Task 1. Read the article and be ready to briefly retell it.

What category of people would

benefit from this article the most?

How major life events impact our long-term

wellbeing
By Arianne Cohen 8th October 2020
Although people lead unique lives, new data says that we all experience relatively similar things – and how we feel about them
is pretty consistent, too.

O UR psychological experiences don’t happen in a vacuum. For instance, imagine that your
life is blighted by a pandemic trauma. You are distraught. But then you meet the love your life. Or
you land your dream job. Or you move into the perfect home. You feel both shattered and uplifted,
simultaneously. Each of these events has an effect on you – and they combine to create a complex
psychological experience in which just looking at one event doesn’t tell the whole story of their
impact. Still, research on the psychological impact of major events frequently focuses on singular
events or categories, such as career; job loss, for example, has its own research oeuvre drilling into
the granular details of how unemployment affects the psyche. But these studies don’t account for
other contemporaneous life events. Understanding this holistic impact inspired Nick Glozier, a
professor of psychological medicine at the University of Sydney, to conduct a study on the
emotional wellbeing and life satisfaction of 14,000 people across 16 years, as participants
weathered 18 common life events: deaths, family additions and subtractions, job changes, criminal
events, health problems and financial swings. For the research, Glozier’s team looked to Australia,
which is home to a number of strong longitudinal datasets, including an excellent annual survey
targeting diverse Australian households called the HILDA Survey.

Good news, bad news

Let’s get the bad news out of the way: in a typical Australian life, the deepest emotional craters
come from deaths, marital separation and major financial losses – and these negative events hurt
for much longer than positive events uplift. Participants averaged four years to emotionally recover
from major financial losses or health shocks, and three years to recover from divorces. (Here,
‘recovery’ is defined as the time to return to prior levels of wellbeing.) One of the most frightening
catastrophes, the death of a child or spouse, averages four years of recovery – but, calmingly, it
occurs rarely.

Nathan Kettlewell, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Technology Sydney, cautions that
these recovery statistics are averages, and some people take longer to get back on their feet. “And
these measures may not capture all of the enduring effects. It’s clear that something like that
becomes part of you, and our study doesn’t suggest that that’s not the case,” he says.
The data also suggests that the emotional costs of quickly moving on from something
unsatisfactory – for instance, from a spouse – will be significant, and are worth avoiding unless
inescapable. Kettlewell suggests proactively addressing issues when reasonable – such as
preventing health problems with exercise and healthcare, evading unnecessary job loss with
training or coaching and keeping healthy marriages humming with counseling and tender loving
care.

The good news in all of this, however, is that for most people, these bleak events don’t occur often
(the exception is health crises of loved ones, which, on average, appear every four-and-a-half
years), and participants’ negative events tend to not pile up. For example, someone who was fired
is unlikely to also experience a natural disaster or divorce. And strong recovery is the norm. “Most
people get better,” says Glozier. “We have this terrible tendency to assume that every kind of bad
thing that happens requires therapy and counseling and someone to talk to, and actually, most
people just get over it. We need to concentrate our resources on the ones that don’t.”

This bodes well for pandemic-induced trauma. “People are, on average, quite resilient to these
things,” says Kettlewell. “We’ll start to feel better. We’ll adapt.”

Boosts and plunges

Ask yourself how you’ve typically felt over the last decade. Is it pretty consistent? If you said yes,
that sounds about right.

“People’s levels of wellbeing don’t change that much over their lives,” says Glozier. “The vast
majority of people revert to their normal set points of wellbeing after a period of time – and in
many cases, just a short period of time. Some people are just pretty miserable, and other people
seem to sort of glide through life, even when terrible things happen to them.” The term for this is
‘hedonic adaptation’.

The data indicates that the biggest wellbeing boosts come from marriage, childbirth and financial
gain, but that those sparks of happiness are fleeting; marriage provides a year-long emotional boost
at most, though improves life satisfaction for three years. A retirement, pregnancy or job promotion
can curl your mouth into a smile for a few months, though you’ll return to your prior baseline
thereafter. You’ll also get a boost from the “anticipatory effect”, too, which are feelings in the lead
up to the big event.

Like boosts, most wellbeing plunges are temporary, too. “Many of the things that we talk about
day-to-day as being highly stressful are only highly stressful for very, very short periods of time,
and have little if any long-term effects,” says Glozier. For example, on average, the study
participants switched jobs or houses every four-and-a-half years. Moving house is nerve-wracking
for three weeks, but nearly invisible in the context of a decade. And workplace changes have
surprisingly small effects on wellbeing. “That was a bit of a surprise, given how much stress,
anxiety and focus people have in career,” says Kettlewell. “When people lose a job, often they get
a new one pretty quickly.”

One day at a time

If you take home one thing from the study, it’s that you can officially stop chasing happiness.

Marriage, financial gain, retirement and childbirth might make you perceive your life as more
satisfying, but none will make you actually feel sparkly over the long term. You are better served
by enjoying positive events as they arise, and otherwise pursuing the values that sing to your
particular soul.

As the study authors wrote, “hoping for happiness from positive events appears misplaced”. Life,
it turns out, is a pleasant hike on a flat course, not a roller coaster.

Task 2. Find English equivalents in the article:

1. ведут уникальную жизнь

2. стойкий, стабильный
3. омрачена шоком
4. в смятении
5. осуществил мечту
6. разбитый
7. воодушевленный
8. потеря работы
9. события современной жизни
10. эмоциональное благополучие
11. удовлетворенность жизнью
12. избавимся от плохих новостей
13. эмоционально оправиться
14. активно решать проблемы
15. довольно устойчивы
16. мгновения счастья
17. долгосрочные последствия
18. прекратить гоняться за счастьем