Recommendation

Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz direct the world’s most enduring longitudinal survey of happiness — the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has been closely following individuals from the same 724 families for more than 85 years. They draw on research from two generations of participants in the Harvard Study and glean insights from the latest research from other studies in psychology and neuroscience as well as the wisdom of ancient philosophers. They conclude that relationships are your pathway to contentment. The authors offer strategies for improving the quality of your connections, for making new connections, and for bolstering your overall well-being and life satisfaction.

Take-Aways

• The quality of your relationships shapes your well-being and happiness.
• People continue to grow and develop throughout adulthood, particularly as a result of their relationships and life transitions.
• Show others you care by giving them your time and attention.
• Be proactive about nurturing your relationships; begin by taking stock of your relationships and prioritizing your most important connections.
• You can take steps to strengthen the health of your relationships and improve your mastery of your emotions.
• Create more satisfying and beneficial relationships by communicating and listening with empathy.
• You spend most of your waking hours at work. Make the most of them; especially heed your connections with others.
• Human relationships are important on a collective level as humanity navigates global challenges.

Summary

The quality of your relationships shapes your well-being and happiness.

Most people say they want to be happy, but what does a happy life look like? The term “happiness” itself is a bit vague. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle differentiated between “hedonic” happiness and “eudaimonic” happiness. Hedonic happiness is a temporary sensation in response to moment-to-moment experiences. Eudaimonic happiness is more long-term and longer-lasting, coming from a sense of purpose and meaning. That enduring sense of well-being you feel when you’re flourishing and thriving is related to Aristotle’s notion of eudaimonia.

“Relationships are not just essential as stepping-stones to other things, and they are not simply a functional route to health and happiness. They are ends in themselves.”

As the lead researchers of the longest survey of human happiness – the Harvard Study of Adult Development – authors Dr. Robert J. Waldinger and Dr. Marc Schulz examined data collected on thousands of people from two generations. They found that the most consistent predictor of well-being isn’t money or career success.It’s relationships. Positive relationships not only make you happier, they also keep you healthier. When you experience a positive interaction – whether a small one (waving to your mail carrier) or a bigger one (knowing a friend deeply loves you) – that interaction signals safety to your body. This signal is the opposite of the message that stress hormones (cortisol and adrenalin) send to your body when a negative interaction triggers a “fight or flight” reaction. Relationships help people manage stress and navigate challenges. Since prehistoric times, humans have evolved to seek safety in relationships, so healthy ones are vital to your well-being.

People continue to grow and develop throughout adulthood, particularly as a result of their relationships and life transitions.

Adulthood isn’t stagnant. It’s a period of flux, bearing the marks of relationship changes. Psychologists used to focus only on childhood development, harboring the false assumption that once you reach adulthood, development halts. Today, thanks in part to research findings from the Harvard Study and new insights into neuroplasticity, scientists understand that adulthood is a period of tremendous growth and change.

“In the end, it’s about gaining some perspective on the roads we’ve taken and the roads still to come, so that we can help each other anticipate and prepare for the hard curves ahead.”

To be open to growth and change, it is helpful to take time to reflect on your life, considering your journey as a whole and the ways that your circumstances and views have changed over the years. For example, how have your priorities, hopes, goals and self-concept shifted since you were half as old as you are now?

The human life cycle tends to unfold in the following stages:

• Adolescence, age 12-19 – During this period, people form their identity, focusing on the type of person they’re becoming, who they hope to be in the future and what they want to do in life. During this stage, they learn how to navigate new types of intimacy.
• Young adulthood, age 20-40 – Young adults build their own safety nets as they separate from their parents and create new social connections and intimate attachments. They often wonder whether they’re on the right path, if they’re living life consistent with their values and if they’ll find love.
• Midlife, age 41-65 – When people realize their younger years are behind them, they begin to assess whether there are things they should do differently. They entertain existential questions such as, “Is this all there is?” They may reflect on whether they’ve truly connected with others and have a sense of meaning and purpose in their life.
• Late life, 66 and older – As people start to view time as more precious and grapple with their own mortality, they develop a deeper appreciation for their existing relationships. Awareness that life is short leads to a greater emphasis on prioritizing what’s most important, often including having meaningful relationships and making sure they’re leaving a legacy behind.

Show others you care by giving them your time and attention.

The quality and frequency of your connections with others are major predictors of your happiness. Many Harvard Study participants who reflected on their lives in their 80s regretted not spending more time with their friends and loved ones. Leading a good life requires nurturing and caring for your relationships. A first step is giving your time and attention to those who are most important to you; it is the simplest way of showing people you value them. Zen master John Tarrant calls attention “the most basic form of love.” Both meanings of “attention” are important. One refers to prioritizing people by spending time with them. The other refers to being present and attentive when you spend time with people rather than allowing your mind to wander.

“Attention is your most important asset, and deciding how to invest it is one of the most important decisions you can make.”

Research in neuroscience shows that multitasking is a myth. People actually can’t pay attention to two separate things at the same time. Instead of trying to multitask, work on reducing unnecessary distractions including those coming from your smartphone and other technologies. Work on being more present, asking yourself what you may not be noticing about others in your daily interactions. Show interest in others by trying to understand what they are experiencing and communicating. While you may not always understand exactly what someone is thinking or feeling, Waldinger and Schulz’s research shows that simply showing that you’re trying to understand someone helps improve the relationship. People reported feeling more positively about partners whom they believed were making an effort to understand them.

Be proactive about nurturing your relationships; begin by taking stock of your relationships and prioritizing your most important connections.

Relationships need to be cultivated and tended. Otherwise, connections with others wither. A good place to begin is to reflect on the quality of your current relationships and how frequently you interact with the people who are important to you. In good quality relationships, attention, care and support are reciprocal, so reflect on how others are showing up for you and you for them. Identify relationships that energize you and those that you experience as depleting in some way. If you frequently spend time in a relationship that depletes you, can you identify opportunities to improve the health of the relationship or to reduce the time you spend with that individual? Can you find ways to spend more time with those you find enlivening?

“A few adjustments to our most treasured relationships can have real effects on how we feel and on how we feel about our lives.”

Do an inventory of your connections with others using the following elements of good relationships. (Not every relationship will provide all of them.)

• Security and safety – Do you have someone you can rely on and turn to during a challenge?
• Growth and learning – Who inspires you to pursue your goals and encourages you to try new things?
• Emotional closeness – Is there one person you confide in most? Whose advice do you trust?
• Shared experience and identity affirmation – Do you have siblings or old friends with whom you’ve shared identity-forming life experiences?
• Romantic intimacy – Do you feel satisfied with the degree of intimacy and sexual connection in your life? Who fulfills these needs?
• Help and assistance – Who helps you solve practical problems (for example, getting a ride to a medical appointment)?
• Relaxation and fun – Think about the people you enjoy being with and laughing with. Who contributes to your sense of joy and feeling of being connected?

You can take steps to strengthen the health of your relationships and improve your mastery of your emotions.

Former Harvard Study director George Vaillant described two “pillars of happiness” – love and “finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.” Habitual negative reactions to stress (such as responding with defensiveness to a concerned family member) can harm your relationships. Everyone has habitual ways of coping when stressful events occur. Those who “lean in,” facing their difficulties head on, tend to navigate stressful challenges better than those who try to ignore problems, hoping they’ll go away. By breaking down stressful emotional encounters into stages, people can learn to navigate challenges in more adaptive ways.

“Our emotions need not be our masters; what we think, and how we approach each event in our lives, matters.”

Use the WISER model to respond better to emotionally challenging events and to enhance your relationships:

1. Watch – Take a moment to observe the situation closely and consider as many aspects of it as possible. Have you missed something important?
2. Interpret – Identify what’s at stake and strive to gain greater insight into why you’re feeling strong emotions. Have you made any false assumptions?
3. Select – Carefully identify and weigh your options, reflecting on what you hope to accomplish and your best means of doing so.
4. Engage – Respond, executing your chosen strategy with skill.
5. Reflect – Learn from the incident, reflecting on what went well and what you might do differently next time.

Create more satisfying and beneficial relationships by communicating and listening with empathy.

Improve your connections to others, including in an intimate relationship, by striving to understand the other person and his or her experience. You can increase and demonstrate your empathy with three practices. The first is “reflective listening,” that is, listening to another person without commenting or judging what he or she is saying and then attempting to repeat back what you’ve heard. (“What I’m hearing you say is ___. Is that right?”)

The second practice is letting your partner know you understand why he or she feels a certain way. Make it clear you grasp your partner’s reactions. (“It makes sense that you feel so strongly about this since you care so much about being kind.”) A third useful practice is striving to view your experience and reactions from a more distanced perspective, as if you were another person watching yourself. This distanced perspective often lessens the emotional heat of the moment and can lead to new insights and opportunities.

“We each bring our own particular strengths and weaknesses into a relationship, our own fears and desires, enthusiasms and anxieties, and the dance that results will always be unlike any other.”

The Harvard Study and others demonstrate that children first learn how to relate to people and manage their emotions within their families. Those who grow up in families that provide support, consistency and warmth are better able to manage challenges and to elicit support from others when they’re facing stress. These strategies for adaptively coping with challenges and emotions also can be learned later in life with the help of supportive people.

You spend most of your waking hours at work; make the most of them.

You might view your work life as separate from your “real life,” but most people spend a significant amount of time working. By age 80, the average person in the United Kingdom has spent 112,000 hours, or 13 years, of his or her life at work and only 8,800 hours socializing with friends. If you view your job only as a means of getting a paycheck, you may be less likely to see work as a place where you can develop authentic and valuable connections with others.

“What if the value of work – even work we dislike – lies not just in getting paid, but also in the moment-to-moment sensations of being alive in the workplace and the feeling of vitality we get from being connected to others?”

While some managers and workers may view having good friends at work as irrelevant or even a drain on productivity, research shows that people with a “best friend” at work are actually more engaged and do better work than those who don’t have a strong friendship at work. While plenty of understandable reasons exist for disengaging from or avoiding work relationships, doing so can contribute to feelings of loneliness and disconnection. To take full advantage of your waking hours, look for opportunities to maximize meaningful social interactions in your chosen workplace.

Human relationships are important on a collective level as humanity navigates global challenges.

The Harvard Study points to the importance of adding a “fourth R” to the “3 Rs” of basic education. Children shouldn’t learn just “reading, writing and arithmetic” in schools; they should also learn about “relationships.” Because human connection is so crucial to well-being, education should include a focus on “social fitness,” or how to cultivate healthy interactions. Schools across the world have begun to catch on, with programs popping up around the globe that teach children how to manage challenging social situations and their accompanying emotions. Research indicates that students who receive this training perform better academically, have fewer conduct problems, use drugs less often and experience less emotional distress. Adults can benefit similarly from such education.

“Week by week, you can prioritize your relationships and choose to be with people who matter. Year by year you can find purpose and meaning through the lives that you enrich and the relationships that you cultivate.”

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the need for relationships and social connection, as many people experienced firsthand the harmful toll of social isolation on their minds and bodies. In the face of global crises, good relationships help people face challenges together and, in this way, support everyone’s well-being. The good life isn’t a destination. It is “the path itself and the people who are walking it with you.”

About the Authors

Robert Waldinger, MD, is a Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry and the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital. Marc Schulz, PhD, is a professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College and the study’s associate director.

Review 1

“The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness” is a New York Times Bestseller written collaboratively by Marc Schulz and Robert J. Waldinger. The book is based on the authors’ work as directors of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, making it grounded in substantial research and offering scientifically-backed insights on happiness and human development.

The book delves deep into what constitutes a happy life and how such a life can be accomplished and fulfilled. Schulz and Waldinger skillfully reveal their findings from the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted. The authors provide the answer to what indeed makes a life good and fulfilling. The central theme revolves around human connections and their role in fostering happiness and a sense of purpose in life.

This book stands out because it is not merely based on the philosophical or conceptual understanding of happiness. Instead, it derives its ideas and suggestions from empirical findings from a scientific study spanning several decades. The themes discussed are intertwined with compelling life stories that serve to illustrate the theories presented.

Possibly one of the book’s most intriguing aspects is the understanding it provides about the importance of social connections and relationships in shaping happy and fulfilled lives. It offers readers a new perspective on wealth, positing that richness comes not from accumulated material possessions or successes but through meaningful and supportive relationships.

“The Good Life” could be described as not just a reading journey but an experiential one, changing perspectives and creating ripple effects on how readers consider, relate to, and prioritize their relationships and connections, which invariably impact their happiness and life fulfillment.

However, while this review captures an overview of the themes and content of “The Good Life,” there may be numerous other learnings, anecdotes, and principles within the book that could profoundly influence readers’ viewpoints and philosophies regarding happiness and lifetime satisfaction.

Review 2

The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness by Marc Schulz and Robert J. Waldinger is a book that explores the key factors that contribute to a happy, healthy, and meaningful life. Based on the findings of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has followed hundreds of men and women for over eight decades, the book reveals that the quality of our relationships with others is the most important predictor of our well-being. The book combines scientific evidence with engaging personal stories to illustrate how relationships can affect our physical and mental health, our resilience, our creativity, and our sense of purpose. The book also offers practical advice on how to strengthen our connections with family, friends, partners, coworkers, and community members, and how to overcome the common challenges that can undermine our relationships. The book is written in a clear, accessible, and compassionate style, and is full of insights and wisdom that can help anyone who wants to live a good life.

Review 3

Here is my review of the book The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness by Marc Schulz and Robert J. Waldinger.

The book is a fascinating and inspiring exploration of what makes a life happy, fulfilling, and meaningful, based on the insights from the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted. The authors, who are the directors of the study, share their personal and professional experiences, as well as the stories and data from hundreds of participants who have been followed for more than eight decades. The main finding of the study is that relationships are the key to a good life. The stronger and more supportive our connections with others are, the more likely we are to enjoy better physical and mental health, as well as greater satisfaction and purpose in life.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part introduces the concept of deliberate calm, which is the ability to choose how we experience and respond to situations, rather than being swept away by automatic reactions. The authors explain how deliberate calm can help us overcome the adaptability paradox, which is the tendency to stick to what we know and avoid what we don’t when faced with uncertainty and complexity. The second part describes the four skills that enable deliberate calm: dual awareness, reframing, curiosity, and experimentation. The authors provide practical tools and techniques for developing each skill, as well as examples of how they can be applied in different contexts. The third part offers guidance on how to use deliberate calm to enhance our relationships in various domains, such as family, friends, work, and community. The authors also suggest how to create a culture of deliberate calm in our organizations and society.

The book is written in a clear, engaging, and accessible style. The authors use simple language and anecdotes to illustrate their points. The book is also full of useful advice and exercises that readers can try immediately. The book is based on rigorous research and evidence from various disciplines, such as psychology, neuroscience, sociology, and management. The book also acknowledges the limitations and challenges of the study and its findings, as well as the diversity and complexity of human experiences.

The book is suitable for anyone who wants to improve their happiness and well-being in a volatile world. The book is especially relevant for leaders who face complex and uncertain situations that require adaptability, creativity, and innovation. The book can help leaders develop a mindset and a skillset that will enable them to learn and lead calmly through volatile times.

The book is a valuable and inspiring contribution to the field of positive psychology and leadership. The book offers a comprehensive and systematic approach to happiness and well-being that can help readers achieve their desired outcomes. The book also provides a variety of examples and suggestions that can cater to different needs and interests. However, the book may also require some adaptation and personalization from the readers, as some of the tools and techniques may not work for everyone or every situation. Therefore, readers should use their own judgment and discretion when choosing and applying the skills that suit them best.