In The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness, Dr. Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, PhD, contrast the lives of two men: A teacher who had rich relationships with his friends, family, and students. Committed to his students, he declined numerous promotions to stay in the classroom. And, a lawyer who believed that professional success would bring him joy. He devoted himself to collecting accolades. Still, he felt disconnected from others and ended his life sad and lonely.
These two men were part of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which Waldinger and Schulz led. Since 1938, the team has interviewed and tracked the health data of thousands of the same individuals and families to discover what leads to a meaningful life. This story reflects what emerged as the key predictor of health and longevity: relationships.
“When people were in their 80s, we asked them to look back on their lives and what they were proudest of,” Waldinger says. “Some of these people had won big awards and made fortunes. Nobody talked about that. Everybody talked about: I was a good partner, parent, mentor, or friend. It was all about people. That’s a helpful pointer when you think about: How would I like to live my life, so I don’t look back with regrets that I missed the important stuff?”
Waldinger is the study’s fourth director, a psychiatrist, and Zen priest. His life’s work is unveiling and helping us understand what truly matters. We begin our conversation with an exercise to visualize the state of your relationships. Then, explore the defining factors of fulfilling relationships, how to create understanding in challenging ones, and the question that the happiest participants in the study asked themselves.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Fast Company: A central premise in The Good Life is that “it’s not easy to take care of our relationships today, and in fact, we tend to think that once we establish [them], they will take care of themselves. But like muscles, neglected relationships atrophy. Our social life is a living system, and it needs exercise.” Why is social fitness imperative and what does a healthy regime look like.
Robert Waldinger: The first thing I realized was when I gave a TEDx talk about this in 2015 and it went viral. It was an elementary school auditorium in Boston. I thought people were going to laugh me off the stage because I thought I was saying something so obvious: How important relationships are. What I came to understand was that we take relationships for granted. They’re like the air we breathe.
As we started pointing this out and the power of these scientific findings, people began to look at it and say: Oh my gosh, that’s right. It’s something they half knew but didn’t pay attention to. That’s what prompts us to assume that relationships aren’t something that we have to actively do anything about. They’ve always been there. They always will be there.
But, what we found in our study was that the people who had good, solid relationships were the people who paid attention to them and were more active, rather than saying: My friends are my friends. It is what it is.
Then, the question was: Why is this important? Certainly, better relationships make us happier. That’s not the surprise. The surprise is that they keep us healthier. The question is: How could the quality of your connections make it more or less likely that you get heart disease, Type II diabetes, or arthritis?
We didn’t believe our own data at first. Eventually, other studies began to find the same thing and we began to understand that this wasn’t just something that we found by chance, but that it’s a very robust, applicable scientific fact. Then, we began looking at: How do relationships get into our body and change our physiology? That’s what we’ve been working on.
The Social Universe is a powerful tool to illuminate the state of our relationships. How can we use that practice to elevate our connections in our lives and at work? What questions or steps might we explore afterward?
There’s a simple diagram that people can make, where you have a set of circles, almost like a dart board. You have a bull’s-eye. Then, a circle around it and a wider circle. You put people in different parts, with your inner circle being the people you’re closest to, who you couldn’t imagine your life without. Then, you put other people in your Social Universe in different circles, depending on how close you feel to them.
It’s a helpful visual way to see: Who’s in my life? How close am I to them? From that, you can say: I have a lot of people in my life. Or, I have a lot of people in my life, most of whom I don’t feel very close to. Or, I don’t have many people in my life.
Then, is the second step to create the graph measuring energy and frequency?
It’s a four quadrant graph, where you put people in a quadrant based on whether you see them often or not. That’s a horizontal line. Then, vertically it’s: Do I find this relationship energizing or depleting?
You could have someone you see frequently who’s very energizing or very depleting. It might give you a hint about: Do I want to increase or decrease the frequency with which I see this person? There are a variety of things that you could conclude based on what you see in this diagram.
You write that: “In truth, almost all relationships contain opportunities; we just have to identify them.” How might we discover the opportunities in our relationships, both the good and challenging ones, and begin charting a new path forward?
One question is with a stale relationship: How do you liven it up? Many of us have stale friendships or romantic relationships, where we feel like: I’ve been with this person forever and know their every move. One of the things we talk about is doing new things together. Maybe you and your partner are doing the same old thing night after night—having dinner, then watching Netflix—and you’re feeling tired of that. Maybe you take a walk after dinner or take ballroom dancing lessons. My wife and I had a date night where we took ballroom dancing lessons when our kids were little. It was super fun.
There are also relationships that are going badly or where you have conflict. It’s often when things aren’t good that it’s helpful to say: What’s possible that I haven’t thought of before? There are ways that you can find out more about someone and make them more human. I have a colleague at work who is so rule-bound. She’s always scolding you and telling you about the rules and regulations. I began to learn more about her personal life and background, and have such a different feeling about her now. Even though she still loves rules and regulations, and is still telling me when I’m not doing it correctly, I have a whole different set of feelings about her.
When it comes to changing our patterns in relationships, you explain that “the old saying ‘we’re always fighting the last battle’ is very true. We tend to think that the thing that happened to us before is about to happen again, whether that is the case or not.” And, that “a great deal of research has shown that once an emotion is elicited, our reactions are almost automatic.” How can we rewire these beliefs and expectations about our relationships?
Often, it’s through corrective experiences. You come with certain expectations. The first thing we learn about how people are and what to expect from them is from our family. If you’ve been raised in a difficult environment and expect that people can’t be trusted, aren’t reliable, and are going to be mean, it’s very difficult because we often bring those expectations into adulthood.
But, what we can do is by choosing friends and partners who aren’t that way—who are reliable, kind, and not mean—we can have corrective experiences. Sometimes, it takes a while to believe it. But, we can come to know: Not everybody is like the people who I grew up with. In fact, people can be quite different and I can learn to tell the difference.
You highlight that the ability to understand how someone is feeling, and accurately communicate it back, is “where the magic happens, where the connection between people becomes solid, visible, meaningful.” How can we achieve this, and what gets in our way of doing so?
The thing that gets in the way most often is assuming that we know what somebody feels. My mother-in-law used to say this saying: When you assume, you make an ass of you and me.
What they find is that people are better listeners and more empathic when they first get together in a romantic relationship, because you’re so worried about whether this other person is into you. Then, they get less and less empathic. They listen less well, as they’ve been together longer, because they think that they know exactly what the other person is thinking and feeling.
The first thing is bringing curiosity to this person who you think you know everything about; You think you know everything that they feel and can predict what they’re going to say. Don’t do that. Be curious. Say: Tell me about that. That’s a way of listening empathically. Even if you disagree, you can ask: How come you believe that?
How can we get better at emphatic accuracy?
You can ask: Here’s what I think you’re saying. Is that right? You tell them what you think they’re getting at. Then, you ask them if that’s right and give them the chance to correct you. So, they can say: No, that’s not exactly it. Then, they can try to explain further.
You’ve also expressed that the intention to accurately understand and report back what someone is sharing supersedes getting it right.
Absolutely, we studied this. We videotaped couples having an argument. Then, asked them: How much did you think your partner got your point of view? We also asked them: How much did you think your partner was trying to? Then, we related that to how satisfied they were in their relationships.
It turned out that whether the partner actually got the right answer about what you were feeling was less important than whether they were trying. Showing that you’re trying to understand goes a long way to making a relationship good.
A pivotal finding in the study is that relationships act as armor during challenging times. You write: “Our coping styles affect the way we deal with every challenge that comes our way, from a minor disagreement to major catastrophe, and a key part of every coping style is how we use our relationships . . . Whatever coping style we use has an impact on those around us.” How can we understand, and take steps to improve, our coping style?
How do you handle a stressful situation? Are you a list maker? Do you break something down into small tasks, then make a list and check each thing off? Are you a headline reader, where you get the overall impression and act?
One of the best things that a good relationship can do is give us a place to test out: I’ve got this stressful thing happening. Here’s how I’m thinking of handling it. What do you think? They might say: That seems like a good plan. Or, I don’t think that’s going to get what you want. Often, when we think about how we’re going to handle something difficult, it’s helpful to have another person there who will tell us things that are hard to hear.
Tell us more about how to use our relationships as protective armor during challenges.
Be good at asking for help, rather than saying: I’ve got to handle this all by myself, no matter what it is. Challenges come along all the time. We can’t handle everything by ourselves. Some people claim to be able to and pride themselves on doing that. But, we’re so much better off getting help from other people.
There’s an African proverb: If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go with other people.
You highlight that the “process of giving and receiving is the foundation of a meaningful life. How we feel about our Social Universe is directly related to the kinds of things we are receiving from and giving to other people.” What is most important to consider on both sides of this equation?
One of the most important things is: How is the balance going? Is it a relationship where there’s both? You don’t want to be the one who gives, gives, gives and doesn’t get anything back. You also don’t want to be the one who takes, takes, takes and never gives anything, because it doesn’t work well. So, trying to find ways to have a relationship where there’s real mutuality is the way to make relationships the strongest and most satisfying.
You explain the concept of generativity as “expanding our concerns and efforts beyond our own lives.” What are the big and small ways we can develop a generative mindset?
In my Zen practice, they teach us to try it with things that are hard for you to do. Give the thing that you really don’t want to give (not that’s going to harm you if you do). But, if you find yourself holding back and saying—“Oh, I don’t want to give that”—that’s the place to practice generosity and build your muscles.
The Dalai Lama says: The wise selfish person takes care of other people. It’s a reminder that what goes around comes around. If we behave generously in the world, we’re much more likely to get generosity from other people; Not always, and not from the same person all the time, but if we have a generous mindset, we’re much more likely to inspire generosity in others.
You emphasize the impact of developing our relationships when you share: “An investment in our social fitness isn’t only an investment in our lives as they are now. It is an investment that will affect everything about how we live in the future.” What’s one action we can take today that can help us begin making that investment in our Social Universe.
Think of somebody you miss, don’t see, or aren’t in contact with as often as you like. Take out your phone. Text, call, or send them an email saying “Hi.” It’ll take you one minute. See what you get back.
You may not get something back every time. But, more often than not, people will be really happy to hear from you and it may spark more connection. You might make a date to get together for coffee or dinner.
I do this when I give talks. Toward the end, I ask people to pull out their phones and do this. They’re all a little surprised, but they do it. Then, during the question and answer, I ask: Did anybody get anything back? Everybody gets stuff back. People will say: My friend was so glad that I reached out. Or, my friend just had surgery and was so glad to hear from me. People realize that these are tiny actions that can have really nice payoffs. It doesn’t have to be heavy lifting.
