Life begins at 46 (at least, it did for Dave)

Dave Stefan: 

I lost track of this journal for a long time. And a few years later, I found it, like, “oh, wow, look at this. This stuff has come true.”

My name is Dave Stefan, and I’m a therapist, former college professor and positive psychology researcher, which basically means I study the science of happiness and try to use it for myself and for the people I meet, and clients, friends, family.

I wrestled with depression most of my life around the time that I knew that I was gay — to even say that now is like, I don’t even think about it that much, and calling myself a gay man, because back then, just verbalizing that- because for 30 years, I had been told that that’s wrong or bad.

I was working in a religious college, and had been outed at 39, and that’s what was an inciting incident to make these changes. But I was, in that time, unemployed, living with my mom, really trying to pursue the gay lifestyle, trying to find a partner. There’s actually something called a gay adolescence. I didn’t do much dating when I was actually a teenager.

[chuckles]

I waited till I was 40, which meant I felt very immature dating and just very awkward.  And all these things just weren’t happening for me. And so that led up to depression and then just feeling lost at 45 and trying to, you know, looking for signs, I guess, for things, how things could change.

The moment of truth happened when I was just about to turn 46 a month later. I came across this Economist magazine article in Barnes and Noble, basically said that we get happier as we get older. And the turning point is at 46. And so that kind of was like a light bulb for me to see that things could get better for me as I got older.

It gave me an idea that- that was a seed of a thought that, you know, eventually germinated into something really great.

I decided to do this project around happiness. But really underlying it all I wanted to be happier, just with- regardless of my circumstance, I just wanted to find greater happiness.

I had this vision journal that I kind of just cut out images to represent what I wanted to see happen as part of Project 46 and the first page

[page flipping]

is the abbey of Gethsemane. It’s a Catholic monastery in Kentucky. It’s me sitting on a bench outside that monastery, and then an image of butterflies and I wrote above it, ‘peace with God.’

[page flipping]

The next page is just through three cutouts of- representing- I wrote down on one page: ‘Partner in crime, love in life, social support, adventures.’

I took intentional steps to pursue happiness, which helped, even though things actually got worse kind of part way through that project, I say much, much worse, because I became suicidal. I was seeing a therapist. And he’s like, ‘Don’t worry about being successful or anything else, just survive.’ And that, for some reason, clicked with me, and actually had a thought, is like, ‘if I can just survive and make a difference in one other person’s life. That’s the icing on the cake.’

I met a partner, we’ve been together for 13 years. I think you just saw him pulling out of the car- driveway.

[laughs]

And, I got a job. There’s like, a long journey, but it’s very fulfilling.

I thought, because I struggled so much to figure out my life, I thought about trying to provide a community for people to help them figure out what to do with their lives.

When I looked at this journal, it was just eye-opening, because the idea of manifesting something and then creating a visual of it was, I had always believed in that process, but it was kind of evidence to me that this really works. It can really work for people, to kind of jot the ideas down, find the images. Even if you lose track of it, it just kind of seeps into your unconscious if you focus on it long enough, and then it becomes a guiding light.