Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - The Key to the Good Life: Who You’re With on the Journey

Episode Date: February 3, 2023

Harvard researchers have been studying what makes people happy for decades. Since 1938, they’ve been following the same people, and then their families, to learn more about what makes a good life. This is the longest-running study of its kind involving hundreds of people across different walks of life. JFK was even involved when he was a student. So what did they discover in this happiness survey? Money, fame, and awards don’t lead to long-term happiness. Here’s what does — good relationships.Think about a trip you took a few years ago. A vacation or time abroad or in a new city that you really loved. What do you remember? When you first got home and a friend asked, “Oh, how was your time away?” chances are you recited the things you did. But years later, when you think of that trip, you remember your interactions with people, those you were traveling with and also complete strangers.The key to the good life is developing good relationships and being open to encounters with everyone.And there’s both science and magic behind why. https://sarahmikutel.com/Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to Live Without Borders, a podcast about how to live the good life through stoicism, personal development, and cultural exploration. I'm your host, Sarah Megatel, an American in England who's here to help fellow citizens of the world like you make the most of the brief time you have here on Earth. It is time to make every moment matter. When you come back from a holiday, what memories stick with you forever? Think about a trip you took a few years ago, a vacation or time abroad or a day. the new city that you really loved. What do you remember? When we first get home and a friend asks, oh, how is your time away? We usually recite the things that we did. And side note, this isn't actually that interesting to people. Go back and listen to my episode with Master Storyteller,

Matthew Dix, on how to tell a great travel story. But when we immediately get back from a trip, we start talking to our friends. Oh, yes, I saw the Eiffel Tower, or I went to the Coliseum. We're reciting the things that we did. But years later, when you think about that trip, what you remember is your interactions with people, those you're traveling with and also complete strangers. So for me, when I visited Bordeaux, when I think back, I'm not remembering, oh, the grand theater. I'm remembering a sunny afternoon spent drinking wine in a tucked away park with my friend. It's the time in between the big items on our to-do list that we remember. Those are the times that feel amazing. And there's both a science and I think magic behind why. It's a Sunday morning a little before 7 a.m. as I slide into my friend's car and we make our way to the beach below the chalk cliffs of Fokston. We are here on this winter's dawn to watch the sunrise and participate in a new moon ceremony. And a new moon ceremony means new beginnings. It's a good time to reflect and set intentions for the next month, goals, what you're letting go of, what you want to welcome. We say a blessing, drink raw chocolate, and burn sage as the sun rises above the ocean. We sit around the campfire, smoke sticking to our clothes and blankets. Johnny strums his acoustic guitar while the rest of us sing. Millie even takes a cold plunge in the sea before we

head back to Kyla and Johnny's to cook a massive English breakfast, Hulumi and Home Fries, plus more traditional fare. After our bellies swell with good food, we lounge around the open living room, fireplace burning. I sit back on the sofa as the two brothers in the room improvise music on the harp and bass. Millie reads on her phone on the couch. Kyla cleans the open kitchen next to us, an activity that relaxes her. Two-year-old Charlie helps by standing on a chair and wiping down the table. Everyone calm and doing what they want in the moment. Peace, no rush, no trying to get somewhere, just being. The feeling is lush. Later in the day, we go back. back to a different part of the beach to play mini-golf. I rank first in a three-way tie,

despite to not having played in a decade. But in a day full of activity, the experience that stays with me most viscerally is the Zen post-breakfast hangout in the living room, where we are all quietly doing our own thing together. Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. You might know this John Lennon quote from his song Beautiful Boy. The 19th century poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said something similar. It's the journey, not the destination. And I would add, it's who you're with on this journey, who you're with in between the plans. Harvard researchers have been studying what makes people happy for decades. Since 1938, they have been following the same people and then their families to learn more about what makes a good life. This is the

longest running study of its kind involving hundreds of people across different walks of life. JFK was even involved when he was a student. So what have they discovered so far in this happiness survey? Well, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, the result shouldn't surprise you. Money, fame, and awards don't lead to long-term happiness. Here's what does. Good relationships. Being part of strong relationships improves your mental and your physical health. Your stress levels go down when you have someone to talk to. Research has shown that people with strong social support networks are also more likely to recover from illness or injury and experience lower levels of depression and anxiety. Robert Waldinger, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the fourth director of this study,

gave a TED talk on their findings. He said, It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they're 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 that they are less happy, their health declines earlier in midlife, their brain functioning declined sooner, and they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely. He talks more about this in his book, The Good Life, Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific

Study of Happiness. These findings back up what people have been saying for thousands of years. When people think back on their lives, they regret worrying about what others think and not spending enough time with the ones they love. Bonnie Ware wrote about this in the five regrets of the dying. She spent a long time taking care of people in their final days of life. And these are the five regrets she said she saw again and again. To quote Bonnie, I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. I wish that I had let myself be happier. End quote. The Stoics have discussed these ideas for millennia. With regard to the first point, Abictida said, what other people think of you is none of your business. So stop worrying what other people think and placing their opinions of you above your own opinions of yourself. Respect your ideas

and your values and have the courage to live them. The Stoics talked a lot about this. They also talked about the importance of staying in touch with friends, being a good friend, and developing relationships with people who share your values and who can help you live a more fulfilling life, people you can learn from, and who can learn from you, who can challenge you in a good way to be the best version of yourself. And the Harvard study of adult development, that's the happiness study, backs this up, saying happy people invests time in relationships. They make an effort to see people. They stay curious and don't assume that they know everything about what people are thinking even if they've known them for a long time. These two concepts, worrying about what

other people think and also not seeing friends, are often linked. We are afraid to share how we feel or to reach out to someone else out of fear of rejection. In the book The Good Life, the authors talked about one of the men the Harvard Happiness study had been following for decades. He had graduated from college, fought in World War II, became a scientist and raised a family. And he talked about his children, his adult children, being the most important thing in his life, but he almost never saw them. He even started learning a new language because his son had moved overseas, but he didn't go and visit him because he didn't want to be a burden. That is so heartbreaking. Who is someone you haven't spoken to in a while who you'd like to see? Do you think that they have

any idea you want to see them? It's time to reconnect. According to Robert Waldinger and his co-author of the Good Life, Mark Schultz. Loneliness is more dangerous to health than obesity, and it's linked to early death as much as alcoholism and smoking. In an article that they co-wrote for the Atlantic, they said, quote, loneliness has a physical effect on the body. It can render people more sensitive to pain, suppress their immune system, diminish brain function, and disrupt sleep, which in turn can make an already lonely person even more tired and irritable. A tide of loneliness is flooding through modern societies and we have a serious problem. Recent stats should make us take notice. In a study conducted online that sampled 55,000 respondents from across the world, one out of every

three people of all ages reported they often feel lonely. Among these, the loneliest group were 16 to 24-year-olds, 40% of whom reported feeling lonely often or very often. In the UK, the economic cost of this loneliness because lonely people are less productive and more prone to employment turnover is estimated at more than 2.5 billion pounds, so that's $3.1 billion roughly, annually, and help lead to establish the UK Ministry of Loneliness. In Japan, 32% of adults expected to feel lonely most of the time during 2020. And of course, that was the pandemic, beginning of the pandemic, but I think that they may have been surveyed before that. And in the United States, a age of the pandemic, a 2010 study suggested that three out of four adults felt moderate to high levels of loneliness, unquote.

People used to see each other on town squares, in church, in stores. We had human interaction face-to-face. Now we sit at home waiting for Amazon deliveries and we panic if we have to talk to somebody in the phone. More than 2,500 pubs have closed across England and Wales in the last five years. Yes, there have been rising energy and food costs, but also more people are staying home alone. instead of meeting at their local. We are spending less time socializing and more time at our desks. And as we lose ties to other areas of our lives, we place more importance on our work identity, what we do instead of who we are. And this is leading to workaholism in some cases. Almost a quarter of millennials said they didn't have any friends in a 2019 UGub America survey.

And I have teachers who tell me that they have teens who can't talk to each other unless they're online. So they're sitting next to somebody and class, saying nothing, but maybe they'll have a chat later. Because there's less risk of rejection online and less reward. In her book, Habits of a Happy Brain, Dr. Loretta Gratziano Bruning says, we have four happiness chemicals influencing our satisfaction and well-being. These are the neurotransmitters dopamine, oxytocin, endorphin, and serotonin. So let's break these down really quick. Dopamine is released when we experience something new and exciting, like participating in a new moon ceremony on a beach.

Our body produces dopamine in anticipation of the event and during the event itself. Dopamine drives us to pursue our desires both healthy, like to file our taxes before the deadline. Maybe we get us dopamine rush because we don't want to get a penalty. So dopamine helps us get it done. And it also drives us toward unhealthy behaviors, like giving into pizza cravings, even though we promised ourselves, okay, no cheese this month. This is not totally out of our control. we can practice stoic mindfulness to make better judgments about what's good for us and to follow through

with better choices. Oxytocin is the love hormone or bonding hormone, and this is released when we feel safe and connected with others, like when you're lounging by the fireplace with friends listening to music. There's bonding, there's trust, you can relax and let your guard down. Physical contact like hugs, handshakes, holding hands, back rubs, these increase oxytocin levels. This is what Bond's mother and baby. Endorphins are released to protect your body from pain and stress. I once broke my arm on a run and I just got up and I kept on going high on endorphins.

And it wasn't until later that the pain kicked in. Hard laughing and crying can also produce endorphins. Maybe you have been really stressed and once you just let out a good cry, it's like, okay, now I feel better. Now I can move on. That's endorphins. Serotonin is released when we feel recognized, respected, and a pre-exam. Like when somebody invites you to hang out and they say how wonderful it is that you joined.

Serotonin swells us with pride and makes us feel special and content. You feel satisfied. You feel present. You can see how quality in-person relationships and interactions can foster these happy chemicals. But what about online friends? Is there the same effect? Dr. Bruning says, digital friends are proxies that can stimulate good feelings of social trust without the complications of human bonds. The oxytocin is less than with live personal contact, of course, but proxies can expand the foundation for future trust. Proxie trust is comfortable because there's less risk of disappointment. But if you give up on direct interpersonal trust, your brain feels that something is missing, and it is oxytocin, end quote. So that's from habits of a happy brain.

To increase your happiness and health, create experiences with other people that release dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin, take a trip somewhere new, bond over a podcast episode, celebrate each other's highlights of the week, or highlights of the day. Another quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with. with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another." End quote. In addition to science, which is always evolving, I believe friendship is rooted in something more

spiritual and timeless. Sure, maybe we are blends of happy chemicals crashing into each other. We're also something much deeper. Einstein said that science is how we understand the natural laws that govern the physical world. And spirituality, he uses the word religion actually, but I think he meant something closer to spirituality. Spirituality helps us find the meaning and purpose behind these laws. Science and spirituality complement our understanding of the world and our role in it. Human beings don't know everything. We will never know everything. There is still mystery to this world and I think that it's a beautiful thing. It's not uncommon for lottery winners to say that winning the money was the worst thing to ever happen to them or for celebrities to feel like the

loneliest people in the world. Yet at the beginning of Robert Waldinger's TED Talk on the Good Life, and that was his TED Talk on the Harvard Happiness Study, he says that half of millennials want to become famous and 80% want to be rich. He was referring to a survey where they were talking about the most important goals in their life. 80% wanted to be rich and 50% wanted to be famous millennials. This TED Talk is several years old, so maybe the data has changed. Maybe the attitudes of these millennials have evolved. When we're really young, we want to be rich and famous. Then we get a little older and think things like down with the system and who cares about money. And then we start paying for things ourselves and we want to be rich and famous again. And then we become older

and wiser, hopefully, and realize that wealth and fame and any other external aren't the keys to lasting happiness. The key to the good life comes from within. It's letting go of what you can't control, as well as feelings of entitlement. It's living your values and honoring your commitments. It's developing your emotional awareness and ability to reason. It's being a good friend to others and to yourself. At some point, the lucky ones will question why money and fame and achievement seemed so important. What are we killing ourselves for? To feel like we matter. That's a that our lives mean something. This is what is driving us for good or bad. The ultimate goal of human existence, according to Aristotle, is eudaimonic well-being or flourishing. This refers to a sense

of purpose and fulfillment in life. U-Di-Monia means having a good spirit. U-E-U equals good and dimone equals spirit. True happiness comes through friendship, living a virtuous life in accord with your values and contributing to the greater good. Contentment, love, stillness, presence, the feeling of serotonin and oxytocin. Hadonic well-being refers to temporary satisfaction and the absence of pain. The dopamine hits we get when we eat a piece of chocolate cake or buy a new painting. While they feel good in the moment, hedonic pleasures don't last. The ancients knew and the Harvard study confirms that it's eudaimonic well-being that's

essential for long-lasting health and happiness. And of course, it's nice to have both. But it's that eudonic well-being that's going to give us that long-lasting feeling of purpose and fulfillment and connection. The Stoics believed that most things are neutral, what they called indifferent. To them, wealth, fame, power, health, they're all external factors that are inherently positive or negative. They can be used for good, for bad. They're not required to live a meaningful life. And they're also not in your control. This is what makes them indifferent. They even include friendship as an indifferent, a preferred indifferent. At the same time, they believed that life is better with friends, that friendship is good for the soul. So are they trying

to have it both ways? Well, the word indifferent and the plural is not indifference that ends with the C-E, but rather E-N-T-S. This word doesn't mean a lack of caring. The Stoics cared very deeply about their friends. Friendship is considered an indifferent because we can't control who comes in and out of our lives. We can only control how we show up in life. If all your friends were taken away, your life would still have meaning. Whatever happens, however anyone treats you, no one can take away your integrity or the quality of your character or your value as a human being. You are loved even when you are alone. Not everyone has easy access to the people they care about or to meet new people. Maybe you're incarcerated. Maybe you're in a convalescent home. You can still be a good friend

to yourself and cultivate happiness chemicals on your own. Learn something new and share it. Look for things you like in others and offer genuine compliments. Celebrate your wins, no matter how big or small, you took your vitamins, you didn't lose your temper. You can choose to love people even if they don't love you back and you can remember somebody who passed away with great warmth and affection. Our world feels chaotic right now for many people, like all the social rules have flown out the window, we are all sitting around waiting for someone else to make the first move. We need to make the first move. Whether we have no friends or five or 50, we are responsible for our own happiness. If you are looking to deepen your relationships or to expand your social circle, ask yourself,

what kind of person do I want to be friends with and be that person? Be somebody who has something to bring to a relationship. Learn, grow, be interesting. Join a group where people share a similar interest. Ask good questions. Be someone other people want to hang around with. Have something to offer. Seneca said, for what purpose then do I make a man my friend? In order to have someone for whom I may die, whom I may follow into exile, against whose death I may stake my own life and pay the pledge to. That is from his letter on philosophy and friendship. Who can I be there for? Who can I benefit? Life starts flowing more smoothly when we stop seeking and start offering. We shift from a contracted scarcity mindset to a more expansive way of being.

And a growing body of research suggests that engaging in pro-social behavior that is acts of kindness and helping others, pro-social behavior increases our own happiness and life satisfaction. The Stokes knew this, of course. And while they set the point of life as to be a good person, happiness is a wonderful byproduct. Doing good deeds activates reward centers in the brain, releasing feel-good chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin. When we are born, we are focused on self-preservation. As we grow up, we extend our concern for ourselves to other people. First, we develop an affinity for those who care for us, then our friends. And as we grow older and wiser, we extend our

circle of concern to include others in our community and eventually for all of our friends. And eventually for all of humanity. The Stoics call this oikiosis, bringing other people closer to us, treating them well, seeing that we are all playing an interconnected role in a much bigger picture. By expanding our sense of self, we bond with friends and we create community. And this contributes to our inner peace and flourishing, our eudaimonia, even for those of us who love our alone time. And trust me, I love my alone time. But I also know how important it is. is to connect with other people. At the end of his TED Talk on Happiness, Robert Waldengar quoted one of my favorites, Mark Twain. There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickering, apologies,

heart burnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.