THE ED MYLETT SHOW - The Secret To A Happy Life w/ Dr. Robert Waldinger

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

This is the most REMARKABLE study on HAPPINESS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD! AN 85-YEAR DETAILED STUDY!This week's show is easily one of the most fascinating of my lifetime!I doubt anyone has studied the subject of HAPPINESS AND WELL-BEING more than this week’s guest, DR. ROBERT WALDINGER. He is a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the founder and Executive Director of the Lifespan Research Foundation.But perhaps his most important work is as the current director of the HARVARD STUDY OF ADULT DEVELOPMENT. This groundbreaking project started in 1938 and is the longest-running study of the same people over time ever conducted.What Dr. Waldinger shares with you this week about the study and the nature of relationships will blow you away.We start with answers to fundamental questions we’ve all wanted to know for a long time.🤔HOW DO YOU MEASURE HAPPINESS?🤔 WHAT MAKES PEOPLE HAPPY?Wealth, achievement, fame, and religion matter, but not in the ways you might think. Having a PURPOSE, working on that purpose, and enjoying HIGH QUALITY, WARM, AND LOVING RELATIONSHIPS matter more…not only to your mental well-being, but your physical well-being, too.We also answer the question of the most common REGRET mega-successful people have. You can probably guess what it is, but Dr. Waldinger drives this point home in no uncertain terms.Our discussion also touches on several other relationship issues, including…🤯 How SOCIAL MEDIA affects the amount and depth of our relationships🤯 ALCOHOLISM, DEPRESSION, and DIVORCE🤯 Why BAD MARRIAGES are worse than breaking up🤯 The WISER (Watch, Interpret, Select, Engage, Reflect) Model of Reaction🤯 Cultural trends and the impact of wealth in nations on happinessOne of the most important things you’ll learn are strategies for STRENGTHENING YOUR RELATIONSHIPS and how to make them a priority.We wrap up with an extended exchange about our most INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS, how they change over time, and what we can do to keep them STRONG AND HEALTHY.

This is the end mileage show. Welcome back to the show everybody. I have to tell you something. Today is a topic I've wanted to discuss on the show since it started and I've been looking for an expert. I've been looking for the right person to deliver this information. Today's topic is happiness and well-being. Long Jevviti of your life as well because they're correlated. And there is a study that is called the study of adult development,

which is the single most fascinating study of my lifetime. I can't even believe the study exists. I literally can't. It's fascinating what they've been able to do here. And the man who was the current director of that study is my guest here today. He's also among many of his accomplishments. He's the professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. So he must know a little bit about what he's talking about, right? And we're going to talk today about the all time amazing study, 85 years long, by the way, guys almost on happiness with real evidence. This stuff is not going to be a pinion. This is evidentiary information. So Robert Waldingerer welcome to the show. Thank you for being here Thank you. I'm really glad to be here. You have to start out and take your time please by explaining the study first of all because

It's mind-blowing what the four directors have been four directors of the study if I'm correct What has been able to happen in tracking these people who who they are, how it started. Let's elaborate on that first. Sure. So the study started in 1938. And it is the longest study of the same people across time that's ever been done. 724 original people then brought in spouses brought in children. So now we have two generations over 2,000 people who've been studied year after year for their whole lives. And that's what's so unusual. Most research gets done in snapshots, just taking a snapshot today of something. And so what's rare is that the study has continued. Usually studies close down because too many people drop out. Do you want me to tell you a

little bit about what's in the study? Well, I see. Yeah, the first thing I think is first because it's two very different groups of people that you studied these men. I think it's important to know the backgrounds of the people that were studied. So that the information's applicable to the people listening or watching. Absolutely. So, started out with one very privileged group and one very underprivileged group. The privilege group was a group of Harvard College sophomores, 19-year-old guys, who their deans thought were fine-up, standing young men. And it was a study of sort of normal development from adolescence into young adulthood.

So, you know, of course, if you want to study normal development, you study all white guys from Harvard, you know, you know, right. So we're possibly having to explain to NIH why they should still fund us. And then the other study was started at Harvard Law School, and it was a study of juvenile delinquency, but it was a study of how some children

from Boston's poorest and most troubled families, how those kids were able to stay on good developmental paths and not get into trouble. And so it was a study of thriving, but a study of children who were born with so many strikes against them. The fascinating part is some of those neighborhoods are where I was born. And so what's what drew, yeah, that, yeah, right. So that's what drew me to this study is because I'm at a stage of my life now where I do interact with people that have come from privileged backgrounds

in their life. And obviously I have some privilege based on, you know, my ethnicity, et cetera. But, but to interact with different people, and I've always had this fascination to people from these wealthy backgrounds or privileged backgrounds end up being happier than people from a not so privileged background or a neighborhood like where I grew up. And the data is too much of a... Do you want this spoiler or not? Yeah, let's do this spoiler first. And then we're going to talk about what

actually leads to real happiness, everybody today. But spoiler alert is what? I really open to knowing myself. Okay, the spoiler is that the the well to do privileged people were not on average happier than the inner city underprivileged group. No different. Well, no different though. So the underprivileged group. No different. Well, no different though. So the underprivileged group wasn't necessarily happier than the privilege group either though, correct?

That's correct. That's correct. And then, you know, there was variation. We had some really happy people in both groups, some really unhappy people in both groups and everything in between. Okay. So one last thing I want everybody to understand, and we're going to get to the data because listen, ultimately, the game of life, I had a situation happen. I'll share this with you several years ago

I've had the good fortune of building wealth in my life and I was building this very beautiful mansion My first one I ever built and it was a very stressful day and I was in a bad mood and I was angry and I walked into What was the kitchen of this home that was being built for me. Really angry with the contractor and life and, you know, you just all about me in the moment. And as I walked in, the gentleman that were working on my kitchen, the finished carpenters, were all people from Mexico, men from Mexico. And they had their mariachi music playing, and they were dancing and singing and doing work that they were excellent at doing and Loving their craft and being good at it and enjoying the company and the other relationships of the other men that were working with them

And I remember watching them thinking they're not making any money They're sending most of this money back home to their family just to survive Frankly probably most of them aren't even in our country legally at the time. And I remember thinking to myself, if the game of life is happiness, they're winning and I'm losing. And it was a really watershed moment for me in my life that I think this work really points to as well. And so that's why your work matters so much to me. One last thing I want to have them understand too is the nature of the study, everybody. I'll let you elaborate, but this is not just about sending somebody a survey and they answer

it back. Some of the intimacy of even the connections that you have with these people in their homes even. So elaborate on that so they know the depth of the study. Oh, yeah. So when they came into the study, you know, all boys and young men, workers went to their homes, interviewed their parents, wrote notes about what was being served for dinner, what the disciplinary style was, all those things. And then elaborate medical exams of the young men, psychological exams, and then as they went through their lives, we began to bring online

different methods of studying well-being. So, audio taping them, video taping them, talking to their partners about their biggest fears. We drew blood for DNA, which I think is so cool because in 1938, DNA wasn't even imagined. And here we were studying it, putting people in the MRI scanner and scanning their brains while we showed them different pictures. We brought them into our laboratory and deliberately stressed them out and then saw how they recovered from stress.

So, all of this, as different angles on the same big question about what makes people thrive as they go through life. How do you measure happiness? That was the last thing I wanted to understand. How do you know if they're happy? Well, we asked people, that's one way, but you know, we had people who said they were happy, but didn't look happy. So we asked other people, do you think your partner's happy? Do you think your dad's happy? So we asked that. We also videotape them, like having an argument with their partners and then watched, like how angry did they get? Was there affection still there? So we did all kinds of things as a way to get at happiness from different angles.

It's amazing you guys. I told you all, so here we go. Now we're going to get into it. Now we've laid the groundwork. So what's it turn out? Let's just, let's, let's, let's not a complete spoiler alert because there's so many layers to this. What makes one happy? Is it the pursuit of a goal?

Is it wealth, achievement, religion? What are the things that you found make somebody happy? Yeah, well we found that it wasn't those things, so it wasn't wealth, it was not achievement, it wasn't fame, and we had people who had all those things in our study, some other people, you know, we had John F. Kennedy, we had Ben Bradley, long-time editor of the Washington Post, and I can only tell you those names because they talked about it themselves. Otherwise, we protect everybody's privacy, but wealth, fame, achievement, didn't do it. Religion didn't do it. Now, what that means is it didn't mean that they made you unhappy. It meant that wealth, fame, high achievement, religion

are simply different from well-being, different from happiness. Okay? Now that said, what that means is we have famous people who were happy, famous people who were unhappy, all the way down the line, right? Now that said, what we also know is that having your basic material needs met is crucial to your happiness.

So, when they do studies of this, they've studied, well, how much does your happiness go up as you make more money? And what they find is that your happiness does go up until you reach about $75,000 a year annual household income. This is a few years ago in the US. But basically, to have your basic needs met, and then after that, as you make more and more money, you know, up to 75 million, you know, a billion, your happiness doesn't go up much, a little bit, happiness doesn't go up much a little bit.

Not really very much. Interesting. And that's important. I like the distinction you made. What is important too is that happiness is an emotion. So as your wealth goes up, you may potentially be able to contribute more, give more. Yeah. There are things of that nature.

Protect people. So, it's not that there aren't positive emotions that are correlated with achievement or wealth, but happiness turns out not to be one of them. Well, you know, and let me call if I add a little bit, because it's important. Like, so getting a badge of achievement. So the ultimate achievement, what, the Nobel prize? achievement, what, the Nobel Prize? It doesn't make you happier or less happy. But doing work that's meaningful to you, that does make you happy. That is a source of fulfillment. So it's not the badge itself, but doing the work. So let's say, you know, you're bringing a lot of ideas to a lot of people. And I expect that means something to you. I expect you care about that.

You're right. And we think of that as a source of well-being, a source of happiness. Well, I think it's correlated to where you're going though. I think contribution involves something in life, which is other human beings. And so the nature of your work is so profound because if people can really understand this,

they can link it back to the contributions and achievements of their life because they involve where you believe real wealth comes from after this study, which is where I want you to really elaborate on this. Because I think everyone needs to hear this. This is it, guys, like this is a moment in many of your lives where it's going to confirm with you intuitively, probably what you already probably think, but maybe needs confirmation and maybe needs more intention, a little bit more focus. I think sometimes I'm going to be more intentional about getting more money or I'm going to be more intentional about getting a bigger house or getting this promotion.

And when I get there, then I'm going to be happier than I am now. And we put our intentions there potentially most of our lives and many of the people in the study missing the very thing that would have brought them the emotion. Everyone on earth wants more of they you don't want the jet. You want the jet because you think it'll make you happier. You don't want to be fit and super ripped and attractive. You think it'll make you happier. And so what we're really seeking that conversation behind everything.

In my opinion, as we want to be happier. And so what is that thing? You go ahead and elaborate. Well, that thing is our relationships with other people. What we found studying these thousands of lives is that the people who had the warmest connections with other people and who made that a priority in their lives, they were happiest as they went through their lives, but also they stayed

healthiest and they lived longer. And that's the thing actually. We didn't believe that when we started to find it. In the 1980s our data began to show this and we thought, oh, this might be a fluke, this might not be real. And then other studies began to find the same thing. Because the question was, I mean, it stands to reason, I'll be happier if I have happy relationships, but how could good relationships make it less likely that you get coronary artery disease or type 2 diabetes or arthritis. How could that be?

So now we've been spending the last 10 years in Arla haven't and many other labs have been studying this. Trying to understand how do relationships actually get into your body and shape your physiology. And so that's what we're studying. Is it the amount of relationships you have or the quality of the ones that you maintain in your life? It's not the amount. So there's no set number.

Like one of the things we know is that we're all, like some of us are introverts, shall I? Some of us are extroverts. No, nothing wrong with being shy. And we know that introverts want fewer people in their lives, that being with a lot of people is exhausting for introverts. And that's perfectly healthy and normal. So there's no set number of friends or connections you should have. What we do believe is that everybody needs at least one or two relationships

that where they feel like this person will be there for me if I really need them. But at one point we asked our original participants, we said, who could you call in the middle of the night if you were sick or scared, list everybody? And most of our folks could list, you know, several people, but some of them could not list anyone. And some of those people were married and they couldn't list anyone. No way. Wow. Yeah. So we think that everybody, whether you're shy or a party animal, you need at least one or two people who are your go to safety net people.

Are you hearing this everybody? So this is correlated. I don't know if you're happiness, but you're longevity. By the way, the name of Dr. Waldinger's book is the good life, lessons from the world's longest scientific study on happiness. And he also has a TED Talk that's been viewed just a couple of times, like 40 something million times. And I want to share something with the audience with you too.

I want to confirm what you're saying. I think oftentimes in the pursuit of our achievements, some of our most important relationships are sacrificed. And they may not be sacrificed. I want everybody to hear this because you're all achievers listening to this show. They're not sacrifice like they go away all together, but the intimacy level, the depth of it is what sacrifice. And it's the unknown. You don't know how deeper relationship or connection could be when you've been pursuing something other than that. In other words, you know, I have good friendships in my life. I have some rich friendships.

How much richer would they be if it was your intention that they be deeper in richer. And I'll give you an example. I think I'm happy. I'm always transparent with my audience. The last five or eight years has been a dramatic acceleration in my life of external achievements, whether that be TV shows or wealth or notoriety, whatever it might be. Books. And so I've had this incredible all my life I've been achieving, but the last call it decade has been accelerated. And I ask myself preparing for this interview. If I went back 10 years, forget the achievements or the wealth, I had wealth and achievements then, I just have more now. Was I happier than than I am now? And you know the truth, I think I was.

than I am now. And you know the truth, I think I was. I think there was a measure of more bliss and joy in my life. And the reason it was just invisible is that I've just gotten so busy, just busy, that the depth of my relationship, I maintain them like you should. You know what I mean?

Are you okay? You check, but it was deeper 10 years ago. It was more, frankly, more time with friends, more time with my family. And I don't think all this external achievement has made me happier. It doesn't mean I'm not happy. It means that after reading your work, it's confirmed for me.

I need to be more intentional with my relationships with my family and my dearest friends in my life. And so if I'm saying that to you all, I want to confirm the work that we're discussing here. So I just wanted to share that. Do you hear that often from people that have achieved, you know, I don't know, whatever they think they wanted to achieve? We, we hear it so often. In fact, when our original participants got to be in their 80s, we asked them, as you look back on your life, what's your biggest regret and the most common regret, way more common than any others was, I wish I hadn't spent so much time at work and I wish

I had spent more time with the people I care about. Is that right? Yeah. So really important. It is everybody. And by the way, what I'm saying to you is, I'm not saying that I don't have deep friendships. All my friends listening to this, I do. And I'm not saying that you don't listening or watching this.

What I'm suggesting to you is, are you just so busy that they're not quite as deep as they could be? And you're just sort of in, you're in growth mode for you. You're in growth mode in your business. You're in growth mode in your business. You're in growth mode in your wealth. Maybe your body, you're growing, right, which is what we all want to do. But are you just kind of maintaining your relationships? Are your relationships growing to the extent that the other areas of your life are?

If you look at it like a category and for me, I'm growing me. I have great relationships, but I've grown my achievements have grown, my fitness has grown at an extent much greater than my relationships have grown if I'm being candid. And you know what? It's not worth that. I think you can have all of it, but you got to be intentional about those relationships. It looked like you wanted to say something about that. Well, I was just going to riff on what you're just saying, which is we started talking about something in the book that we call social fitness. My next question, great.

Perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we make it a, it's a direct analogy. We need it to be an analogy with physical fitness. And you know, to be that it's a practice. You know, we go to the gym today. We don't come home and say, good, I'm done, I don't never have to do that again.

And what we're finding is that the people who are the happiest and the healthiest and the most fulfilled are the people who make it a practice, an ongoing practice to attend to their relationships and just the way you're pointing to it. That, you know, and I've learned, I've had to learn to do this in my own life. That, you know, and I've learned,

I've had to learn to do this in my own life. Like, you know, I could work all the time. I'm a professor. Yeah. And, you know, I always have homework. And, you know, I could work all day long, all night long. And I've had to make myself deliberately think, okay, who do I want to see?

Reach out to them, say, let's go take a walk. Let's get together for coffee that I didn't used to do that and one of the things we see is we track people's lives is that perfectly good relationships wither away because of neglect if you don't pay attention to them. I'm just thinking of a few of mine as you're saying that and breaks my heart. Let me ask you a question. In social media, the day we're in now with technology, it seems to me that we can have more relationships because we can text and we can DM somebody or make a post and people like it. But I feel like the depth of the relationship

is nowhere near as deep as the ones that we have in person. Has there been any data or do you have any feelings just your own thoughts of looking at this, of how this has changed or accelerated even in the last decade where the depth of relationships maybe aren't what they were even 20 years ago when we've physically had to usually see one another to be connected.

Yeah. Well, that's actually a burning question, like lots of people want to know the answer to that. And so there is some research. It's still too early to know. We know that things are filtered out from our relationships online, right? That emotion that we can communicate to each other in person can't be communicated in the same way in a virtual call.

So we know that, but we're not exactly sure how it works or what gets lost in the translation. There is some research that might be useful here, which is that we do know that how we use social media matters in terms of our happiness and our well-being. So that if you use social media actively to connect with people, well-being usually goes up. If you use social media passively, just consuming content, it often goes down.

So example. So, example. That's interesting. If you, so I have a friend who connected with his old elementary school friends during the pandemic, and they connected on Zoom, and they have coffee every Sunday morning on Zoom, and they are thrilled to be connected again, right? So that's an active use of social media to connect.

I love that. Alternatively, if we scroll through other people's Instagram feeds, we curate our lives for each other on social media. I post my happy pictures, right? I don't post the pictures where I wake up feeling lost and depressed or hungover. I don't do that, right? I don't post the pictures where I wake up feeling lost and depressed or hungover. I don't do that. So when we look at these curated lives, it's really easy to get the impression that everybody else is having this great life. And I'm the only person who doesn't have it figured

out. So that kind of passive consumption of social media lowers well-being, it can make us more depressed, more anxious. And what we know is that teenagers are particularly susceptible to that. Interesting. So you said hungover, and I wanted to go there. So it's only you're reading my mind. You went to social fitness. So I'm reading a little bit of the data,

stuff that you've talked about, is relates to divorce or even depression and the correlations with alcohol. So, I'll have you talk about that a little bit on both the interesting reverse correlation on depression surprised me. I think you said that alcohol use preceded depression in most people, not the other way around, but also alcohol use it was connected to divorce. So share that with everybody. the other way around, but also alcohol use it was connected to divorce. So share that with everybody.

Yeah. So the alcohol use preceding depression is kind of cool. So one of the things, when you follow people year after year, you get to see what comes first, the chicken or the egg, right? So if you ask people, alcoholism and depression often go together. And if you ask people who have both problems, which came first, they'll say to you, oh,

I got depressed and then I started to drink. But when we follow them, we see the reverse. That mostly people start to drink. We know that alcohol is a central nervous system, depression, and that the alcohol preceded the depression. Interesting. So that's one way that this kind of longitudinal research can unpack a little of the chicken and egg question that we often ask about things.

But then there was a second thing you just asked me. About divorce, that somehow there was a correlation with alcohol and divorce, isn't there? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. When we looked at the marriages that broke up among our 724 families, in more than half of them, either one person or both people were alcoholic, and that that was a fundamental force in the breakup. Interesting. And we know that that alcoholism wreaks havoc on relationships. Is the, what about marriage? So are the people that stayed with one person all of their life? Did they end up becoming happier than the people that have been divorced?

Or is there either correlation at all to marriage and happiness? There isn't. Wow. Wow. So there is a there actually no, I'm sorry. Let me back up. There is a correlation between marriage and happiness. That married people are on average happier than people who are single. But it's not that huge. And there is a longevity benefit to being married or partnered, probably because you're with someone who reminds you to eat well, who reminds you to take your medicine, who tells you not to drink too much. It helps, having somebody there.

But then, marriage, you know, what we know is that really acrimonious marriages are probably worse for your health than breaking up. We know that marriage works all kinds of different ways. Our unhappiest man in our study, and we tell his story in the book, he had two really unhappy marriages. So the first one was unhappy, but the second one was no better. So some people get divorced, marry again, and they don't, it doesn't work the second time. Other people find that it really makes a huge difference to, to move on, find a person who, to whom you're better suited,

and that that really does increase your happiness. So as with so many things we study, one size never fits all. It's for people who divorce and remarry are happier and some are not. I wanna ask you about kids. I wanna step back everybody. I wanna just,

cause I'm always wanna emphasize something. This should be telling you the massive priority you should be putting on your relationships. Okay, just, it's gotta be, and for a lot of you that are busy like me, telling you the massive priority you should be putting on your relationships. Okay. Just it's it's got to be and for a lot of you that are busy like me, this may seem sort of cold, but maybe you should schedule it. We schedule our business meetings, right? We schedule our workouts.

We schedule these things. Why not be scheduled? You look like you want to agree with me there. You schedule your relationships in your counter. Show me your schedule and I'll probably show you your life, your character, your priorities, what matters to you, and what you'll actually achieve. You are totally right.

I mean, I'll give you my own example. So my co-author, Mark Schultz and I have been research collaborators for over 25 years. But what we do is we schedule a call every Friday noon. We schedule an hour and a half phone call and we don't just talk about research or writing this book. We talk about our kids. We talk about our marriages. We talk about, you know, what shows we're watching on Netflix. You know, we do all that. And the fact that it's a schedule means that we're going to do it regularly unless one of us has to cancel.

So scheduling, Ed, is like, you don't have to do it with many people, but maybe there are one or two people in your life who you just say, we're going to have a call every week or even every month just to make sure we stay current with each other. When I was young, I would watch my dad. And I always, my dad was an alcoholic who got sober. But I always felt like I wished my dad had more rich friendships. As a child, I remember wishing my daddy had more really good friends. And I would watch other dads of my friends. And you know what they had? They had like a bowling league they belonged to. Or a Bible study they went to. Or they were in a softball team or I remember one of the moms was way back in the day, but she had like a yoga class she went to

and that was a regularly scheduled relationship time that my dad just didn't have in his schedule and so my dad had a good life. He he achieved. He was a good person, but the real and ironically what changed my dad's life was getting sober. And then he became a member of AA. And ironically, I'm sure AA was my dad went to four or five meetings a week his entire life. And I remember thinking, why do you go is it to keep alcohol away? And I think that was a little bit of it, but that's not what it was. It was the relationships. Exactly. It was the relationships. And the reason why AA works like why why is it so hard to Stop drinking if you are addicted. Well, it's not just because of the addiction to alcohol that goes away pretty quickly

It's that your your life has been taken over by alcohol and you don't have anything else in your life often Yes has been taken over by alcohol and you don't have anything else in your life often. Yes. So what they do is they they they a did for your dad what it does for so many people was it it begins to provide them with a tribe with a club with a little group of people who they can count on. It's exactly one billion percent right and I attribute that to his sobriety. There's a service element of the program. There's a forgiveness element. There's the steps, but overriding at all for my dad was, this was a place for my dad to have relationships.

There's a community belong to, and he did it regularly. And I watched this man who had didn't have a lot of deep friendships for the first 35 years of his life, really didn't. And by the way, his relationship was alcohol. That was his best friend. Exactly. But what it changed my dad and he had a very rich life. Now, speaking of dads and children, now you have to second study you're doing

that's connected to the first one. Listen to this, everyone, because I'm fascinated of the children of the members. This is like a movie, everyone. You imagine a movie where you can see the pictures of a young man at 19 who's in South Boston somewhere with no dad in this house and he's under privilege and another young man who's 19 at Harvard and you track their entire lives. It's fascinating work.

But now that you're starting to study their children, are there a correlation between unhappy people having unhappy children or happy people and the happiness of their children. Have you seen any correlation there? We haven't studied it quite like that, but I'd love to know. I would love to know that. Yeah, yeah, I would like to know too. It's so complicated that there's a lot of ways to do that. And so we're doing parts of it. So let me tell you about one part. We looked at do children have happy marriages if their parents had happy marriages. And what we found was that there wasn't that strong a connection except for, wow, I believe it was women whose fathers had happy

marriages. That there's something about that. And I have to go back and look at the data. But so it's kind of a specific connection. But what we find, and it kind of stands to reason that if your model of marriage that you grew up with is one where people get along and are good partners, you're more likely to have that. But your question, Ed, which is a fabulous question, like generally are people happier.

I can't give you the answer to that from my study right now. I believe it's noble and we got to get to that. I would love to know that. I wonder also if you could determine overall happiness in our culture now compared to different times. And did you see any of that change? And I know the people changed over time. But is it more difficult or easier to be happy now?

In other words, the children, they're data similar percentages of happy and unhappy. Now compared to them? We did not do the measurements in the same way. So it's hard to compare. But what I will tell you is that when they started studying happiness really in the last 40 years in a more rigorous way, and they find that levels of happiness

are going down in developed countries. And the paradox is that as gross domestic product goes up, as we get wealthier, as nations, happiness levels goes down. So there are there are cultural trends taking us away from well-being. Probably that has a lot to do with relationships that what we know is that there are these strong cultural trends that toward investing less in other people investing less in other people, investing less in our communities, not joining clubs, not going to houses of worship, not volunteering in the community, not inviting people over as often, not having family dinners. I mean, all of this. It's been well documented for the last 50 years.

But so everybody, what you just heard are the things to do toward that offer to keep it. What is the wiser model of reacting to an emotionally challenging situation? What is that wiser? Well, it's actually a cool model developed by a psychologist named Ken Dodge. And it was to help kids, but then he realized, oh my gosh, this can really help adults. It's basically a way of slowing down something that happens where you find yourself puzzled and starting to make assumptions. So let's say somebody says something to you and you're confused and you don't know why they said it. and you're confused and you don't know why they said it.

What the model says is we're really quick to fill in the blanks. So if you say something and I'm puzzled by it, I might start thinking, you're dissing me. You're being mean to me, right? Or you said this because of this, right? And so what we do, the mind does this. The mind fills in a blank. And so we often tend to fill in the blank with something negative. And what the wiser model asks us to do is just slow everything down. So if you say something, and I say, oh my god, that was offensive to stop. And just look, it's like, well, wait a minute. You know, what's that doing? What was he thinking?

Maybe he didn't mean that. Maybe he set up for this reason. Or maybe it's not about me, maybe Ed's having a bad day, right? And then to think about the possibilities, then to think about, okay, given that, what do I want here? Do I want to just get mad at Ed and tell him he's being a jerk? Well, I don't know if I want to do that because I like Ed and I don't want to lose his friendship. So what else could I do? No, so it's slowing down. And then it's trying out a more considered response

when we can. And then seeing how it goes, like, how did that response work as opposed to just telling you or you're a jerk and walking away, right? So it's that way of just slowing everything down so that you don't send the nasty email. You don't text the thing that you're going to come to regret. You just slow everything down back and say, okay, what might be going on here? And maybe this isn't even about me.

Interesting. Is Wizer Stan for something? W-I-S-E-R, what's it Stan for? It's so the first one is watch, meaning watch what's happening. So if I look at you when you said that thing, okay, what was going on for end? Well, you know, and then interpret. So think of all the possibilities, not just my first interpretation, which is, it's being mean to me. And then, so watch interpret select. Think about how I want to respond. Okay, I could do different things. Choose the one that I want to work for the long term. Engage, meaning, do make that response. So I'll engage with you. and I might say, and what's going

on here? How come you said that instead of you, jerk, right? And then reflect. So see how that worked. Did it work better that I simply was curious with you rather than calling you a name. And then reflect. So you learned from your experience. Yeah. It's almost curiosity over judgment. Yeah. It's really that is so now I want to challenge something. I want to ask you about it to but it's something I thought when I was looking at the work. So there's a correlation between happiness and health longevity. Is there any correlation between the absence of health the other way and lack of happiness? Meaning how do we know it's not the other way or is there a different correlation?

Meaning someone who's not healthy is typically unhappier than someone who is healthy and that our health and taking care of our bodies and wellness are another element of happiness in addition to the relationships. That is exactly correct. And so you're pointing to something important in research, which is that correlation does not equal causation. So you're saying, wait a minute, it may not be that good relationships cause better health. It may be that better health allows you to have good relationships because you got the energy to reach out and you know, all that. You are right. It goes both ways. So this is what we call in the research a bi-directional relationship, a two-way relationship.

Now, what we can do because we follow people longitudinally is we can do a chicken and egg analysis. And we do find that people who have good relationships can stay healthy or over time compared to the people who have bad relationships. So we can do some of that unpacking of which direction it goes in, but you're absolutely right. It goes both ways.

Interesting. What is something someone can do strategically, tactically, to be better at their relationships? In other words, I think sometimes I take for granted the people know how to do it. And I'm thinking about it even with me right now. I'm not sure that I have all the tools. In fact, I know I don't have all the tools on how to build do-upal relationships.

What's a few things somebody could do? Absolutely. So first of all, maybe just do a little bit of reflecting, like what do I have in my relationships? What am I getting that I want? And so, you know, we get all kinds of things. We get people who we have fun with, people who we can fight in.

My neighbor loans me tools. He always has the right tool and I never have the right tool for what I need to fix in my house, right? So, there's that kind of relationship, right? There's the people you play basketball with, right? So, think about what do you have and what would you like more of? And then think to yourself, well, is there somebody I could cultivate that with?

Who I already know, or are there ways I might be able to find new people who I could do more of that with? And so, that's the first step. What do I have and what would I like more of that with. And so that's the first step. What do I have? And what would I like more of? And then particularly with the relationships we already have, this does not have to be some heavy lifting thing. Like you could do tiny actions that will start building those social fitness muscles. So if you so if you think about it when you're when you're done listening to this show Okay, think about somebody Somebody you miss somebody you haven't seen in a while and you'd like to be in contact with

Take out your phone send them a text send them an email saying I Was just thinking of you and wanted to say hi. That's all you have to say. See what you get back and and granted you won't get back something positive every time. Most of it. But way more often than not, you're going to get good stuff back. And you know, some people, I've done this actually sometimes with an audience when I'm giving a talk. And I ask during the question and answer, did anybody get a text back and people raise their hands and they say, oh my gosh,

I made a date next week with my friend, I have dinner, somebody else said, my friend had surgery and he was so glad I reached out. So again, my point is just small actions can really pay off, especially if we do them regularly. I totally agree with you. And by the way, what that does, it makes someone think if we do them regularly. I totally agree with you. And by the way, with that, does it make someone think you finally see them again?

I'm writing a book right now. I'm not going to get into all of it because it's on the show, but I'm writing a book right now called Let Me Tell You About You. And it's a lot of depth to it. It's about who we are as people. But one of the things that I do as a friend, I share with everybody is I tell my friends about them.

So when I'm with them and some of my friends look forward to it, hey man, do it, you know, and it sounds corny at first, but I don't just say, hey man, I love you. Or hey, bro, I'm so good, we're glad we're friends or hey sister, it's so good to see you. I'll tell them why. And I think it's a, I think it's a little bit of a level more, like when I love about you brother,

it's how much you love God or how dedicated you are to your family or how hilarious you are or the depth of your intellect, depending on the person. And I find that when you just take it a little deeper, that little deeper, then, hey, man, that's good to see you. Let me tell you why it's so good to see you. Every time I see you, you bring a smile to my face. You get that thing about you. It just deepens the connection with people.

And I think people are yearning for a deeper connection with other people and it's a subtle way to do it. Exactly. You know, and what you're doing and when you do that, is you're making people feel like you see them. So for who they are, right? So to say I love you is wonderful, but to say, here's what's so great about you that I'm see. Yes. Somebody really feels known, and that's what we really yearn for, we yearn to be known by so much. You just made the move, by the way, because a lot of you're listening to this audio, but you just touched your heart when you said it.

Yeah. And amazing, because that's usually what happens is that it's a heart connection. I think I love you. Hey, good to see you. I think that's like almost head to head, like, hey, just so you know, I love you. When you go a little bit deeper with something that's true about them by the way also when it's something they intuitively kind of know is true and you touch on it like man the way you problem

solve or you're so nurturing you care so deeply and they go you know like I do have that about me don't I and it's a heart to heart connection. I think that it deepens our relationships. A couple more things. I'm like so fascinated by this. So and you're so awesome. What about our intimate one, though? So our personal intimate relationships. So to me, there's friendships and those are wonderful. And I've had people on the show that have actually submitted that those front those relationships are of the same priority as the one in our life. And I submit that there's some validity that. But the proximity to your intimate relationship

is much greater and has to have a deeper impact. It just has to. You sleep next to the most of the time. They're with you far more than any of your friends are. So how important is that intimate relationship? And is there anything you would say in that relationship that you see amongst the happy people that you don't, do they travel together, do they exercise together, do they communicate more?

Is there any of those sort of things in the intimate relationships? And is there a correlation? Yeah. Well, first, let me say that you don't need an intimate relationship to get these benefits we're talking about. Right. Because, you know, so many people are not partnered and that's, you can get all these benefits from friendships, family relationships, work relationships. But, you're asking this great question.

And one of the things we find is that the intimate relationships that are the strongest, our relationships where people continue to see each other, right? So, you know, it's very easy to think, well, you know, I've been with this person for 10, 20 years. I know everything about them. I don't really have to pay close attention. And when they study this, they find that the time when we're most attuned to another person is when we're first dating. Yeah. That actually, if you think about it because you're like, you're hanging on there every look and they're every word because you want to know, are they into me, right? You're curious. Yeah, you're really curious.

And then after 10, 20 years, we are less good at knowing what our partner is feeling. So the thing that strong intimate partnerships cultivate is watching and paying attention to each other. And this what we call in the book Radical Curiosity. Yes. So so my one of my Zen teachers gave us this assignment in meditation and it really applies to your partner too. He said, okay, when you're sitting on the cushion meditating, which you've done a thousand times,

your question for yourself is, what's here that I've never noticed before? And what if you sat down with your partner to dinner tonight and asked yourself, what's here right now between us that I have never noticed before? And let yourself be that curious. And so what we find is that that kind of radical curiosity keeps relationships alive. And then the other thing that we find is that

you know we are all constantly changing and evolving there's a huge amount of change throughout our adult lives so if you think about it any two people in a relationship are constantly changing each of them is changing so by, the relationship has to be changing. And what we find is that the strongest relationships are those where each person can embrace the other person's change, support the other person in changing. Not try to suppress that change in the other person. Whoa. Now that's interesting right there. That's interesting. I think that's a rewind for about a minute right there, everybody, because you know,

I, nothing breaks my heart more than when I'm in a, you know, you're in a restaurant and you look over at a couple that's sitting at a table together. We've all seen this and they'll sit for 30, 40 minutes and they're not even looking at each other. They're like, they're, they're like two strangers sitting on an airplane who don't even talk and they're looking at their phone or they're looking around and I find

That the longer term relationship is usually the one I'm looking at that and what it is is exactly what you said they've lost curiosity and Interesting friends of mine that have split these they say one of two things either a I don't know her anymore or I don't know her anymore, or I don't know him anymore, or B, I'm bored. And both of those are lack of curiosity. If you don't know somebody, you've taken years and years and years and up and curious to know who they currently are, vice versa. And being bored is the same thing. It's assuming they're the same person. It's assuming they've got new thoughts or emotions or needs. And that's the formula. Okay, last thing on relationships sex. Is there a correlation between good sex, lots of sex and happiness? Or there's no connection whatsoever. And I actually found out in your study,

turns out one political party has better sex. You know, the other one. So my predecessor, George Valiant, talked about that. I don't know if I believe that's finding it. What do you tell him? Tell him what did he find? Just so my friends know. What did he find? I think he found that people on the more liberal side of this spectrum had better sex for longer.

That's what it said. I'm just telling you guys. I'm not sure about that. So please take that with, take that finding with a grain of salt. I'm not that fun with it. I know. Yeah. Yeah. But we didn't, first of all, we didn't ask a lot about sex. And that may have been because of the kind of Victorian sensibilities of my predecessors. So at one point, we went to do home visits

for our couples when they were around 80 years old. And we, our young 20-something interviewers, lovely bright people went and interviewed these people. And some of the couples said, you're not asking about sex. Why aren't you asking us any questions about sex? Don't you think we have sex anymore? And our 20-something interviewers came back to our lab, saying, oh my god, they're my grandparents, Agent Langley, and they asked them about sex. But what we do find is that sex is one component that it does not have to be. So for some couples, sex is a vital core part of their relationship. For some couples,

it's not central. And then you can have a really warm, vibrant, wonderful relationship and not not much sex for other people That would be a total deal breaker. So again, one size doesn't fit all All right last thing. So you had out of this whole study like you said earlier Which is fascinating. They grabbed this group of kids one of them turns out to be the president of the United States and some of them didn't. And so what I'm wondering about the two groups is not really a happiness thing. I guess it is, but it's a connection.

Did the people that started at the overall more privileged position or achieved position at Harvard did more of them build the external things in their life of success than the people that started out in the, I know there's no correlation difference in happiness level, but I'm just curious, does that even matter? Like at 19 year old started out at Harvard and a 19 year old kid in South Boston somewhere

who's, you know, doesn't even have running water oftentimes in their home or electricity when this started. What happened to their lives? Just tell us about their lives last night. Okay. Well, let me give you a big picture finding, which is sad, which is that the Harvard men lived on average 10 years longer than the inner city men. And so privilege really matters.

We think that has a lot to do with access to healthcare. We also found that 25 of the inner city guys went to college and finished college, which is unheard of for people from that background. Those 25 live just as long on average as the Harvard guys. And we don't think it was because of their college diploma. We think that education made a difference in these people's ability to kind of take in what we were learning in the, particularly the 60s, 70s, 80s, about the importance of not smoking, the cost of alcoholism, the cost of a sedentary lifestyle and obesity. So I think that it was education that made them more likely to change their habits and

start taking care of their health. And that's why that's one big reason. But the bottom line is that privilege matters a lot for well-being, which is why the inequities in our society are so, I mean, they're disturbing for so many other reasons, but they're disturbing because they're hazardous to our health among other things. Yeah. Well, not only is it health care, but it's nutritional food, nutritious food, it's access to those things, it's safety and shelter.

It's probably, I would imagine, and again, I'm just projecting here, but a level of constant stress, maybe not the same external stressors happen to the more privileged group. But I just think overall, I just want to tell you, I think, I think you're fascinating, and I think this work is just so, so important. And by the way, everybody, the book is called The Good Life. Again, lessons from the world's longest scientific study on happiness. It's the most fascinating thing I've ever seen. And I, I know you'll have someone take over for you at some point as well. I hope that continues with the trip. I hope that's enough for a long time. But I will. I want to thank you for the time

today. And it's made me. I just want to tell you, sometimes it's not even the work that you're reading. Sometimes it's the work that you're reading causes you just to reflect on yourself, the topic itself. And I want to tell you that both the work was fascinating to me, but the the causing of self reflection on my part about my own happiness level was priceless for me in my life. And I'm very, very grateful to you and all your predecessors for the work. That is music to my ears, because what we most hope for from the book is that it will get people to think about their own lives and do some things that will make them happier and healthier.

Well, that's exactly what it did for me. So thank you so much. Continue to do this great work. Great, thank you so much. This was a fabulous discussion. Yeah, I enjoyed it so much today. This was wonderful. Hey everybody, we're the number one show in the world right now

because you share it. And if there's anybody you know that needs to be happier, which is everybody that you know, please share today's episode with them. Make sure you go grab the power of one more of my book, go grab the good life by Dr. Waldinger. You'll be happier for doing it. God bless you, everybody.

Max, out your life. This is the Edom Mylet Show.