Three Lessons from Robert Waldinger, “The Good Life” Presentation
The media are filled with stories of people who are rich and famous and building empires of work and we believe those stories. There was a recent survey of Millennial asking them what their most important life goals were? And over eighty percent said that a major life goal for them was to get rich and another fifty percent of those same young adults said that another major life goal is to become famous. We are constantly told to lean into work to push harder and achieve more, were given the impression that these are the things that we need to go after in order to have a good life. But it's a true, Is that really what keeps people happy as they go through life pictures of the entire lives of the choices that people make and how those choices work out for them those pictures are almost impossible to get most of what we know about human life. We know from asking people to remember the past and as we know hindsight is anything but 2020. We forget vast amounts of what happens to us in life and sometimes memory is downright creative. Mark Twain understood this he's quoted as saying “Some of the worst things in my life never happened” and research shows us that we actually remember the past more positively as we get older. Robert was reminded of a bumper sticker that says “It's never too late to have a happy childhood”. But what if we could watch entire lives as they unfold through time? What if we could study people from the time that they were teenagers all the way into old age to see what really keeps people happy and healthy? We did that the Harvard study of adult development. It may be the longest study of adult life that's ever been done for 75 years we've tracked the lives of 724 men year after year asking about their work their homelands their health and of course asking all along the way without knowing how their life stories. We're gonna turn out studies like this are exceedingly rare almost all projects of this kind fall apart within a decade because too many people drop out of the study or funding for the research dries up or the researchers get distracted. When they die and nobody moves the ball further down the field but through combination of luck and the persistence of several generations of researchers, this study has survived about sixty of our original 724 men are still alive still participating in the study. Most of them in their nineties and we are now beginning to study the more than 2,000 children of these men and Robert is the fourth director of the study since 1938. We've tracked the lives of two groups of men the first group started in the study. When they were sophomores at Harvard College they were from what tom brokaw has called the greatest generation they all finished college during world war two and then most went off to serve in the war and the second group that we've followed was a group of boys from Boston’s poorest neighborhoods boys who were chosen for the study specifically because they were from some of the most trouble and disadvantaged families in the Boston of the nineteen thirties most lived in tenements many without hot and cold running water when they entered the study all of these teenagers were interviewed they were given medical exams we went to their homes and we interviewed their parents and then these teenagers grew up in two adults who entered all walks of life. They became factory workers and lawyers and bricklayers and doctors one president of the united states, some developed alcoholism, a few develop schizophrenia, some climb the social ladder from the bottom all the way to the very top and some made that journey in the opposite direction the founders of this study would never in their wildest dreams imagined that I would be standing here today seventy-five years later telling you that the study still continues every two years are patient and dedicated research staff calls up our men and ask them if we can send them yet one more set of questions about their lives many of the inner-city Boston then ask us why do you keep wanting to study me my life just isn't that interesting.
The Harvard men never asked that question picture of these lives we don't just send them questionnaires, we interview them in their living rooms, we get their medical records from their doctors, we draw their blood, we scanned their brains, we talk to their children we videotaped them talking with their wives about their deepest concerns and went about a decade ago we finally asked the wives if they would join us as members of the study many of the women said you know it's about time so what have we learned.
What are the lessons that come from the tens of thousands of pages of information that we generated on these lives the lessons aren't about wealth or fame or working harder and harder the clearest message that we get from this seventy-five years study is this good relationships keep us happier and healthier period. We have learned three big lessons about relationships the first is that social connections are really good for us and that loneliness kills turns out. That people who are more socially connected to family to friends to community are happier there physically healthier and they live longer than people who are less well connected. And the experience of loneliness turns out to be toxic people who are more isolated than they want to be from others find. They are less happy their health declines earlier in mid-life, their brain functioning declined sooner and they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely. And the sad face act any given time more than one in five Americans will report that their lonely.
And we know that you can be lonely in a crowd and you can be lonely in a marriage so the second big lesson that we learned is that it's not just the number of friends you have and it's not whether or not you're in a committed relationship but it's the quality of your close relationships that matters. It turns out that living in the midst of conflict is really bad for our health high conflict marriages for example without much affection turn out to be very bad for our health perhaps worse than getting divorced and living in the midst of good warm relationships is protective. Once we had followed our men all the way into their eighties, we want to look back at them and at mid-life and to see if we could predict who was gonna grow into a happy healthy octogenarian and who wasn't when we gathered together everything we do about them at age fifty it wasn't their middle aged cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going to grow old. It was how satisfied they were in their relationships the people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 where the healthiest at AGD and good close relationships seem to buffer us from some of the slings and arrows of getting old are most happily partnered men and women reported in their eighties that on the days when they had more physical pain their mood state Justice happy. But the people who were in unhappy relationships are the days when they reported more physical pain it was magnified by more emotional.
The third big lesson that we learn about relationships on our health is that good relationships don't just protect their bodies they protect our brains. It turns out that being in a securely attached relationship to another person in your eighties is protective that the people who are in relationships with a really feel they can count on the other person in times of need those people's memories stay sharper longer and the people in relationships with a feel they really can't count on the other one those are the people who experienced earlier memory decline and that was good relationships they don't have to be smooth all the time some of our octogenarian couples could occur with each other day in and day out but as long as they felt that they could really count on the other when the going got tough those arguments didn't take a toll on their memories so this message that could close relationships are good for our health and well-being this is wisdom that's as old as the hills it's your grandmother's advice and your pastors why is this so hard to get for example with respect to wealth we know that once your basic material needs are met wealth doesn't do it if you go from making $75,000 a year 275 million we know that your health and your happiness will change very little if at all when it comes to fame the constant media intrusion and the lack of privacy make most famous people significantly less healthy it certainly doesn't keep them happier and as for working harder and harder the reason that truism that nobody on their deathbed ever wish they had spent more time at the office why is it so hard to get and so easy to ignore well we're human what we'd really like is a quick fix something we can get that all make our lives good in keeping their relationships are messy and they're complicated and the hard work of tending to family and friends that's not sexy or glamorous it's also lifelong it never ends the people in our seventy-five years study who were the happiest in retirement with the people who had actively work to replace workmates with new playmates just like the middle of Millennial in their recent survey many of our men when they were starting out as young adults really believed that fame and wealth and high achievement or what they needed to go after to have a good life but over and over these seventy-five years our study has shown that the people who fear the best for the people who leaned into relationships with family with friends with community so what about you let's say you're 25 or 40 or 60 what might leaning into relationships even look like the possibilities are practically endless it might be something as simple as replacing screen time with people time or lining up a stable relationship by doing something new together long walks or did nights are reaching out to that family member who you haven't spoken to in years because those all-too-common family feuds taking a terrible toll on the people who hold grudges I'd like to close with another quote from mark twain more than a century ago he was looking back on his life and he wrote this there isn't Robert is so relieved his life for Pickering's apologies heart burnings callings to account there is only time for loving and budding instance so to speak for that the good life is built with good relationships and that's an idea worth spreading.
Rewrite from: Robert Waldinger, “The Good Life” Presentation, TEDxBeaconStreet ( https://youtu.be/q-7zAkwAOYg )