Thanks to all of you who send me great articles and Substack columns including this one from my friend Sandy LaBelle called “Here’s One Thing About Getting Older.” I’ve excerpted it below in italics and added my comments at the end. Based upon yesterday’s post on my Near Death Experience, Rest in Peace (while living has a whole new meaning for me).
A group of researchers around Tim Lomas from Harvard piggybacked on the Global Flourishing Survey, which asked more than 200,000 people in 22 countries over five years to rate how they feel about several aspects of life. One item was the question: “In general. How often do you feel you are at peace with your thoughts and feelings?”
Here is the share of the population that states they are at peace with themselves often or always across the 22 countries.
People feeling at peace with themselves:
Source: Lomas et al. (2025)
It’s a really weird order. While anyone who has ever read about surveys of best places to live, etc., would have expected Sweden to be near the top, I am surprised to see Egypt there as well. Meanwhile, I am not too surprised to see Turkey at the bottom, but why Spain?
The researchers don’t give any explanation or analyse country-level results at a deeper level, but they do give results based on socioeconomic variables. And they make more sense to me. Most importantly, the older people get, the more they feel inner peace. Religious people also feel more at peace than nonreligious people. And married people feel significantly more inner peace than unmarried and single people.
Inner peace increases with age:
Source: Lomas et al. (2025)
There isn’t any information in the paper of what drives these feelings because it is only a first presentation of survey results pending further analysis of causal drivers. But the pattern that emerges is the one that people who no longer compete with other people (whether it is for a job, a salary increase, a spouse, etc.) simply are happier. Or as Lily Tomlin so memorably said: “The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you are still a rat.”
The more anxious and disturbed the world is (not much “outer peace”), the more important it is to find tranquility within oneself (“inner peace”). My sense is age leads us from a state of mind focused on performance (and comparison) to one focused on presence (and contentment). Many of us are less focused on the pursuit of happiness and more focused on the practice of gratitude.
What do you think? Why do you have more inner peace as you age?
-Chip