The SECRET to a GOOD Life | Jim Kwik & Robert Waldinger

Welcome back, Kwik Brain. So this is an important episode. I think all our episodes are important because we look for important topics to discuss with you. This is on the subject of happiness and really how do you thrive? What are the essential ingredients or the essential ingredient for having a good brain, a good life, one you desire and one that you really deserve? If you're going to invest in your future best self and be limitless, where are you going to put your time? Where are you going to put your resources? Where are you going to put your effort? Again, not only to thrive, survive, But also to thrive in your health and your happiness. And so, on the show today, we have Dr. Robert Waldinger. He's a psychiatrist. He's professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He's also a Zen priest. If I was to read his CV, it would take up the entire 20-minute episode. He's a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and he directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development. And this is one of the longest-running studies of adult life He also has an amazing top 10 TED Talk. We will link to that if you haven't seen it, always in the show notes at jimkwik.com/notes. And he's the new co-author of a brand new book, which I highly recommend all our Kwik readers get their copy. It's called The Good Life. This is lessons from the world's longest scientific study of happiness. Professor, welcome.

It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Thank you so much for joining us. And so I so enjoyed your book. Thank you for the advanced copy. We have a global community of brain health enthusiasts, and they always want to know, how does this work and what do I need to do? And so what is it that keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life? Is it fame? Is it money? Obviously, I read your book, so I know the answer.

Well, and we had some famous people in our study. We had some wealthy people and then lots of regular people who weren't either. But we found that fame and money didn't predict happiness at all. And what predicted happiness surprised us. It was the quality of our relationships.

Hmm.

And it wasn't just happiness that it predicted. So, you know, you might say, well, okay, if I have good relationships, I'm likely to be happier. But it also predicted our health, like whether we stay healthy as we get older. And it predicted how long we live. And at first, we didn't even believe it because we thought, how could our relationships be that important for our bodies as well as our minds, but it turns out they're really important.

When we're talking about relationships, is this your romantic relationship, your marriage or partnership, or is it extended family, friends, work colleagues?

It's all of those relationships. You do not have to have a romantic partner to get the benefits of relationships. You don't even have to live with anyone to get these benefits. It can be friends, relatives, and we even get little hits of well-being from the person who delivers our mail. From the barista who gives us our coffee in the morning. Lots of relationships do this for us.

So when we talk about optimizing brain health, have people on their way to having a more limitless brain, we'd say that it's not just your biological networks or your neurological networks, it's also your social networks, your social connections.

Absolutely. And it turns out that social isolation and loneliness predict worse health, but they also predict worse brain health. They predict earlier cognitive decline, earlier dementia. So these are really— our relationships and our engagement socially with the world is really important as a factor in our brain health and in our body health as well.

And I know mental health is, you know, is one of the big challenges, you know, especially over the past few years. I read a I saw a quote in an interview that you had from you saying the people who are most satisfied in their relationship at age 50 were actually the healthiest at age 80. And so what do you attribute— I mean, this study is going on close to 85 years, which is amazing. But tell me a little bit about this study and what you found.

Sure. So about 40 of the original 724 people are still living. They're all in their late 90s or early 100s. hundreds. Most have passed away, but we're studying all their children as well. And their children are mostly baby boomers. So altogether, over 2,000 people.

That's astonishing. And maybe you could give us some of the— before we go into some of the practical things people could do to not only help them to live longer, but not only add years to their life, but also life to their years. What do you attribute this to? What are some of the highlights that you've seen or some of the surprises maybe from From this long study? Sure.

We think that this works through relieving stress. We think that good relationships are actually stress relievers. So I'll give you an example. If something happens to me during the day, it's— and it's upsetting, I can feel my body start to rev up, go into fight-or-flight mode, right? Heart rate increases. I might start to sweat. And fight-or-flight mode is the body's natural way of meeting Challenges. That's not a problem. We're meant to go back to our baseline equilibrium when the threat is removed. But what if I'm still upset at the end of the day? If I have somebody who's a good listener who I can call, or somebody at home who I can talk to, I can literally feel my body calm down, go back to equilibrium. But what we think happens is that people who don't have anyone they can talk to, about upsetting events stay in chronic fight-or-flight mode. And that means higher levels of circulating stress hormones. That means low levels of chronic inflammation that gradually break down body systems. And so we think that good relationships protect us from that chronic fight-or-flight mode that breaks down the body.

When we get stressed, and especially chronic stress, we know shrinks the human brain, we create cortisol and adrenaline. If we don't have, you know, ways of coping with stress and managing that stress. And when I was reading your book, there was this section on keystones of relationships and some of the questions you would ask some of the subjects, like around safety or learning, emotional closeness, shared experiences. Like safety was like, who would you call in moments of crisis?

Yeah.

There was a question on learning, like who encourages you to take on new things, to try new things, to pursue your dreams, to pursue your goals? There was one section on emotional closeness where like, who do you know that— who knows everything, almost everything about you? Or who can you call when you're feeling a little bit low? And it's kind of even when I ask these questions, people are going through and some of them they might have answers for. I mean, I feel like we all, especially now, need somebody to encourage us, to challenge us, to cheerlead for us. And if we haven't found that person, maybe we could be that person for someone else, especially be that person for ourselves. So what would you recommend that— where would people start? You know, people were starting fresh, or they maybe they moved, uh, to a new area, um, and they don't have those maybe those social bonds yet at work or in their neighborhood or in their, in their, in their spiritual connection, you know, at maybe a church or something like that.

Yeah. So if you, if you don't have the connections yet, that's a really important question. Where would you start? Probably the best place to start is to think about things that you care about, things you love to do, causes that you might care about, and try to do those things that you care about alongside other people. So it might be volunteering in your community for something that really matters to you. It might be joining a club, joining a gardening club, joining a bowling league. Or a biking group or a walking club, but doing something that you care about where you're likely to meet the same people again and again. Because what happens then is you have a shared interest, and that's a natural place to start up conversations. And what we know is that when you have a reason to start up casual conversations and then you see that person again, you're more likely to deepen the conversations.

And in that way, over time, Now, does it matter, you know, as our listeners are kind of seeing themselves in this research, does it matter how old someone is or what age or stage or life cycle? Does it matter if they're married or if— we've done a couple episodes including with Susan Cain about introvert, extrovert. Can anyone make positive turns in their life?

Yes. We had people tell us, I'm no good at relationships. I can't do this. I'll never have good relationships. It's too late for me. Some of the people who said it was too late for them were in their 20s. And yet what we find, you know, we have a lot of life stories in the book where we tell the stories of people's lives all the way through their lives. And we have many instances where people who were sure it was too late for them, Found communities later in life, found communities when they didn't expect it, found love when they didn't expect it, sometimes for the first time in their 70s or 80s. So the message is, if you think it's too late for you, that's not necessarily true at all.

Why do you find it— it's interesting with children when, like, knowing the results of this study and more emerges, You know, how often do you follow up with your subjects?

We follow up usually every 2 years.

And it's very thorough, right? I mean, you're doing all kinds of testing and assessments and interviews.

Oh, yeah. So we, at different times, we certainly ask them a lot of questions and get their answers. But in addition, we'll videotape them talking to their partners, we'll put them in the MRI scanner and show them different kinds of pictures and watch how their brains light up. We draw blood for DNA, for epigenetic markers. We do all these things as a way to try to get different windows on well-being, on human thriving.

When we're talking about happiness, it's interesting because at a very early age, it's almost imprinted on us. You go to a child and say, what do you want to be when you're an adult or when you grow up? Or at business gatherings or you're at a wedding or something, people like, one of the first questions people ask is, what do you do? And success is more measured on someone's title, on their salary, on some kind of recognition or achievement. And so this is such an important topic to discuss to kind of really maybe make the most important things the most important things, right?

Right.

You're beginning with the end in mind.

Yeah. Well, and what we did was when people were toward the end of their lives, like some of our original people in— when they were in their 80s, we said, as you look back on your life, what do you regret the most and what are you proudest of? And what people regretted the most was not spending enough time with the people they cared about. Many people said, I spent too much time working and not enough time with the people who mattered to me. And when we asked people what they were proudest of as they look back on their lives, They always mentioned relationships. It wasn't, I made this great amount of money, or, I got this great award. It was, I was a good boss. I was a good mentor. I was a good spouse. I was a good parent. I was a good friend. And so, when people think about what's been most important in their lives, it's always relationships.

At a young age, I lost my grandmother. to Alzheimer's. So, I spend a good amount of time working with seniors and so, helping them polish off their memories. And you also hear at that time or that stage, sometimes when it gets very quiet or more intimate, people reveal sometimes not only the things they're most proud of but also the things they regret. I don't remember hearing anyone say they regretted not spending more time at work. You know, or working or working more hours. You know, you and I have had a conversation prior to this about how a good life is also forged from doing the things that are precisely the things that sometimes makes it more difficult.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, maybe we could talk about that a little bit.

So what we find is that, first of all, there are challenges in everybody's life that even though we can, you can get the impression, especially if you look at somebody's social media feed that everybody else is having a perfect life except me. Everybody else has it figured out.

Yeah.

And what we know from studying thousands of people is that there is no life that's without hardship. There's no life where somebody's happy all the time, right? And so what we find is that it's in meeting the challenges that we often learn, we get wiser, we grow stronger. And what we find is that when we ask people, what has helped you get through the biggest challenges? in your life, it's always other people. Whether it was getting through the Great Depression or World War II or the challenges of the pandemic, it's always other people.

In my book, I talk about how technology, it's kind of a double-edged sword. It's not necessarily good or bad, but it's like fire. It's fire. It could cook your food or it could maybe burn down your home. It's just really how it's utilized. We talk about some of the digital distraction, digital dementia, these terms I coined, digital delusion, digital deduction in terms of how it's doing the thinking and the work for us, but also going back to that comparison, digital depression. And, you've mentioned in your work, and I don't know if I'm quoting you directly, but where we're comparing our insides to other people's outsides.

Yeah, exactly. You know, when we curate our lives for each other, right? I mean, we, you know, on social media, we post our happy photos, our beautiful photos. We— I don't post the photos where I've woken up depressed, or, you know, feeling really lost or just looking disheveled. I don't do that. We don't do that for each other. And that's, that's okay. But, but what it means is that I can look at somebody else's social media posts and say, gosh, My life isn't always like that. I'm not always on beautiful beaches or about to dive into beautiful plates of food. That's not my life. And and even though rationally we know that, it can be this sense of gosh, I'm missing out. I don't have it figured out. And so I think what we want to name is that nobody's life is really like that. That that's what that's what comparing our insides to other people's outsides is about. And and so we want to remember that everybody's insides are. filled with joy and heartache and messiness and confusion, all of it.

And that— is it important that we have those? I mean, you're not, you're not saying that we should be happy all the time, right?

Not at all. Not at all. We can't be happy all the time. And that's useful to name because it's easy to imagine that if I'm not happy all the time, I'm not doing something right. And that's not the truth of life. The truth of life is that Happiness comes and goes. And that what we can do is build a kind of bedrock of well-being. And that's, you know, that we can build through taking care of our physical health, that we can build by taking care of our social fitness, as we call it in the book, taking care of our relationships, that that can build a bedrock of well-being that helps us meet life's challenges. It won't promise that we'll be happy all the time. But it will promise that we will meet challenges with more help and more equanimity when they come along.

And going back to the digital depression, where the comparison sometimes on social media, the grass is greener because of the filter people are using.

Yeah.

There's a lot of artificial turf out there when you're comparing your life to the highlight trailer, as we've heard, of other people's lives. I get to speak at a lot of anti-aging conferences talking about more of an ageless mind and brain and keeping focus and memory. At these events, at the conferences, there are a lot of speakers talking about key markers like the benefits of exercise, the benefits of eating a good diet, of sleep. How do the social connections compare? I don't know if you've compared, you know, and your research has informed anything about You know, how diet compares to social connections, you know, in terms of some of the benefits, because we hear a lot about eating right foods and moving and exercise, and we should do that, certainly. But how important in the scale of things is connections and relationships?

They're really important. So there's been some work by my colleague, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, where she, from the science, estimated how how bad it is for your health to be socially isolated and to be lonely. And she found that it's about as bad for your health to be lonely or isolated as it is to smoke half a pack of cigarettes a day or to be obese. So these have huge health consequences. That means that social connection has the opposite effects. It's, it's health-promoting in those ways.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

And so as we wrap up this conversation, I want to make sure everybody gets their copy of the book. Again, this book is called The Good Life. And I always recommend everyone get 2 or 3 copies, one for yourself and also gifting a copy for a family member, a friend, somebody who you feel like could benefit. But what would you like, maybe 1, 2, maybe 3 ideas to be able to share with our listeners and our viewers? If you were to kind of share something practical or— I know you're on a mission and you want to get this out.

Yeah.

To so many people. What are some of the key ideas? Why did you write the book?

So I think the key idea that made us write the book is this idea that we can be more active in taking care of our relationships. That rather than what I used to think in my 20s, which was, oh, my relationships will take care of themselves. My good friends are always going to be my friends. It turns out that perfectly good relationships wither away from neglect. So the practical thing we can do is just to keep reaching out, to keep the connections alive. So you could do this right now after you've listened to this episode, right? You could think about somebody you miss or you haven't seen enough, or you just want to say hi to. Just write them a text right now or an email. Just say, you know, I was just thinking of you and wanted to say hi. That's all you have to do. And then watch what comes back. And what you will see is much more often than not, people will be thrilled that you reached out. And it might even lead to having a cup of coffee or making a date to have dinner or whatever it might be. But you will find that if you take active small steps every day or every week to take care of your relationships, it will have big payoff.

I love that. So that's everyone's challenge right now. Remember that knowledge by itself is not power. Knowledge More times action and application really leads to a good life. And so, make sure you make the decision. I encourage everybody, take a moment, 60 seconds to pull out your phone and send that message to that person that comes top of mind. Who's somebody that's special to you? Maybe there's been a little bit of distance of time or space and send them a note. And again, you never know, one step in another direction can completely change your destination and there's a big ripple butterfly effect. Thank you so much for joining us. How do people get your book? How do they— people find out more?

You can order it on our website, thegoodlifebook.com. You can go to Barnes& Noble, Amazon. It's everywhere available for order. And I would love to see people read the book and hopefully benefit from some of what science has told us about the power of connection.

Absolutely. Everyone right now, make sure you send a message or voicemail or FaceTime, you know, reach out and connect. You know, we have that ability to do all that any, at any time, you know, with mental health challenges, especially around loneliness. You know, sometimes if we're alone, we're alone with our thoughts, we're alone with our doubts, we're alone with our fears. And one of the best ways is to be able to mitigate that is to be able to connect, you know, with, with one individual. And And I recommend everyone to be able to do that and take a screenshot of this and make sure you share it. Tag us both there. Professor, are you on social media as well?

I am on LinkedIn, Instagram, a little bit on Twitter.

Okay. We'll put all of your links to your social medias also again at jimkwik.com/notes where we do summaries there as well, put all the resources there as well and tag us so we get to see it and let us know if you're willing to something unexpected came from that reaching out to that individual. And again, Professor, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you. This was a pleasure. Really appreciate your having me.

I want to thank you to all our listeners once again. One of the best things you could do— we keep this— we don't have sponsors for over 300 episodes. We like to keep every episode to 20 minutes or less just because we want to respect your time and we recommend you go deeper. Uh, with our guest, uh, to go get more information and upgrade your knowledge, your skills, uh, your abilities. One of the best things you can do is share this episode. Uh, make sure you rate it if you can, leave a review. I love the reviews. We read every single one, uh, every single day. That's how our team starts our day. And, um, until our next episode, be limitless, everybody. Bye now.