Key Insights From the Longest Study on Happiness
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Summary
Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has tracked a group of men through every stage of their lives, from youth to old age, to discover what factors lead people to flourish. Here to share some of the insights that have been gleaned from the study is Dr. Robert Waldinger, the current director of the project and the co-author of The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Started in 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development represents the longest study on
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happiness ever conducted. It set out to follow a group of men through every stage of their lives,
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from youth to old age, to discover what factors lead people to flourish. Here to share some of
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the insights that have been gleaned from the Harvard Study of Adult Development is Dr. Robert
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Waldinger, the current director of the project and the co-author of The Good Life, lessons from the
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world's longest scientific study of happiness. Today on the show, Robert explains how the study
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has affirmed the absolute primacy of relationships and happiness, and how to develop the social
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fitness to make and enrich those vital connections. We discuss what the happily married couples in the
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study did differently, and why happiness in marriage tends to follow a U-shaped curve,
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which hits its low point in midlife. We talk about how the way you were raised helps set a
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trajectory for your life, but how it's possible to overcome a rough upbringing and become a
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transitional character in your family. We also discuss the role that friends and work played in
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the happiness of the men who participated in the study. We enter a conversation with what folks in
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every stage of development, whether youth, midlife, or older age, should focus on to live a flourishing
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life. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash happiness.
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So you are the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. This is a study on human
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happiness flourishing that's been going on since 1938. And you recently co-authored a book with
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Mark Schultz about what you and other researchers have discovered in this 85-year-old study about
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human happiness. Before we get into the book, let's talk about the study itself. When it started,
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what was the aim of the study? And who were the individuals being studied? Just kind of give us
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a big picture overview of this Harvard Study of Adult Development.
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Sure. So it was actually two studies that didn't even know about each other when it started.
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One study was at Harvard University Student Health Service. It was a study of undergraduates,
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sophomores, from the classes of 1939 to 1942. Their deans thought they were fine, upstanding young men,
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and they wanted to do a study of young adulthood and normal development. So of course, you study all
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white guys from Harvard. It's totally politically incorrect now. But at that point, that's what they
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wanted to study. And then the other study was started by a Harvard Law School professor,
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Sheldon Gluck, and his wife, Eleanor Gluck, who was a social worker. They were interested in juvenile
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delinquency, and particularly why some kids born into really underprivileged, impoverished, troubled
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families, why those kids managed to stay on good developmental paths, not get into trouble,
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but really develop into, you know, upstanding young guys. And so both of those studies then were
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combined by my predecessor, so that they're very contrasting groups, like a very privileged group
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and a very underprivileged group. And we followed them all for their whole lives. We brought in their
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wives at one point when I started with the study 20 years ago, and then we reached out to all their
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children, more than half of whom are women. So now we've studied over 2,000 people in 724 families.
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And so this is called a longitudinal study, where you take somebody or a group of people and you
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study them, not just for a moment in their life, but across the entire life. Because I think this is
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interesting, what are the benefits of doing a longitudinal study like this? What insights can you
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get that you can't get when you do a study, when you just look at a person at a particular moment in
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their life? Right. That's such an important question. And most research is done by just
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looking at particular moments. So the best way I can give you an example is through a joke.
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So, you know, often we take snapshots, like if we were to do a study of people in their 20s,
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and then also some people in their 40s and in their 80s, you know, we'd take snapshots at different
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ages. But there's a senator from Florida named Claude Pepper, who once said, when I look at my
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state of Florida, and particularly South Florida, I would have to believe that you are born Cuban,
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and you die Jewish. That the issue is that we tend, if we just take snapshots at different points of
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life to make connections that aren't real, that we think we know how life proceeds, but it's not
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often the case. So by following the same people throughout their entire lives, we really can see
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whole lives play out. And we've done that with thousands of people now.
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So in this study, so you're researching or studying Harvard sophomores, and they've been following them
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their entire life, then this group of underprivileged kids, these poor kids, what kind of questions were
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the researchers asking these individuals throughout their life?
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They were asking questions about the big domains of life. So mental health, physical health, work,
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satisfaction, did you get promoted? Did you get fired? How much do you like your work? Relationships,
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all kinds of relationships, not just romantic partnerships, but friendships and casual relationships
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in the community. So we asked all those questions. And of course, we relied a lot on their reports to us,
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their questionnaire self-reports. But we also then began to bring in other sources of information.
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We began to videotape them talking with their partners. We began to draw blood for DNA. And that's so cool
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because if you think about it, DNA wasn't even imagined in 1938. And when I came on in the 2000s,
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we started measuring DNA. We bring them into our lab and we stress them out and see how quickly
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they recover. And all of these are different windows on human thriving.
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So after decades of looking at the lives of these men, and even the lives of their children,
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the study has gone on to a second generation. What's the most important thing that you and
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the researchers involved in the study have learned?
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Well, we took away two big things. One won't surprise you. It's that taking care of your health
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really matters. Exercising regularly, not smoking, not abusing alcohol or drugs,
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eating right, all that stuff matters hugely for your happiness, for your health, for your longevity.
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But the surprise for us was that the people who stayed healthy the longest, who were the happiest
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and who lived the longest, were the people who had the best connections, the warmest connections
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with other people as they went through their lives. The surprise was, you know, okay, it stands to reason
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that if you have good relationships, you'd be happier. But how could it predict that you would be
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less likely to get coronary artery disease or type 2 diabetes? Like, how could that possibly happen?
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And that's what we began to study. Many other research groups have found the same thing.
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So we have a lot of confidence in these findings. They're very strong.
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Well, and the point you make is that what's nice about the study is that you have two groups that come
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from different social strata. So you have the Harvard guys, and then you have the kids who were poor.
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And what you found is that where you started off in life didn't necessarily correlate with how you
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would end up later on in life, or you're flourishing in life. There were men who were
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great at the beginning of their life, and then they died just unhappy, unhealthy, etc. Then there were
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boys who were poor and destitute, but they grew up into flourishing human beings.
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Exactly. Exactly. And we found that it wasn't much to do with wealth. It wasn't much to do with
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achievement, and certainly not fame, even though everybody feels like they want those things,
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that it was about taking care of themselves and their families and about the strength of
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their connections, that those were the things that really mattered.
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So you mentioned the strength of relationships in a person's life contributed to their physical
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health. They're less likely to get type 2 diabetes, coronary disease. Did the satisfaction or the
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strength of relationships correlate to other life outcomes like careers or things like that?
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Absolutely. So what we know from our study and other studies is that if you are good with people,
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if you have good people skills and you prioritize good relationships, you do better at your work.
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You are occupationally more successful compared with other people who may be brilliant,
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but aren't so good with other people. So this prioritizing of relationships really matters in
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Yeah, I think I've seen, looking at the study, there's things like men with at least one good
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relationship with a sibling growing up made $51,000 more per year than men who had poor
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relationships with their siblings or no siblings at all. I think another one saw was men with warm
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mothers took home $87,000 more than those men whose mothers were uncaring. But I think the point you
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make throughout the book is that even if you had a bad childhood, it doesn't mean you're destined to
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not make as much money. But generally, if you look at the outcomes of individuals,
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Well, you do. That childhood experience really matters, but there's a lot of room for correction,
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course correction. So very often, people who find a good partner can really change what they expect
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in relationships. So let's say you grew up in a really difficult family where you couldn't trust
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people or people were mean and emotionally abusive or even physically abusive. If you're able to find
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a partner, if you're able to find friends who are reliable, who are kind, who are stable,
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often that goes a long way to correcting your own expectations about life.
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So social relationships are the most important thing. It's going to correlate to you having a
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flourishing life in all aspects of your life. This is not to say that being born into poverty or
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wealth is going to not have an influence. It will. But the relationships, the power of those warm
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relationships are going to, can overcome those influences. So one of the things that you and
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your colleague have developed with this understanding from the study that relationships, the power of
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relationships is the thing that allows us to flourish in life. You develop this idea of social
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fitness. And I really like this idea of thinking of our social life in terms of fitness. How would
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you describe social fitness? Like what makes it up and how do you measure social fitness?
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Yeah. Well, what we did was we coined that phrase just as a way to be analogous to physical fitness,
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because with physical fitness, if you think about it, you know, if you exercise today,
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you don't come back home and say, gee, I'm done. I don't ever have to do that again. We know that
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physical fitness is a lifelong practice. And similarly, what we find is that with our
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relationships, there is a kind of social fitness. There's a practice that, you know, when I was in
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my twenties, I used to think that my good friends were always going to be my friends, you know, from
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school, from college. Now they were just there, no need to worry about them. But it turns out when we
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watch friendships over time that many really good relationships can just wither away and die because
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of neglect, not because there's anything wrong in the relationships. And so what we've learned is
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that the people who are the best at maintaining social connections are active. They make it a
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practice. And so what I mean by that is they take care to reach out to somebody, to make sure they
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have regular contact, to connect when it's been too long and they want to make sure that they catch
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up with the people who they want to really keep in their lives. You know, I'll tell you, for example,
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that my co-author, Mark Schultz, and I became buddies, became friends when we were apprentices in
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somebody's research lab like 30 years ago. Well, he since moved to Pennsylvania where he's a psychology
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professor, but we have a phone call every Friday noon and we talk about, yes, we talk about our
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research and our writing, but we talk about our kids and our wives and our, you know, our personal
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lives. That's hugely important in maintaining a vibrant friendship that otherwise I'm sure would
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have just withered away. And the other reason I like this idea of social fitness, I think this could
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be very appealing to men who often think of, not always, but I think they often think that social
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skills are just something you either have or you don't. But this idea of social fitness is, no,
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you can act, it's like getting stronger or getting better at endurance. It's a skill that you can
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develop with training and practice. I think that can be appealing. Yeah. And there's some ways you can
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do it. So first is to be active, as I was saying, but another way is simply to be curious about another
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person. So if you say, well, I don't know how to talk to people. All you have to do is be curious.
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So let's say at work, you know, you see somebody who's got something interesting they're displaying
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on their desk, like a little object or a photo, just ask them about it. People love to talk about
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themselves. Or if you know that somebody has a particular hobby, you know, ask them. If somebody
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plays fantasy football, just ask them about it. What's it like? What do they do? Could be anything
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that what we find is that if we bring curiosity to our encounters with other people, conversations
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get going pretty easily. Yeah. I think you broke down social fitness. This is how I interpreted it.
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So correct me if I'm wrong. There's two key components. The one you're talking about now is
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attending, right? Making a focus on attending to the people that are in your life and then time spent.
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And I like this idea of this attending to them. So you talked about how you can attend more to
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people or pay more attention to people, ask questions, be curious, and anything else that
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you found from the study that the men who really thrived with their social life, what else do they do
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to pay more attention to the people around them? Sure. Well, to spend some time on that idea of
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attending on attention. One of the things we're worried about a lot now is this problem that we're
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all giving each other partial attention a lot of the time so that even when we're together in the same
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room, we're often on our screens and maybe half paying attention to each other or not paying attention
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to each other at all. Think about the last time you saw people in a restaurant where everybody was
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sitting at a table, presumably friends or family, and everybody was on their phone,
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not even looking at each other. So one of the things we want people to think about is being
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very intentional to give each other full attention. One of my Zen teachers has this famous quote that I
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love. He said, attention is the most basic form of love. And what he means by that is attention. Our full
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undivided attention is probably the greatest gift we have to give to somebody else. And it's not that hard
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to do. You just have to really pay attention to it. You have to be mindful and intentional and say, okay, I'm
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going to put down my phone. I'm going to put away my screen. I'm going to look at this person and give
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them my full attention. So yeah, I think one question you propose that people ask themselves
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every day to increase the amount of attention they give the people in their lives is what action could
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I take today to give attention and appreciation to someone who deserves it? So think about that and
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then set a goal to attend to that person. Yeah. And then notice how it feels because what you'll find is
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that it actually feels good to do that. That when you appreciate somebody, first of all, you get a
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lot of good stuff back usually, but also it just feels good to do it. Okay. Social fitness, one part
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is the attending part. The other part is time. Just as your physical fitness, if you want to get more
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fit physically, the more time you spend exercising, the more fit you're going to get. I imagine the same
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is the same with social fitness. The more time you engage in social activities, the fitter you're going
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to get. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because we learn things when we do that. We get better at it. It's
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like practicing a sport. It's like practicing anything. The more you do it, the better you get
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at it. And you overcome some of the awkwardness. Like a lot of us are worried that, oh, if I strike up
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this conversation with the guy who gives me my coffee at Dunkin' Donuts, I'm, you know, it's going
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to be awkward. Well, the more you do it, the less awkward it becomes. So it's like practicing any
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skill. Just keep trying. Were there any insights from the study that suggest how much time we should
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spend with family and friends? There's no formula that one size doesn't really fit all people. So
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what we know is that all of us are on some kind of spectrum from being really shy to being really
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outgoing and there's nothing abnormal about either end of the spectrum. It's fine to be shy. But what
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that means is that if I'm a shy person, that means being around a lot of people can be exhausting and
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I need more alone time. If I'm an extroverted person, then I want parties a lot. I want to be around a lot
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of people. So it's up to each of us to kind of pay attention to ourselves and say, okay, what works for
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me? Is it a few close people or is it a lot of people in my life? You also found a research that
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participants who not only socialized with their friends and family, but also socialized with
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strangers that affected their social fitness, correct? Absolutely. That when we connect with
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strangers, so let's say the person who delivers our mail, the cashier at the grocery store, if we connect
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and exchange some pleasant conversation, we get little hits of well-being and we give other people little
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hits of well-being. It's like just a recognition of, hey, I see you. I like saying hello to you. And those
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little interactions turn out to contribute every day to our feeling better about ourselves and to our health.
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Okay. So social fitness, spend more time with people we care about, spend more time socializing.
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And again, you said there's with the caveat, everyone's different. Sometimes you need more of
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that. Sometimes you need less, but then also when you are spending the time, make sure you are actually
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paying attention to those people. One of the interesting things about this study is that again,
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it's longitudinal. So you've seen from when these individuals were in college from boyhood all the
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way into their eighties, nineties. So you've seen them date, get married, divorce, have kids,
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face a lot of challenges in a relationship. What did you learn about what these participants did who
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thrived with the relationships and in life? How did they handle those challenges that will inevitably
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come up in any relationship? Yeah. They didn't hide from the challenges. So the temptation can be,
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you know, if I'm having a disagreement with somebody, let me just sweep it under the rug.
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Let me just turn the other way. Let me just avoid that person. Well, it turns out that the people who
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thrive are the people who work out disagreements, that actually they're always going to be disagreements
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in any relationship, no matter how good it is. And the challenge is to work out those disagreements
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in a way that helps everybody feel stronger and better. Not so that one person wins and the other
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loses, but that both people feel like they came to some understanding and they're able to move ahead
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with the relationship. And usually what happens is when you work out disagreements, the relationships
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get stronger. So turn towards the adversity instead of withdrawing. Absolutely. Absolutely.
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Okay. So if you face challenges in a relationship, turn towards it, do so again, I think bringing that
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curiosity. If you see a disagreement, figure out why the person you're disagreeing with sees things the
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way they do and try to really control and harness those emotions towards positive, proactive ends.
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Let's talk about marriage. That's a big part of life. What did you learn about marriage from studying
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the men in this study? We learned that it changes that, you know, you know, we pick a partner,
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right? And we say till death do us part or not, you know, we don't necessarily get married, but we have
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a partner. And, and what we don't expect is that we and our partner are going to change, but of course we
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do. We're always changing. And so one of the things we notice is that the people who have the best and the
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most stable relationships are the people who accept that they change, that their partner changes, and
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that the relationship is going to morph and change as it goes through time, that that's not a problem
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at all, that that's to be expected. And if we give each other room to change, and that's a way of doing
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what we call growing together instead of growing apart. So the people who were best at, you know,
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learning new dance steps with their partner, if you will, were the people who had the most
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satisfying relationships that lasted, that met the test of time. And I imagine the people who
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didn't have that flexibility usually end up in acrimony or divorce. Exactly. Exactly. Why can't you
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be the person you were 20 years ago? Well, nobody is. Yeah. I mean, anything else that you found just
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sort of the day-to-day that these individuals that had a thriving marriage that they did to strengthen
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their marriage? Yes. They caught each other being good. You know, we often catch each other being
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bad, doing the wrong thing, and we call them out. But really, if we catch each other being good,
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doing the thing we appreciate and name it, it goes such a long way to, first of all, reinforcing the
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behavior, getting the other person to do it again. Gee, you like that? I'll do it again. So we can help
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each other learn how to please each other. And so what I would say is that the people who were best
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at this were the people who kept appreciating their partner for the things that they genuinely valued.
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Well, here's a tip from my own life. So listeners of the podcast have probably heard me talk about
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this before. We actually had a, we did a whole podcast about this. It's this idea of a marriage
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meeting, a weekly marriage meeting. My wife and I have been doing it for years. And you start off the
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meeting with appreciation. And so you just, you both, we each take turns just showing, sharing how
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we appreciated what the other did during the week. So it's the mundane stuff, just, hey, thanks for
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picking up the kids to, you know, the more meaningful things as well. Yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. And that's,
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you know, you start with appreciation and actually that's a good way to start lots of encounters,
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but especially with your partner. Wow. Such a good thing. And then you were able to move on
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to talk about the things that you'd like to maybe be different or change.
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Yeah. So we talk about our to-dos. So we talk about what stuff that we have to do to get,
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just manage the household, what needs to be fixed, cleaned, where the kids need to be. And then we
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talk about plan for good times. So we plan for good times individually. So if there's something I
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wanted to do, I want to go ahead with my friend on Thursday night, are you available to, you know,
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make sure the kids are babysitting, you know, someone's watching the kids. Oh yeah, that'd be
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great. Same thing. We plan good times as a couple or as a family. I love that. And then we end it with
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big issues. So it could be issues with the kids, concerns in the relationship. You talk about that
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stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is fantastic because the other thing we know is that it's easy for
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couples to just become a tag team raising kids. And, you know, where you do this and I'll do that.
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And then we stop paying attention to the romance. We stop paying attention to the fun parts. And so
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what you and your wife are doing is actively remembering to plan some fun and plan, you know,
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planning fun individually and planning fun as a couple and planning fun as a family. Because those
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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
00:32:40.000
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
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
00:36:04.020
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
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
00:45:05.860
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
00:46:01.600
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00:46:06.680
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00:46:27.820
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00:46:35.700
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00:46:39.820
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