5 Shocking Lessons from the Longest-Running Study on Happiness

I am about to sit down for a conversation with Dr. Robert Waldinger. Dr. Waldinger is the director of the longest running study on happiness in the world. We're going to cover the study's most interesting and shocking findings, how to deal with loneliness in the modern era, and much, much more. You will not want to miss it. Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Robert Waldinger. Now we are alive. I'm so happy to finally be able to do this. And this is. It's funny how this has come together because you and I have gone for several walks now together and had so many great conversations that we figured, why not record one of these and put it out into the world and hopefully share some of the. Some of your insights that have benefited me so much over the years.

And yours.

Well, we'll see. We'll see. So maybe we can just start actually at the. I'll call it the top with the Harvard study and your TED Talk, which I think at the time of this recording is fast approaching 50 million views since you recorded it in 2015. Can you just talk a little bit about the Harvard Study of Adult Development, its origins, how you came to be involved with it?

Sure. This study is the longest study of the same people that's ever been done. And, and that's what makes it so rare that for 85 years the same families have been studied year after year. That's never done. 724 families. And it started in 1938 with a group of Harvard College undergraduates and a group of inner city boys from Boston's poorest and most troubled families. So a really privileged group and a really underprivileged group. And both studies were about what helps young people thrive as they develop and grow into adulthood. And they thought, well, we'll study Harvard men. And that now we smile at because they are not the typical young adults. But these inner city boys also were born with so many strikes against them, them. And the question was, how is it possible that they stay on good developmental paths? And eventually we've brought in partners, we brought in children, more than half of whom are female. So we have really good gender balance now. But the same 724 families, John F. Kennedy was one of the original.

I was gonna say there was a president in there.

There was a President Ben Bradlee, who was the longtime editor of the Washington Post, and he broke the Watergate Scholar scandal. But also in the inner city group, the Boston Strangler. But most people, they weren't famous. They weren't infamous. They were Just living their lives. And the great thing about doing this kind of thing is that you don't know how the story is going to come out. And so you get to watch how many, many lives unfold over time. And that's been the enormous privilege of doing this.

So what? It's hard to summarize 80 years of a study and findings into a few sentences. And it almost feels crazy to even try to do it. But what was the most. Aha, blow you away learning that you've had from being involved with this and seeing all of this data that's been amassed on these families over that period?

Sure. So let me tell you the not. Aha. Not to blow you away from.

You tell me the not, which is.

If you take care of your health, you stay healthier and you live longer. And of course, that's not a surprise to any of us.

And was that when you say take care of your health, actually, just to clarify that was that people who had consistently thought about and taken care of their health in their 20s, 30s, 40s, had the healthiest later years.

And what that involved, it involved eating decent food. And we know that access to decent food is itself a privilege. It involves not abusing alcohol or drugs, not smoking, getting regular exercise, getting a decent amount of sleep. Those things actually keep people alive years longer. And not just alive, but with more years without disability. Because we all. We don't just want to live long. We want to live in a healthy way. Right. And so the reason I say that is that when I'm going to talk about what surprised me, it's really important to say this thing that we all know. But boy, can I tell you from a science perspective how much it matters in our lives. Okay, so then what surprised me, the thing that surprised us was when we looked at who stayed healthiest and lived the longest, the strongest predictor was who had the best and the warmest relationships as they went through their lives. And we didn't believe that at first because, okay, if you have good relationships, it stands to reason you'd be happier. That's not a surprise. But how could relationships get into your body and make it less likely that you would get coronary artery disease, less likely that you get type 2 diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis? How could that be? And so first we figured out that many other studies were finding the same thing. And that's super important because no single study proves anything. In my kind of research, you really need multiple studies to point to the same finding. And then you can say, okay, this is really a scientific fact. So many studies confirm this. And then we've been in our lab figuring out, well, how does this work? Like, how do relationships change our physiology? So that's what we've been working on.

So one of the things that I remember reading when I first came across this study was the single line that summarizes what you just said, which is that the single greatest predictor of health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50.

Exactly.

That is unbelievable as a finding.

Yes.

I just remember, I think I came across it when I first saw your TED Talk and you saying that. And I had to play it back two or three times to make sure I was understanding that that relationship satisfaction at age 50 was more impactful on your health at age 80 than anything.

Else than blood pressure at age 50, then cholesterol level. Not that those aren't important. So don't everybody give up on those things. Take care of your health. But more important than that was were you feeling good about your connections with other people? So, yes, a partner, if you have one. But it doesn't have to be a partner. It can be all kinds of relationships.

And it sort of leads naturally to what I would argue is maybe the biggest crisis that we face broadly as a society and that I think that individuals are facing today, which is this concept of the loneliness epidemic. I think you probably saw it, but in 2023, the US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, released this report called our Epidemic of Loneliness. And it was filled with some shocking statistics. Among them, 60% of people said they don't feel very connected to others. 15% of men said that they don't have any close friends, a figure that is now 5x from, I think, two decades ago, there was research that showed that dementia risk was increased by 50% with chronic loneliness. It was filled with these really shocking statistics on the negative impacts of loneliness and on how much loneliness is actually increasing over time. Did you see that in the study? Do you feel like it's a more recent trend?

We saw it in the study. There were some very lonely people, very isolated people.

How did you identify loneliness? Like, how did you even define that in the study?

Well, we would ask, how often do you have people over for dinner? Do you attend church or synagogue or mosque regularly? Do you join clubs? Do you play sports with other people? There were all these things we asked about, and do you take vacations? And if so, do you take them with other people? All of that.

Have you seen that study, by the way, on vacations? Sorry to interject. There's this study, I think it was in Sweden. A man, I think his name is Dr. Terry Hartig, did a study on vacation time in Sweden. And basically what they found was when vacations were at different times than other people, and it didn't actually lead to more happiness, but when people were taking their days off at the same time as other people, they measured it by the amount of antidepressants, I believe, that were prescribed. And during when times when people were together on vacation, those numbers came way down. People were way happier. So, like, vacation in and of itself wasn't what made them happy. It was the fact that they were doing vacation with other people. It was the relationship.

That makes total sense to me. I had not heard. Super interesting, but it is so interesting because it does make sense. What we find is that even like, they did this study of how we spend our discretionary income and are we happier when we spend it on material things or are we happier when we spend it on experiences? Turns out we're happier and we're happier longer when we spend it on experiences. Why? Because mostly we do those experiences with other people. If we get tickets to a soccer game or to a concert or we go on a vacation, usually it's either with other people that we already know or we meet other people where we are. And so it's the interpersonal connection that seems to make these pastimes and the way we use our resources really impactful.

One of the interesting things you mentioned about how you assessed loneliness in the study was there was a lot of sort of community and cultural questions, like you were asking about clubs, about sports teams, about local religious institutions, all those kind of things. And, you know, it's one of the things that I keep coming back to is this feeling that a lot of loneliness is driven by a kind of internal, like a focus on the self rather than on something bigger than yourself.

Yeah.

And I think it was the Wall Street Journal that released this poll that they've been doing since 1998 or so, asking people what values they felt most strongly about. And there was all sorts of values. There was community, patriotism, religion, all sorts of different things. And then there was money. All of them were on the decline except for money. Money was the only one that was a value that was increasing in importance to people while community was going down, while having children was going down, while religion was going down. So all of these things that were about connecting to something bigger than yourself were on the decline. And then the only thing that was sort of about yourself, which was making more money, was on the increase.

And if you think about it, the next logical question is, well, what's the money for? Right. And often I think what you're describing, I didn't know that research, but it's super interesting and depressing. But the next logical question, which many people can't answer, is, well, what's the money for when you want to become a billionaire? And many people, because I see patients in psychotherapy, and some patients will come to me and say, to be a success, I need to be a multimillionaire. When I ask them why, what for? They're like deer in the headlights. And I think it's because there are these badges of achievement that we can measure and they make us feel. Feel like we have succeeded. You know, whether it's, you know, winning a prize or making a certain amount of money or getting a certain position at work, it's like, oh, I can measure that. And therefore I know if I've arrived or not.

Yeah. There's no sense in sitting on the yacht alone.

Yeah. Really?

That doesn't sound like very fun. Right. Going on vacation alone isn't very fun. It's like, what's the point of all this money if you have no one to dote upon, no one to experience these incredible things with? No one to do these things with. I have my barber I'm friends with, and I was talking to him recently about how he thinks about money, and he said something that I thought was really beautiful. Just he was kind of like saying it in passing, but I thought it was really amazing where he just said. He said, look, I've got two girls. I pay the bills. I can take them on vacation twice a year. I'm a rich. I'm a rich man. He's like, I don't need anything more. What do I need more than that? I have two girls that love me. I get to take care of them. I get to take them on vacations. That's all I need. I don't need millions of dollars. I don't need all these other things. I think if more people thought that way, frankly, they would be a lot happier too. What do you think about? Just as it relates to loneliness in particular, the demographic that this is most striking with right now, in my opinion, is teenagers.

It is. They're the loneliest age group.

And I believe that because the thing sitting in our pocket has become more and more of your life. And I saw this stat recently that teenagers are spending 70% less time with their friends in person than they were two decades ago? 70% less time. How can you possibly build a happy, healthy, fulfilling life if your entire life is by yourself with your phone scrolling on TikTok, scrolling on Instagram, seeing lives that aren't real out there and comparing yourself to that the entire time? I mean, social media is a drug that is specifically designed to make you feel less about yourself. It's designed to make you wish you were somewhere else, someone else, with someone else, doing something else. And that is what your entire life is now being built around as a teenager. How do you fight that in this modern era if you're raising teen kids today? I know you have children. I have a young son. So I'm actually thinking about this in real time. What do we do about that?

Well, you fight it by being very intentional. Right. And that's what we're not doing yet, because I don't think we even know how to work with it. I mean, I used to watch too much TV as a kid and now many parents realize, okay, we don't want our kid having a steady diet of daytime tv. Right? I come home from school, turn on the tube. Terrible. I think what we need to do now is understand just what you said, that doom scrolling through social media lowers self esteem, it raises anxiety, it raises depression, and it raises levels of loneliness and isolation. So once we know that, and once it's becoming an established fact, which it is, then we get to say, okay, this is something we have to be very intentional about using and we teach our kids about it. And also we model the for our kids so kids will do what we show them. And so, you know, we have to think about this. I will be out at a nice restaurant and I'll see parents on their phones. And so the kids have nothing to do but be on their iPads as well. And if parents are doing that, it's really clear that kids are going to pick up those habits. If parents are very clear about what's healthy and what's not, kids are pretty good about learning that.

I think about this a lot now, just because of my son and his age, that. Yeah, go ahead.

Well, the other thing you can do is we can be much more aware of what the brain needs to do to develop as it should. And that means there needs to be physical playtime, there needs to be real time, real life interaction. Because the brain does different things and it develops different neural pathways having those experiences than it does looking at a screen. It doesn't mean that screens are bad and have to be Eliminated altogether. But it means that what we need to do is help parents see, okay, these are the experiences that are vital for your child's healthy brain development. I think we're beginning to be able to lay those out with greater precision. And hopefully, by the time your son is old enough to be able to go out and play by himself, you'll be knowing exactly why he needs to do that.

There is sort of this great paradox of social media, that social media can be an incredible force for good. We're going to release a lot of this conversation on social media. It can hopefully positively impact a lot of people with the ideas and how they can reach people. Social media can also be a terrible force in people's lives. And you mentioned before we were chatting, before we recorded this, an interesting test you have for thinking about consuming information and how to decide what to consume and what to kind of stray away from. Can you just repeat that for everybody? Because I thought it was great.

Yes, because it's something I noticed in myself. The test is spend 10 minutes doing a usual activity that you do online and then check in with yourself. And is my energy lower now or higher than it was before I started doing this activity? Am I feeling more open to the world or worse about myself or other people? If it's making you feel more energized and more open, that's a healthy activity for you. If it's the opposite, stay away from that or really severely limit it. So. So for me, for example, I have to limit my exposure to the news. I want to know what's going on in the world, but if I have too much of it, I literally sink into a depressed mood. That's no help to anybody.

It's also not the news in particular I could rail on for a long time because the problem is the base rates are not tied to what you see in the news. And so you think when you watch the news that there's constantly acts of terror, crime, murder, that that's the entirety of the world. When the reality is there was a. I forget where it was, but there was like a post that showed the actual causes of death in the United States versus the amount that you see in the news from a death standpoint. And it was basically like what you see in the news is murder, terrorism, crime, and then what you actually see as causes of death is like heart disease, cancer, you know, things that aren't really talked about. So it also, I think the danger of being on social media all the time and consuming news and things that are inherently Tied to monetizing through getting you to click is that you actually develop a skewed and incorrect perspective on what the world is. You start to think that people are inherently bad out to get you. You become more cynical about the world, and that's a scary thing, too.

Well, and the media do that because our brains are attuned to be riveted by what's negative. So what we know, and they've done really good tests of this, our brains emphasize the negative. So think about it. Like, if you get 10 bits of good feedback and one bit of negative feedback, you're going to think about that negative feedback for days. And the good feedback, yeah, that was nice, but that'll kind of fade, right? We know that it's because our minds, our brains are attuned to seek out the negative. Now we think it's because we evolved that way because. Cause it's really good to be able to see threats and what's wrong out there. But the bad news is it gives us a really distorted view of what the world is. As you were saying. And so one of the reasons why we talk about gratitude practice. I used to think gratitude practice was hokey. Like, what am I grateful for? It turns out gratitude practice is a corrective for that negative bias that our brains have. Gratitude practice is looking at the things that are not wrong, the things that are positive. And so, you know, because think about it. I mean, we're in this really nice space. I'm having a great conversation with you, right? Like, that's not wrong. Right? Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen teacher, used to say to people, let's celebrate today because it's a no toothache day. I mean, how often do you think, gee, today I don't have a toothache. Never think about that. I only look for what's wrong and how to deal with it.

And then when you do have a toothache, you can't remember how good it feels to not have a toothache. I always think that when I get sick, I'm like, I can't imagine. Just like I took for granted every day when I woke up feeling not sick. And it's funny, it is. What you just said is my number one tip for marriages and healthy relationships, which is tell your partner one thing you appreciate about them every single day. One thing you're grateful for, that they did. One of their behaviors, one of their actions, one of their attitudes on the world. One thing every single day. If you do that, you will have a thriving, healthy relationship because it's so easy to just let those good things pass. And then you only point out the bad.

Right.

Because you just assume the good.

Right.

You fall into this pattern of, well, the good is just the good, and I just expect it. And I'm not gonna point it out. I'm not gonna tell the person I appreciate them or for those good things. But then what happens is their only recognition that they're getting from you is a negative one. It's you coming to them with a problem or an issue or a fight versus appreciating every single day one thing that they've done right.

And what you're saying is not just a platitude. It's based on good cognitive science. Right. So, like, we should tell everybody, like, put that on a sticky note. Put it everywhere you can to remind yourself to do that.

Yeah. I really do mean that, like, that has had an enormous impact on my relationship and on the health of my marriage with my wife is just recognize the good. Take a moment to recognize the good. And that applies to your relationship. It also applies to your life. If you're out for a walk and you notice something smells really good, or you notice that the sky looks nice, recognize it in your own mind. That's that point of gratitude. Gratitude doesn't have to be. I'm happy that my family is healthy. You should be grateful for that. That's fantastic.

But.

But gratitude can be the tiniest thing that you notice during the course of a day, that you pause, stop, and like the Kurt Vonnegut. I think Kurt Vonnegut, in 1997, gave this commencement speech at Rice University. He talked about how he had an uncle who used to stop and look up at the sky and say, if this isn't nice, then what is? When moments are nice, when moments are sweet. And it wasn't about the huge, amazing things in life. It could be about something tiny, like a bird chirping or a sound or a smell, whatever that thing is that you feel pleasure around, register it. Actually register it in the moment, and you feel so much better.

Yes. You know, there's a wonderful passage, and I'm not going to be able to quote it, but it's from Lewis Thomas. It's from Notes on a Biology Watcher. And he writes about this. He says, think about how miraculous it is that our bodies work, that we have these billions of cells functioning in the way that they do, that the universe works the way it is. And. And it's this long kind of list of all the miraculous things that have to happen. Just for us to be alive. And then the last line of the paragraph is, you would think we would never stop dancing. And I just love that. It's like.

It's beautiful. Yeah, I got to pull that up. That sounds amazing.

Yeah.

By the way, the other angle on your test related to consuming media is the same exact test applies to people in my experience that if you spend time with someone after you're done, think about how you feel. Do you feel drained or do you feel energized? Do you want to, like, go out for a walk because you feel so great about yourself and about the world, or do you feel like you need to go take a nap because you're so worn down by being in the other person's presence? If that's how you feel, if you feel drained after spending time with someone, that's probably not someone that you should spend a whole lot of time with.

Yes.

And vice versa. If it's someone that makes you feel inspired and energized, you want to spend more time with that person. And if you can slowly reposition who you spend your time with towards those energy creating people and away from those people that are draining your energy, your life will improve.

Yes. Yes. And I've learned. I've had to learn to trust that rather than to override those signals, saying, well, everybody else thinks that person's fine. And, you know, it's like we were talking before the recording about the Maya Angelou quote. When someone shows you who they are, believe them, really believe them, and believe your gut or your heart or whatever part of the anatomy we want to think it resides in. But that intuitive sense of, this is a person I'm drawn to, or this is a person I need to move away from.

It's one of the harsh truths of life that most people don't want to see you succeed. And I'd say this is one of the toughest things that you learn as you are starting to experience success, is that a lot of the people that you thought wanted you to win, that you thought were your friends, aren't. I think it was Leonardo DiCaprio that said, Pay attention to who's clapping when you win and pay attention to who's not clapping when you win. And it just goes to all of these points that we're making that you can see and observe a whole lot about the people around you by just opening your eyes a little bit to how you feel, to what they're doing, to their actions, to how they're experiencing you, to how they're reacting to the things that are happening in your life. Because my general bias is I think we allow too many people to have access to our energy and to our time. And if you become more deliberate about who you are gifting your energy to, I mean, your energy is finite over the course of your life, and who you choose to give that energy to should be really precious because, again, it's finite. You're not getting that energy back. So if you're giving all of your energy to people who are spitting on it and who are not treating you with respect and not treating you in supportive ways and not lifting you up, you're wasting that energy that could be going to someone who will.

Yeah. You know, the other thing that sometimes we imagine is that people can be like bad actors in one place, but they're fine in another area. It never works that way. We're all. We're the same person wherever we go and in every setting in which we operate. And so it's really important just to trust that sense of who can you trust? Who's a decent person and who is not? Because we are who we are. Everywhere.

Your mind creates your reality. It actually reminds me of a Zen story of two men go to visit a Zen master because they're thinking of moving to his town. And the first one goes in and says, I'm thinking, thinking of moving to this town. Can you tell me about it? And the Zen master says, well, how's your current town? And the man says, oh, it's awful. And the Zen master says, oh, well, so is this one. You probably won't like it here. And then the second man comes in and says, I'm thinking of moving to this town. How is it here? And the Zen master says, how's your current town? And he says, it's fantastic. And the Zen master says, well, so is this one. I think you'll really like it here. And the point is that your internal reality creates your external reality.

Absolutely, Absolutely. Absolutely.

It's a really powerful one. I haven't thought of that one in years. But as soon as you said that, I was like, oh, yeah, your internal world actually creates that external world.

Absolutely.

And now, sitting in our pockets, we have a thing that somehow gives everyone in the world access. It has removed all boundaries to our inner world. It's one of the things that actually really scares me about social media, texting, email, all these things. The first thing most people do when they wake up in the morning is they grab their phone and they look at it and a million people have Access to your inner world. All of a sudden, they can say whatever they want about you. They can post whatever they want. They can email whatever they want, text you, have access to you 24. 7. And how much has that impacted us negatively in terms of our inner world, our inner sanctum?

Well. And how much do we give access to those people and to the exclusion of the person right next to us? I mean, I think about, you know, my wife and I do this. We do just what you're saying. I grab my phone and I look at the news, and she checks her email, and we realize we haven't even looked at each other. We haven't even said, good morning. And I stop and think, to whom am I giving my precious attention? Right? And I'm giving it to these people I don't know, to these media that don't know me. And. And I am taking it away from this person who I'm spending my life with. And so. And it's a helpful orientation for me because it makes me remember, okay, wait a minute here. Just because clickbait is enticing doesn't mean it's the most important thing. In fact, it's the least important thing. The most important thing is that person right here. These people who are my family, these friends who I need to remember to stay in contact with every day, every week.

That hit me hard. Yeah, you're allowing millions of people to be connected with you through your phone, and you're not connected to the one person that's sitting right in front of you that actually means the most to.

You in the world and that actually cares about you.

That's a. I mean, that's a crazy, crazy powerful and scary, scary thought. You know, it relates to a lot of how I think about the challenges of parenting, too, in the technology era. I catch myself with it because a lot of my work, a lot of all of our work runs through our phones now. Texting, emails, all that stuff. We're operating on our phones. And I often find I'll be on my phone and my son will be trying to play with me or trying to do something, and I'll have my face buried in my phone, and I have to catch myself. Like, he's picking up on that signal. Absolutely. Whether really he understands it or not, I don't know. But he's picking up on the fact that my attention is pulled by this random thing in front of me that's sitting there and how dangerous that is for our relationship development. And his brain development.

Exactly. I have a friend who Has a four year old daughter and he's on his phone and he's doing business a lot. And he said that this was a couple months ago. He said he went into his daughter's room to call her for dinner and she was there with her fake plastic phone on her ear. And she put out her hand like this and said, daddy, daddy, wait, I'm on a call. And he said, his heart sank and he said that's she learned. That's exactly what I do when she comes to me and wants to play or wants to tell me something. But it's so helpful. I know it makes us miserable to think this way, but it's also a wonderful wake up call because it means that we can be more intentional about not doing that.

Yeah, you can take action. One tiny action to just even just hearing this now I'm reminded. And so now the next time I start to note, I notice that, that I have my phone out when I'm around. Just put it away. Like you've now registered it as something that you need to be a little bit more intentional about. And if you can be 1% more intentional about it, that's a positive. You're making steps in the right direction.

Another research study, they find when they have people have conversations with a cell phone on the table between them, face down, or no cell phone, nothing on the table between them, the conversations go deeper when there's no technology visible. Because the subliminal message of having technology even visible is we could be interrupted at any moment. So I won't go deeper.

Whoa.

So there's a subliminal message just by having the object there within view.

That's crazy. Yeah, that is really, really interesting. Wow. So just putting your phone away. So if you're on a date, next time you go on a date, do not have your phone out on the table. Absolutely.

Put your phone away.

Oh, man. Wow, that's so interesting. I think that, I mean, it also is just, you know, like young couples when they have their first kid. 80% of married couples say that their relationship got worse in the first year after having a child.

Yes.

I think about that statistic all the time because I feel like we've gone the exact opposite direction. I have never felt closer and more in love with my wife than after the first year of having our child. But I often think about, okay, what led to that moving in a positive direction. Why did it move in a positive. When so many people, the vast majority, 80%, move in a negative direction. I think the biggest thing is that it's the first time in your relationship and probably in your life that your innate selfishness has had to go away. Oh yeah, you have this new thing, literally a thing, because at a baby, it's a thing that enters that it's requiring you to no longer have your partner be the most important person in your world. You, each other, are no longer your number one. You have this thing that's your number one. And that's really hard for people if you aren't connected and you don't communicate it and you don't tell the person the thing you appreciate about them every day and you don't put your phone away and actually speak to the person and actually see them and understand the things they're going through. I think so often we, you know, in a relationship you get into arguments, you get into fights. It's not unhealthy to be in a fight. It's an important part of relationship development. But how often are you in a fight and you're waiting your turn to talk versus listening to understand? I catch myself doing this all the time. Oh yeah, you're in a fight with your partner, you're arguing about something and you realize in the back of your mind that you're just waiting your turn to make your point. You're not hearing, you're not listening, you're not trying to understand, you're just waiting to talk.

Right.

And if you are doing that consistently in a relationship, you're going downhill. I'm willing to predict the demise. So catching yourself in that I do think is just so, so important.

Well, and that idea of appreciating your partner, especially when you're trying to focus on this little being who you've brought into the world. The best advice we got as young parents was to arrange a date night that was regular, that we would have to actively cancel if we weren't going to do it. So we hired a babysitter, college kid who came every Thursday night at 6 o'. Clock. And she would come and we would pay her. And it was an important part of her income that we paid her. So we paid her every Thursday night. And we would just go out and, and we would, sometimes we would just go to the mall and walk around. It didn't matter what we did, but we had time alone with no distractions. We didn't go home until the kids were fed and in bed and asleep. And it meant that no matter what happened, we would have that time to ourselves to just focus on each other. And it doesn't have to be that it could be anything. It could be taking a walk, but it could be. It's making sure that the two of you have some time where it's just you. Even in the process of raising these children who need our constant care and attention.

Yeah. I think it's even building upon that both that the two of you have the time for your relationship to grow. Because growing in relationships is so important also that each individual has time to themselves. Oh yeah. And the biggest challenge with that, typically in a post child setting, is that the mother has time to actually sort of just have those releases and have the ability to take care of themselves because they are so on. And there are so many demands that a man will never understand but that we observe. And typically the guy has gone back to work and so they have an escape or they're going to the gym or they're having their work meetings or their lunches or whatever the thing is. And, and the mother does not have that time to take care of herself. And if you're not able to take care of yourself, how can you be expected to take care of the other people around you? You can't. It's like the inner world, outer world. If your inner world is not okay, your outer world will not be okay.

Absolutely.

It's like being on a plane. They tell you to put on your oxygen mask for your kids. It's the same thing. You have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others. And so after you have a kid, you have to make sure that each person has the time to do the things, even if it's on a distilled lower level, that they need in their life to feel okay, if that's 15 minutes of working out, if it's a 10 minute walk every day, if it's making sure they get to shower twice a day, whatever those non negotiables are, establish them so that you can build around them in your relationship.

Yeah. And you know, it applies to a much broader group of people than just parents. Like, you know, one in four people in the US is a caregiver in one way or another. So obviously parents, but also a disabled family member, a relative struggling with dementia. There's so many people who are caregivers who don't even always recognize it. And caregivers are often the people who don't figure out ways to take care of themselves. I know this as a physician because in medicine, doctors are some of the worst people at taking care of themselves. And so what we have to do is keep Teaching each other that this kind of self care, putting your oxygen mask on first is essential or you won't be able to keep it up. And that goes for parenting, that goes for any kind of caregiving that we do.

That's an amazing stat that a quarter are caregivers.

Yeah.

Is that from like the American Time Use survey or something that they found.

That, ooh, I'd have to go look up the stat. I'm not sure where it's from.

The American Time Use survey is incredible in some of the findings around this. One of the other things I'm curious how you experienced it, whether through the Harvard study or outside of that is toxic relationships. What did you find either in the study or in your other learnings research about toxic relationships and the impact that they had on people's lives and happiness?

Yeah, there's a lot of research on this because the question comes up, when should a couple get divorced? When is it important to walk away from a relationship? And it's complicated. I mean, I think on the one end it would be easy to say, well, anytime I'm unhappy with somebody, it's a toxic relationship and I'm going to leave. Right. That's an extreme. That doesn't serve anybody well because often we invest in relationships and you don't want to throw away an investment too easily. On the other hand, there are people who stay in abusive relationships where they clearly need to move away and it breaks down their health, their mental health. So how do we, how do we find the kind of sweet spot? And it has to be determined in each relationship. Is this relationship toxic or not? And I think the first step is, can we work on it? If we try to work on a relationship and we find that we can't get it to be better, then there's a point at which you have to say, okay, I've done what I can and I need to walk away. But if we haven't tried, then we really need to. And that could be. For example, a couple could do couples therapy, which can be enormously helpful. You know, a child who wants to disown their parents could go some distance to seeing if they can maintain a relationship that they'll never have again. Because you only have one set of parents. Cutting each other off is a huge step, and many families are torn apart by family feuds and rifts. So I guess what I'm saying is it's a very complex decision. It's not a decision to be taken lightly to call a relationship toxic and move away from it. But Very important to do once you're convinced that this cannot be helped.

What about with friendships? Well, slightly less entangled than a divorce or than a parent, but friends that.

You know again, I mean, my closest friend from kindergarten really annoys me. If I were gonna. If I were gonna meet him today, I wouldn't be his friend. But nobody else knew me in kindergarten. Nobody else can I argue with about what we did in third grade. Right. That's. That's precious. Right. So, yes, he annoys me, and he's gonna be my friend forever. So there are these kinds of balancing acts. Like what. What is valuable enough that I want to tolerate the problems in this friendship? Or is it really not worth it because the benefits aren't as great as the problems? Again, it's always a balancing act, and each of us has to discern that for ourselves. But that said, no relationship is of consequence. It is without problems. And so it's okay if relationships aren't happy all the time. In fact, it's normal. As you said about a partnership.

I think the biggest challenge here is separating criticism, feedback, et cetera, that comes from a place of love versus just being demeaning.

Yes.

And someone who is just consistently demeaning to you, in my opinion, is not someone that you should continue to allow into your space and into your inner world. I have always found in my own life, and I think it comes out in the research as well, that the most toxic relationships are actually the ones that are sometimes loving. And it's the people that give you those little bits of love that you've allowed into your space as a result, who are then deeply demeaning.

Yeah.

That cut you the deepest.

Oh, yeah.

And that is so challenging for people to deal with and to wrestle with, because the manipulative, demeaning people and the manipulative, toxic people play with that. And they know that if they give you the little bit of love, that you'll open back up and. And then they can stick the knife in. And I just talk to so many people that have wrestled with this for so many years, not just in a romantic relationship, but also with friends. Those friends that kind of, like, say the nice things and reel you back in. And then when you really need them, they're not there for you in those dark moments, or they're not there to celebrate with you when you win, or they're sort of smiling when you lose. That is the most challenging thing I find in people's lives. It's like those. It's an ambivalent relationship that is the most painful.

And there's science behind this. So when they, when they train like rats in a maze or when they train people, what they find is that if you're, you're always rewarding somebody, that's okay. If you're always denying somebody something, they go away eventually. The most riveting thing, the thing that ties, ties you to your friend, to your captor, to your teacher, is inconsistent, intermittent reinforcement. So I'll give you a piece of candy now, but I won't do it tomorrow for the same thing. Right. I'll say something nice to you now and then I'll slap you tomorrow. And it turns out that that's absolutely riveting, almost impossible to break away from. And those. I think that's what you're saying when you talk about an ambivalent relationship. This person who says come hither and is loving and then pushes me away when I.

It's almost like Stockholm syndrome. It's like what kidnappers played with. Yeah.

And so when you see that, step away from it.

Yeah.

Or you could name it, you could say, do you see what's happening here? You could call somebody on it and see if they could actually watch what they're doing and change, but if not, go away.

Yeah. I had a conversation once with a 90 year old woman. This is on my 32nd birthday. I was asking all of these octogenarians and older what advice they would give to their 32 year old self. So I had a conversation with this 90 year old woman and I asked her what, what advice she would give to her 32 year old self. And she said, don't fear sadness because it tends to sit right next to love.

Hmm.

And I thought that that was such a beautiful way of capturing this dynamic tension of life that oftentimes these two things that we view as being opposites actually do sit right next to each other on this razor's edge, this, that, that love and depth that we feel and the connection that we feel with these people that we love so closely exposes us to immense sadness when we lose them, when the relationship falls apart, when we're not able to be around them, when they don't love us back. Those things, but they come together, they're part of a kit.

Absolutely.

And you can't have one without the other.

That's right.

And trying to avoid the sadness means you're going to miss out on the love.

Right. Because you won't be. If you invest in loving somebody, eventually you're going to lose that love. I mean, One way or another, right? Even if it's through death. But you're going to lose that love eventually. And so it means letting yourself take the risk that there will be some eventual loss and sadness. Otherwise, you stay completely isolated and feel like you've never lived.

I was mentioning this to you before, speaking of loss, but we were. Last time we got together, we went on a walk, and we walked through this beautiful cemetery, which has these gorgeous walking paths. And we were walking and having a great chat and a great conversation. It was a beautiful day in the winter. And there was a man that we walked by who was at a grave site. And he was clearly praying or having a quiet moment. And we sort of were walking past quietly. And I had this realization later that his whole world had stopped. Whatever this loss was that he was experiencing had shut off his entire world. And then we were sort of walking past and our whole world was open and blooming and having this great conversation. And there are these moments in life that are like that. This just again goes to this crazy tension and juxtaposition and collision of worlds that exists where you are experiencing something so different from what the world around you is experiencing. And wrestling with those tensions. I've personally just found that growth in my own life and in my own learning and human experience has come from the ability to sit with those dynamic tensions that exist in the world. The ability to just appreciate them for the tension that exists, not try to answer it. Because there's no answer to the question of why does the. I mean, you lose the most important person in your life and the entire world just keeps.

Nobody else knows.

No one knows. The entire world just stops.

Right, Right.

Such a crazy thing, right?

And it also, I think, gives us much more empathy for everybody else. Because you realize that, you know, well, that person who. I don't know, who I'm seeing on the street could have just sustained a terrible loss. And I don't know, you know. And so it means that you think of each person as having a whole, rich inner world that's filled with joy and sadness and everything in between. But it gives me, when I let myself practice this, much more appreciation for the richness of even the most trivial interaction I have with somebody.

Every single person you encounter is fighting a battle that you know nothing about.

Exactly. Exactly.

What a better way to experience and feel empathy on a daily basis. Like the person that honks at you that you want to curse at. They may have just lost someone terribly close to them. They might just be a jerk as well. But if you operate with the principle that you do not understand the battles that everyone is facing and that everyone does have some battle, even the worst person in the world has some glimmer of good in them. Operating with that as a principle, I tend to think will make you a happier individual.

Oh, absolutely.

Back to relationships and back to loneliness as we kind of come towards a close. What did you find, either through the study or through your own experiences, were some of the common practices or common traits of the people who had built the healthiest, strongest relationships and relationship portfolios, if you will, the people that felt most connected to those around them?

You know, we studied this, we wrote this book called the Good Life. And it was all about how the role that relationships play in our lives. And so we studied well, who were the people who did this the best. And it turned out that it wasn't heavy lifting. It wasn't some Herculean thing they were able to do. It was these tiny daily things that they did by habit, as a practice. So it was prioritizing, reaching out to people. The people who made sure that there were two or three friends who they saw every week or at least every couple weeks, that there were was a group of people who they hung out with regularly, that they invited people over, that they stayed in touch with family. It was. It was now, you know, at that time, there wasn't texting, there wasn't email. So it would be people who picked up the phone, right, who they wrote letters. Now it's the people who text every day. You know, just. Just saying hi, just want to see how you're doing. Just want to see how that exam went or that job interview went. It was the people who kept other people in their minds, kept their lives in their minds. That if we stay current with other people's lives mentally and then in our communications, it's what we call maintaining a kind of social fitness. For us, it's like. It's like physical fitness, right? It's like you don't go to the gym once and then you're done. It's a practice you do again. And what we're saying is you do that with your relationships, that you keep doing it again and again. And the people who were the happiest and the most engaged with life were the people who did that. You don't have to do it with 100 people. You might be a shy or an introverted person. You might do it with two or three people, and that might be all you need. That might be what's right for You. But doing that kind of day to day practice of staying current with a few people's lives is all that's needed.

It is interesting to that point. That connection is varied by person. I might be someone that needs a hundred relationships in order to feel really connected and close with people. An introvert, very shy person, might need one or two people that they feel deeply connected to in order to feel that feeling of connection in their life. And so it's about finding that personal level for you. And I love that term, social fitness, because it does bring this back to its daily discipline. The first thing we said in this conversation was that health, the people that maintained great health habits, well, this is one of your health habits now because we know it's connected to health. It leads to these great health outcomes. So include this the same way you're eating whole unprocessed foods, the same way you're showing up at the gym every morning doing all of those health, healthy, physical health habits. You need things for your social health in the same way.

I've started literally making plans with my guy friends instead of just waiting for my wife to be our social director. Like, I'll call my friends and I'll joke with them. I'll say, you know what? My research says it's better if I have friends. So do you want to go out to dinner? Do you want to go have a beer? And they laugh too. And then we do it and then, and we joke and we say, well, we have to remember to talk about our kids now, because when we go home, our partners are going to ask us, well, how are their kids? And we wouldn't have talked about that. We would have talked about something else.

Everything else.

Everything else. But, you know, it's literally made me change the way I live because I realized that otherwise I could pick my head up and look around and say, I don't have anybody in my life anymore and I don't want to do that.

Yeah. And it's bad for you. It's bad for you, as we now know. Yeah, there's just so much, I think there's so much to understand and appreciate about what came out from this study, the work that you've done, and actually to take the information and do something with it. We were talking about that before we started here. Today that we live in an era where information is as abundant as it has ever been in history. I mean, literally on your phone, sitting in front of you, you, you have access to all of the world's information from the smartest people in the world. This conversation, one of the smartest people in the world sitting in front of you, telling you all of these important things from 80 plus years of research history, all in one conversation of an hour. You have access to all the information in the world, but the information cannot act on your behalf. The way is lit, the path is lit, but no one can walk the path for you. You actually have to go out and walk it. And so if I were to leave people with one thing today, and I think you would agree, it would be to take one insight, one piece of information that you've learned from this conversation and to actually go and implement it. Even if it's the tiniest thing, if it's telling your partner one thing you appreciate about them, if it's texting one friend to catch up with them, you know, any of these things that we've talked about, take one and just go act on it.

Right? And I'll tell you, that would be the greatest gift they could give to us.

Right.

And to themselves.

Yeah, we're not selling this. We didn't sell tickets to a live audience. There's no mastermind here. This is entirely free and entirely driven by the ideal of wanting to create positive ripples in the world and to be a part of, hopefully, what is a positive inflection point in other people's lives. So thank you so much. I feel very lucky to be able to do things like this and somehow call it a job. So I really, you know, it's a privilege to call you a friend and someone that I've learned so much from. So I'm thrilled that we were able to do this conversation and hopefully share it with the world in a way that impacts people.

This is a wonderful conversation. This has raised my energy.

Me too.

So let's do it again.

Yeah, I know we're gonna have to spend more time together. I would have felt really bad if you had said this was draining and.

You were like, oh, God, no, no, no, no, no.

Well, thank you so much. Just got done with that remarkable conversation with Dr. Waldinger. He is a special human being. I have so many takeaways from the conversation. I'd say the number one was just a headline. That your relationship satisfaction at age 50 is the single greatest predictor of your physical health at age 80. That should blow you away. And you really don't need any other reason to prioritize relationships. Dr. Waldinger's entire idea around social fitness, the daily deposits that you can make to improve upon your social health, Texting people, letting people know you care about them. Those tiny things that you can do on a daily basis that will positively impact your world and your relationships are so, so important. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. I felt very lucky to have the chance to even do that with him in the first place. I hope you enjoyed it. And as always, until next time, stay curious.