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What keeps us healthy and happy as we go through life?

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If you were going to invest now

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in your best future self,

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where would you put your time

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and your energy?

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There was a recent survey of Millenials

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asking them what their most important

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life goals were,

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and over 80% said that the major life goal for them

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was to get rich.

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And another 50% of the same young adults

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said that another major life goal was

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to become famous.

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And we're constantly told to lean into work

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to push harder and achieve more.

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We're given the impression that these are the things

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that we go after in order to have a good life

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Pictures of entire lifes, of the choices that people make

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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