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By Cynthia Ross Cravit............What is the key to successful living? Read these 5 secrets for leading a full and meaningful life.Studies have found that a person’s outlook on life may not only improve longevity but quality of life.

Studies have found that a person’s outlook on life may not only improve longevity but quality of life. Optimists, in fact, are said to experience a higher level of both physical and mental functioning than their pessimist counterparts. And people who perceive themselves to be happy are less likely to become ill, researchers say.

So what is the key to successful living? Author John Izzo set out to answer that very question in his book The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die.

Named the best self-help book of 2008 by the Independent Publisher’s Association, it is based on a five-hour Biography Channel TV series in which Dr. Izzo interviewed 230 people from age 60-106 asking them to reflect back on what they had learned about life.

Interviewees ranged from a town barber to CEOs, from aboriginal chiefs to Holocaust survivors. All were considered by others to be ‘wise elder’ and to have something important to teach about how to live well and be happy. Amnong them, Dr. Izzo says, they represent over 18,000 years of life experience.

50Plus.com asked Dr. Izzo about what he learned from his research. In other words, what must we discover about life before we die?

5 secrets to lasting happiness

Secret #1: Be true to yourself

Q. Good advice to be sure, but life can be terribly busy. With so many voices, expectations and responsibilities crowding our daily lives, how to know if we’re following our heart?

A. It’s true we all have this unelected board of directors that we carry around with us: the voice of our parents, society, and others telling us what it means to be successful. But many of the people I interviewed said that each one of us has an inner voice inside of us that is reliable but that we have to create space to hear it.

One of the simplest ways to hear the inner voice is to build reflection into your life and ask three simple questions: Did the last week or month of my life feel like how I want to be living my life? Am I doing what I really want to do with my life — have I heeded my