Keep growing on a soul level

 Keep growing on a soul level

 If you can take advantage of an intergenerational program in which adults spanning decades study (and in some cases live) side by side on university campuses, more power to you. Golden enrolled in a yearlong program at Stanford University at 61 and was delighted to discover that she and her classmates, who ranged in age from their 20s to their 80s, “were all at exactly the same stage of life—learning, rethinking what we wanted to do, resetting our life priorities. It was just one of the most rejuvenating experiences you can imagine.”

According to professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at McGill University Daniel Levitin, PhD, gratitude works “at any age” to increase happiness. “Practice gratitude for what you have. This is motivating, alters brain chemistry toward more positive emotions, and oils the pleasure circuits of the brain,” he writes in Successful Aging. You can get a bump from appreciating something as simple as the taste of your morning tea or the sight of a cardinal out your window. Or you can allow gratitude to help you turn a painful setback into an engine of growth.

 Gladys McGarey, MD, a pioneer of holistic medicine who has lived more than a century, is living proof. She suffered mightily as a child due to undiagnosed dyslexia and was blindsided at age 69 when her husband of 46 years left her for another woman. Nevertheless, as McGarey writes in her new book, The Well-Lived Life, finding the possibility of transformation within every challenge can go a long way toward helping help people her age (and much younger) experience transcendent happiness.