To Inspire:

We’ve been sharing insights from the book, JOYSPAN: The Art and Science of Thriving in Life’s Second Half. The author, gerontologist Dr. Kerry Burnnight, shares that joyspan reflects an understanding that it’s not just the number of years we live (lifespan), or even the number of years we live in good health (health span), but how many years we truly enjoy our life (joyspan). Kerry shares four essential actions or elements that enable one’s joyspan:

• Grow – our determination to continue to grow as a person.
• Connect – our dedication to building meaningful relationships with other people.
• Adapt – Our desire and ability to adjust to life’s inevitable challenges.
• Give – our willingness to share ourselves to enrich the lives of others.

In three previous WealthNotes we shared her insights into the first three essential elements, Grow (read that here), Connect (read that here) and Adapt (read that here). In this issue of WealthNotes we share her insights on Give. Here are some excerpts from Kerry’s chapter on Give with Joy:

The fourth element of Joyspan is giving. To give yourself is to offer your time, energy, skills, or compassion to others, creating connections and fostering purpose. Giving is not just a moral idea: it is an ongoing, action-based choice. Research shows that people who regularly give of themselves experienced lower levels of stress, better immune function, and increased life expectancy. Giving reduces cortisol levels and activates neural pathways linked to reward and fulfillment.

You can have a sense of purpose even if you can’t readily recite, “my purpose is to…” Purpose exists in the small, everyday acts of care and contribution: nurturing relationships, sharing your passions, or contributing to your community. Purpose is recognizing what you can give of yourself – and then giving it. It’s a bridge connecting your inner values to the needs of others. You can have multiple giving intentions that wax and wane in importance over your lifetime as your priorities shift and your roles change. Purpose is a practice, and you create it and re-create it again and again.

Recent research has provided evidence to support the idea that helping others goes hand in hand with meaningfulness. It’s not just that people who have already found their purpose in life enjoy giving back. Instead, helping others can actually create the sense of meaning we’re seeking. Rather than ruminating on what makes our life worthwhile as we work toward burnout, we can find the answer outside ourselves, in human connection.

Dr. Steven Cole and his team at UCLA collected DNA samples from 1,572 adults aged 59 to 98. They surveyed the participants on their self-reported level of happiness and their self-reported level of life purpose. The results were startling. It was not how happy the participants felt that impacted gene expression, it was the extent to which people felt their lives had sense of direction and purpose. The research showed that purpose resulted in lower inflammation and higher antiviral response. For those without a sense of purpose, just the opposite results were revealed – elevated inflammation and reduced antiviral response, both of which increase disease processes.

This weekend, give thought to making your life purpose, the regular acts of giving to others – small and large. Giving is a way of serving and Albert Schwetizer shared an insight that we might end with here:

“The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”

Life, what a gift. And we find joy as we give our life to others!

Written by Matt Palmer, Partner & Co-Founder