What keeps us healthy and happy ขา
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as we go through life?
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If you were going to invest now
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in your future best self,
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where would you put your time and your energy?
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There are lots of answers out there.
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We're bombarded with images of what's most important in life.
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The media are filled with stories of people who are rich
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and famous and building empires at work.
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And we believe those stories.
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There was a recent survey of millennials
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asking them what their most important life goals were,
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and over 80 percent said
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that a major life goal for them was to get rich.
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And another 50 percent of those same young adults
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said that another major life goal
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was to become famous.
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(Laughter)
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And we're constantly told to lean in to work, to push harder
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and achieve more.
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We're given the impression that these are the things that we need to go after
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in order to have a good life.
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But is that true?
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Is that really what keeps people happy as they go through life?
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Pictures of entire lives,
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of the choices that people make and how those choices work out for them,
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those pictures are almost impossible to get.
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Most of what we know about human life
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we know from asking people to remember the past,
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and as we know, hindsight is anything but 20/20.
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We forget vast amounts of what happens to us in life,
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and sometimes memory is downright creative.
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Mark Twain understood this.
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He's quoted as saying,
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"Some of the worst things in my life never happened."
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(Laughter)
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And research shows us that we actually remember the past more positively
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as we get older.
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I'm reminded of a bumper sticker that says,
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"It's never too late to have a happy childhood."
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(Laughter)
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But what if we could watch entire lives
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as they unfold through time?
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What if we could study people from the time that they were teenagers
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all the way into old age
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to see what really keeps people happy and healthy?
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We did that.
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The Harvard Study of Adult Development
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may be the longest study of adult life that's ever been done.
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For 75 years, we've tracked the lives of 724 men,
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year after year, asking about their work, their home lives, their health,
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and of course asking all along the way without knowing how their life stories
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were going to turn out.
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Studies like this are exceedingly rare.
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Almost all projects of this kind fall apart within a decade
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because too many people drop out of the study,
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or funding for the research dries up,
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or the researchers get distracted,
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or they die, and nobody moves the ball further down the field.
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But through a combination of luck
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and the persistence of several generations of researchers,
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this study has survived.
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About 60 of our original 724 men
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are still alive,
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still participating in the study,
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most of them in their 90s.
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And we are now beginning to study
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the more than 2,000 children of these men.
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And I'm the fourth director of the study.
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Since 1938, we've tracked the lives of two groups of men.
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The first group started in the study
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when they were sophomores at Harvard College.
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The were from what Tom Brokaw has called "the greatest generation".
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They all finished college during World War II,
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and then most went off to serve in the war.
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And the second group that we've followed
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was a group of boys from Boston's poorest neighborhoods,
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boys who were chosen for the study
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specifically because they were from some of the most troubled
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and disadvantaged families
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in the Boston of the 1930s.
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Most lived in tenements, many without hot and cold running water.
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When they entered the study,
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all of these teenagers were interviewed.
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They were given medical exams.
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We went to their homes and we interviewed their parents.
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And then these teenagers grew up into adults
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who entered all walks of life.
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They became factory workers and lawyers and bricklayers and doctors,
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one President of the United States.
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Some developed alcoholism. A few developed schizophrenia.
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Some climbed the social ladder
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from the bottom all the way to the very top,
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and some made that journey in the opposite direction.
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The founders of this study
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would never in their wildest dreams
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have imagined that I would be standing here today, 75 years later,
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telling you that the study still continues.
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Every two years, our patient and dedicated research staff
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calls up our men and asks them if we can send them
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yet one more set of questions about their lives.
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Many of the inner city Boston men ask us,
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"Why do you keep wanting to study me? My life just isn't that interesting."
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The Harvard men never ask that question.
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(Laughter)
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To get the clearest picture of these lives,
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we don't just send them questionnaires.
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We interview them in their living rooms.
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We get their medical records from their doctors.
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We draw their blood, we scan their brains,
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we talk to their children.
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We videotape them talking with their wives about their deepest concerns.
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And when, about a decade ago, we finally asked the wives
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if they would join us as members of the study,
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many of the women said, "You know, it's about time."
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(Laughter)
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So what have we learned?
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What are the lessons that come from the tens of thousands of pages
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of information that we've generated
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on these lives?
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Well, the lessons aren't about wealth or fame or working harder and harder.
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The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this:
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Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.
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We've learned three big lessons about relationships.
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The first is that social connections are really good for us,
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and that loneliness kills.
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It turns out that people who are more socially connected
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to family, to friends, to community,
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are happier, they're physically healthier, and they live longer
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than people who are less well connected.
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And the experience of loneliness turns out to be toxic.
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People who are more isolated than they want to be from others
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find that they are less happy,
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their health declines earlier in midlife,
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their brain functioning declines sooner
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and they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely.
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And the sad fact is that at any given time,
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more than one in five Americans will report that they're lonely.
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And we know that you can be lonely in a crowd
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and you can be lonely in a marriage,
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so the second big lesson that we learned
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is that it's not just the number of friends you have,
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and it's not whether or not you're in a committed relationship,
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but it's the quality of your close relationships that matters.
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It turns out that living in the midst of conflict is really bad for our health.
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High-conflict marriages, for example, without much affection,
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turn out to be very bad for our health, perhaps worse than getting divorced.
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And living in the midst of good, warm relationships is protective.
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Once we had followed our men all the way into their 80s,
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we wanted to look back at them at midlife
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and to see if we could predict
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who was going to grow into a happy, healthy octogenarian
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and who wasn't.
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And when we gathered together everything we knew about them
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at age 50,
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it wasn't their middle age cholesterol levels
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that predicted how they were going to grow old.
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It was how satisfied they were in their relationships.
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The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50
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were the healthiest at age 80.
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And good, close relationships seem to buffer us
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from some of the slings and arrows of getting old.
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Our most happily partnered men and women
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reported, in their 80s,
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that on the days when they had more physical pain,
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their mood stayed just as happy.
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But the people who were in unhappy relationships,
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on the days when they reported more physical pain,
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it was magnified by more emotional pain.
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And the third big lesson that we learned about relationships and our health
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is that good relationships don't just protect our bodies,
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they protect our brains.
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It turns out that being in a securely attached relationship
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to another person in your 80s is protective,
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that the people who are in relationships
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where they really feel they can count on the other person in times of need,
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those people's memories stay sharper longer.
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And the people in relationships
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where they feel they really can't count on the other one,
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those are the people who experience earlier memory decline.
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And those good relationships, they don't have to be smooth all the time.
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Some of our octogenarian couples could bicker with each other
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day in and day out,
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but as long as they felt that they could really count on the other
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when the going got tough,
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those arguments didn't take a toll on their memories.
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So this message,
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that good, close relationships are good for our health and well-being,
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this is wisdom that's as old as the hills.
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It's your grandmother's advice, and your pastor's.
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Why is this so hard to get?
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For example, with respect to wealth, we know
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that once your basic material needs are met,
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wealth doesn't do it.
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If you go from making 75,000 dollars a year
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to 75 million,
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we know that your health and happiness will change very little,
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if at all.
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When it comes to fame,
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the constant media intrusion
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and the lack of privacy
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make most famous people significantly less healthy.
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It certainly doesn't keep them happier.
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And as for working harder and harder,
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there is that truism that nobody on their death bed
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ever wished they had spent more time at the office.
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(Laughter)
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Why is this so hard to get and so easy to ignore?
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Well, we're human.
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What we'd really like is a quick fix,
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something we can get
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that'll make our lives good and keep them that way.
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Relationships are messy and they're complicated
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and the hard work of tending to family and friends,
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it's not sexy or glamorous.
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It's also lifelong. It never ends.
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The people in our 75-year study who were the happiest in retirement
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were the people who had actively worked to replace workmates with new playmates.
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Just like the millennials in that recent survey,
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many of our men when they were starting out as young adults
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really believed that fame and wealth and high achievement
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were what they needed to go after to have a good life.
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But over and over, over these 75 years, our study has shown
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that the people who fared the best were the people who leaned in to relationships,
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with family, with friends, with community.
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So what about you?
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Let's say you're 25, or you're 40, or you're 60.
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What might leaning in to relationships even look like?
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Well, the possibilities are practically endless.
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It might be something as simple as replacing screen time with people time
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or livening up a stale relationship by doing something new together,
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long walks or date nights,
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or reaching out to that family member who you haven't spoken to in years,
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because those all-too-common family feuds
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take a terrible toll
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on the people who hold the grudges.
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I'd like to close with another quote from Mark Twain.
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More than a century ago,
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he was looking back on his life,
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and he wrote this:
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"There isn't time, so brief is life,
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for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account.
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There is only time for loving,
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and but an instant, so to speak, for that."
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The good life is built with good relationships.
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And that's an idea worth spreading.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)