Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Coming up on this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show. It wasn't career achievement. It wasn't exercise. It wasn't a healthy diet that determined the quality and happiness of your life. It was good relationships. Good relationships keeps us healthier and happier. The holidays are supposed to be joyful, but for many of us, they're stressful.
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What do the longest living and most joyous people in the world have in common? Well, they all share one common trait, a sense of belonging, of community, of connection. You know, when we have a tribe to lean on, when we are connected to others, we have a sense of belonging. when we feel there's a worth outside of ourselves, we can really tap into an incredible array of our own inner pharmacy.
Not the doctor's pharmacy, but our own inner biochemistry lab in our brain that regulates so much of our health. So what we're talking about today is how the strength of our relationships is one of the key factors, maybe the key factor in determining longevity. I'll just tell you a quick story about a community I might have mentioned before, but it's Rosetta, Pennsylvania.
And it was read about this years ago in one of Deepak Chopra's books. And they found that there was this tribe of not tribe, but community of Italians that came over en masse from Italy, from this little town in Italy. And they were all different levels of society, wealth and achievement and success, at least monetarily. But they all came over.
But the thing that was unique about them was that they had a deep sense of community. And no matter what station of life you were or who you were, everybody celebrated everything together. All the holidays, all the birthdays and the weddings and the funerals and everything was in community.
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Chapter 2: How do relationships impact our health and happiness?
It was good relationships. Good relationships keeps us healthier and happier. That was powerful. And the studies leaders that are, I mean, obviously the people that started the study are dead. The current leader of the study, Robert Waldinger from Harvard and Mark Schultz have a new book. It's called The Good Life, Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.
And it's a great book. I actually had Robert Waldinger on the podcast, The Doctor's Pharmacy, and you can learn more about the book and things there. But what are the things that we can do? What are the lessons learned from the study about how do we improve the quality of our relationships? First, we have to look at ourselves, right? Who are we? What is our life like?
What are the choices we're making? How are we not prioritizing relationships? So we can get really busy. We can do all sorts of stuff that we think is helping us get ahead. We can spend too much time on social media, right? But we often don't really think about building and investing in the quality and the number of our relationships.
And for me, I know personally that my relationships, my friendships, my community is the most important thing for me. It really is what keeps me grounded, keeps me healthy, keeps me happy. And then more and more as I get older, I focus more on this as opposed to like when you have kids and a career and whatever.
You try to just kind of get by and it's like sometimes friends can fall by the wayside, but it's really important to find and it even can be just one or two good friends. It makes a huge difference. Now,
When these people in the study actually were interviewed, they really actually benefited from these interviews because it helped them realize where they neglected their relationships, and then they considered sort of looking and finding, well, how can we improve that? So maybe look at your own life. What's your social life like?
Who are the people in your life that you care most about, that you want to have a relationship with? Think about how they support you and how often you spend time together, and maybe do a little bit of effort to actually focus on what matters to you most and help you make decisions that actually can enhance the quality and number of your relationships.
So maybe spend more time with people who make you laugh and who elevate you and less time with people who drain you and are, you know, energy saps. So I, you know, I think it's important to find friends and community members that help bring you up and not take you down. You know, sometimes you meet with people and all they want to do is complain and go on and on about everything.
And I think there, you know, there are other people who, when you're around them, you laugh, you have fun, you play, and it's just, that's what you want. You know,
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of community in longevity?
for 40 often plus years, maybe 35, the smallest, the fewest I think was 25 years. And so we've known each other and we formed this group. And every Tuesday at six o'clock, we meet for an hour and a half and spend time together and share about our lives. And it's been one of the most impactful things I've done. And it's something that you can do. It doesn't take any organization.
You just need a zoom link or, you know, it's really pretty easy. Uh, and you can have these deep connections and relationships that, that allow you to be seen and known and, and can really help activate so many healing pathways in your body. Um, Make time to talk to people, right? And it came in sometimes with small relationships that matter.
But a study in the University of Kansas found that the simple act of just reaching out to somebody, a friend, for a conversation once a day dramatically increases happiness and lowers their stress hormones. So hanging out with friends lowers your stress hormones. Pretty good. And also, it's not all about you, right? Take time to ask questions. Find out what's exciting for them.
Find out what they're struggling with. Find out what makes them happy. Have them share their life with you and value their opinions. Be present, focused, and don't just kind of be superficial with them, but go deep. So maybe try to have one conversation a day and put that in your calendar. and see what the effects will be over time. Super important. Next thing is be kind.
You know, my grandmother used to ask my mother when she came home and said, I met this new friend. She says, are they kind? And I think kindness was such an important value in my family. And how do we be kind to each other? And the relationship happiness is determined by how you are in that relationship. And there was a research study in Michigan State that looked on data.
for our 2,500 married couples. And they found they were, you know, how good they were in five different dimensions. Were they extroverts? Were they agreeable? Were they conscientious? Were they stable emotionally? Were they open to doing new things and experiences? And the ones who had higher levels of agreeableness and emotional stability also had higher happiness.
So the more kind of kind and positive you were, the more likely you were to be happy. People invest a lot of time in finding someone who's perfectly compatible, but that might not be the whole story. It's more about being kind to the people you care about and fostering those deep connections.
Also, a friend of mine had a word that I really loved, which is called cop-to-itiveness, which is where you cop to it. If you screw up, if you make a mistake, you cop to it. And it's really about learning to apologize, learning to repair relationships, learning how to have nonviolent communication, and owning your stuff. Like I said, also a great way to build relationship is to ask questions.
Instead of talking about yourself, ask questions about somebody. Show that you care. Show that you're interested in what they care about or thinking about. If someone wants advice, don't just give them your opinion. Ask them questions to guide them to the right answer that they know themselves. Also, don't be shy about expressing your love.
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Chapter 4: What did the Harvard Study of Adult Development reveal?
And friends that I choose, I'll color code in orange, right? So different colors, just to sort of see, ah, okay, cool. So, you know, and then I have this kind of axis of energy that I created in my book, in chapter one, or in part one of the book, where you sort of
assess, okay, who are the community members who are bringing me up and who are the community members in my life who are bringing me down? So looking around, you begin to see, ah, cool. So all the green quadrant sort of is up and to the right. So therefore, I realize that my work life is very positive. I have very positive community at work.
But then maybe there's more red dots around family and friends in the negative quadrants. So you're like, ah, okay, I need to really understand and assess what's happening in my family life so I can really heal that or support that or ask myself, you know, how do I connect and handle family members? And we've all, you know, we all, we've all, we're all, we all go through that.
And so, so really looking at this.
Although I know your family, they're all pretty awesome.
Yeah. Well, you know, we all... Your dad's Indian, your mom's Japanese.
My dad's, yeah.
Your sister's a doctor and your sister's, you know... Well, you know, and culturally it's interesting, right? Like, you know, my father, my mother are some of the most loving community builders. I know, in fact, they modeled what community looks like for us. And yet it's interesting because culturally talking about love and sex and differently, you know, you just don't talk about those things.
Yeah. with your kind of Asian parents. And so on one hand, they're the best community builders I've seen. On the other hand, I do long for a little bit more kind of emotional. Honesty. Honesty, yeah. But I think, again, we all have those sort of issues. I'm going through the motherhood process right now. I'm seven months pregnant.
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Chapter 5: How can we improve the quality of our relationships?
So I don't want friends who are negative Nellies, lazies, shoulder shruggers, Debbie Downers, Netflix, and chill watchers all the time, and homebodies. I wanted friends who were just really out there.
Say yes to life.
Say yes. And I call it an FYF in my book.
And somebody else might want a friend who they can sit around and do knitting with.
That's right. That's what I'm saying. Drink tea in the afternoon.
Everyone's different.
So your qualities are going to be very different from my qualities, whoever's listening out there. And that's exactly what you want to do right now is ask yourself, where do I feel the most energized? And then column three, perhaps the most important column, was all the qualities that I need to embody in order to attract the friends that I want. All the qualities that I need to embody.
So I need to be less of a workaholic. I love my work. I need to put my laptop down. I need to be less judgmental and nitpicky and perfectionist. I'm a CEO, right? I run companies... And so my job is to focus on what's going wrong. My job is to focus on how to improve what's going wrong.
So if I bring that, I used to bring that into my relationships, into my friendships, I'd be nitpicking what's going wrong in those relationships instead of being grateful for what's going right. So that sort of understanding. Shifting your frame a bit. Yes, that compartmentalization of in my work, I'm gonna be focused on really kind of wanting to improve service and product and whatever.
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Chapter 6: What practical steps can we take to foster community?
And values are sort of kind of the guardrails through which you live your life. What are the... What are things that matter to you? And you can Google values and see sort of what values come up. And there's all kinds of lists that come up. In my book, I list out about 100 values that you can choose from. But it's also something you can find on the internet.
And you can begin to sort of map out what do I care about today and really sit with yourself and connect to that essence. So write that down in one circle. And that will give you, again, the beginning of a roadmap for the type of other people that you want to connect with. Shared values are so critical, right?
Yeah.
And then the I. Because if you name it, then you can identify others, right? That's right, exactly. And then the I in your VIA chart is your interests. So what am I interested in today? So, you know, it's different from your values and your values is more sort of kind of intrinsic qualities, family, you know, community, work, life balance, you know, that sort of thing, right?
Whereas your interests might be things like hiking and yoga and mindful meditation and music festivals and, you know, and daybreaker. Yeah, thank you. And all kinds of, right? So it's what are you interested in tangibly doing today? Some people I do this workshop with will say, well, I don't know. We all have interests, right? So dig deep.
If you don't have an interest right now, then start cultivating them. And that's what's so fun about this going in journey is that life is, we have 100 years to live on this planet. Let's really begin cultivating our interests that are outside of just work.
Only 100 years if you eat right and follow my advice and connect in the community and follow Radha's advice. Then you get to 100.
Yeah. Exactly, if you read all of Mark's books, yeah, for sure. And then your abilities are, and I really think about abilities through the lens of what can you bring to your community? So what are your abilities, not just like I'm a good public speaker, but what can you bring to your community? So is one of your abilities to ask amazing questions? Is one of your abilities to cook?
Are you a good cook and chef? Can you cook for your friends? Is one of your abilities to gather people in your home? Is your home a really wonderful place to gather?
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