The Art of Manliness - Key Insights From the Longest Study on Happiness

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.800 Started in 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development represents the longest study on

00:00:16.680 happiness ever conducted. It set out to follow a group of men through every stage of their lives,

00:00:21.140 from youth to old age, to discover what factors lead people to flourish. Here to share some of

00:00:26.660 the insights that have been gleaned from the Harvard Study of Adult Development is Dr. Robert

00:00:30.680 Waldinger, the current director of the project and the co-author of The Good Life, lessons from the

00:00:35.840 world's longest scientific study of happiness. Today on the show, Robert explains how the study

00:00:40.440 has affirmed the absolute primacy of relationships and happiness, and how to develop the social

00:00:44.840 fitness to make and enrich those vital connections. We discuss what the happily married couples in the

00:00:49.840 study did differently, and why happiness in marriage tends to follow a U-shaped curve,

00:00:53.760 which hits its low point in midlife. We talk about how the way you were raised helps set a

00:00:58.160 trajectory for your life, but how it's possible to overcome a rough upbringing and become a

00:01:02.100 transitional character in your family. We also discuss the role that friends and work played in

00:01:05.980 the happiness of the men who participated in the study. We enter a conversation with what folks in

00:01:10.260 every stage of development, whether youth, midlife, or older age, should focus on to live a flourishing

00:01:15.400 life. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash happiness.

00:01:23.760 Robert Waldinger, welcome to the show.

00:01:36.400 Thank you. Glad to be here.

00:01:37.820 So you are the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. This is a study on human

00:01:43.760 happiness flourishing that's been going on since 1938. And you recently co-authored a book with

00:01:50.720 Mark Schultz about what you and other researchers have discovered in this 85-year-old study about

00:01:57.140 human happiness. Before we get into the book, let's talk about the study itself. When it started,

00:02:01.860 what was the aim of the study? And who were the individuals being studied? Just kind of give us

00:02:06.760 a big picture overview of this Harvard Study of Adult Development.

00:02:11.080 Sure. So it was actually two studies that didn't even know about each other when it started.

00:02:16.360 One study was at Harvard University Student Health Service. It was a study of undergraduates,

00:02:23.720 sophomores, from the classes of 1939 to 1942. Their deans thought they were fine, upstanding young men,

00:02:31.740 and they wanted to do a study of young adulthood and normal development. So of course, you study all

00:02:38.080 white guys from Harvard. It's totally politically incorrect now. But at that point, that's what they 0.83

00:02:44.460 wanted to study. And then the other study was started by a Harvard Law School professor,

00:02:51.620 Sheldon Gluck, and his wife, Eleanor Gluck, who was a social worker. They were interested in juvenile

00:02:58.300 delinquency, and particularly why some kids born into really underprivileged, impoverished, troubled

00:03:07.180 families, why those kids managed to stay on good developmental paths, not get into trouble,

00:03:13.120 but really develop into, you know, upstanding young guys. And so both of those studies then were

00:03:21.200 combined by my predecessor, so that they're very contrasting groups, like a very privileged group

00:03:27.900 and a very underprivileged group. And we followed them all for their whole lives. We brought in their

00:03:33.280 wives at one point when I started with the study 20 years ago, and then we reached out to all their

00:03:39.920 children, more than half of whom are women. So now we've studied over 2,000 people in 724 families.

00:03:50.320 And so this is called a longitudinal study, where you take somebody or a group of people and you

00:03:53.980 study them, not just for a moment in their life, but across the entire life. Because I think this is

00:03:59.200 interesting, what are the benefits of doing a longitudinal study like this? What insights can you

00:04:03.120 get that you can't get when you do a study, when you just look at a person at a particular moment in

00:04:08.540 their life? Right. That's such an important question. And most research is done by just

00:04:13.580 looking at particular moments. So the best way I can give you an example is through a joke.

00:04:20.160 So, you know, often we take snapshots, like if we were to do a study of people in their 20s,

00:04:26.460 and then also some people in their 40s and in their 80s, you know, we'd take snapshots at different

00:04:31.380 ages. But there's a senator from Florida named Claude Pepper, who once said, when I look at my

00:04:40.200 state of Florida, and particularly South Florida, I would have to believe that you are born Cuban,

00:04:46.660 and you die Jewish. That the issue is that we tend, if we just take snapshots at different points of 0.74

00:04:54.160 life to make connections that aren't real, that we think we know how life proceeds, but it's not

00:05:02.000 often the case. So by following the same people throughout their entire lives, we really can see

00:05:09.000 whole lives play out. And we've done that with thousands of people now.

00:05:15.040 So in this study, so you're researching or studying Harvard sophomores, and they've been following them

00:05:20.060 their entire life, then this group of underprivileged kids, these poor kids, what kind of questions were

00:05:25.080 the researchers asking these individuals throughout their life?

00:05:29.060 They were asking questions about the big domains of life. So mental health, physical health, work,

00:05:36.600 satisfaction, did you get promoted? Did you get fired? How much do you like your work? Relationships,

00:05:42.640 all kinds of relationships, not just romantic partnerships, but friendships and casual relationships

00:05:49.520 in the community. So we asked all those questions. And of course, we relied a lot on their reports to us,

00:05:57.860 their questionnaire self-reports. But we also then began to bring in other sources of information.

00:06:03.420 We began to videotape them talking with their partners. We began to draw blood for DNA. And that's so cool

00:06:12.580 because if you think about it, DNA wasn't even imagined in 1938. And when I came on in the 2000s,

00:06:19.520 we started measuring DNA. We bring them into our lab and we stress them out and see how quickly

00:06:25.400 they recover. And all of these are different windows on human thriving.

00:06:32.240 So after decades of looking at the lives of these men, and even the lives of their children,

00:06:37.480 the study has gone on to a second generation. What's the most important thing that you and

00:06:42.740 the researchers involved in the study have learned?

00:06:45.540 Well, we took away two big things. One won't surprise you. It's that taking care of your health

00:06:50.280 really matters. Exercising regularly, not smoking, not abusing alcohol or drugs,

00:06:57.520 eating right, all that stuff matters hugely for your happiness, for your health, for your longevity.

00:07:03.860 But the surprise for us was that the people who stayed healthy the longest, who were the happiest

00:07:13.760 and who lived the longest, were the people who had the best connections, the warmest connections

00:07:19.820 with other people as they went through their lives. The surprise was, you know, okay, it stands to reason

00:07:26.840 that if you have good relationships, you'd be happier. But how could it predict that you would be

00:07:31.920 less likely to get coronary artery disease or type 2 diabetes? Like, how could that possibly happen?

00:07:38.640 And that's what we began to study. Many other research groups have found the same thing.

00:07:43.780 So we have a lot of confidence in these findings. They're very strong.

00:07:48.440 Well, and the point you make is that what's nice about the study is that you have two groups that come

00:07:54.560 from different social strata. So you have the Harvard guys, and then you have the kids who were poor.

00:07:59.840 And what you found is that where you started off in life didn't necessarily correlate with how you

00:08:04.880 would end up later on in life, or you're flourishing in life. There were men who were

00:08:09.080 great at the beginning of their life, and then they died just unhappy, unhealthy, etc. Then there were

00:08:14.640 boys who were poor and destitute, but they grew up into flourishing human beings.

00:08:20.980 Exactly. Exactly. And we found that it wasn't much to do with wealth. It wasn't much to do with

00:08:29.100 achievement, and certainly not fame, even though everybody feels like they want those things,

00:08:34.880 that it was about taking care of themselves and their families and about the strength of

00:08:40.780 their connections, that those were the things that really mattered.

00:08:44.160 So you mentioned the strength of relationships in a person's life contributed to their physical

00:08:48.980 health. They're less likely to get type 2 diabetes, coronary disease. Did the satisfaction or the

00:08:54.980 strength of relationships correlate to other life outcomes like careers or things like that?

00:09:02.300 Absolutely. So what we know from our study and other studies is that if you are good with people,

00:09:08.840 if you have good people skills and you prioritize good relationships, you do better at your work.

00:09:15.920 You are occupationally more successful compared with other people who may be brilliant,

00:09:22.000 but aren't so good with other people. So this prioritizing of relationships really matters in

00:09:29.920 your work life, not just in your home life.

00:09:33.560 Yeah, I think I've seen, looking at the study, there's things like men with at least one good

00:09:38.460 relationship with a sibling growing up made $51,000 more per year than men who had poor

00:09:43.980 relationships with their siblings or no siblings at all. I think another one saw was men with warm

00:09:49.340 mothers took home $87,000 more than those men whose mothers were uncaring. But I think the point you

00:09:55.400 make throughout the book is that even if you had a bad childhood, it doesn't mean you're destined to

00:10:00.160 not make as much money. But generally, if you look at the outcomes of individuals,

00:10:05.280 you see those correlations.

00:10:07.340 Well, you do. That childhood experience really matters, but there's a lot of room for correction,

00:10:14.200 course correction. So very often, people who find a good partner can really change what they expect

00:10:22.240 in relationships. So let's say you grew up in a really difficult family where you couldn't trust

00:10:28.860 people or people were mean and emotionally abusive or even physically abusive. If you're able to find

00:10:37.200 a partner, if you're able to find friends who are reliable, who are kind, who are stable,

00:10:44.480 often that goes a long way to correcting your own expectations about life.

00:10:50.840 So social relationships are the most important thing. It's going to correlate to you having a

00:10:55.020 flourishing life in all aspects of your life. This is not to say that being born into poverty or

00:11:00.300 wealth is going to not have an influence. It will. But the relationships, the power of those warm

00:11:05.200 relationships are going to, can overcome those influences. So one of the things that you and

00:11:10.100 your colleague have developed with this understanding from the study that relationships, the power of

00:11:15.500 relationships is the thing that allows us to flourish in life. You develop this idea of social

00:11:20.160 fitness. And I really like this idea of thinking of our social life in terms of fitness. How would

00:11:25.480 you describe social fitness? Like what makes it up and how do you measure social fitness?

00:11:30.180 Yeah. Well, what we did was we coined that phrase just as a way to be analogous to physical fitness,

00:11:37.260 because with physical fitness, if you think about it, you know, if you exercise today,

00:11:41.820 you don't come back home and say, gee, I'm done. I don't ever have to do that again. We know that

00:11:48.000 physical fitness is a lifelong practice. And similarly, what we find is that with our

00:11:56.100 relationships, there is a kind of social fitness. There's a practice that, you know, when I was in

00:12:01.660 my twenties, I used to think that my good friends were always going to be my friends, you know, from

00:12:06.400 school, from college. Now they were just there, no need to worry about them. But it turns out when we

00:12:13.140 watch friendships over time that many really good relationships can just wither away and die because

00:12:20.900 of neglect, not because there's anything wrong in the relationships. And so what we've learned is

00:12:26.620 that the people who are the best at maintaining social connections are active. They make it a

00:12:32.880 practice. And so what I mean by that is they take care to reach out to somebody, to make sure they

00:12:39.940 have regular contact, to connect when it's been too long and they want to make sure that they catch

00:12:46.660 up with the people who they want to really keep in their lives. You know, I'll tell you, for example,

00:12:51.620 that my co-author, Mark Schultz, and I became buddies, became friends when we were apprentices in

00:13:00.740 somebody's research lab like 30 years ago. Well, he since moved to Pennsylvania where he's a psychology

00:13:08.600 professor, but we have a phone call every Friday noon and we talk about, yes, we talk about our

00:13:14.660 research and our writing, but we talk about our kids and our wives and our, you know, our personal

00:13:19.820 lives. That's hugely important in maintaining a vibrant friendship that otherwise I'm sure would

00:13:27.140 have just withered away. And the other reason I like this idea of social fitness, I think this could

00:13:31.800 be very appealing to men who often think of, not always, but I think they often think that social

00:13:37.340 skills are just something you either have or you don't. But this idea of social fitness is, no,

00:13:41.820 you can act, it's like getting stronger or getting better at endurance. It's a skill that you can

00:13:47.380 develop with training and practice. I think that can be appealing. Yeah. And there's some ways you can

00:13:53.580 do it. So first is to be active, as I was saying, but another way is simply to be curious about another

00:14:01.500 person. So if you say, well, I don't know how to talk to people. All you have to do is be curious.

00:14:07.860 So let's say at work, you know, you see somebody who's got something interesting they're displaying

00:14:13.080 on their desk, like a little object or a photo, just ask them about it. People love to talk about

00:14:19.340 themselves. Or if you know that somebody has a particular hobby, you know, ask them. If somebody

00:14:25.580 plays fantasy football, just ask them about it. What's it like? What do they do? Could be anything

00:14:31.340 that what we find is that if we bring curiosity to our encounters with other people, conversations

00:14:38.200 get going pretty easily. Yeah. I think you broke down social fitness. This is how I interpreted it.

00:14:44.280 So correct me if I'm wrong. There's two key components. The one you're talking about now is

00:14:48.320 attending, right? Making a focus on attending to the people that are in your life and then time spent.

00:14:54.180 And I like this idea of this attending to them. So you talked about how you can attend more to

00:14:58.640 people or pay more attention to people, ask questions, be curious, and anything else that

00:15:04.500 you found from the study that the men who really thrived with their social life, what else do they do

00:15:09.680 to pay more attention to the people around them? Sure. Well, to spend some time on that idea of

00:15:17.320 attending on attention. One of the things we're worried about a lot now is this problem that we're

00:15:25.480 all giving each other partial attention a lot of the time so that even when we're together in the same

00:15:32.340 room, we're often on our screens and maybe half paying attention to each other or not paying attention

00:15:38.740 to each other at all. Think about the last time you saw people in a restaurant where everybody was

00:15:44.160 sitting at a table, presumably friends or family, and everybody was on their phone,

00:15:49.640 not even looking at each other. So one of the things we want people to think about is being

00:15:58.420 very intentional to give each other full attention. One of my Zen teachers has this famous quote that I

00:16:06.220 love. He said, attention is the most basic form of love. And what he means by that is attention. Our full

00:16:14.880 undivided attention is probably the greatest gift we have to give to somebody else. And it's not that hard

00:16:23.700 to do. You just have to really pay attention to it. You have to be mindful and intentional and say, okay, I'm

00:16:30.660 going to put down my phone. I'm going to put away my screen. I'm going to look at this person and give

00:16:36.480 them my full attention. So yeah, I think one question you propose that people ask themselves

00:16:41.540 every day to increase the amount of attention they give the people in their lives is what action could

00:16:47.040 I take today to give attention and appreciation to someone who deserves it? So think about that and

00:16:52.260 then set a goal to attend to that person. Yeah. And then notice how it feels because what you'll find is

00:16:59.020 that it actually feels good to do that. That when you appreciate somebody, first of all, you get a

00:17:04.200 lot of good stuff back usually, but also it just feels good to do it. Okay. Social fitness, one part

00:17:10.080 is the attending part. The other part is time. Just as your physical fitness, if you want to get more

00:17:15.460 fit physically, the more time you spend exercising, the more fit you're going to get. I imagine the same

00:17:20.700 is the same with social fitness. The more time you engage in social activities, the fitter you're going

00:17:25.860 to get. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because we learn things when we do that. We get better at it. It's

00:17:31.840 like practicing a sport. It's like practicing anything. The more you do it, the better you get

00:17:37.660 at it. And you overcome some of the awkwardness. Like a lot of us are worried that, oh, if I strike up

00:17:44.560 this conversation with the guy who gives me my coffee at Dunkin' Donuts, I'm, you know, it's going

00:17:51.060 to be awkward. Well, the more you do it, the less awkward it becomes. So it's like practicing any

00:17:56.780 skill. Just keep trying. Were there any insights from the study that suggest how much time we should

00:18:02.680 spend with family and friends? There's no formula that one size doesn't really fit all people. So

00:18:10.660 what we know is that all of us are on some kind of spectrum from being really shy to being really

00:18:17.380 outgoing and there's nothing abnormal about either end of the spectrum. It's fine to be shy. But what

00:18:24.160 that means is that if I'm a shy person, that means being around a lot of people can be exhausting and

00:18:30.620 I need more alone time. If I'm an extroverted person, then I want parties a lot. I want to be around a lot

00:18:38.460 of people. So it's up to each of us to kind of pay attention to ourselves and say, okay, what works for

00:18:45.540 me? Is it a few close people or is it a lot of people in my life? You also found a research that

00:18:52.760 participants who not only socialized with their friends and family, but also socialized with

00:18:57.240 strangers that affected their social fitness, correct? Absolutely. That when we connect with

00:19:04.300 strangers, so let's say the person who delivers our mail, the cashier at the grocery store, if we connect

00:19:10.620 and exchange some pleasant conversation, we get little hits of well-being and we give other people little

00:19:17.600 hits of well-being. It's like just a recognition of, hey, I see you. I like saying hello to you. And those

00:19:24.960 little interactions turn out to contribute every day to our feeling better about ourselves and to our health.

00:19:34.760 Okay. So social fitness, spend more time with people we care about, spend more time socializing.

00:19:41.420 And again, you said there's with the caveat, everyone's different. Sometimes you need more of

00:19:45.420 that. Sometimes you need less, but then also when you are spending the time, make sure you are actually

00:19:49.960 paying attention to those people. One of the interesting things about this study is that again,

00:19:54.880 it's longitudinal. So you've seen from when these individuals were in college from boyhood all the

00:20:00.780 way into their eighties, nineties. So you've seen them date, get married, divorce, have kids,

00:20:07.500 face a lot of challenges in a relationship. What did you learn about what these participants did who

00:20:13.360 thrived with the relationships and in life? How did they handle those challenges that will inevitably

00:20:18.000 come up in any relationship? Yeah. They didn't hide from the challenges. So the temptation can be,

00:20:25.760 you know, if I'm having a disagreement with somebody, let me just sweep it under the rug.

00:20:31.420 Let me just turn the other way. Let me just avoid that person. Well, it turns out that the people who

00:20:37.700 thrive are the people who work out disagreements, that actually they're always going to be disagreements

00:20:45.440 in any relationship, no matter how good it is. And the challenge is to work out those disagreements

00:20:53.020 in a way that helps everybody feel stronger and better. Not so that one person wins and the other

00:20:59.660 loses, but that both people feel like they came to some understanding and they're able to move ahead

00:21:07.560 with the relationship. And usually what happens is when you work out disagreements, the relationships

00:21:13.120 get stronger. So turn towards the adversity instead of withdrawing. Absolutely. Absolutely.

00:21:18.920 Okay. So if you face challenges in a relationship, turn towards it, do so again, I think bringing that

00:21:25.180 curiosity. If you see a disagreement, figure out why the person you're disagreeing with sees things the

00:21:31.120 way they do and try to really control and harness those emotions towards positive, proactive ends.

00:21:38.540 Let's talk about marriage. That's a big part of life. What did you learn about marriage from studying

00:21:43.500 the men in this study? We learned that it changes that, you know, you know, we pick a partner,

00:21:50.260 right? And we say till death do us part or not, you know, we don't necessarily get married, but we have

00:21:56.740 a partner. And, and what we don't expect is that we and our partner are going to change, but of course we

00:22:05.660 do. We're always changing. And so one of the things we notice is that the people who have the best and the

00:22:12.920 most stable relationships are the people who accept that they change, that their partner changes, and

00:22:19.500 that the relationship is going to morph and change as it goes through time, that that's not a problem

00:22:25.680 at all, that that's to be expected. And if we give each other room to change, and that's a way of doing

00:22:32.840 what we call growing together instead of growing apart. So the people who were best at, you know,

00:22:39.840 learning new dance steps with their partner, if you will, were the people who had the most

00:22:44.980 satisfying relationships that lasted, that met the test of time. And I imagine the people who

00:22:51.100 didn't have that flexibility usually end up in acrimony or divorce. Exactly. Exactly. Why can't you

00:22:58.400 be the person you were 20 years ago? Well, nobody is. Yeah. I mean, anything else that you found just

00:23:04.620 sort of the day-to-day that these individuals that had a thriving marriage that they did to strengthen

00:23:09.280 their marriage? Yes. They caught each other being good. You know, we often catch each other being

00:23:16.960 bad, doing the wrong thing, and we call them out. But really, if we catch each other being good,

00:23:24.400 doing the thing we appreciate and name it, it goes such a long way to, first of all, reinforcing the

00:23:32.220 behavior, getting the other person to do it again. Gee, you like that? I'll do it again. So we can help

00:23:38.480 each other learn how to please each other. And so what I would say is that the people who were best

00:23:45.460 at this were the people who kept appreciating their partner for the things that they genuinely valued.

00:23:52.880 Well, here's a tip from my own life. So listeners of the podcast have probably heard me talk about

00:23:57.520 this before. We actually had a, we did a whole podcast about this. It's this idea of a marriage

00:24:01.480 meeting, a weekly marriage meeting. My wife and I have been doing it for years. And you start off the

00:24:06.060 meeting with appreciation. And so you just, you both, we each take turns just showing, sharing how

00:24:13.200 we appreciated what the other did during the week. So it's the mundane stuff, just, hey, thanks for

00:24:18.820 picking up the kids to, you know, the more meaningful things as well. Yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. And that's,

00:24:25.840 you know, you start with appreciation and actually that's a good way to start lots of encounters,

00:24:30.660 but especially with your partner. Wow. Such a good thing. And then you were able to move on

00:24:36.740 to talk about the things that you'd like to maybe be different or change.

00:24:41.540 Yeah. So we talk about our to-dos. So we talk about what stuff that we have to do to get,

00:24:45.800 just manage the household, what needs to be fixed, cleaned, where the kids need to be. And then we

00:24:50.860 talk about plan for good times. So we plan for good times individually. So if there's something I

00:24:56.480 wanted to do, I want to go ahead with my friend on Thursday night, are you available to, you know,

00:25:01.620 make sure the kids are babysitting, you know, someone's watching the kids. Oh yeah, that'd be

00:25:04.760 great. Same thing. We plan good times as a couple or as a family. I love that. And then we end it with

00:25:11.320 big issues. So it could be issues with the kids, concerns in the relationship. You talk about that

00:25:17.860 stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is fantastic because the other thing we know is that it's easy for

00:25:24.940 couples to just become a tag team raising kids. And, you know, where you do this and I'll do that.

00:25:32.240 And then we stop paying attention to the romance. We stop paying attention to the fun parts. And so

00:25:38.080 what you and your wife are doing is actively remembering to plan some fun and plan, you know,

00:25:44.520 planning fun individually and planning fun as a couple and planning fun as a family. Because those

00:25:51.220 fun times are the glue that holds every relationship together. We're going to take a quick break for

00:25:57.100 your words from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Well, another thing you found day to day that

00:26:08.540 the participants in the study who had flourishing marriages did was just physical touch, like a

00:26:14.300 frequent daily physical touch, hugs, handholding, et cetera. They did that from once they got married

00:26:19.900 till, you know, their eighties and nineties. They didn't stop doing that.

00:26:23.720 Absolutely. Absolutely. Because physical touch literally calms us down. It literally relieves

00:26:30.000 stress and it certainly gives us hits of wellbeing. You know, when somebody takes your hand, when

00:26:36.220 somebody puts an arm around you, gives you a little peck on the cheek, you know, it makes a big

00:26:41.700 difference and we can see it. We can see in the laboratory when somebody's about to have a stressful

00:26:47.840 medical test, if they can hold the hand of someone they trust, they are hugely calmer. And in fact,

00:26:58.000 they feel less pain if the procedure is painful. And so we know that this stuff really works.

00:27:04.620 And another thing you found with this longitudinal study is that relationships, we mentioned

00:27:08.160 relationship change over time. And one thing that they follow is this sort of U-shaped curve of

00:27:14.740 happiness. We actually had an economist on the podcast to talk about this idea that generally

00:27:19.680 people follow this U-shaped curve of happiness through their life. They're in their twenties,

00:27:23.300 they're really happy. And then as you get down to your forties, your happiness reaches its lowest point.

00:27:28.420 And then after that, it starts going up. And the same thing happens in relationships. Marital

00:27:31.960 satisfaction is high in the beginning. And then it sort of follows this U-shaped curve of happiness

00:27:37.240 where you're in your forties, fifties, you're like, ah, this is my, our relationship's not the best,

00:27:41.400 but then 60s, 70s, 80s, it's the best it's ever, ever been.

00:27:47.180 Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's such a surprise because we think, oh, being old,

00:27:51.020 ooh, I don't want to do that. And that looks depressing, but older people get happier.

00:27:56.040 And this U-shaped curve keeps coming up in study after study. A lot of it is because midlife is hard,

00:28:04.340 right? Midlife is often the time when we have the most pressure,

00:28:08.060 most career pressure, the most pressure to take care of kids if we're raising kids,

00:28:14.040 often pressure to take care of aging parents or disabled relatives. And so often we talk about

00:28:22.260 the sandwich generation, the middle-aged person who's got so many responsibilities on so many fronts.

00:28:29.100 It's easier when you're a young adult and it's easier when you're older and maybe the kids are

00:28:34.940 launched. Maybe you're no longer taking care of elderly parents. So there are a lot of reasons

00:28:40.840 why this dip in happiness occurs in midlife. Now, it doesn't occur for absolutely everybody.

00:28:47.500 These are big averages when we look at thousands of people, but it's pretty reliable.

00:28:53.960 Let's talk about, we've sort of glanced on this, but a participant's family of origin,

00:28:58.940 how did that influence what their own family was like in adulthood?

00:29:04.720 What we've seen is that if you have warm relationships with your parents,

00:29:10.700 you're much more likely to have warm relationships as you get older. And we found that there was a

00:29:18.560 connection even across 60 years that people who had warmer connections with parents in childhood

00:29:26.380 had warmer relationships with romantic partners in their seventies. And that kind of connection is

00:29:33.220 really hard to find across so many years. Well, what about people who grew up in a home that

00:29:39.380 wasn't so loving, a broken home? Did they often carry those negative familial patterns into their

00:29:45.020 adult family? Many people do. It's also possible to have other good relationships that help a lot. So for

00:29:56.020 example, you could have a relationship with an uncle or an aunt, you could have a great relationship

00:30:02.100 with an older sibling, with a coach, with a teacher, somebody who you can rely on somebody. If it's an

00:30:08.740 adult, who's just crazy about you and mentors you and takes care of you. If you have that, that goes a

00:30:15.160 long way toward compensating for some of the bad times we can have with parents.

00:30:21.540 Well, there's this idea from a family scholar that I've read, Carl Fred Broderick. And he called this

00:30:29.660 idea, say, if you grew up in a family that was not good, it was a bad, a broken family, you don't have

00:30:35.520 to carry that on. You can become what he calls a transitional character. And it's a person, he calls

00:30:42.200 it, it's a person who in a single generation changes the entire course of a lineage. And that can

00:30:47.860 happen. And you highlight people who did that. They came from a broken home, but then through

00:30:52.780 someone they met or just even just will, they changed that for themselves and their family.

00:31:00.140 Exactly. Exactly. And I love that concept of being a transitional figure where you interrupt a lineage,

00:31:06.960 where you don't want to pay something forward that was unfortunately given to you,

00:31:12.220 that you want to do it differently. And many people do that. You know, actually being a parent,

00:31:17.680 a lot of parents are intentional about doing it differently because there were some things

00:31:24.980 in their childhoods that were hurtful, that were neglectful, and they don't want to inflict that on

00:31:31.060 their children going forward. And that can be a source of healing for the parent. You know,

00:31:37.260 it can be a hugely healing thing to be able to do for your kids what wasn't done for you.

00:31:45.060 And it was interesting too, you also highlight people who, they try to be that transitional

00:31:48.860 character in their family for their own kids. But by doing that, they actually were able to

00:31:54.140 heal the rifts with their parents or siblings from their family of origin.

00:31:59.440 They can. Because sometimes, you know, grandparents can learn from parents about how the parents are,

00:32:06.620 are taking care of their kids. You know, grandparents can say, oh, wow. You know, in fact,

00:32:10.920 actually my own father, who was a very good man, didn't know what to do with young kids. And so,

00:32:17.600 he didn't really spend much time with me and my brother when we were little. But when he saw me

00:32:23.660 being a father and spending an awful lot of time taking care of my first son when he was a baby,

00:32:30.460 my dad got really curious and interested and said, gee, I wish I had done more of that

00:32:35.420 when I was a parent of young kids.

00:32:40.000 Did the flourishing participants in the study, did they stay connected with their family of origin

00:32:45.480 more than participants who didn't fare as well in life?

00:32:49.640 You know, it depends. There were some people who put distance between themselves and their families

00:32:55.920 because the families were hurtful, because the relationships were more toxic. And those people

00:33:02.440 found that they survived better and they thrived more when they put distance between themselves

00:33:08.680 and their families of origin. There were other people who stayed quite close, and that was an

00:33:13.160 enormous source of support as they went through all kinds of challenges as young adults and middle-aged

00:33:20.600 adults. So, I would say that if the families of origin were good nurturing families, staying close 1.00

00:33:28.520 was an enormous source of support. So, I think the big takeaway from that aspect of the study is that

00:33:34.880 if you came from a family that wasn't great, you're not doomed to repeat that. History is not doomed to

00:33:40.540 repeat itself. Exactly. Exactly. Childhood is not destiny.

00:33:46.240 Well, it is genetics destiny. So, you talked about how you've brought in DNA studies, and there's a lot of

00:33:50.960 talk about how, well, a lot of problems in people's lives, they're determined by genetics. You were able to see

00:33:56.740 this, like, firsthand. What influence have you found that genetics has had in the outcomes of

00:34:01.900 individuals' lives? Actually, there's another researcher who's done some work on this, a psychologist

00:34:07.720 named Sonia Lubomirsky, and she's done some estimates, like how much of our happiness is under our control.

00:34:16.040 And what she finds from looking at a lot of studies is that about 50% of our well-being is genetically

00:34:24.120 determined that we're all born with a certain temperament, a certain happiness set point

00:34:29.180 that is pretty stable throughout our lives. But then, about an extra 10% is our current life

00:34:36.680 circumstance, and then the remaining 40%, she estimates, is under our control. So, she says about

00:34:44.740 40% of our happiness, our well-being, is malleable. We can do something about it. And that's a big percentage.

00:34:53.000 Well, let's talk about friends. What role did friends play in the lives of the men in the study?

00:34:58.980 It varied. Some men turned around in midlife and said, I don't have any friends.

00:35:06.240 And they really felt quite isolated. Some of them had spouses who made their social lives for them,

00:35:13.220 and that worked okay. Some of our original study participants, our men, had very good friendships,

00:35:23.100 friendships that were long-lasting. Also, some friendships that they made for the first time

00:35:27.280 in midlife or in late life. People who they never thought they'd become friends with became friends

00:35:33.520 when they were in their 70s and 80s. So, it varied a lot. The message from all of that was that it is

00:35:41.760 never too late to find friends, never too late. And we have stories in our book about that. Life

00:35:49.460 stories where people who thought that it was too late for them, they were never going to have good

00:35:54.320 friendships, suddenly found their friendships late in life.

00:35:58.920 Did you all find any, like, was there a specific number of friends someone needed to have a

00:36:02.800 flourishing life or did it vary?

00:36:04.020 It varies a lot. And again, it's that continuum. Some of us are shy, and it means that maybe we just

00:36:11.300 need one or two really good friends in our lives. Some of us are extroverted, and we might want lots

00:36:17.840 of friends. So, it's a very personal matter to check out for yourself, like, what works for me?

00:36:25.580 And then to try to make that happen for yourself. What we do know is that everybody needs

00:36:30.740 somebody. Everybody needs at least one solid relationship. At one point, we asked our original

00:36:38.600 participants, we said, who could you call in the middle of the night if you were sick or scared?

00:36:46.180 List everybody you could call. Some people could list, you know, quite a number of people who they

00:36:52.620 could go to. Some people couldn't list anybody. We think that each person needs at least one person

00:37:00.120 in their life who's their go-to person who would have their back if they really needed help.

00:37:07.340 And one thing you found is that the people who maintained or kept growing friendships throughout

00:37:11.900 their life, what they did, one thing they did was really powerful, was they thought about their

00:37:16.580 social routines and then changed it up so that it allowed them to make more friends. So, take a look

00:37:21.840 at your life, like, what am I doing that's preventing me from making friends? And then what can I do

00:37:26.480 to increase the likelihood that I'll make a new friend? Yes. And one of the things we find is that

00:37:32.700 if you think about what you enjoy or what you care about, so what are the things you love to do or what

00:37:41.220 are the causes you care a lot about, do those things with other people. So, volunteer for a gardening club

00:37:49.020 or a biking group or a bowling league, anything, something you love to do. Because one of the things

00:37:55.380 we find is that if you put yourself in groups of people who share interests, first it gives you an

00:38:02.920 immediate topic of conversation, something to talk about, and you go back again and again and you're

00:38:08.500 with those same people, you're more likely to strike up conversations, to eventually have deeper

00:38:15.340 conversations with a few people and eventually build some deeper relationships.

00:38:22.720 And in this idea that it's never too late for you to make new friends, you talk about, this is a great

00:38:26.360 example, a guy named Andrew that was part of the study. And he was in a not great marriage. His wife

00:38:32.580 was really critical of him and she was very averse to social situations. They kind of, they kept to

00:38:37.040 themselves. And he was miserable, said that at age 45, he attempted suicide. And then 20 years later,

00:38:44.860 at 65, he was thinking about it again. And then at 67, he was forced to retire because he couldn't see

00:38:53.100 anymore. And then he got divorced and he was even lonelier because he divorced his wife, even though

00:38:58.300 the marriage wasn't great, but he decided to do something. He's like, I'm lonely. I need to make

00:39:03.180 friends. And so what he did, he changed his social routine and he joined a health club, fitness club,

00:39:08.900 went there every day, started making friends. This guy was really social. And then it says a couple of years

00:39:14.540 later, when they did the study on him, they asked if he ever felt lonely before he'd said yes, often.

00:39:21.260 And recently he said, no, I never feel, I never feel, and this was in 2010. He says he never feels

00:39:27.500 lonely and he gets people visiting him at his house. He's made friends. So it took a while,

00:39:32.200 but it is possible to change. Exactly. And he's a perfect example of how change happens,

00:39:39.080 even when we're sure it's not going to. He just, you know, he made an effort and he did something

00:39:44.280 that he wanted to do anyway, which is he wanted to join a gym. He wanted to take care of his health

00:39:48.960 and it had this wonderful side benefit that turned out to be the main event for him.

00:39:56.200 What role did work play in the happiness of the participants of the study?

00:39:59.900 It played a big role. First on the downside, many people, when we asked them to look back on their

00:40:07.220 lives and we said, what's your biggest regret? Many of them said, I wish I hadn't spent so much

00:40:13.020 time at work. I wish I had spent more time with the people who mattered to me. But in addition,

00:40:19.420 the people who were happiest at work were the people who made friends at work, who had important

00:40:25.940 relationships at work. It gave them a reason to go to work every day. It gave them people to show up

00:40:31.580 for. And what we find is that that's true when they study millions of workers, that if you have

00:40:36.800 a friend at work, someone you can talk to about personal matters, it makes an enormous difference

00:40:42.900 in how much you like the job, whether you're a good performer at that job, and whether you're more

00:40:48.880 likely to change jobs. You're more likely to stay put if you have friends who you want to show up for

00:40:53.900 at work. So I guess the big insight there is pick a job where you enjoy being around the people at

00:40:59.820 work. Yeah. Yeah. So we've talked a lot about what you've all learned from the study. We talked

00:41:05.780 about how relationships are, that's the most important thing in life. It correlates to higher

00:41:10.080 health, higher income, higher happiness. But then to increase those relationships, we've got to

00:41:15.160 exercise our social fitness. We do that by spending more time with people we care about or even

00:41:21.400 strangers. And then really when we're spending that time attending to them, then we talked about

00:41:26.060 different ways we can exercise our social fitness within our marriage, our friends at work. Again,

00:41:32.060 this study is longitudinal. So you've been able to see these men at different points in their life,

00:41:36.160 young adulthood, midlife, elderhood. Let's say someone who's listening to this podcast,

00:41:40.260 they're in that early part of adulthood. They're in their 20s, maybe early 30s. What do you think is

00:41:45.120 the one thing that these individuals should focus on to really lay a foundation for a flourishing life?

00:41:51.220 Basically, focus on your relationships. And they don't have to be a choice between relationships and

00:41:59.660 work or relationships and family. It doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. Focus on your relationships

00:42:07.780 wherever you find yourself during the day, right? And bring those skills that you just named so

00:42:16.300 beautifully. You know, those skills of curiosity and reaching out that you can bring those wherever

00:42:23.540 you are at home, at work, in the community. But it turns out to be the best investment in your future.

00:42:32.320 What about midlife? What are the challenges that you've seen there? And what can individuals who are

00:42:36.840 in midlife do to overcome those relationship challenges?

00:42:39.300 Probably the biggest challenge is shutting down, is being so beleaguered by all your responsibilities

00:42:46.040 that you don't take time to connect with other people. You don't take time to care for yourself and to

00:42:52.320 have fun, which is a part of self-care. So I would say, make that a priority. Plan that out, just the way you

00:43:00.120 and your wife do. Plan it out every week. Let other things fit in around that. Make those the first 1.00

00:43:07.520 things you plan and let the other things come in when there's time for them.

00:43:12.700 That's that idea from Stephen Covey, the big rocks, right? Plan your big rocks first and then let the

00:43:17.060 sand of life fill in on those rocks. Let's say it's someone who's, you know, retirement. So late 60s,

00:43:24.460 early 70s, what's something that they should, you know, be turning towards when it comes to their

00:43:29.260 relationships? The people in our study who were the happiest in retirement replaced their work

00:43:35.440 relationships with new relationships in retirement. So I would say that finding that group of friends,

00:43:43.740 finding those causes you love and volunteering for them, finding those clubs you want to join,

00:43:50.900 do those things, make those things happen, be active about it, because that's likely to build a kind

00:43:58.600 of bedrock of social connection that's going to keep you happy when you're no longer seeing people

00:44:04.780 all day at work. I saw that in the life of my own grandfather. He passed away in 2015. He was almost

00:44:12.460 101, but he retired from the Forest Service. I forgot how old he was. You know, he was like in his 60s.

00:44:18.200 But then he lived like, you know, another 40 years and he had a flourishing life and it was spent

00:44:23.480 socializing. He was involved with conservation groups, the Rotary Club. He traveled a lot.

00:44:30.020 He did meals on wheels, even in his 90s. He was visiting, he's been delivering, you know,

00:44:35.660 meals on wheels to other 90-year-olds who couldn't get around. And I mean, I think that did a lot for

00:44:42.160 his longevity and he had a flourishing life all the way up, pretty much up to the end.

00:44:46.400 Yeah. And that's the recipe, staying engaged in the world. It sounds like he was very engaged

00:44:52.960 with all kinds of people, with all kinds of activities. It's staying engaged that matters

00:44:58.520 hugely for your happiness and your health when you retire.

00:45:02.320 Well, Robert, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book

00:45:05.400 and your work?

00:45:05.860 Well, the book has a website, thegoodlifebook.com. And you can also go to our study website. It's

00:45:14.540 www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org. Adultdevelopmentstudy, all one word, .org.

00:45:24.080 Fantastic. Robert Waldinger, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:45:27.000 Thank you. I've really enjoyed this conversation.

00:45:30.260 My guest today was Dr. Robert Waldinger. He's the author of the book, The Good Life. It's

00:45:33.820 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about the Harvard

00:45:37.460 Study of Adult Development at adultdevelopmentstudy.org. Also check out our show notes at

00:45:42.180 aom.is slash happiness, where you find links to resources, where you delve deeper into this topic.

00:45:53.380 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website

00:45:57.480 at artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives. And while you're there, sign up for our

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00:46:27.820 It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the

00:46:31.520 show with a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it. As always,

00:46:35.700 thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay reminding you to not only

00:46:39.820 listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:47:01.520 referred to the AOM podcast, but then the AOM!

00:47:09.700 Thanks, God.

00:47:11.240 Until next time, per se.

00:47:11.860 Thanks.

00:47:12.480 Bye.

00:47:12.640 Bye.

00:47:13.420 Bye.

The Art of Manliness - January 11, 2023

Key Insights From the Longest Study on Happiness

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