Contentment after 65 isn't the result of a charmed life. It's the result of years of quiet letting go — of grudges, of control, of comparison, of perfectionism, of the belief that happiness exists somewhere other than right here.
Add VegOut to your Google News feed. 
There's a misconception about happy older adults that needs correcting. People assume they got lucky — better health, more money, an easier life. But the research tells a completely different story.
The 2024 World Happiness Report found that older adults around the world consistently rate their lives more highly than younger people — even though their health declines and their social circles shrink as they age. Researchers describe an "age-related positivity effect" where people naturally shift their focus away from negative experiences and toward positive ones as they get older.
But here's the thing: this shift doesn't happen automatically. It happens because content older adults have quietly given things up. Not possessions. Not people. But mental habits, emotional patterns, and psychological dead weight that most of us carry around without even realizing it.
As psychologist Steve Taylor wrote in Psychology Today, aging can be a process of natural spiritual development — but only if you accept the letting go that comes with it. Those who resist it end up in what Erik Erikson famously called despair. Those who embrace it find integrity, wisdom, and a kind of peace that younger people find hard to understand.
Here are 9 things the most content people over 65 gave up long before they got there.
1. The need to be right
At some point, genuinely content older adults stopped treating every disagreement as a battle to win. They learned that being right and being happy rarely occupy the same space, and they chose accordingly.
The Harvard Study of Adult Development — which tracked participants for nearly 80 years — found that the quality of relationships was the single strongest predictor of happiness and health in later life. People who maintained warm relationships lived longer and stayed sharper. Those who let arguments and stubbornness erode their connections paid for it with their health.
You can't nurture deep relationships if you're constantly correcting people. Content older adults figured that out and let it go.
2. Grudges
This one is backed by serious science. Research on adults aged 60 to 92 found that forgiveness significantly mediated the relationship between wisdom and wellbeing. Those who showed greater wisdom also showed a stronger tendency to forgive — and reported higher psychological and life satisfaction as a result.
A positive psychology intervention that included forgiveness training in adults over 65 produced significant increases in subjective happiness, life satisfaction, and wellbeing, with effects lasting up to a year.
In Buddhism, we say that holding a grudge is like gripping a hot coal — you're the one getting burned. Content older adults put the coal down. Not because the person who wronged them deserved forgiveness, but because they deserved freedom from the weight of carrying it.
3. The obsession with staying busy
There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from equating busyness with worth. Younger people run from it. Content older adults stopped running.
Qualitative research on successful aging found that older adults who reported the highest wellbeing described it as a balance between engagement with life and self-acceptance. Not relentless activity. Not constant productivity. A balance. They pursued things that mattered and let the rest fall away.
The happiest older adults I know are not busy. They're intentional. There's a world of difference.
4. Worrying about what other people think
By 65, the people who are genuinely at peace have stopped performing for an audience. They wear what they like. They say what they mean. They've lost interest in managing other people's perceptions of them.
This aligns perfectly with what happiness researchers have found. The World Happiness Report researchers noted that older adults become less susceptible to external negativity bias as they age. They're better able to recognize what actually matters in their daily lives — their community, their close relationships, how they spend their time — and to filter out the noise of social judgment.
In my book Hidden Secrets of Buddhism, I write about upekkha — equanimity. It's the ability to stay centered regardless of praise or blame, gain or loss. Content older adults may not know the Pali term, but they've mastered the concept.
5. The pursuit of more
More money. More stuff. A bigger house. A nicer car. At some point, the happiest people over 65 simply stopped wanting more and started appreciating enough.
Research on happiness and mental health in older adults found that happiness was linked not to income, but to income satisfaction — the feeling that what you have is sufficient. It's not about the number in your bank account. It's about whether you've made peace with it.
This is one of the most liberating transitions a person can make. Once you stop chasing, you can finally sit down and enjoy what's already here.
6. Trying to control their adult children
This is the one nobody talks about, but every content older adult has confronted. At some point, they stopped trying to steer their children's careers, relationships, and life choices. They offered their love and made themselves available. And they let go of the rest.
The Harvard study's director Robert Waldinger emphasized that the relationships which predicted happiness were characterized by warmth — not control. People who clung to authority over their adult children damaged those bonds. People who released it deepened them.
Content older adults learned that love and control cannot coexist for long. They chose love.
7. The fear of missing out
FOMO doesn't just affect 25-year-olds on Instagram. It also affects retirees who feel like life is passing them by — like they should be doing more, seeing more, achieving more.
The happiest people over 65 have given this up entirely. They've stopped measuring their lives against some imagined ideal and started savoring what they actually have. Research from the World Happiness Report confirms this, noting that age leads people to accumulate enriching life experiences and to think more positively about their circumstances — a process that naturally crowds out FOMO if you let it.
Contentment requires deciding that where you are right now is a valid place to be. Not a waiting room for something better.
8. Perfectionism
Content older adults gave up the fantasy that things need to be perfect to be good. The dinner doesn't need to be flawless. The garden doesn't need to win prizes. The day doesn't need to go according to plan.
Research on acceptance and wellbeing in older adults using data from 840 community-dwelling adults aged 72 to 105 found that acceptance was a strong predictor of wellbeing — comparable in strength to self-rated health. People who accepted their circumstances, including their limitations, reported significantly higher positive affect and lower negative affect.
Perfectionism is exhausting at 30. It's corrosive at 65. The content ones traded it in for something better: good enough, done with joy.
9. The belief that happiness is somewhere else
This might be the most important thing on the list. At some point, genuinely content older adults stopped believing that happiness was waiting for them in another place, another relationship, another set of circumstances. They stopped saying "I'll be happy when..." and started finding it in what was already in front of them.
A "three good things" gratitude intervention tested on older adults showed that simply paying attention to what's going well — right now, in your existing life — produced meaningful increases in wellbeing. Not because their lives changed. But because their attention did.
This is the core of Buddhist philosophy. Suffering comes from wanting things to be different from how they are. Contentment comes from turning toward what is, fully and without resistance.
The happiest older adults I've ever met didn't arrive at contentment by adding things to their lives. They arrived by subtracting. By releasing the psychological habits that were quietly stealing their peace.
The bottom line
Contentment after 65 isn't the result of a charmed life. It's the result of years of quiet letting go — of grudges, of control, of comparison, of perfectionism, of the belief that happiness exists somewhere other than right here.
Erik Erikson said old age presents two paths: integrity or despair. The research is clear about what separates the two. It's not health. It's not money. It's acceptance — the willingness to put down the things that are too heavy to carry and to stop picking them back up.
If you're over 65 and at peace, you already know this. And if you're not there yet — at any age — the path is the same.
Give something up. You'll be amazed at how much lighter you feel.
What’s Your Plant-Powered Archetype?
Ever wonder what your everyday habits say about your deeper purpose—and how they ripple out to impact the planet?
This 90-second quiz reveals the plant-powered role you’re here to play, and the tiny shift that makes it even more powerful.
12 fun questions. Instant results. Surprisingly accurate.
