The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

by Robert Waldinger

Seventy-six percent said that becoming rich was their number one goal.

Fifty percent said a major goal was to become famous.

Fame was now lower on the list, but the top goals again included things like making money, having a successful career, and becoming debt-free.

Success in life is often measured by title, salary, and recognition of achievement, even though most of us understand that these things do not necessarily make for a happy life on their own.

As an old saying goes, We are always comparing our insides to other people’s outsides.

The good life is a complicated life. For everybody. The good life is joyful… and challenging. Full of love, but also pain. And it never strictly happens; instead, the good life unfolds, through time. It is a process. It includes turmoil, calm, lightness, burdens, struggles, achievements, setbacks, leaps forward, and terrible falls. And of course, the good life always ends in death.

Because a rich life—a good life—is forged from precisely the things that make it hard.

In fact, good relationships are significant enough that if we had to take all eighty-four years of the Harvard Study and boil it down to a single principle for living, one life investment that is supported by similar findings across a wide variety of other studies, it would be this: Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period.

“More money does not necessarily buy more happiness, but less money is associated with emotional pain.”

the way we feel in life is determined only in part by what happens around us, and to a great extent by what happens inside of us.

These experiences are illuminating from both a human and a scientific point of view, since low moments are often formative and also give us some indication of how people cope with difficulties. When

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

relationships are full of rich and constantly shifting momentary experiences, and this is part of what makes them lively antidotes to the repetitions of material life.

The engine of a good life is not the self, as John Marsden believed, but rather our connection to others, as Leo DeMarco’s life demonstrates.

“Where you stand depends on where you sit,” is apt.

How we see the world depends on our vantage point.

it is our relationships that most often reflect back to us who we really are, and how far we’ve come on our life path.

Somehow we live up to what we have to do, relationship by relationship, stage by stage, and in the process, we change. We grow.

This is a time of rapid growth but also of contradiction and confusion. An adolescent’s life burns with intensity as they ascend into adulthood.

Knitting all of this together is the desire and need for intimate attachments that aren’t just about romance, but about sharing life and responsibilities with someone we know we can lean on.

Two of the great sources of excitement in young adulthood—becoming more self-sufficient and getting ahead in the world—can also be traps.

To be sure, accomplishing personal goals or career milestones is enlivening and builds confidence, but it’s easy to get so wrapped up in the pursuit of achievement that equally enlivening personal relationships fall by the wayside.

that the unexpected is perfectly ordinary.

Chance encounters and unforeseen events are a big reason why an individual’s life can never be completely understood by any “system” of life stages.

We carry the people we love around with us; they are part of us, and when we lose them or those relationships go awry, the feeling is so visceral that it’s almost as if there is a physical hole where that person used to be.

Man plans, and God laughs.

The people we meet in life are responsible for a huge amount of how our life moves.

We can’t outrun the chaos of life. But the more we nurture positive relationships, the better our chances of surviving and even thriving on this bumpy ride.

It can. Sometimes it’s difficult to understand and connect with the people in our lives when all we’re thinking about is what’s right in front of us. Stepping back now and then to take a wider view, to place ourselves and the people we care about into the context of a longer life, is a great way to inject empathy and understanding into our relationships.

And as the old Turkish proverb says, No road is long with good company.

A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ. John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

Psychology often studies the effects of emotional wounds. But we want to talk about one particular study that began by creating wounds. Physical ones.

THE MIND IS THE BODY IS THE MIND

It’s not easy to take care of our relationships today, and in fact, we tend to think that once we establish friendships and intimate relationships, they will take care of themselves. But like muscles, neglected relationships atrophy. Our social life is a living system. And it needs exercise.

Looking in the mirror and thinking honestly about where your life stands is a first step in trying to live a good life.

But, then, how can loneliness be so physically harmful when it’s a subjective experience?

In particular, the more time they spent with their partners, the more happiness they reported. This was true across all couples but especially true for those in satisfying relationships.

This might all sound quite intuitive, but there is a very powerful yet simple message nestled in these findings: the frequency and the quality of our contact with other people are two major predictors of happiness.

Sometimes we don’t really know how we feel about a relationship until we stop to think about it.

In general, an energizing relationship enlivens and invigorates you, and it gives you a sense of connection and belonging that remains after the two of you part ways. It makes you feel better than you would feel if you were alone.

A depleting relationship induces tension, frustration, or anxiety, and makes you feel worried, or even demoralized. In some ways, it makes you feel lesser or more disco...

Relationships that give us a sense of safety and security are the fundamental building blocks of our relational lives.

The Dalai Lama reminds us that what goes around comes around. “We are self-centered and selfish, but we need to be wisely selfish, not foolishly so,” he once said. “If we neglect others, we too lose.… We can educate people to understand that the best way to fulfill their own interest is to be concerned about the welfare of others. But this will take time.”

helping others benefits the one who helps.

Being generous is a way to prime your brain for good feelings, and those good feelings in turn make us more likely to help others in the ...

We get hurt by the people we love. We feel the sting when they disappoint us or leave us, and the emptiness when they die.

Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.

We often struggle in relationships for the same reason we struggle in other areas of life: we become too self-focused. We worry about whether we’re doing it right, whether we’re good at something, whether we’re getting what we want. Like Sterling, or John Marsden, the unhappy lawyer, when we become too self-focused, we can forget about the experiences of others.

Like generosity, curiosity is an upward spiral.

“Become genuinely interested in other people.”