A Practical Approach to Life Satisfaction

We realize that life ultimately represents change, and the quicker we adjust to change, the faster we can move on with our lives. Nevertheless, most people resist the process of change and ultimately prolong some of their negative experiences. This resistance could affect their overall well-being. With every loss or failure comes an unexpected opportunity for growth. We should learn to accept defeat because it can allow us to see things from a different perspective. This internal struggle for equilibrium produces some of the greatest moments of productive change that one can experience due to psychic disturbances. Remember that failure is not a permanent condition that we should avoid, but rather an opportunity to learn from it and move on with our life in the most productive way.
Imagine how strange the world would appear if you decided not to get up after falling to the ground when you were an infant. Falling is a failure. Getting up is a successful outcome for this infant's ability to develop a growth mindset.
While giving a lecture at the college on Erik Erikson's Psychosocial Theory of Development, a student asked me a provocative question about life satisfaction. Generativity and stagnation are Erikson's seventh stage of development. This stage prompted the student to ask if regret was a universal feeling experienced when things in life turn out differently than expected. I liked her question since it showed that she was thinking about life's meaning. I said that regret was a universal feeling that helped us examine our actions to react to events differently in the future. People experience stagnation in middle age based on this stage. Perhaps they feel stagnation because they have not done enough to advance younger people's lives or maybe because they have been too focused on themselves.
Nevertheless, people interested in promoting youth are more likely to experience generativity during middle adulthood. And, when they are in late adulthood, they are more likely to feel integrity for a life well-lived, and they experienced despair if regret filled their thoughts. Therefore, people who lived their lives with more generativity are more likely to have more integrity in late adulthood. They are also more likely to experience less regret, bitterness, and despair, which means they may achieve higher degrees of satisfaction in their lives.
There are qualitative differences between generativity and stagnation and between each of the stages of Erikson's theory. Each of these stages confronts the person with an existential crisis that needs resolution. The person might feel vulnerable during a problem, as they seek out and experience the cognitive conflict that consumes them. With mental conflict or loss comes an opportunity for intellectual and emotional growth. In this sense, my student's simple question about regret presented a quandary for me.
Rather than answering questions quickly, my teaching practice involves asking students for responses, which I did in this situation. A typical reaction from most of the students was that they had no regrets. Listening to their responses helped me remember the innocence of youth. It also helped me imagine what it would feel like to be young again. I remember thinking that their eyes were young and their experiences not yet ripe with maturity. Even now, I also knew that the passage of time would change how they understood regret. Perhaps people recognize that this question leaves them vulnerable. This question forces them to confront the ultimate truth that we all have regrets. Whatever their reasons, their responses might help insulate them from feelings of regret to avoid feelings of inferiority because they want to appear perfect and superior. After listening to their responses, they redirected the question back to me. I knew that I had to answer, but how should I answer without sounding too parochial?
While staring at the sea of people in front of me, I thought about how vulnerable I would like to be in the moment or whether I would be able to say something simple yet profound. I opted for the latter with a simple message while I thought about the book Who Moved My Cheese. After explaining the book's premise, I told students that my biggest regret in life was similar to Hem's. I replied to the students by saying that much of my pain and suffering associated with the Great Recession could have been more palatable. My losses related to this event could have been more pleasant if I accepted my losses early on and moved on to the next best opportunity. It appears to me now that resisting change also prolonged my suffering, and I wish I could have been more like Sniff: an innovator. In the parable, Sniff is the one character whose simple-minded style enabled him to detect change. This ability to see differences meant that he could respond quickly to events to minimize losses in an unpredictable and changing world. A complex mind could overthink solutions to any problem rather than approaching it most simply. Sniff was more spartan in his approach to innovation than the complex mind of Hem that procrastinated change at the expense of a meaningful gain.