The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which tracked hundreds of men across their entire adult lives for more than 80 years, found that the people who are happiest and healthiest in their later years are not those who are wealthiest or most successful. They are the people who maintained close, warm, authentic human relationships. The quality of relationships in midlife, the study found, is a better predictor of health and happiness in later life than cholesterol levels. People who reach sixty with strong, close relationships treated those relationships as investments requiring regular deposits of time, attention, and genuine care.
Habit 3: Practicing Genuine Forgiveness and Releasing Resentment
Clinical psychologists who specialize in forgiveness research have documented extensively that chronic resentment operates like a low-grade inflammatory process in the human body and mind. It keeps the stress response partially activated, contributes to anxiety and depression, disrupts sleep, and consumes enormous cognitive and emotional resources that could otherwise be directed toward living. The people who age with genuine lightness and peace are almost universally those who developed the practice of working through their grievances rather than accumulating them. If you reach sixty still carrying the resentments of your forties or thirties, this is the work that most deserves your attention now.
