Upside of Aging: You will be less bothered by things

A provocative study on aging and emotional stability was published last summer in the Journal of Neuroscience and reported in the Los Angeles Times. In short it found that healthy, older people "are less bothered by things and are more in control of their reactions to fear."

...researchers studied 242 healthy people ages 12 to 79. The subjects were shown pictures of fearful faces and happy faces, while their brain responses were tracked with functional MRI scans and EEGs, or electroencephalograms, which show the regions of the brain active at any given moment. The findings suggest that people become less neurotic, more able to control fear and more emotionally stable as they age, an observation that fits with other data.

Specifically, the Australian team found that the amygdala — a deep brain center for processing raw feelings, especially fear — becomes less reactive to fearful stimuli between the middle and older years, while a higher brain center, the medial prefrontal cortex, which governs planning and judgment, gets more active during that same period.

The LA Times article also cited another supporting study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that "showed that young people report more sad, blue or depressed days per month than older people — 3.4 per month for 20- to 24-year-olds, versus just over two days for people 65 to 74."

None of this surprises positive psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar:

"One of the reasons why we are happier with age is that we simplify our lives. We focus on what's really important to us, while discarding things that are less personally meaningful.

Here are some ideas on how to simplify your life.