Robert Waldinger

Lessons on the Good Life

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“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

Love — It’s What Really Makes Us Happy

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BY Andrea Miller , Sept. 13, 2017

About Andrea Miller:  Andrea Miller is a deputy editor of Lion’s Roar magazine and the editor of three anthologies, most recently, All the Rage: Buddhist Wisdom on Anger and Acceptance.  In 2018, Wisdom Publications will release her first children’s book, The Day the Buddha Woke Up.

 

Robert Waldinger is a Zen Priest and leader of the longest-running study of human happiness.  As Andrea Miller tells us, he’s found that science and Buddhism agree on what makes life happy and meaningful.

Robert Waldinger TED talk
Waldinger’s viral TED talk entitled “The Good Life” sparked widespread interest in the Harvard Study of Adult Development.

What makes life worth living? What really makes us happy? As a Zen priest and leader of the one of the most important studies of human happiness ever undertaken, Robert Waldinger has sought the answers to these questions.

What he’s discovered is that science and Buddhism arrive at the same basic answer. They both conclude, he says, that “moving beyond the small self is a huge source of both meaning and contentment.”

Waldinger is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard University and director of the famed Harvard Study of Adult Development. It’s perhaps the longest-running study of adult life ever conducted. For seventy-five continuous years, it has tracked the lives of 724 men in order to understand what makes for a healthy, happy life. Now it’s following the next generation, as it tracks the lives of the original subjects’ children and their families.

The study is one of the most important longitudinal research projects ever undertaken. Over the decades, the scientific community has followed the Study of Adult Development with interest, but the public was largely unaware of it and its findings about what really makes people happy and healthy. Then Robert Waldinger became an internet star.

Read More:  Love- It’s What Really Makes Us Happy/Lion’s Roar

This Is the One Secret You Need to Live a Fulfilling Life

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Hint: It has nothing to do with the health of your bank account.    

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Fulfilling Life

In this day and age, many fall into the trap of defining their self-worth by 401(k) plans and followers on social media—and you could be one of them. But science just offered the perfect reminder that the most important things in life aren’t exactly material.

A 75-year Harvard study analyzed the physical and mental health of two groups of participants, including 456 low-income men in Boston from 1939 to 2014 and 268 male graduates from Harvard’s classes of 1939 to 1944. The researchers spent decades evaluating blood samples, brain scans, self-reported surveys, and personal interactions to determine what made these men feel the most fulfilled.

Their results couldn’t be clearer. “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period,” said Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development.

Having strong, happy relationships in your life relaxes your nervous system, keeps your brain healthy, and reduces both emotional and physical pain, researchers say. (Check out even more scientific benefits of having friends.) They also found that lonely people are more likely to experience an earlier decline in physical health and die younger.

Read more: This is the One Secret You Need to Live a Fulfilling Life/Reader’s Digest

 

For 79 Years, this Groundbreaking Harvard study Has Searched for the Key to Happiness. Should it Keep Going?

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By Colby Itkowitz

For close to 80 years, Harvard University researchers have studied the lives of the same group of men. Since 1938, they’ve tracked their development, documenting every two years details about their physical and emotional health, their employment, their families and their friendships. By looking at human development over a lifespan, the early researchers hoped to find trends that would provide insight into what factors ultimately led to a good life.

The big takeaway from the decades of research and millions of dollars spent on the famous Grant Study is that, as the Beatles sang, all you need is love. It was not money or status that determined a good life. Those who were happiest and healthier reported strong interpersonal relationships, while those who were isolated had declines in mental and physical health as they aged. In November 2015, Robert Waldinger, the director of the program, shared that key finding in a widely popular Ted Talk that has been viewed close to 14 million times — there’s clearly an appetite for learning what to prioritize to have more fulfilling lives.

Read More: For 79 Years, this Groundbreaking Harvard study Has Searched for the Key to Happiness. Should it Keep Going?/TheWashingtonPost

4 Lessons From the Longest-Running Study on Happiness

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By Daryl Chen

Essential, data-derived advice for leading a happy, healthy life, shared by researcher and psychiatrist Robert Waldinger.

Have you ever wished you could fast-forward your life so you could see if the decisions you’re making will lead to satisfaction and health in the future? In the world of scientific research, the closest you can get to that is by looking at the Harvard Study of Adult Development — a study that has tracked the lives of 724 men for 78 years, and one of the longest studies of adult life ever done. Investigators surveyed the group every two years about their physical and mental health, their professional lives, their friendships, their marriages — and also subjected them to periodic in-person interviews, medical exams, blood tests and brain scans.

With a front-row seat on these men’s lives, researchers have been able to track their circumstances and choices and see how the effects ripple through their lives. Psychiatrist Robert J. Waldinger, the study’s director and principal investigator, shared some of the major lessons in a popular TED Talk (What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness). He says, ”We’d been publishing journal articles with our findings for 75 years, but we publish in journals about lifespan developmental research that few people read. The government has invested millions of dollars in the research, so why keep it a secret?”

 

Read More: 4 Lessons from the Longest Running Study on Happiness/ Ted.Ideas