What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness | Robert Waldinger | TED Talks

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

If you were going to invest now

in your best future self,

where would you put your time

and your energy?

There was a recent survey of Millenials

asking them what their most important

life goals were,

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

was to get rich.

And another 50% of the same young adults

said that another major life goal was

to become famous.

And we're constantly told to lean into work

to push harder and achieve more.

We're given the impression that these are the things

that we go after in order to have a good life

Pictures of entire lifes, 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.

Mark Twain understood this.

He's quoted as saying,

"Some of the worst things in my life
never happened."

(Laughter)

And research shows us that we actually
remember the past more positively

as we get older.

I'm reminded of a bumper sticker
that says,

"It's never too late
to have a happy childhood."

(laughter)

But what if we could watch entire lives

as they unfold through time?

What if we could study people
from the time that they were teenagers

all the way into old age

to see what really keeps people
happy and healthy?

We did that.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development

may be the longest study
of adult life that's ever been done.

For 75 years, we've tracked
the lives of 724 men,

year after year, asking about their work,
their home lives, their health,

and of course asking all along the way
without knowing how their life stories

were going to turn out.

Studies like this are exceedingly rare.

Almost all projects of this kind
fall apart within a decade

because too many people
drop out of the study,

or funding for the research dries up,

or the researchers get distracted,

or they die, and nobody moves the ball
further down the field.

But through a combination of luck

and the persistence
of several generations of researchers,

this study has survived.

About 60 of our original 724 men

are still alive,

still participating in the study,

most of them in their 90s.

And we are now beginning to study

the more than 2,000 children of these men.

And I'm the fourth director of the study.

Since 1938, we've tracked the lives
of two groups of men.

The first group started in the study

when they were sophomores
at Harvard College.

The were from what Tom Brokaw has called
"the greatest generation".

They all finished college
during World War II,

and then most went off
to serve in the war.

And the second group that we've followed

was a group of boys
from Boston's poorest neighborhoods,

boys who were chosen for the study

specifically because they were
from some of the most troubled

and disadvantaged families

in the Boston of the 1930s.

Most lived in tenements,
many without hot and cold running water.

When they entered the study,

all of these teenagers were interviewed.

They were given medical exams.

We went to their homes
and we interviewed their parents.

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.

The founders of this study

would never in their wildest dreams

have imagined that I would be
standing here today, 75 years later,

telling you that
the study still continues.

Every two years, our patient
and dedicated research staff

calls up our men
and asks them if we can send them

yet one more set of questions
about their lives.

Many of the inner city Boston men ask us,

"Why do you keep wanting to study me?
My life just isn't that interesting."

The Harvard men never ask that question.

(Laughter)

To get the clearest picture
of these lives,

we don't just send them questionnaires.

We interview them in their living rooms.

We get their medical records
from their doctors.

We draw their blood, we scan their brains,

we talk to their children.

We videotape them talking with their wives
about their deepest concerns.

And when, about a decade ago,
we finally asked the wives

if they would join us
as members of the study,

many of the women said,
"You know, it's about time."

(Laughter)

So what have we learned?

What are the lessons that come
from the tens of thousands of pages

of information that we've generated

on these lives?

Well, the lessons aren't about wealth
or fame or working harder and harder.

The clearest message that we get
from this 75-year study is this:

Good relationships keep us
happier and healthier. Period.

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.

People who are more isolated
than they want to be from others