Let’s Play!

Zimbardo and Boyd say you can look for happiness in the past or future, but you “experience happiness only in the present.”

Their research shows that adults who live with a present time perspective are more playful and impulsive, are given to excitement and novelty and are spontaneous. They make friends easily and frequently, and these “presents” laugh significantly more than future and past oriented folks.

The Stanford psychologists point out that all of us begin life as presents. Children don’t look backward or forward but live in the now, which is why they spend so much time playing and laughing.

According to the doctors, in retirement we need to “ramp up” our present orientation because “successful aging is for the young at heart.”

Sounds good to me.

(I’ve written about this before)