Midlife 3D Decision Making.

Recently I attended a neighbor's daughter's wedding. It was a very happy wedding and spirits were high. During the dancing, and according to the custom, the bride and groom's friends entered the middle of the dance floor while presenting a personal number so to make things merrier for the newly wedded couple.

Suddenly, with no early notice, a guy rides into the center on a unicycle while juggling three clubs.

Once the virtuoso finished his jig, a friend of mine who was astonished shared with me his admiration while adding that he can't even consider doing either one of the tricks individually, and this guy did both simultaneously. I had a mellow reaction frankly because I could barely hear my friend over the band's loud music, and he mistakenly thought I wasn't very impressed, as a result, he asked –"Can you do that?".

I replied, "I can do something similar"- although I can't ride a unicycle while juggling three clubs. But I can juggle one club while riding a tricycle".

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Dealing with Challenges

We constantly find ourselves coping with difficulties and responding to challenges.

Peoples differ in the manner they encounter problems, some tackle highly stressful incidents with ease, while others collapse on dealing with mildly complex issues. For some, financial "to-dos" are no big deal, but small house duties create procrastinating reflexes, others can't start daily obligations if there are dirty dishes in the kitchen sink.

Addressing complex situations or figuring out how to act while feeling lost and unable to find a solution, causes discomfort to intensify. Stress will grow depending on the importance of the issue and the complexity the resolution requires.

Everyone has their own unique bundle to tackle, But I believe that major issues are linked to people in general, according to their culture and age group. So, there are common and typical concerns that are highly correlated according to age groups and social customs, and backgrounds.

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Different age groups face problems that have consequences with different time frames.

I suggest that there is a general structure correlating age groups to the general time zone that is required to be considered when making decisions.

Infants are concerned mainly with immediate issues. As the individual gets older there is a shift to future and distance-oriented problems. The procedure reverses with elderly people, and they, like toddlers, engage mostly with immediate concerns.

According to this thesis, infants and toddlers are engaged in present issues, such as solving problems regarding hunger, toys, sleep, etc.

In countries where pension funds are considered sufficient, people who retire also don't need to make long-term decisions, they are geared toward enjoying the moment. Leisure-time issues are treated with greater levels of ease and short-term planning.

Young adults are those that need to intake long-term consideration to their decisions, such as deciding on their professional direction and the path needed to achieve it, Marriage, children, where to live, mortgages, etc. Choosing a profession might require making decisions that will finalize only after a decade, and the profession chosen might dictate life's framework for multiple decades.

The decision on getting married and whom to wed usually has outcomes for generations to come.

In midlife, it is expected to focus on relating to a combination of future and present issues, like the situation in younger adulthood, but what might additionally intensely sneak in, is examining previous decisions. With midlife, the questioning of previous long-term decisions that were made might erupt, on reaching midlife people can look back at their achievements and level of life satisfaction, and begin to challenge and question if the assumptions made years ago are accurate and appropriate. Were the best decisions made? Should forecasts be updated or decisions improved or changed?

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Do the multi-time zones in midlife decision-making affect happiness?

If we were to present this notion on a graph it would be presented as the following:

This graph indicates that at life's beginning and in the elderly years of life, short-range decisions are common. The further a person is from these two points the more long-term related the considerations customarily are, with the beginning of midlife being the turning point.

?A caparison to the "U shape life satisfaction graph" indicates in general a mirrored situation:

In the case of life satisfaction, young adult and elderly individuals are highly satisfied, and when reaching midlife life satisfaction registers as life's low.

(More information on the topic https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-020-00797-z by the researcher Dr. David Blanchflower)

This suggests the hypothesis that dealing with present issues compared to far future decision-making, creates a higher level of happiness. When problems are dealt with immediately and solutions are quickly and successfully applied to lead to the elimination of the problem, instant satisfaction is achieved, and distress is released. When addressing a longer process that required a long period to compose a plan for action to solve a long-term incident, and an even longer period is in need until the process is finalized, there is constant long-lasting continuous dwelling on an unsolved problem, causing the breakout of levels of dissatisfaction.

On approaching midlife, life satisfaction can plummet even if life is looking good and achievements are successfully accumulating, this can be a reaction that comes from simultaneously addressing short and long-term decisions while questioning the predictions and results of prior decisions. Not only is it required to still be aware of future issues, but also new immediate decisions take form, for instance- responsibilities of caring for aging parents, fatigue from years of daily routines at work, or other wearying obligations.

The anticipation to reach midlife with stability is uprooted by the actuality of additional instability and uncertainty.

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It is hard enough to succeed in riding a unicycle but at the same time trying to juggle three clubs proliferates the challenge. Similarly. Throughout midlife, we juggle diverse challenges with a wide spectrum of time zones. ?Still planning the future and at the same time new types of distractions presently show up, and to this, we might add intense re-examining of the past. This multi-level problem juggling can result in the appearance of the '"U" shape of life satisfaction' finding that:

you are celebrating life's jubilee on the bottom of the "U".