What makes us healthy and happy throughout our lives? If you think it's fame and money, you're not alone. However, according to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, you are wrong. As the leader of a 75-year adult development research project, Waldinger has unprecedented access to the secrets of true happiness and fulfillment. In this talk, he shares three important lessons from this study, as well as some practical and old-fashioned wise advice on how to ensure a fulfilling and long life.
A good life is built on a good relationship.
What makes us healthy and happy throughout our lives? If now you were planning to take care of your own bright future, where would you invest your time and energy? In a recent Millennium Generation survey of their top goals in life, over 80% said their top goal in life is to get rich. And for another 50% of the same youth, becoming a celebrity turned out to be the most important goal in life.
(Laughter)
We are constantly told that we need to rely on work, diligence and achieving more. We get the impression that this is exactly what we should strive for in order to live better. The complete picture of life, decisions made by people and the consequences of these decisions - such a picture is practically inaccessible to us. Most of our knowledge about human life is based on what people remember from their past, and, as you know, when looking into the past, we do not have 100% vision. We forget a lot of what happens to us in life, and our memories are sometimes distorted beyond recognition.
But what if we could see life completely as it develops in time? What if we could trace people from adolescence to old age and see what actually makes them healthy and happy?
This is what we did. The Harvard Study on Adult Development may be considered the longest-running study of adult life. For 75 years, year after year, we observed the lives of 724 men, asked them questions about work, personal life, health, and all this time we asked them, not knowing how their lives would develop.
Such studies are extremely rare. Almost no project of this kind lasts even ten years, either because of the departure of too many participants, or because of the cessation of funding, or because of new interests among employees, or because of their death in the absence of followers. But by a happy coincidence and thanks to the persistence of several generations of researchers, this project survived. About 60 of our original 724 contributors are still alive and involved in the project; most of them are over 90. And now we are beginning to study more than 2,000 children of these people. I am the fourth project leader.
Since 1938 we have been studying the lives of two groups of men. At the beginning of the project, the participants in the first group were second-year students at Harvard College. They all graduated from college during World War II, and most of them went to war. The second group we studied was a group of boys from the poorest areas of Boston who were selected for the study precisely because of their belonging to the most disadvantaged and disadvantaged families in Boston in the 30s. Most of them lived in rented apartment buildings without running water.
At the beginning of the project, all the boys were interviewed. All passed medical examinations. We came to their house and talked to their parents. Then these young men became adults, each of them with his own destiny. They became factory workers, lawyers, builders and doctors, and one even became the President of the United States. Some of them became an alcoholic. Some developed schizophrenia. Some climbed the social ladder from the bottom to the very top, while others traveled in the opposite direction.
The founders of the project, even in their deepest dreams, could not imagine that I would be standing here today, 75 years later, telling that the project is still ongoing. Every two years, our patient and dedicated staff call our members and ask if they can send them another questionnaire about their lives.
Many in downtown Boston ask, “Why are you continuing to study me? There is nothing interesting in my life. "Harvard alumni don't ask such questions.
(Laughter)
In order to clarify the picture of their life, we not only send them questionnaires. We talk to them in their living rooms. We get their medical records from their doctors. We take their blood, we scan their brains, we talk to their children. We are videotaping their conversations with their wives about their deepest problems. And when, ten years ago, we finally asked the wives about their desire to participate in the project, many of them answered us: "Yes, it's high time."
(Laughter)
So what have we learned?
What lessons have been learned from the tens of thousands of pages of information accumulated about their lives?
Now, these lessons are not about wealth or fame or hard work. After 75 years of research, it's very clear to us that good relationships make us happier and healthier. Point.
After 75 years of research, it's very clear to us that good relationships make us happier and healthier. Point.
We've learned three main lessons about relationships.
The first is that interconnection with people is very useful for us, and loneliness kills. It turns out that people who have a strong bond with family, friends, community are happier, healthier physically, and live longer than people deprived of the company of other people. And the state of loneliness, as it turned out, is poisonous. People who are isolated from others more than they would like to feel less happy, their health deteriorates earlier, their brain functions fail earlier, and their lives are shorter than those of non-lonely people. And the saddest thing is that whenever you ask, at least one in five Americans will tell you that they are lonely.
... it's about the quality of relationships with loved ones
And we know that you can be lonely in a crowd, you can be lonely in a marriage, so the second lesson we have learned is that it's not about the number of friends or whether you have a permanent couple, but about the quality of these relationships with loved ones. people. As it turned out, living in a state of conflict is extremely harmful to our health. Conflicting families, for example, where there is not enough love and affection, have a very detrimental effect on our health, this is perhaps even worse than divorce. And life in a good, spiritual environment is a protection for us.
When our participants were well into their 80s, we wanted to go back to the middle of their lives and see if it was possible to predict who would turn out to be a happy, healthy 80-year-old person and who would not. Having collected all the information we have when they were 50, it turned out that it was not the level of cholesterol at that age that served as an indicator of how they will be in old age. It turned out how well their relationship was going.
The people most satisfied with their relationships at 50 turned out to be the healthiest at 80.
Good, warm relations serve as a kind of buffer for us, protecting us from the blows of fate, from turning into old people. The happiest of our couples, when they were already over 80, said that even in moments of severe physical pain, a feeling of happiness never leaves them. And people with uncomplicated relationships in the days of exacerbations of physical pain suffered even more because of emotional pain.
... that good relationships protect not only our body, they protect our brain
And the third lesson we have learned about relationships and health is that good relationships not only protect our bodies, they protect our brains. It turns out that a secure and strong attachment to another person when you're in your 80s protects you, and people in relationships where they can really rely on each other during tough times retain good memories longer. And people whose relationships do not allow them to truly rely on each other, memory problems are observed much earlier. At the same time, a good relationship does not mean complete cloudlessness. For some of our 80-year-old couples, the bickering may go on day and night, but as long as they feel they can count on the other's support when things get tough, these fights do little harm to their memory.
The truth that good, intimate relationships contribute to our well-being is as old as the world. Why is it so difficult to assimilate and so easy to neglect? Because we are people. We prefer momentary decisions, we would get something from which our life will become better and will remain so. And the relationship has no guarantees, they are complex, confusing and require constant effort, commitment to family and friends, there is no glitter and glamor. And there is no end. This is the work of a lifetime. In our 75-year study, the happiest retired participants were people who actively made co-workers playmates. Just like the millennial generation in that recent poll, many of our men, as they entered adulthood, sincerely believed that wealth, fame and great achievement were what they needed to live fulfilling and happy lives.
What do you think? Let's say you are now 25, or 40, or 60. What does it mean to invest in a relationship?
The possibilities are practically unlimited. It can be a simple substitution of screen time for time with people, revitalizing a relationship that has lost its novelty with some new idea together, for example, a long walk or a date at night, or a call to a relative with whom you have not spoken for a hundred years because all of these are too familiar we are threatened by strife with terrible retribution for those who harbor a grudge against others.
I would like to end with a quote from Mark Twain. Over a century ago, looking back on his life, he wrote:
“There is no time - life is so short - for squabbles, apologies, bile and a call to account. There is only time to love, and for that, so to speak, there is only a moment. "
A good life is built on a good relationship.
