Robert J. Waldinger
Appearances
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
If you see the same people casually over and over again, you're more likely to start to have conversations with them and then develop friendships that last.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
So this study is the longest study of the same people that's ever been done. It's an 85 year long study of over 2000 people from 724 families. It was started in 1938. Almost certainly could never be repeated again. The longest study of adult life that anybody has done.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
So the big takeaway is about relationships. We found that the people who were happiest and also who stayed the healthiest as they went through their lives were the people who had good, warm connections with other people. And the surprise was not that it made us happier to have better relationships.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
The surprise was that relationships could make it less likely that we would get coronary artery disease or type 2 diabetes or dementia. I mean, this was the thing that at first we didn't believe until other researchers began to find the same thing.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
It means all kinds of relationships. So you don't have to have an intimate partner. You don't even have to live with anyone to get these benefits. What we're talking about are relationships that could be anybody, family, friends, work relationships, and even casual relationships.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
Even the little hit of well-being you get from the barista who makes your coffee for you in the morning, or the mail carrier, or the person who checks you out at the grocery store, that all of these give us a sense of connectedness. And then to your question, we feel that everybody needs one secure relationship at least in their life. And what we mean by that is something we studied.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
We asked our original participants to tell us, who could you call in the middle of the night if you were sick or scared? And most of our people could list a number of other people who they could call. if they really needed help. Some of our folks couldn't list anyone. And a few of those folks were married, and they didn't list anyone.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
So what we think we need is at least one person who we feel will have our back when we're in trouble.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
Yeah, so we've been spending the last 10 years of our research lives studying exactly the question you just asked. The best hypothesis we have, and there's good data from other studies as well as ours, the best hypothesis is that relationships help us manage stress. So, you know, stress is a part of everyday life. It happens to all of us.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
And if something happens to me that's upsetting, I can feel my body rev up, my heart rate increases, all kinds of physical changes happen, and that's good. That's what we call the fight or flight response. That's normal. And then when the challenge is removed, Our bodies are meant to go back to baseline, equilibrium.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
And so what I find is that if something upsetting happens to me, at the end of the day, if there's someone I can call or if I can talk to my wife and I can really vent, I can feel my body literally calm down, go back to equilibrium.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
the best hypothesis is that the people who don't have good relationships don't have anyone they can do that with and that therefore their bodies stay in a kind of chronic fight or flight mode with higher levels of circulating stress hormones with higher levels of inflammation and we think that those are what break down different body systems And so it's not magic at all.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
That's how chronic stress could break down your joints or your coronary arteries.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
Yes, I love that actually. One of the ways that I've thought about it is happiness is kind of an accident. It happens to us moment to moment or not, but we can build our lives to make ourselves more accident prone, to make moments of happiness more likely to happen.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
And so what I would say is that we know now that there are certain conditions we can build into our lives that make it more likely that we will feel content or happy more of the time.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
Well, one thing will not surprise you. It's that if we take care of our health, it really makes a difference in our wellbeing. So literally eating right, not abusing drugs or alcohol, getting regular exercise, getting that preventive healthcare, that all of those things make a huge difference in how we feel and in how long we live.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
But then in addition to that, building this network of good relationships is a really good investment in making it more likely that you'll be happy more of the time. And so what we would like people to do is see relationships as a kind of living, breathing system that needs caretaking and that we can take care of every day.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
Yes, I agree. That's absolutely right. And so we want to try to build in things that we enjoy and also things that we find meaningful. So yes, fun is hugely important for all of us. But in addition to what's sometimes called hedonic well-being, hedonism, like am I having fun now? There's also what's called eudaimonic well-being, and that's that sense of meaning and purpose in my life.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
So the other thing we want to build in besides fun is activities that make us feel that our lives matter and that they are worthwhile. It's both kinds of activities that we want.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
Well, it could be anything. It could be raising good children, healthy children. It could be working to prevent climate change. It could be joining a bowling league and being with people you love to hang out with, not just for the fun of it, but because you love those friends and you want to connect with them. It could be being involved in a religious or spiritual practice.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
There's so many things that can make life feel worthwhile, and it's highly individual.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
That's a wonderful question. And I think the answer is undoubtedly going to be complicated. But I think many of us have been raised not to listen to ourselves, not to listen to our guts when they tell us, oh, I care about this. And when they tell us, I don't really care about that. We're given so many messages about what we ought to think is important and meaningful.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
And sometimes it can be very hard, given all that messaging and all that training as kids, to pay attention to what's energizing for us, what lights us up, what makes us feel like we want to get up in the morning, and then also to pay attention to those things that just aren't like that for us. Even if other people care about something, we may not care about it.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
It's very important to listen to those messages that we can tune into if we just let ourselves.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
Well, you're exactly right. And one of the awful things about depression is it makes us hide. It makes us wanna withdraw. It makes us believe that other people don't want us around. And so how do we overcome that when we're depressed? It's very, very hard. And I think in some ways, the remedy can be for other people to pay attention. So if you notice that someone in your life seems depressed
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
It would be such a blessing if you could be the one to be active and say, hey, I want to connect with you. I want you around. I want to know how you are. I want to help. Because the depressed person is handicapped in a way. It's almost like if we've broken a limb or we're in some other way disabled. depression is very disabling.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
And so I think what you're pointing to is one of the scarier things about depression. And it's one of the reasons why we need help. We need a village. We need other people to notice and then to lend their energy to us and help draw us out.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
Yes, yes, absolutely. So what we know is that we're all on a spectrum from being introverted, shy, or being extroverted. We're all somewhere in between, and many of us have both qualities in us. We're kind of shy, and we also like being out there with people. There's no right way to do this life in that way. We all have different temperaments.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
What we find is that everybody, even the shyest people, need somebody, maybe just one or two of those warm relationships, those middle-of-the-night calling relationships. people who have our back, but that beyond that, it is just fine not to need a lot of people. One of the things we know about introverts is that they find having a lot of people around exhausting and depleting.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
They get re-energized by having alone time. And with extroverts, it's often the opposite. Extroverts get energy from other people. And so when you study thousands of lives the way we have, the first thing you realize is that one size never fits all. There's no right way to have relationships. There's no correct number of relationships. It's a highly individual matter.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
There are some fairly tried and true ways. So the first step might be to think about what you love to do and see if there's a way to do that alongside other people, to do that in a group. That could be anything. It could be a gardening club. It could be a bowling league. It could be a church group. It could be working for a political cause.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
Because what happens is that if you're doing something you care about, first of all, it feels meaningful or fun. If you're doing it alongside other people, you instantly have one thing in common, which is you both like this thing you're doing or care about it. And that is a natural opener for beginning conversations. And one of the things that we know from research is that if you...
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
see the same people casually over and over again, you're more likely to start to have conversations with them and then deeper conversations and then develop friendships that last. The instruction is figure out what you care about, what you love, what you enjoy, and try to do that with others.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
I'm so glad you raised that point because it does look effortless. It looks like other people have it figured out. Think about how we curate our lives for each other. Look at social media. Think about what we post for each other about our lives. I don't post the mornings when I wake up feeling awful. feeling like my life is a mess and I don't know what I'm doing.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
Nobody posts their hangover pictures, at least most people don't, right? So we curate our lives. And even though we know that, when we look at each other's Facebook posts or Instagram feeds, you can imagine that everybody's having an easy life. Everybody's got it figured out. Everybody's got people in their life except me. And that, I can tell you, is not the truth of life.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
having studied thousands of life stories. That's just not the truth. And so I think part of it is trying to remember that nobody has it all figured out ever, and that every life has difficulty and struggle.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
Well, that's important to point out. It takes time. Also, it's not going to work every time. So you may reach out to some people and they really don't reciprocate. I think of it more like a basketball game or baseball, where you have certain tries at bat or you try to make a basket. It's not going to happen every time. But it doesn't happen for anybody every time. That's okay.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
Expect that there will be some people who just don't respond or don't respond very warmly. And try again. Keep trying. Because if you keep trying, you will find there will be people who do respond.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
Absolutely. Family members count hugely. Many of the people we're closest to can be family. So for example, I have two first cousins who are more like sisters to me. And I don't know why. It's just that we happen to have cultivated particularly strong relationships, more than I might have with other relatives. And so even within our families, we choose to be closer to some people than others.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
That's natural. But families can play a wonderful role in that network.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
One of the dangers of presenting these ideas in the way that I am is that I could give the impression that it's all gotta be rosy all the time, that relationships have to be smooth. They're not. Relationships of any significance have difficulties, have differences. We disagree with each other. We disappoint each other.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
And I think what we find is that the people who worked at resolving differences, at mending fences, were the people who were the happiest and most secure in their relationships. It turns out that if we can work out our differences, that the relationships get stronger and more stable.
Something You Should Know
Why Thinking Is Not All In Your Head & Secrets From the Longest Study of Happiness - SYSK Choice
Well, you're a really good interviewer, and I love the questions you took me to places I wouldn't have otherwise gone, you know?