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

by Robert Waldinger

respond to positive contact with others.

They survived because they were social.

experience those negative feelings as life-threatening,

threatening, which leads to stress and sickness.

human beings require warm relationships

human beings need nutrition, we need exercise, we need purpose, and we need each other.

need nutrition, we need exercise, we need purpose, and w...

Positive relationships are essential to human well-being.

the good life may be a central concern for most people, but it is not the central concern of most modern

societies.

when it comes to making decisions about our lives, we humans are often bad at knowing what is good for us.

humans are often bad at knowing what is good for us.

It’s very difficult to figure out what r...

the haze of culture and the mistakes we make in forecasting what w...

John

one of the more professionally successful members of the Study, was also one of the least happy.

consistently reported feelings of disconnection and sadness throughout his life.

he was preoccupied at every stage of his life with himself, and what he referred to as his “inner drives.”

Convinced that his career and his accomplishments would bring him happiness, he was never able to find a path to joy.

Leo DeMarco, on the other hand, thought of himself primarily in relation to others—his

one of the Study’s happiest men.

Why do we so often overlook sources of happiness that are right in front of us?

This kind of prediction about what will make us happy is known in psychology as “affective forecasting.” We

The actual experience, however, was the opposite of what they expected.

were told to strike up a conversation, most had a positive experience and rated their commute as better than usual,

no less pro...

human beings are bad at affective forecasting.

bad at affective forecasting.

in the long te...

We seem particularly bad at forecasting the benefits ...

we pay a lot of attention to potential costs and downplay or dismiss potential benefits.

We avoid things that we think will make us feel bad and pursue things that we think will make us feel good. Our

many of us end up making some pretty big decisions

or the same small decisions

based on faulty thinking that seems perf...

the culture we live in is also forecasting for us.

Every culture—from

is at least partially invisible

to its partic...

without our noticing or agreeing to them.

Sometimes cultural messages and practices point us in directions away from well-being and happiness.

notice some of the cultural water.

money, achievement, and status all have a tendency to overtake other priorities.

we focus on what is most visible, and most immediate.

The value of relationships is ephemeral and h...

they become ends in themselves.

running in circles.

persistent cultural assumption,

The foundation of a good life is money.

artists have been warning against the seductions of wealth for thousands of years.