Find your bliss

Tips for cultivating your 'joyspan'

Harvard Health Publishing

We may think of joy as a bolt of lightning we’d love to bottle. But if you’ve ever wished good moments would linger, the path forward is becoming clearer.

Science is illuminating how the brain holds on to positive experiences — and how simple daily practices can help us extend our “joyspan,” the satisfaction and well-being we experience as we move through life.

Coined by gerontologist Kerry Burnight, who wrote the 2025 bestselling book “Joyspan: The Art and Science of Thriving in Life’s Second Half,” the term might be considered the emotional counterpart to “lifespan” or “healthspan” — the latter being the length of time someone stays healthy, not just alive.

Joy joined other seemingly elusive topics such as kindness, gratitude and forgiveness as research themes since the “positive psychology” movement prompted a shift in the late 1990s from focusing solely on mental health problems to studying the factors that enhance well-being.

Joy isn’t necessarily the absence of sadness or angst. It’s more akin to a form of emotional fitness that can be fostered over time, says Ronald Siegel, an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School.

“You can’t reliably cultivate joy by chasing after pleasure all the time,” he says. “Well-being is tied much more to wisdom and compassion and being able to ride the roller coaster of life. If we’re able to do that, our moments of joy are much richer.”

Nurturing joyspan

Much research — including the long-running Harvard Study of Adult Development — shows that joy is associated with health benefits such as better immune function, resilience and longevity.

Siegel believes these health eff ects stem from joy’s ability to lower stress levels.

“The combination of being less stressed and not doing unhealthy things to self-medicate improves our lifespan and psychological well-being,” he says.

In her book, Burnight focused on four “non-negotiable” actions she identified through research that can foster joyspan, all of which resonate with Siegel. Here’s what we have to do:

1 Grow: In the emotional sense, growth means reaching for more, whether that means knowledge, exploration or connection — all of which can help our brains stay sharp and foster our mental health, Siegel says. “It’s about knowing what you don’t know, and constantly being curious and learning,” he says.

2 Adapt: Embracing change is often more challenging when it’s unwanted, such as the death of a loved one. But adapting means approaching these types of adverse circumstances as a normal part of life.

3 Give: This directive doesn’t mean you have to make huge gestures. Even small actions to give something to others — be it time, attention or perspective — end up benefiting your joyspan. “There’s a lot of research on giving that shows the more generous you are, the happier you are,” Siegel says. “Sending a check to a good cause is great, but actually helping out someone you know is even more closely tied to well-being.”

4 Connect: Mounting research suggests social connections are vital for our physical and mental health, while loneliness can lead to an earlier death. So it’s logical that connecting with others also extends our joyspan, Siegel says. “The jury’s in: we know what’s most important for physical and mental health, and it’s the quality of our relationships,” he says.

Small shifts can produce big benefits

Siegel suggests trying these tactics to cultivate your joyspan.

• Notice and savor tiny pleasures: A hot cup of coffee, sunlight through a window, a satisfying stretch, a funny text — all can create moments of pure joy. “Take time to eat your food without looking at the TV or your social media feed,” Siegel says. “Try to pay attention and show up for your life.”
• Take a “daily joy” snapshot: Capture one novel, beautiful or meaningful thing each day.
• Find ways to connect: Volunteering in your community and nurturing close friendships can boost your sense of meaning, not just your mood.
• Move more: Walking, dancing, yoga and other forms of gentle movement emphasize the joy of the body. Bonus points if you pursue them outdoors. “Getting into nature really calms the mind and helps us feel less isolated and stuck in our heads,” Siegel says.

HIV testing and diagnose dropped after cutbacks

Julie Steenhuysen and Christy Santhosh
Reuters

CHICAGO — The U.S. State Department says it supported HIV treatment for 20.6 million people as of September last year, including 3 million people whose care was provided by their own governments rather than the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, while testing rates sharply dropped due to funding cutbacks.

The report last week suggests support for HIV treatment and services through PEPFAR overall was about the same as the prior year. However, the Trump administration did not provide data from earlier in 2025 that would show the effects of HIV funding disruptions, AIDS advocates said Friday.

In one of his first acts in office in January 2025, President Donald Trump put almost all U.S. foreign aid on a 90-day hold. Days later, the State Department said life-saving HIV work under PEPFAR, the world’s leading HIV/AIDS initiative, would continue. Most prevention eff orts, including testing and pre-exposure prophylaxis, in which HIV-blocking drugs are given to people at risk of infection, were curtailed.

“We have seen this big drop in testing, and that’s problematic, because if people aren’t tested, they can’t know if they’re positive. If we don’t know they’re positive, they cannot be put on drugs,” said Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development who tracks the data. “We’re building up problems for the future.”

In September, the Trump administration released an America First Global Health Strategy in which the U.S. would negotiate multiyear agreements with countries receiving PEPFAR assistance to steer them toward self-reliance for HIV care.

As a result, the number of people receiving antiretroviral therapy from PEPFAR fell to 17.4 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, down from 19.4 million in the prior year quarter, according to the State Department’s PEPFAR website.

Testing in that period fell to 17.2 million people in the fourth quarter of 2025, down from 21.9 million in the year-earlier quarter. New HIV diagnoses fell to 307,000 in the fourth quarter of 2025, from 385,000 in the year-ago quarter.

The PEPFAR website said data for the first three quarters of fiscal 2025 were not available because of program interruptions, reporting challenges and program shifts. The federal government said it has greater confidence that fourth-quarter figures represent a complete tally after the State Department took ownership of the program.

“We have been in an unprecedented period of a 16-month data blackout,” said Asia Russell, executive director of Health GAP, a global AIDS advocacy organization, noting typically PEPFAR data are reported every quarter.

Preliminary drafts of quarterly data from early in 2025 “suggested a big drop off ” in HIV care, Kenny said.

“The program interruptions bit really matters here,” he said. “That means, quite plausibly, hundreds of thousands of people lost access to lifesaving medicine for a while at least.”

PEPFAR is credited with saving 26 million lives and preventing HIV infections in 7.8 million babies born to HIV-infected mothers since its start in 2003 under President George W. Bush.

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