Comments on: What makes a good life?

By: My number one takeaway from travel roulette - Intentional Retirement

My number one takeaway from travel roulette - Intentional Retirement — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 17:23:03 +0000

[…] What makes a good life? I wrote about the Study of Adult Development that Harvard has been conducting for the last 80 […]

By: Joe Hearn

Joe Hearn — Mon, 12 Sep 2016 18:25:44 +0000

In reply to Jason. Hi Jason. Thanks for the comment (sorry for my slow reply). Inspiring stuff. I love hearing from readers who are actually putting things into practice. Planning and dreaming are one thing, but doing is another. Hat tip for doing the hard work of actually getting your dreams off the drawing board. Keep up the good work and I'll keep writing and doing whatever I can to help. Touch base anytime. ~ Joe

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 05 Sep 2016 22:45:42 +0000

Thanks for all the articles you write. They are all very helpful to me.

Several years ago my eyes were opened by “The 4 Hour Workweek” and it changed my life.

Because of what I learned from that book and your website, I am now “retired while still working full time”. How is that? I now take 2-2.5 week vacation trips overseas 3-5 times a year, and work in between my trips.
In the past I was always looking forward to retiring someday and being able to travel the world. Now I have discovered that I can travel all I want today, without having to retire from my job.
My big question in the past was: what will I do after I retire someday other than travel?

Since I am able to do today what I want to do in retirement, in my mind I am already retired and my work is just to fund my trips and the future funding of my overhead when I decide to no longer work some day.

By: Joe Hearn

Joe Hearn — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 14:30:48 +0000

In reply to Robert Mullennix. All great points Robert. I wasn't aware of those additional details, so I really appreciate you sharing. Thanks! ~ Joe

By: Robert Mullennix

Robert Mullennix — Sat, 18 Jun 2016 23:00:38 +0000

Joe,
All of your comments about the benefits of warm realtionships are important and true. An additional key finding is that later life satisfaction is directly correlated with the warmth of relationship with your father. Interestingly, at least for later life satisfaction, it was a father’s warmth not your mother’s that had a strong positive correlation.
It should be mentioned that the study identified the strongest correlation to later life satisfaction was the negative correlation of alcohol abuse. That is:
Alcohol abuse is a disorder of great destructive power.
Alcohol abuse was the main cause of divorce between the Grant Study men and their wives.
Strongly correlates with neurosis and depression, which tended to follow alcohol abuse, rather than precede it. Together with associated cigarette smoking, was the single greatest contributor to their early morbidity and death