The Secret? to Happiness
I have good news for you. Happiness is no secret. It turns out that a lot of people have been doing it for a long time.
A recent article in The Atlantic reviewed the recently published book, The Good Life by Robert Waldinger, MD and Marc Shulz, PhD. A summary of the book is below. (Disclaimer: The study was commissioned during a time when women did not have equal standing. The study has acknowledged this flaw in the research.)
Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has been investigating what makes people flourish. After starting with 724 participants—boys from disadvantaged and troubled families in Boston, and Harvard undergraduates—the study incorporated the spouses of the original men and, more recently, more than 1,300 descendants of the initial group. Researchers periodically interview participants, ask them to fill out questionnaires, and collect information about their physical health. As the study’s director (Bob) and associate director (Marc), we’ve been able to watch participants fall in and out of relationships, find success and failure at their jobs, become mothers and fathers. It’s the longest in-depth longitudinal study on human life ever done, and it’s brought us to a simple and profound conclusion: Good relationships lead to health and happiness. The trick is that those relationships must be nurtured.
That might be a no-brainer for a lot of people. Maybe we should take a good look at ourselves and how well we’re nurturing the important relationships in our lives.
Arthur Brooks, in his book, From Strength to Strength, points out the difference between “deal friends” and “real friends.” In the first half of life, when we’re climbing the ladder of success and trying to make our mark in the world, we have a lot of deal friends and transactional relationships with people who can help us. We learn in Networking 101 to nurture those relationships carefully. We sometimes do such a good job nurturing our deal friends that we neglect our real friends and family who offer the promise of transformational relationships.
The article concludes with this reminder of what is common knowledge but not always common practice:
Relationships keep us happier and healthier throughout our life spans. We neglect our connections with others at our peril. Investing in our social fitness is possible each day, each week of our lives. Even small investments today in our relationships with others can create long-term ripples of well-being.