Three Big Lessons About Relationships and Happiness
Living Happy
In a TEDx talk, Dr. Robert Waldinger spoke about what makes a good life and shared lessons from an adult development study that is 75 years old.
Happiness is one of the things that the data from that study showed us.
Yet, happiness isn’t always our goal.
Waldinger said,
“There was a recent survey of millennials asking them what their most important life goals were, and over 80 percent said that a major life goal for them was to get rich. And another 50 percent of those same young adults said that another major life goal was to become famous.”
And God knows, I’d like to not have to constantly worry about making enough money to support that goal, so I get that. There’s a security and stability in being rich that so many of us don’t have.
But should that be a goal?
As Waldinger says,
“And we're constantly told to lean in to work, to push harder and achieve more. We're given the impression that these are the things that we need to go after in order to have a good life. Pictures of entire lives, of the choices that people make and how those choices work out for them, those pictures are almost impossible to get. Most of what we know about human life we know from asking people to remember the past, and as we know, hindsight is anything but 20/20. We forget vast amounts of what happens to us in life, and sometimes memory is downright creative.”
Those pictures happened with that study of 724 men (yes, sigh, just men and half Harvard sophomore and have a group of boys in Boston’s “poorest neighborhoods” ), that really long study that began in 1938 and is called the Harvard Study of Adult Development where they actually tracked people from their teen years all the way through—seventy five years.
“And then these teenagers grew up into adults who entered all walks of life. They became factory workers and lawyers and bricklayers and doctors, one President of the United States. Some developed alcoholism. A few developed schizophrenia. Some climbed the social ladder from the bottom all the way to the very top, and some made that journey in the opposite direction,” Waldinger said.
And what they found is this:
Relationships that are rich and good make people healthier and happier.
Waldinger explained:
“We've learned three big lessons about relationships. The first is that social connections are really good for us, and that loneliness kills. It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they're physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected. And the experience of loneliness turns out to be toxic.
“The second big lesson that we learned is that it's not just the number of friends you have, and it's not whether or not you're in a committed relationship, but it's the quality of your close relationships that matters. It turns out that living in the midst of conflict is really bad for our health. High-conflict marriages, for example, without much affection, turn out to be very bad for our health, perhaps worse than getting divorced. And living in the midst of good, warm relationships is protective.
“And the third big lesson that we learned about relationships and our health is that good relationships don't just protect our bodies, they protect our brains. It turns out that being in a securely attached relationship to another person in your 80s is protective, that the people who are in relationships where they really feel they can count on the other person in times of need, those people's memories stay sharper longer. And the people in relationships where they feel they really can't count on the other one, those are the people who experience earlier memory decline.”
It's not about being rich.
It’s not about being famous.
It’s about relationships.
So how do you build those?
Waldinger says,
“Well, the possibilities are practically endless. It might be something as simple as replacing screen time with people time or livening up a stale relationship by doing something new together, long walks or date nights, or reaching out to that family member who you haven't spoken to in years, because those all-too-common family feuds take a terrible toll on the people who hold the grudges.”
What do you do to try to build your relationships? To revive them?
STORIES AND LINKS FROM THIS LAST WEEK!
Dispute This! – How I deal with Social Anxiety
Brad Pitt in a Skirt and Mixing Things Up in Your Relationships To Make Them Last
EMPATHY MAKES YOU HAPPIER AND MAYBE EVEN SMARTER
REFERENCES AND ROUND-UP, YOU CAN LEARN MORE ABOUT THINGS!
How cool is that?
NYT article on having a quarter life crisis.
https://www.mentalhelp.net/blogs/empathy-it-s-about-happiness-too/
The Problem With Empathy, Edith Stein
MasterClass about empathy
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-disputation-3024547#citation-1
Ioana Alina Cristea, Stefan S, David O, Mogoase C, Anca Dobrean. REBT in the Treatment of Anxiety Disorders in Children and Adults. Springer; 2016. doi:10.1007%2F978-3-319-18419-7
Lueck, M. (2019, July 7). How to Use Thought Disputation to Improve Self-Esteem, HealthyPlace. Retrieved on 2022, August 6 from https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/toughtimes/2019/7/how-to-use-thought-disputation-to-improve-self-esteem