When we asked participants in our study, you're eighty years old now, when you look back on your life, what do you regret the most more than anything? Many of them said, I wish I hadn't spent so much time worrying about what other people thought. So then the question is, well, what could we do to change that? And is simply to check in more with myself about what are the things that raise my energy. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world.
Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. Now I know that you're here because you want to improve your happiness, you want to improve your health, and you want to improve your healing. And there are certain guests that I always love having on the show that I have on multiple times, and today's guests this is their second appearance, and I could have been more happy to speak to them because they also have a new book that I
have been eagerly waiting for since I met them. I'm talking about the Special Robert Waldinger a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, and co founder of the Lifespan Research Foundation. Doctor Waldinger received his AB from Harvard College and his MD from Harvard Medical School. Doctor Waldinger is a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and he directs a psychotherapy teaching program
for Harvard Psychiatry residents. He's also a zen master and teaches meditation in New England and around the world. And Robert is the co author of the book The Good Life Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. This is the book that I want you to go and order, The Good Life Lessons from the World's Longest scientific Study of Happiness. If you've ever heard me talk about the seventy five year Study of Happiness, so if
you've ever read that article, it's quoted absolutely everywhere. This is the man who completed that seventy five years study. I believe the fourth of the researchers involved in that program. I couldn't recommend this book more. Doctor Robert Wardinger or Bob and I met in Montana courtesy of Arthur Blank, who brought us all together at his beautiful ranch in Montana introduced us to probably some of the most amazing
people in the world. In this space. We instantly connected a because I geek out on research and science, but more importantly because we both have this meditation and mindfulness practice that we both deeply love. And beyond that, we just had a natural flying conversation. So, Bob, thank you for coming back, Thank you for flying in from Boston to New York to do this interview. It's so good to see you again. Well, it's a treat together to
see you again. That's the big incentive for me to get on a plane and come here to see you now. But I appreciate it. I want you know, my community appreciates it. I was just saying to you earlier that we made this rule for on purpose again, where we only wanted interviews to be physical, because I miss this, like I miss looking at someone, I miss being able to hug someone, I miss being able to have even the before and afterwards. When you do a zoom interview,
you lose the before and afterwards. You're there for the interviewing you, whereas we've been talking for the last half an hour already. And so I wanted to hear from you because you said something interesting to me. You said, you know, I'm sure someone studying it. You're not studying it yet. Let's think about that a little bit. What do you think has gained or what can be done meaningfully through zoom or virtually? But then what is lost in your opinion and your thoughts and from your intuition
on that. Yeah, well, some of the most important things are about accessibility. Like what we're finding is that people who can't be together physically obviously can be together online. Or people who are frightened. So you know, I'm a psychiatrist, and many people are really scared to talk to someone about their problems. Well, what if you could be in your own home and you could just dip atoe in the water by trying a video chat with someone who's
a professional. And I've seen people do that with huge benefit. So in that sense, the accessibility is wonderful. People in remote areas and all of that. What's lost, I think are just what you've been describing this the casual interactions that we have and that we love, that we take for granted. I mean, it's a reason why you know, people talk about the water cooler at the workplace or
the coffee machine. It's where people run into each other and they have these little conversations that might turn out to be hugely important, might turn out to spread ideas or give people a glimpse of a person they find interesting who they've never met before. And so those are the things I'm afraid that we're losing. Yeah, remotely. Yeah, I think that's a brilliant answer. And I I love the perspective that there's actually a positive and a challenge
to every situation in life. And if we lean into the positives, it can be more meaningful, it can be more powerful, and instead of obsessing on the negatives. But let's talk about the seventy five year study. For anyone who doesn't know about this study, could you just give us a quick synthesis or synopsis of what you were looking at, the types of things that you're assessing, the types of behaviors, and then of course the more scientific
result that you gained from doing that study. So what's wonderful for me about this study is that it has followed the same people for their entire adult lives. That's completely unheard of in the history of science. It just doesn't happen. So we started with people who were teenagers and followed them for now we're about to enter our eighty fifth year. We've followed people for eighty five years.
Most of the original people have passed away, as you can imagine, but we've started studying their children, who are
all baby boomers. And what's unique about it is to be able to see how lives really unfold, not how we remember them, because if you think about it, when we try to remember what happened to us, there's there are big holes in our memories right very well, and we get creative about you know, I'll make up stuff and then like my wife will correct me and say no, it didn't happen that way, and she's always right, yeah.
And so I think to be able to follow lives forward and not know what the outcome is going to be is just amazing. So so that's the big picture. We started. It started in nineteen thirty eight with two studies that didn't even know about each other. A group of Harvard College undergraduate students who were chosen by their deans as fine, upstanding young men, and in a study of how people were going to develop from adolescence to young adulthood. They thought maybe the study would go for
ten years. They never dreamed I'd be talking to you today.
About the studies still going eighty five years later. The other was a study of boys from Boston's poorest and most troubled families in the nineteen thirties because a group of researchers were interested in why some children from really difficult backgrounds stayed out of trouble, how did they stay on healthy developmental paths, And so we studied a group of young men who hadn't gotten into trouble even though their families were plagued by poverty and illness and crime
and all kinds of difficulty. So those two we've studied together, two ends of the spectrum, and now fortunately we've added women. We started out with all white males because that's what the city of Boston had in nineteen thirty eight for research to study. And fortunately more than half women, more people from different backgrounds, lots of immigrants. So we're very excited about this kind of diverse sample that we've grown into.
Tell us a bit about the findings over the seventy five years now obviously eighty five, but tell us a bit about that core finding, because I think the most common finding that stated is that in this Harvid seventy five years study that when you look at the indicators of human happiness, the quality of our relationships was seen as the number one indicator. Was there a number two, was there a number three, or was it just so far out? Like, tell us a bit about the findings
and then we'll dive into the number one finding. Right. Well, the biggest findings were about relationships, but also about taking care of our health, taking care of our bodies. One of our study members said, take care of your body as though you're gonna need it for a hundred years.
And so what we do find, and many other studies find, is that getting regular exercise, eating well, getting decent sleep, getting regular medical care, if you can all of those things, not smoking, not using alcohol or drugs, not abusing at least, that all of those turn out to have huge effects
on how long we live, how healthy we stay. But the surprising thing was what you named, which is this finding that the people who stayed healthiest and lived longest had the best and the warmest connections with other human beings. When we started seeing that in our data, we didn't believe it because we thought, well, how you know, okay, I mean, if I have nice relationships, it'll keep me happy.
Or sure, but how could it actually keep me from getting arthritis or type two diabetes or how could that be? And so we and other researchers have found over and over again that this is the case, and that it seems to have something to do with stress, and that relationships help us manage stress and help us manage powerful negative feelings. One of the things we all know is that all of us have stress every day, right, and sometimes really bad things happen during the day. We come
home and we're upset. What we find is that if you have someone who you can talk to at home, or someone you can call up who's a good listener, who's a sympathetic listener, you can literally feel your body calm down. And what that means is you can literally feel your body physiology and chemistry come back to normal. And that's the main thing that we think relationships do for us. Understood, So you are actually saying that not only do positive relationships help us monitor stress and maybe
regulate stress, but challenging relationships can actually cause health issues too. Yeah, they apposite, is also true, very conflicting conflictual relationships. So challenging can be good, right, And that actually doesn't break down our health. But relationships where there's abuse, relationship where there's constant unhappy arguing, and relationships where difficulties never get resolved. Those take a toll because they keep us in what
we call fight or flight response. You know, the fight or flight responses, our natural response where if you get scared, your body prepares to run away or to fight or meet with a challenge that's meant to be temporary. We're meant to come back to baseline, to equanimity. If we can't do that, then we're in trouble. There's one thing I love about this book is that it's practical, it's scientific, it's thoughtful, It helps us come back to our essence.
It's also simple in the sense that it kind of kindly nudges us and reminds us to go back to what we already know, but that we keep neglecting. And there's this one study that you quote in the book. Can you say In a two thousand survey, millennials were asked about their most important life goals. Seventy six percent said that becoming rich was their number one goal. Fifty
percent said a major goal was to become famous. Now that's in two thousand and seven, and I think if that study was done now, those things would still hold true to a great degree. And then you say, more than a decade later, after millennials spent more time as adults, similar questions were asked again in a pair of surveys. Fame was now lower on the list, but the top goals included things like making money, having a successful career,
and becoming debt free. How do we when we talk about the good life, which is such a elusive topic
for so long? You know, I feel like we've been studying the good life through culture, through spirituality, through philosophy for thousands of years, but the amount of advancement we've made in that pursuit is very literal compared to going to the moon or going to space, or even healthcare for that matter, or I think even healthcare from a physical health perspective has had so much acceleration, but our understanding of the mind and the heart still seems to
be fairly limited. And when you see those goals, you see, Okay, that's what people are aspiring for, is someone who's living the good life aspiring for because I think we often think of a good life is these habits but what is a good aspiration If the aspiration is not money, not fame, not a successful career, well, the aspiration can be different for different people. So they've done research on this and they have these different types of well being.
There's one called hedonic wellbeing, which is what we all think of as as just enjoying a good party, a good meal, having a good conversation. I'm really enjoying this conversation right now, I'm having hedonic wellbeing. Right. But other people, well all of us to some extent, want also a sense of purpose and a sense of meaning. It's called
you demonic well being. The best example is you have a small child who you read to at night before bed, and you're reading the book good Night, and your child wants you to read that book for the eighth time and you are exhausted. Right, is it fun? No? But is it the most meaningful thing you could imagine doing? Absolutely? And so this sense of I'm doing this because I love it, because I'm on purpose, because I care deeply about what I'm doing, that's a different kind of well being.
And then there's a third kind that they've begun to identify, which is a psychologically rich life so many of us value just having interesting experiences, going to new places, doing things we've never done before. So those three things, having a good time now, feeling like I'm doing meaningful activity, and feeling like I'm having interesting experiences, those are all flavors of happiness. And I think that each of us is a mix of all three, but some of us
really want one more than the others. Is it meant to be balanced, or is it that is there a hierarchy of needs there? Or what have we learned about those two areas well? There's officially there's no there's no right or wrong way. But what we know, and I think we know this from spiritual traditions more than my science, that when we do invest in things outside of the self, we are happier, and we're happier for longer, and we feel more of a sense that life is worth living.
So I would say that we need to be sure we have some of that so we don't end up looking back and saying, gosh, I wasted my life. I feel like one of the most difficult things for a lot of people today is self awareness, in being aware of what we think is good for us, what we think is right for us. I even had a friend to say to me yesterday. They say to me, yeah, I think I'm actually going to say no to that opportunity now because I realized I was only going to
say yes because of what people thought. And so you see that a lot where so many of our choices and our decisions are based on what other people think is good for us, or what other people think is right for us. I remember growing up and only wanting to aspire for things that other people rewarded. So if the most celebrated and respected person in my community growing up was an actuary for a career, I wanted to
be an actuary at ten years old. But if you asked me what an actuery did, I had zero idea. And I think that this idea perpetuates. So what can we do to get closer to knowing what is good for us so that we can truly live a good life? Yes, well, and I just want to I just want to emphasize what you said, because when we asked our original participants in our study, hundreds of them, we said, when you know you're eighty years old, now, when you look back
on your life, what do you regret the most? More than anything. Many of them said, I wish I hadn't spent so much time worrying about what other people thought, And that's just what you're naming. So then the question is, well, what could we do to change that? And I think what I've learned more and more in my own life is simply to check in more with myself about what are the things that raise my energy when I engage in them, and what are the things that lower my energy.
So maybe like doing actuarial work might lower your image, right, So, and some people actually embark on courses of study and then realize, how did I get here? I don't like this? And so I think one of the things we can do every day is simply to pay attention to that internal sense of being enlivened or being depleted by activities that we're doing during our day, and really pay attention to that, and when you can turn toward the activities that are enlivening. Yeah, I often say to people it's
like reflecting after you go to a restaurant. So what do you do when you leave a restaurant? You talk about the food, you talk about the ambiance, you talk about the service, and you're like, oh, I really like that dish, but I didn't love that one and all the way to us so wonderful. He was so helpful, and I really like the design and the aesthetic of that space. Right, So you talk about it when you order in, you do the same thing. When you go to watch a movie or a TV show, we do
the same thing. We go, oh, yeah, that actor's performance was amazing, or that actress was incredible, or that scene you know that was brilliant. Like we analyze things, but I find that we don't analyze our lives in the same way. Like when you go to a sports game, you could spend the whole day talking about it. Or if something happens to another couple in the media, or if something happens to a famous person in the media, we will analyze it for days and weeks and months.
But when it comes to our own lives, we rarely paid that attention as a psychiatrist, And why is that?
Why is it that we can obsess over these external big or minute like we either obsess over these tiny experiences of food and movies and entertainment, or we'll talk about other people's problems for hours and hours and hours but when it comes to our own we've really struggled to say, you know, the argument we had last week, like, let's just reflect on that for a second, right, right, maybe maybe it takes us back to the actuary problem, which is which is that we are We are so
trained from the time we're small to respond to rewards, to respond when people say, you know, good girl, a good boy, that was a good thing you did, right, and so so we are trained to respond when people praise us, we're trained to respond when people correct us, and we're not trained to look inward. You know, you have a deep meditative practice. You have done a considerable amount of training to look inward to notice what arises in the moment. I've spent a lot of my life
on a meditation cushion as well, doing that. It's a radical practice. But you don't have to meditate to do this, right. We know, you can be walking along the street, you can be looking at a beautiful tree and just start checking in with where you are and what's coming up for you. But we have to learn to do it. And that's the thing that I think we don't learn enough as we're as we're growing up. This is exclusively for my LA listeners. Something Joyful is coming to air
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dot com forward slash on purpose. Now that's Masterclass dot com forward slash on purpose for fifteen percent of Masterclass. What are some of the things that we should reward or not should but what are some healthier things to reward in one another to create a healthier relationship. If we're trying to create these positive relationships in our life. What would be the things that we should encourage and reward and respect. I think we should reward people taking
risks with us. You know, if someone says to me, I was upset when you said that, my first reaction is to get defensive and say, well not, you know, to excuse myself. But I've learned that sometimes what really helps is to say thank you for being willing to tell me that. Right, So, if someone will take a risk with me, I begin to say, oh, that's a gift.
And when they do too, and when they take risks, and when I take risks, our relationships deeper, you know, because if we trust each other and we realize we can trust each other, that you're not going to come back and criticize me. You're going to be curious and welcoming when I tell you about something difficult. So I would say, let's reward each other for take going out
on a limb, for taking risks with us. Let's reward each other for trying new things instead of just doing the same old I mean, most of the time when someone in our world tries something new, we're like shocked, like that's not what I expect from you, and so it takes a minute to re orient and say, oh, that person is trying something different, that person is taking a risk, is challenging themselves. And so I would say,
let's let's applaud that when we can. I mean, unless they're doing something, but you know, yeah, let's applaud the thing that where people are trying to grow. Yeah, some of the things that other people do that trigger us, I feel as so much because we are not allowing
ourselves to do those things. Like I had a friend recently who's moving country and he was telling his friends out some of our friends that he's moving country, and everyone just had negative things to say, like why would you move now, Like kids are too old, they're already in school, Like it's a tough time for them, Like it's going to go wrong, or you're going to come
running back. And we were talking about this, and it's exactly what you're saying that instead of rewarding that he's trying to do something finally, after all these years that's true to himself, he's receiving a lot of this backlash from around him, and it discourages him. It also, I think what people don't realize is that it not only discourages the person, it distances you from them because now you've not been a part of something that's significant to
them in life. I remember, you know, when I've moved to country, I've moved state, and every time I've done that, when people have not been able to be a part of that decision with me, it makes me feel less understood by them, if that's accurate. And I think this feeling of being understood is what you were speaking about earlier, that we're all craving someone that you can pick up the phone too and have that meaningful connection with. How do we help people understand us better and how do
we learn to understand other people better? Because if understanding, I mean when I look at relationships, I've realized that I think Jamie McGuire says that she says love is an overused word, and I've often added to that that I think love is an underdefined word. And as I've been on my journey to really unpack what is love between people, I often come to words like it's not even gratitude or care. It really comes down to things
like safety and understanding. When I think about love, I'm like, yes, safety and understand if someone feels safe around someone, that's a sense of love, and I mean emotionally safe, physically safe, mentally safe. And then if I feel understood by someone where I don't have to explain, like you didn't really have to explain to me that you were talking about what kind of thing someone would be doing as a risk, because I understand you, and I think there's safety in
the understanding. So how can we understand people better? And how do we help people understand us better. One of my meditation teachers gave me an instruction just to try as I meditated, and he said, especially when you're sitting there and you've done this meditation a thousand times, or you're washing the dishes, you know, for the three thousandth time, right where you're doing something ordinary, he said, ask yourself the question what's here now that I have never noticed before?
And what I find with relationships, particularly the relationships with people we think we know so well, right our partners or the old friend or my boss, is to ask that question, what's here that I've never noticed before? And then to share it. You know, I never realized, um that you enjoy this, or you know, I love those sneakers and I I, you must have taken some care to make them, you know anything. Yeah, yeah, they're very cool,
but just to notice, right. And so what I think, what I'm what I'm getting to is curiosity to let ourselves be genuinely curious about people, including the people we think we know so well. They've actually done a study of this where they looked at how tuned in we are to each other when we first start dating someone and then after we've been together as a couple for
four or five years. And what they find is that when we first start dating, we are much more tuned in to each other than we are when we've been together for some years because we think we know right, whereas when we're dating, we're like, oh, what's this going to be like? And is this person into me? And you know, and so we when we make a new friend, and so I think, really the question is couldn't we muster that interest and that curiosity even when we've been
together a while we know this person. That is such a great examples. That's a brilliant study. I'd love to take more of a look at that, because I think that's such a great example of exactly how that diminishing curiosity creates diminishing results in a relationship. And I call that concept in my reflection of it, new old and old new. So when I meet someone new, I try to find out something old about them that because we
might have that in common. Maybe it's a city we lived in, maybe it's a country that we both love. Maybe it's a cuisine, and it's something that's in built to us. And then when I have known someone for a long time and I consider them an old friend, let me look for something new in them, as you're saying. And so I call it new old, old new, And it's always been my way of thinking about it, because
you're so right. There is always something new you can learn about anyone, even if you deeply think you know them. And I think that with my wife today. We've been married for six years and together for ten, so it's a long enough time of our entire life, and I feel like I learned new things about her every day. And I think what's as important as learning new things about my wife every day is unlearning misconceptions I've had
about her from ten years ago. So there are things that I was so sure about who my wife was a few years ago. And at the same time, as I have to learn the new things, I have to say, well, wait, I have to unpack that old idea I had about her. That's not why she thinks that way or lives that way. This is the reason currently that she lives that way. I think we find a lot of it's challenging to
feel that people are changing. Yes, it's challenging to feel that we are changing, and it's challenging to feel that people that we love are changing. How do we think about allowing ourselves to change and people to change, because that seems to be the hardest thing in marriage, in friendship, Like I have friends will say to me, like, Jay, you've changed now. I don't think that. I think i've I think in my core values and how I construct my life, I think I'm actually pretty similar. I don't
think I've changed that much. My external life has changed for sure, obviously since living is a monk and then after and then how I live now. But I think I live with the same purpose and the same intention. But how do we allow people to change and allow ourselves to change? You know, that is actually the core of my spiritual practice. So as you know, if you don't mind that, yeah, No, I want you to go
wherever you want to go. Yeah. The core of Buddhism is this the truth that everything is always in the process of changing, right, and that some things we can't see the rate of change because it's so slow, and some things are changing in an obvious way. But what Buddhism teaches me is that one of the great sources of suffering in my life is when I try to hold onto things that are changed, when I try to
fix them, when I try to freeze them. And what you're describing, you know, with your wife, when you're just what we're describing with a friend of I'm trying. I'm trying to keep you in the same category I had you in ten years ago. Right, So important to really let yourself notice what is what's evolving, what's different and same with ourselves, and that yes, maybe our core values stay the same, but even that we express them differently.
I mean, we talked with some of our study participants when they were in their thirties about how they were expressing, say, a desire to take care of their family, and of course what they did in their thirties to take care of their families was very different from what they did in their eighties, and so the values stay the same, but the behavior, the expression can change. And so all of these things are just can be sources of endless
interest and curiosity. Yeah, and I think it comes with that expectation, right, that when you meet someone, you'll hope, subconsciously is that they're going to stay this way forever. Yes. It's almost like when you meet a two year old and they're just adorable and you're like, hope, this child just stays this way forever because you find them, you know, cute and fun and playful or whatever it may be.
And it's the same with our partners. When you meet your partner, you're like, God, they're perfect the way they are, right, And that idea that someone is perfect right now is often the issue with progress because they are going to change. You're also going to realize how imperfect you both are. And and I think letting go of that expectation is what's so difficult. It's almost like when you when you
buy a phone or you buy a physical item. It may be perfect, but you know it's going to get knocked, it's gonna get dropped, it's gonna you know, it's gonna need an upgrade. It's so we accept that to some degree.
But with people which are these dynamic, vibrant, energetic beings, we almost like no, no, no, be technology, Like you know, it's it's it's a weird mindset, and I wonder how we can really learn to let go of that, Like it's a constant I think it's a constant process, right, because our minds do want to hold on to expectation, certain expectations, certain images. We would go crazy if everything we're always up for grabs, right, Like, at least I knew roughly who I was going to find when I
came to see you today, thank goodness. But the other side of that is just what you're saying that we need to keep looking and see, well, you know, I haven't seen you in three years, and how are we each different now? And that's a hard thing to keep doing. But just to remember, I think, as you're pointing out, that we want things to stay the same, and so it's going to take some effort to pay attention to
the changes that are happening all the time. Yeah, I think one of the biggest relationships speaking about the good life and talking about relationships. I think, as we know through resets who studies, so much of our expectations as we were talking about, our beliefs about love about relationships
come from our family. And often I find today that the amount of people that say to me that their family is toxic or they experience a really negative energy from their family, Like I hear that over and over and over again, and I'm sure as I'm sure you hear it more and more and more. And I find like families that were meant to be people's places of refuge of sacredness, often people don't feel that way. Now, I'm not saying that it's all the families fault either.
I think there's responsibility on both sides, and it's a complex matter. But how does someone navigate? What should someone be thinking about if they have family members or a family member that causes them a great deal of stress, pressure and insecurity? Like how does someone what does some what't you? Someone me thinking about? What? Could someone ask? How how did they reflect on that? Perhaps first to
reflect on the positive? Someone once told me, you know, no one will ever care about you as much as your family will care about your well being. And I know there are exceptions to that, but basically, these are the people who are your people, and so if if there are ways to preserve those ties, it is worth it. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes people need to walk away from their families of origin. I totally get that, but but to at least be sure that what's there to be
invested in has been appreciated. Right. But then, often what gets families into trouble is just what we're talking about, which is the problem of allowing each other to grow and change. I mean, I have a son who's in his thirties and who gets angry at me when I ask him, well, you know, do you need a warmer coat when you go out today? We're and he says, Dad,
I'm in my thirties. Why do I you know? And I stop and I said, oh, you know, if you hadn't been so dependent on me when you were two years old, if you hadn't trained me to worry about these things, we'd be fine. He's saying to me, Dad, recognize that I'm grown up, right, And often the difficulties we have in families are the difficulties of people not allowing each other to grow and change into who they are at this moment. I mean, what if your family had said you have to be an actuary and if not,
you are a failure. So so I think so, I think what you're saying is is right that that, yes, many families are filled with this kind of strife, and often it comes from this difficulty recognizing that we are all changing and then allowing each other to change and grow. I find that a lot of generations today are obviously more open to therapy, more open to these types of reflection.
I find that when I speak to some people that I know that they may find that certain older generations are like, well, what's the need for therapy or what's the need for that? Like, you know, everything's okay, Like
we can figure this out. It's a family matter. Again, there's truth on both sides in different ways, right, But I guess I think one of the biggest challenges is that a lot of people it's like when you're young, you always feel the adults don't get it, and when you're an adult, you feel like the kids don't get it, right, Like that's like and everyone and the funny thing is we all experience it. It's like there's that famous quote, I don't know who said it, but it's the day
you realize your parents were right. Your kids will be telling you that you're wrong, Like, I don't know how, Yeah, it's brilliant. Yeah it's so good. And I don't know who said it, but I always think about that. I'm like, oh, I was so interesting. When I was young. I used to think this of I'm thirty five years old, and I was like, oh, that's what I used to think of thirty five year olds or someone with that opinion. Now that I'm thirty five, I'm like, oh, I think
this differently. How do we It's like I'm asking questions here that I know there aren't any conclusive answers to,
but I think they are important questions to ask. It's like, how do we live a life where we realized that from a different vantage point you're going to have different beliefs and almost opening yourself up and not stereotyping an eighteen year old or stereotyping in twenty one year old, or stereotyping a sixty year old or a seventy or old, like I think we have stereotypes about like, oh, well
you know, and I'm like, well, wait a minute. When I was they said, you did the same thing, and we you know that kind of thing, like when I moved. It's like what you just said about the your son and the coat. It's like when I moved. I moved country when I was twenty eight. So I moved from the UK to the US when I was twenty eight years and my mom was so scared for me. I was like, Mom, you moved to London when you were sixteen,
Like you left. She left like a country where there was a war in Yemen between the Yemen and the British, and then she left and moved to England during that time. And I'm like, you left a war torn country. It's sixteen years old. I left to follow my purpose and passion like at twenty eight, like you did something way harder, but you're so scared for me. And I know that
that's love, of course, I know that that's love. But it's interesting how it's like you took the biggest risk and you kind of don't even want me to take this one, right, because it's hard to imagine to reimagine ourselves at an earlier age in a way that was quite capable, as she must have been as a sixteen year old and I'm sure it was incredibly hard and she managed. Wow. These So we in our Lifespan Research Foundation, we developed this program that you were actually part of
helping us imagine, Oh, I love this. In Montana, it was we call it Roadmaps for Life Transitions, where we have five sessions where where we bring some of these insights from our research into small group sessions that people can really learn from and use. And the first session we ask people to bring a photograph of themselves when
they were half as old as they are now. And then they go into small groups and they show each other their photograph and that the assignment is to tell each other, Okay, what did life look like to you when you were the person in this photograph and how has life changed? How has your view of life changed now?
And it really underscores that difference between well, this is what it was like when I was sixteen and leaving Yemen, and this is what it's like for me now, And then she gets to think, oh, my twenty eight year old son, oh, I may have more of a sense now of what life is like for him. But it's a kind of active reimagining of life at a different
from a different vantage point from a different time. I love that example, remember that exact conversation we had because I talked about how all my work is dedicated to helping people make life transitions, because I think that's where all the pressure this stress, like when you're just getting married, or you're just getting divorced, when you're starting a new job, or leaving an old woman, when you're moving country or moving home, like that's well, can you share more about
that program and some of the insights in the book that what are other ways that people can reflect on life transitions in a healthy way. So we do a session where we ask people to clarify their values, you know, as you ask people to think about all the time, and we ask, well, what are the two or three values that you couldn't imagine living your life without. And then we say map out a typical week in your life and write down where you can express these values.
And some people are really shocked that they're not able to bring their values into much of their daily life. We do another session where we ask people to map their relationship universe and say, well, who are you close to, who would you like to be closer to, Who have you had troubles with but you'd like to mend a relationship. We do another one where we say, actually it's the
leaving Yemen. It's the We ask what are some of the biggest challenges, the biggest transitions you've had to make in your life so far, and what were the strengths that you were able to bring to managing those transitions. And then we ask you, what do you see coming down the road, and how can you use those strengths that you already have to anticipate meeting this next challenge that's coming along for you. I love that question because
I think I do that subconsciously all the time. Whenever I'm going through a new challenge, I automatically reflect on an old one. Yeah, I think to myself, how did I get through that? When I got through that, Like I was telling you about everything I went through surgery, just think about was the last mine and through surgery, I was like, Okay, when I was six, I dislocated my wrist. I mean I can barely remember it. All I remember is I was in the park. I was
swinging on the monkey bars or whatever they're called. I fell on the last one because I was going too fast and I fell on my wrist and I just lookate. I was in agony. Parents had to rush me the hospital. I had a cast on my arm for like three to six months. Everyone was writing on it in school. But I got through that when I was six, and I was like, well, maybe I healed faster at six, So I was like okay. And then when I was twenty five twenty six, I had polyps in my throat
which I had to be lasered out. I had to eat through a store. I couldn't talk for six months. I practically lost the sound of my voice. The texture of my voice had changed. I'm now back to sounding how I used to before. If now I'm a little bit deeper, which is great. But that was pretty tough because I was an adult already and going through that
was challenging. And so I was like okay. When I was going through this surgery, I was like, okay, I got this, like I've done hard things before, and that gave me more strength as opposed to like, oh, I'm going through a new surgery. It's brand new. I have never been through anything, you know. So I think that's a really, really great activity. And I love hearing about these practical exercises, because I think that that's what we need.
We need to make things tangible and visual. Yes, And I think we need to remind ourselves of some of the things that we take for granted. Like I didn't know what that surgery was going to be like, and I and I was Okay, I calmed myself down, I went into it, I came out fine. You know, it's just kind of like I did this, I did this. Yeah, And we need to remind ourselves of the hard things we've already done. Yeah, And this time there's one thing
that went the other way. So whenever anyone talks to me about anesthetic, right or anesthesia, whenever I had to do one of these surgeries, I've always had a positive experience with it because I'll pray and meditate a lot before a surgery, naturally, and then when I come out, I find that those few seconds I don't think we would organized, but the few seconds that I'm like coming out of the effect of anesthesia, I have like really
powerful spiritual experiences, like some of my favorite spiritual experiences that have happened in those moments. And this time the opposite happened. I actually came out of it with something called an electicis, which is a partial collapse of the lung, and I couldn't breathe for like a week, and so
I was like gasping for air. And it was so funny because I went into it so positive, hoping that I was going to have another amazingly spiritual experience, and when I came out the other side, I was I was just about just amount of life and yeah, it's it's But I liked that idea of and I think I would love to ask that to my mom. Actually, I would love to ask her to reflect on her strengths,
because I don't think she's probably done that. I think she just sees it as that's what we had to do, or that was normal, or what else could we do? Like they just see it as they just see it as like, well, that was the natural journey of life. And I'm like, no, it wasn't, Mum. You could they just stayed where you were, but you did something very brave. And I think reminding our parents of that and reflecting with our parents and that could be really powerful. So
I love those activities. I wanted to ask you, going back a bit to the family piece, what are the negative effects on our health when there's someone in our life, could be family, could be our partner, could be a friend that's there but they're causing continued issues or challenges or I think there was this beautiful quote you hadn't hear from John Steinbeck. You said, a sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker than a germ. And I know that that can be you know, sometimes it can
be your own soul. But the idea that there's someone in your life that's like, it's almost like if we were doing this interview and there was like a constant tapping, like a constant tapping, we could probably still get by because I'm focused, but there's an irritation, there's an agitation,
there's some sort of distraction that's going on. I think sometimes people feel that in their life life that I'm trying to get over my life, but there's this like recurring thing, this person, this individual, What it talk to me about? What that does to our health? Like, how does that what does that kind of impact us? So when does it impact us? Well, what we know is that sources of irritation are stressors, and so it has that long term chronic effect on our bodies we assume.
I mean, I don't know that anyone's studied, you know, a tapping noise and what it does to us, although actually noise pollution is one of those, yeah, cognitive load
as well, cognitive load. So what we do know is that being in a chronically stressful relationship does break down the body, and that there have been a couple of studies that have shown, for example, with marriages, that leaving and a really acrimonious relationship is better for you than stain, even though there it's very painful to break up a
long term partnership and all that. So I think that the question then becomes, how do we discern when a relationship should be worked on and when it's important to step away? And I think it's always a matter of wisdom, of bringing wisdom to this to say, how much do I have invested, you know, if we have children, if we've build a life together, I'm going to work really hard to make sure I don't throw that away until I find that there's just no saving it, right, And
people do that. But on the other hand, sometimes there are friendships, there are relationships that are just chronically irritating and they can be stepped away from and more nurturing relationships can be cultivated instead. So it really is a constant matter of discernment. But I will say that I don't want to advocate just being done with a relationship because there are difficulties, Because there are conflicts in every relationship of any depth. Right, They're going to be disagreements.
Many of those disagreements can be worked out, and working them out is a source of growth and can often strengthen the relationship. So it's important to try where you can to work out difficulties because the potential for benefit is huge. And I think that's the challenge, right. I think we don't have the tools to figure out difficult relationships. It's almost like no one ever went to that class.
There wasn't that class at school. Your family has its own methodology of how to like some families, every family has their own way of dealing with conflict subconsciously or consciously. So some people go, just put it under the rug, we forget about it. We'd be civilized. Some people say, well, we fight it out and then we never talk again. Some people say, we pretend to be best friends, but then behind their back, we talk bad about them, right.
I think we all subconsciously have a family methodology of how we deal with other family members that we don't enjoy being with or we do enjoy being with, and so our tools are often scarred by how we were raised in previous experiences. Like, what are some healthy tools to actually address conflict in a relationship, because I think that most of us, when we're raised, we're raised to avoid conflict. We're raised to avoid having the uncomfortable conversation.
We're raised to like, well, don't go there, or you put someone in their place the extreme opposite, or you tell them how it is now. Neither of those things lead to better relationships. It was so funny. I there's someone in my life yesterday that I wanted to send a very clear message to about something that I think I didn't appreciate about what they did for me. And it came actually because so many people were telling me. So it wasn't even my own thought. I didn't even
have that bitterness inside of me. I didn't even care so in love with what I do. But then I had like three people in the same week point this thing out to me and say, did you see what this person did? Like, and I know them, And they were like, you see what this person did, Like, I think you should tell them. You want me to tell them, I think you should tell them. And so I was
being egged on. And whenever I'm egged on by an idea that doesn't come from within my own intuition, I always have to check whether it's aligned with my intuition. And I that's like a practice that I've had for a long time. It's like is this idea mine or is this idea of someone else's? Like do I really believe this? Or am I being made to believe it?
Because someone felt like starting a little fire, And I literally wrote out the text and then I pressed delete and I said, this is not my idea, this is I don't genuinely care. I'm gonna let this go. Funniest thing happened that even I got a message yesterday. Yesterday, I've got a message from this person. It wasn't about them apologizing for anything, but they came back with so many wonderful ideas. They were coming at me with so
much good energy. They were they were at and they were they were somewhere, and they were like, yeah, I saw these things, And I thought of you, and I was like wow, like you know, it was just I was just about to send this message, and this person's thinking about me off their own accord. They don't apologize and they don't think they've made a mistake, but they're bringing good energy my way. And so the reason I'm showing that whole example is just I think we don't
have tools. One tool for me is always is this how I genuinely feel or is this just how someone in my life feels about this person? And I'm borrowing that emotion one of other tools that we can use to deal with conflict and issues better in our in our important relationships. Oh, first of all, I love what you just named because I think I have been egged on by other people as well and then and I always regret it, and so taking that pause, do it
delete it was really important. Another tool for that I've found is so important for me is to take a long view. So what do I want with this person in the long run, right, six months from now, three years from now? What do I want? Do I not care if they're out of my life? And so it doesn't matter how I handle this now or do I care?
Do I want to make sure that we're okay, because this person brings energy into my life, because I care about this person, because it means that I will adjust my response depending on the long game, if you will, what I really want out of this relationship and so and usually what that means for me is what you and I were talking about before we started this interview, which was ideally everybody needs to win, right that there
Ideally there's no loser and no winner. And so if I want to make my point and score one, so what and the other person ends up feeling bad or put down? It leaves us both disconnected and in a bad place. So how then to create a scenario where we talk about something that's a problem, Because if I just suppress the problems, I'm going to grow more resentful and that's going to be its own difficulty in separation.
And so how do we talk about problems in a way that will allow us both to get to a place of feeling like we've won, we've gained something, and ideally were closer. Yeah, And so usually for me, that means writing the angry email and then pressing delete and then sleeping on it, meditating on it. And one of my teachers wants described as strike while the iron is cold,
wait till the hot iron cools down. That's great, and then think back, Okay, now, how do I feel about this and how would I what would be the most skillful way to talk to this person about it? And so those are some of the pointers that I have to keep using with myself when I'm all riled up about something. Yeah, that is that kind of aligned with the idea of being reflective versus reflective like exactly, yeah, exactly, yeah,
no that I love that long term thinking. I think that is such a great question, because what feels right right now might not feel right then right, And I
think that's how we often play it. We go, well, they need to understand this, and they need to learn this, and they need to know this, and it's like, yeah, they could maybe appreciate and digest that if you strike while the iron is cold, But when you strike while the iron is hot for a conversation like that, you actually end up completely alienating that person and pushing them away. Had a client the other day who called me and said,
you know, my boyfriend's about to come back in. You know, it was like it was nine pm and then my boyfriend's about to come back from work in half an hour and I just found this information out about his previous relationships, and I'm going to ask him. And I was just like, okay, well, first of all, who did he get the information from? And she said, oh, it was just someone that knows him really, you know, someone that used to know him a few years ago. It's like, okay,
that doesn't sound like great information. I said, second, what's he been doing today? She was like, Oh, he's been at work, he's been with his family, he had like an event, he's been preparing for a wedding, for a friend's wedding this weekend. I was like, do you think that's the right time to have that conversation? Like he's had a long, stressful day, Like is this the right time? And I'm sure he'll be open to it, but does it mean it's ideal? And they were like no, I
don't think so. And I was like, okay, so we've got two knows so far. And then I was like do you again. Then there was the third question that I asked, like do you even believe that this is true? Like is this even your instinct from your contact with this person? They were like no, and I was like, well, then you were just about to go and create another huge argument that didn't need to happen, and you could talk about it later on in a better way. I
think the long term is brilliant. Another thing that came to my mind when we were talking about this was there's a great book called Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, and he quotes Popovich, who I believe is a basketball coach, a very successful basketball coach, so's my basketball level of knowledge. And when he would give feedback to his players, he had a really fascinating way of giving feedback which would
encourage them to grow. And then they looked at studies and they found that when examiners gave their students feedback in this way, that the students performed better. And so this type of feedback had three key areas to it. The first and I try and I really try and practice this in my life because I think that not because it's a good technique, but because I actually believe
it's true. So the first was that you make someone aware that you of your standards, like you make someone aware like like this is the type of life I want to live, This is the type of company I want to build. This is the type of relationship I want to have. So when I'm talking to my wife, I'll often say to her, I say, you know, I want a relationship where we're both happy and joyful and supporting each other. That's the relationship I want to have.
And it's like, no one can argue with that. And that's a long term view, right, Like what you're saying, it's a long term view of me saying I want to have a healthy relationship. That's the kind of relationship I want to be in. Do you want to be in that relationship too? And of course, right? Or like I want to build a company with purpose that is impacting the world where people are happy to be at work every day, right, and so do we all want to be in that? So that's one thing setting a standard.
The second thing is reminding the person that you're speaking to that you trust and you believe that they can rise to that standard, that I know you want this too, and I know you can be there. I know that you can. Actually I know that if you want that, I know you can have that. Like I know that we can have that together. So it's not like a teacher it's it's together. And then the third thing is saying, you know, what are we both willing to do to get there? Now that we know we want to be there,
we trust we can both get there? What are we both willing to do to get there? And I think when you think about relationships that way, you go, oh wow, things could be solved, you know if you if you had an effective conversation. And I often say to people, use us and we, not you and me. You know, there's such a like you versus me, whereas us and
we brings us together. So I'm glad. I'm glad we went there because I just think that there are I just think we've never learned these tools and it and it upsets me because I agree with you that I think so many relationships are lots too early. Yeah, or they die early even if we live long in them.
And that's even worse. You know, there's there's a whole movement to provide what's called socio emotional learning for children right where they create you know, curricula, They create classroom sessions where they talk about this is what feelings are, this is what it's like when you have an argument with a friend, what are the ways you can deal with your argument with your friend, you know, how do
you manage these different difficult things in your life? And what they find is that when they offer these programs to children, they do better in their academic subjects. They don't get into trouble as often in school, they don't get involved with alcohol and drugs as much. I mean, all these things that flow from these emotional skills and social skills that are being taught. And many times when they give teachers these programs to teach their children, the
teachers will come back and say, we need this cross please. Yeah, I mean it makes sense, Like you think about so much of your work life is into personal skills as opposed to just functional things right. And I often think like, if you get along with someone, you can work with them and coach them and get it right. But if you don't get along with someone, it's very hard to
put in the time to get it right. And I find that more and more and more, Like I think, for a long time, I worked with companies, or I worked in companies where people were hired for their proficiency or their skills, and they weren't hired for their attitude. And you could tell how that affected company culture, where if someone had the right attitude, they could learn the skill, but if someone had a poor attitude, no matter how skilled they were, it could be damaging to a work environment.
And when I was inside large organizations, I could see that very clearly. You talk about in this book something called social fitness and keeping our relationships in shape, seeing what do we how do we know? How do we become aware of this? First of all, the social fitness of a relationship, or our social fitness, and how do
we keep our relationships in shape? Well, this concept sort of came out of our finding that many people felt that they weren't spending time with the people who were most important to them, And in fact, that was one of the big regrets when people look back on their whole lives, they said, I wish I had spent more time with family and friends. And so I started thinking
about it personally. And because I can spend a lot of time working, and I can spend a lot of time just on email just you know, as we all can, right, there are just so many things we could do all day long. And I began to realize that unless I actively exercise those social muscles, and by that, I mean if I actively keep in touch with my closest zen buddy who lives across town, but I don't get to see enough, if I don't make the decision to call him up and say let's go take a walk, let's
go have a coffee. If I don't do that, the path of least resistance for me is to stay home, is to do another piece of work on a Saturday afternoon. And so what we're talking about is this idea of beginning to prioritize nurturing, keeping up relationships rather than assuming that they'll take care of themselves. Yes, the idea being that, you know, I used to think, well, my best friends are my best friends and they'll always be that way, and my relationship with my partner is going to be
fine because it's good now, it'll always stay fine. We know that's not true that unless we really invest in having new experiences, in long relationships, in reaching out and devoting some of our time to keeping those relationships alive, it's not going to happen on its own. So rather, the path of least resistance, unfortunately, can be social isolation and more screen time. And so we're talking about social fitness as a way to get people to think about it,
like like going to the gym. You don't. You don't go to the gym one day and say good, I'm done. I've done that, right. You think, Okay, I'm going to do that over and over again. And we would like people to think about their relationships. Can talking about interets
and extrats and that socializolation sense. It's like, I think we've also made this very clear as a society that we're social animals, we need to be around people, etc. And then we meet people who are surrounded by people or appear to be very popular, but still feel alone. And then you meet people who are single and feel incomplete. And then you meet people who are happy in solitude and they enjoy spending time with their own Like, we're
all different, we all need different things. But can introvert how to introuts find a sense of healthy social fitness and how to extroverts also find a sense of healthy social fitness because extraverts often appear very socially fit, but if you ask them, they may feel quite depleted. And introverts may, like you said, potentially rely on isolation because they don't want to step out so how can we think about that differently? But it's a it's such an
important question. I mean, I think what we realize is that from our work that everybody, whether you're an introvert who who wants just a small number of people in your life or an extrovert who loves lots of people, that everybody needs a sense that somebody in the world is there for them, some emotional safety net. We asked our original study participants at one point, who could you call in the middle of the night if you were sick or scared, And some people couldn't list anyone, and
some people could list quite a few people. What we know is that if you're an introvert, you might just need one person in the world like that, but you need somebody. And if you're an extrovert, you might have more people, but you might only need one person. The extrovert who's lonely in a crowd probably doesn't have that person.
And that's what we're really so I think this comes under the professional rubric of security of attachment, that everyone needs to feel securely attached, securely connected to at least one other person. Kids need it, but we need it all the way through lives all the way into old age, and so I think if someone can find the way to make sure they have and nurture at least one of those relationships, the rest is probably much more easy to take care of absolutely everyone. I've been talking to
the one and only Robert Wardinga. The book is called The Good Life Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. I hope you go and grab the bookcase you can see. One thing I love about speaking with Bob is that he's great into weaving, science and spirituality. You know, he has this amazing zen background. But then also as a psychiatrist, I love meeting people who are at the juxtaposition of two seemingly opposite ideas but actually
two things that flow beautifully together. Bob, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you really want to share, or something that's on your heart or mind or in your intuition that you'd love to share with everyone. I'd love to give you that opportunity. Okay, Well, I'll just state something that's obvious but might not be vious all the time, which is that in this quest for happiness for the good life, it's easy to imagine that it's possible to be happy all the time. Nobody on the
planet is happy all the time. And the reason I have to say that is because when we look around us, we see you know, advertisements and social media where people are smiling and having looked like they've got life all figured out. Nobody has life figured out all the time,
every day. And I just want to name that so that you know that life is filled with joys and sorrows and ups and downs, and that you are not having a bad life if there's a mixture of joy and sorrow and boring days and ordinary days in your life. I love that reminder. I think that's such a beautiful thing for all of us to remember. It's You're so right. Our external projection is that someone else has it all together. Whoever that maybe none of us too. I love that.
Thank you so much. Everyone's been watching back at home, or if you're traveling, if you're on the move, you're at work, wherever you are listening and watching, Please do tag us on Instagram, on Twitter, or on TikTok. Let us know what you learned, what you took away. When you grab the book. I want you to take pictures of the book tag me to let me know what line you've read, what moved you, because I would honestly say that the questions this conversation made me ask we're
deeply personal. You could see I was reflecting, like, these are the things we need to spend more time on, and these are the things that we need to focus more deeply on, because these are the things that are so simple that we might just miss them right they're they're right there in front of us, and so you might just ignore them. So thank you so much for listening.
Thank you so much for watching. A big thank you to doctor Robert Wardinger as well, Bob, thank you for making the trip Outen and Honor, thank you so much. Thank you. If you love this episode, you will also love my interview with Charles do Hire on how to hack your brain, change any habit effortlessly, and the secret to making better decisions.