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Robert Waldinger

Are Friends the Key to Happiness?

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By David Levine, Contributor

July 27, 2018

IN THE WORLD OF science, a longitudinal study is a research method in which the same group of subjects is observed and measured over a period of time. If there is one study that really puts the “long” in longitudinal, it’s the Harvard Study of Adult Development. It has been providing data on the same group of men since 1938. There were 268 of them then – fewer than 20 are still alive – all Harvard sophomores, including future President John F. Kennedy and future Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. The goal of the study was to find out what factors lead to healthy and happy lives. And perhaps the biggest key to well-being, it has revealed, is having friends.

Dr. Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School…

Read more: https://health.usnews.com/health-care/patient-advice/articles/2018-07-27/are-friends-the-key-to-happiness

6th World Government Summit: What Are the Keys to Global Happiness?

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written by Rachel Weil  Feb 8, 2018

WASHINGTON, February 8, 2017:  In his 2015 TEDx talk, psychiatrist Dr. Robert Waldinger shared some of the findings from a 75-year study of 724 adult men that began in 1938. As the current Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which continues to this day, Dr. Waldinger asked, “What have we learned?”

Simply stated, the answer is that “people are happier who are more connected to others.” The talk went viral with over 19,000,000 views, and a year later he found himself in Dubai speaking to an international audience at the inaugural Global Dialogue for Happiness, an adjunct of the World Government Summit.

2018 World Government Summit

This year’s Summit, from February 11-13, 2018, includes a diversity of topics from “The Importance of Hope,” to “Cryptocurrencies and the Future of Financial Markets.” The event features an impressive array of internationally-renown speakers. Attendees will be able to hear from Arianna Huffington and Deepak Chopra, to International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde.

Read More: 6th World Government Summit: What Are the Keys to Global Happiness?

Give Yourself the Gift of a Good Life

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Advice from Harvard’s top happiness researcher

AARPby Kathleen Fifield, December 2017/January 2018

Dr. Robert Waldinger
ROSE LINCOLN © 2016 THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE

As he’s shared in things like his hugely popular TED talk, “What Makes a Good Life? Lessons From the Longest Study on Happiness,” Robert Waldinger knows well the surest, and most scientifically measurable, path to personal well-being. (It’s relationships, stupid, though he hails from Iowa and would never speak to anyone like that.)

Waldinger, a psychiatrist, heads the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has tracked, in great depth, the lives of more than 700 Harvard and inner-city Boston men for 80 years, and more recently analyzed the DNA, health habits and life satisfaction surveys of their wives and children, too. The unusually vast longitudinal study gives its fourth director a unique vantage point on how lives — be they WASP-y or working class, Depression-era or 21st century, John F. Kennedy’s or Ben Bradlee’s — can unspool into contentment or veer into bitterness, chug along on course or be upended without warning. It also provides tidy answers to questions like whether the strength of your relationships at 50 or your cholesterol is a better indicator of your health at 80 (it’s the former, though you probably guessed that by now).

But if it’s interesting that, say, 80-year-olds with healthy marriages tolerate physical pain better than those in unhealthy ones, Waldinger, who happens to be a Zen priest, doesn’t understate the human complexity behind the data-driven takeaways. Those octogenarians in the most protective of marriages, he notes, can still “bicker like crazy,” and all those health-sustaining relationships, he wants you to know, take work, “really, a lot of work.”

Read More: Give Yourself the Gift of a Good Life

5 Ways Loneliness Can Hurt Your Health

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Time Health

By Jeffrey Kluger

November 13, 2017
TIME Health
For more, visit TIME Health.

There’s nothing wrong with living alone, and there’s surely nothing wrong with enjoying solitude. Being lonely, however, is a whole different matter. Not only does it feel terrible, it can also harm your health. Here are five ways loneliness can be dangerous.

—Elevated cortisol: Loneliness can cause stress, which your body interprets as danger. In response, it releases the hormone cortisol, explains Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University. In occasional bursts, cortisol gins up your cardiovascular and immune systems, up-regulates your metabolism and more. That’s fine intermittently, but chronically elevated cortisol can dysregulate those same systems, contributing to heart disease, diabetes, cancer and more.

—Chronic inflammation: We tend think of inflammation as the overheated, reddened skin around a bite or a wound. That’s part of the inflammatory process, but so is a more systemic release of blood proteins that prep the immune system to deal with danger or injury. As with cortisol, loneliness-related stress can cause inflammation to become chronic, says Dr. Robert Waldinger, director of Harvard University’s Adult Development Survey. And as with elevated cortisol, that can lead to a host of diseases.

READ MORE: 5 Ways Loneliness Can Hurt Your Health/Time Health

“That was so cool!” The Transformative Power of Human Kindness

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Huffington Post11/03/2017 03:29 pm ET
David Mochel, Contributor
Well-being Coach and Consultant. CEO at Applied Attention

Earlier this week I was getting my haircut at my favorite barbershop in Santa Barbara – Willies. It is no frills and I love going there for three reasons:
  1. They are in no hurry. This means that sometimes I wait and it also means that they give me their attention when it is my turn.
  2. They take their craft seriously. They give a good haircut for sure. More importantly, they talk to me. They ask me what’s going on in my life. They listen, and they tell me about what is going on in their lives.
  3. They are kind – really kind. They allow one person who is without a home to have her mail delivered there so she has a place to pick it up. On more than one occasion I have seen them give a haircut without charging for it. They warmly greet whomever pokes their head in the shop – whether that person is wearing a suit and tie or tattered clothes and no shoes.

On this particular day, a man with a long beard and no shoes poked his head in to say hello. My barber gave him a warm hello and asked him how he was doing. They chatted and the man asked if he could sit on the chair on the sidewalk just outside the door of the shop. “Of course, but it may cost you a sip of your drink.” They both chuckled.

human kindness

Then, I watched as a sheriff’s deputy came by and started talking to the man sitting outside the door. I felt some tension in my body as I anticipated some kind of confrontation. Soon they were sitting next to each other laughing as if they were old friends. Then, they stood up, the officer put his arm around the man, and took several selfies of the two of them.

READ MORE: The Transformative Power of Human Kindness/Huff Post

Harvard’s longest study of adult life reveals how you can be happier and more successful

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CNBC logoIf you have ever wondered what the key to living a long, successful and happy life is, Harvard researchers may just have your answer. “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier,” Dr. Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist and director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, said in a viral “TED Talk“ released in 2015.

The ongoing Harvard study is considered one of the world’s longest studies of adult life, having started in 1938 during the Great Depression.

If you have ever wondered what the key to living a long, successful and happy life is, Harvard researchers may just have your answer.

“Good relationships keep us happier and healthier,” Dr. Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist and director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, said in a viral “TED Talk“ released in 2015.

The ongoing Harvard study is considered one of the world’s longest studies of adult life, having started in 1938 during the Great Depression.

“Our study has shown that the people who fared the best were the people who leaned into relationships, with family, with friends, with community,” Waldinger said.

The study aims to shed light on how “psychosocial variables and biological processes from earlier in life predict health and well-being in late life (80’s and 90’s), what aspects of childhood and adult experience predict the quality of intimate relationships in late life and how late-life marriage is linked with health and well-being,” according to the study’s website.

Waldinger is the fourth director of the study since its inception.

“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,” Waldinger said. “We forget vast amounts of what happens to us in life and sometimes memory is downright creative.”

Read More: Harvard’s Longest Study of Adult Life Reveals How You Can Be Happier and More Successful/CNBC