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12:47
What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness | Robert Waldinger | TED
TED
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May 10, 2026
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Transcript
0:12
What keeps us healthy and happy
0:15
as we go through life?
0:18
If you were going to invest now
0:21
in your future best self,
0:23
where would you put your time
and your energy?
0:27
There was a recent survey of millennials
0:29
asking them what their
most important life goals were,
0:34
and over 80 percent said
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0:36
that a major life goal for them
was to get rich.
0:40
And another 50 percent
of those same young adults
0:45
said that another major life goal
0:47
was to become famous.
0:50
(Laughter)
0:52
And we're constantly told
to lean in to work, to push harder
0:58
and achieve more.
1:00
We're given the impression that these
are the things that we need to go after
1:04
in order to have a good life.
1:06
Pictures of entire lives,
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1:08
of the choices that people make
and how those choices work out for them,
1:13
those pictures
are almost impossible to get.
1:18
Most of what we know about human life
1:21
we know from asking people
to remember the past,
1:24
and as we know, hindsight
is anything but 20/20.
1:29
We forget vast amounts
of what happens to us in life,
1:33
and sometimes memory
is downright creative.
1:36
But what if we could watch entire lives
1:41
as they unfold through time?
1:44
What if we could study people
from the time that they were teenagers
1:48
all the way into old age
1:50
to see what really keeps people
happy and healthy?
1:55
We did that.
1:57
The Harvard Study of Adult Development
1:59
may be the longest study
of adult life that's ever been done.
2:05
For 75 years, we've tracked
the lives of 724 men,
2:13
year after year, asking about their work,
their home lives, their health,
2:17
and of course asking all along the way
without knowing how their life stories
2:22
were going to turn out.
2:25
Studies like this are exceedingly rare.
2:28
Almost all projects of this kind
fall apart within a decade
2:33
because too many people
drop out of the study,
2:36
or funding for the research dries up,
2:39
or the researchers get distracted,
2:41
or they die, and nobody moves the ball
further down the field.
2:46
But through a combination of luck
2:48
and the persistence
of several generations of researchers,
2:52
this study has survived.
2:54
About 60 of our original 724 men
2:59
are still alive,
3:00
still participating in the study,
3:02
most of them in their 90s.
3:05
And we are now beginning to study
3:07
the more than 2,000 children of these men.
3:11
And I'm the fourth director of the study.
3:15
Since 1938, we've tracked the lives
of two groups of men.
3:20
The first group started in the study
3:22
when they were sophomores
at Harvard College.
3:25
They all finished college
during World War II,
3:27
and then most went off
to serve in the war.
3:31
And the second group that we've followed
3:33
was a group of boys
from Boston's poorest neighborhoods,
3:37
boys who were chosen for the study
3:39
specifically because they were
from some of the most troubled
3:43
and disadvantaged families
3:44
in the Boston of the 1930s.
3:47
Most lived in tenements,
many without hot and cold running water.
3:54
When they entered the study,
3:56
all of these teenagers were interviewed.
3:59
They were given medical exams.
4:01
We went to their homes
and we interviewed their parents.
4:05
And then these teenagers
grew up into adults
4:07
who entered all walks of life.
4:10
They became factory workers and lawyers
and bricklayers and doctors,
4:16
one President of the United States.
4:20
Some developed alcoholism.
A few developed schizophrenia.
4:25
Some climbed the social ladder
4:27
from the bottom
all the way to the very top,
4:30
and some made that journey
in the opposite direction.
4:35
The founders of this study
4:38
would never in their wildest dreams
4:40
have imagined that I would be
standing here today, 75 years later,
4:45
telling you that
the study still continues.
4:49
Every two years, our patient
and dedicated research staff
4:52
calls up our men
and asks them if we can send them
4:56
yet one more set of questions
about their lives.
5:00
Many of the inner city Boston men ask us,
5:03
"Why do you keep wanting to study me?
My life just isn't that interesting."
5:08
The Harvard men never ask that question.
5:11
(Laughter)
5:20
To get the clearest picture
of these lives,
5:23
we don't just send them questionnaires.
5:26
We interview them in their living rooms.
5:29
We get their medical records
from their doctors.
5:32
We draw their blood, we scan their brains,
5:34
we talk to their children.
5:36
We videotape them talking with their wives
about their deepest concerns.
5:41
And when, about a decade ago,
we finally asked the wives
5:45
if they would join us
as members of the study,
5:47
many of the women said,
"You know, it's about time."
5:50
(Laughter)
5:51
So what have we learned?
5:53
What are the lessons that come
from the tens of thousands of pages
5:58
of information that we've generated
6:01
on these lives?
6:03
Well, the lessons aren't about wealth
or fame or working harder and harder.
6:10
The clearest message that we get
from this 75-year study is this:
6:16
Good relationships keep us
happier and healthier. Period.
6:23
We've learned three big lessons
about relationships.
6:26
The first is that social connections
are really good for us,
6:30
and that loneliness kills.
6:33
It turns out that people
who are more socially connected
6:37
to family, to friends, to community,
6:40
are happier, they're physically healthier,
and they live longer
6:45
than people who are less well connected.
6:48
And the experience of loneliness
turns out to be toxic.
6:51
People who are more isolated
than they want to be from others
6:57
find that they are less happy,
7:00
their health declines earlier in midlife,
7:03
their brain functioning declines sooner
7:05
and they live shorter lives
than people who are not lonely.
7:10
And the sad fact
is that at any given time,
7:13
more than one in five Americans
will report that they're lonely.
7:19
And we know that you
can be lonely in a crowd
7:21
and you can be lonely in a marriage,
7:24
so the second big lesson that we learned
7:26
is that it's not just
the number of friends you have,
7:29
and it's not whether or not
you're in a committed relationship,
7:33
but it's the quality
of your close relationships that matters.
7:38
It turns out that living in the midst
of conflict is really bad for our health.
7:43
High-conflict marriages, for example,
without much affection,
7:47
turn out to be very bad for our health,
perhaps worse than getting divorced.
7:53
And living in the midst of good,
warm relationships is protective.
7:57
Once we had followed our men
all the way into their 80s,
8:01
we wanted to look back at them at midlife
8:04
and to see if we could predict
8:05
who was going to grow
into a happy, healthy octogenarian
8:09
and who wasn't.
8:11
And when we gathered together
everything we knew about them
8:15
at age 50,
8:18
it wasn't their middle age
cholesterol levels
8:20
that predicted how they
were going to grow old.
8:23
It was how satisfied they were
in their relationships.
8:27
The people who were the most satisfied
in their relationships at age 50
8:31
were the healthiest at age 80.
8:35
And good, close relationships
seem to buffer us
8:38
from some of the slings and arrows
of getting old.
8:42
Our most happily partnered men and women
8:46
reported, in their 80s,
8:48
that on the days
when they had more physical pain,
8:51
their mood stayed just as happy.
8:54
But the people who were
in unhappy relationships,
8:57
on the days when they
reported more physical pain,
9:00
it was magnified by more emotional pain.
9:04
And the third big lesson that we learned
about relationships and our health
9:08
is that good relationships
don't just protect our bodies,
9:12
they protect our brains.
9:14
It turns out that being
in a securely attached relationship
9:19
to another person in your 80s
is protective,
9:23
that the people who are in relationships
9:25
where they really feel they can count
on the other person in times of need,
9:29
those people's memories
stay sharper longer.
9:32
And the people in relationships
9:34
where they feel they really
can't count on the other one,
9:37
those are the people who experience
earlier memory decline.
9:42
And those good relationships,
they don't have to be smooth all the time.
9:46
Some of our octogenarian couples
could bicker with each other
9:49
day in and day out,
9:51
but as long as they felt that they
could really count on the other
9:54
when the going got tough,
9:56
those arguments didn't take a toll
on their memories.
10:01
So this message,
10:04
that good, close relationships
are good for our health and well-being,
10:10
this is wisdom that's as old as the hills.
10:13
Why is this so hard to get
and so easy to ignore?
10:17
Well, we're human.
10:19
What we'd really like is a quick fix,
10:21
something we can get
10:23
that'll make our lives good
and keep them that way.
10:27
Relationships are messy
and they're complicated
10:30
and the hard work of tending
to family and friends,
10:34
it's not sexy or glamorous.
10:37
It's also lifelong. It never ends.
10:40
The people in our 75-year study
who were the happiest in retirement
10:45
were the people who had actively worked
to replace workmates with new playmates.
10:51
Just like the millennials
in that recent survey,
10:54
many of our men when they
were starting out as young adults
10:58
really believed that fame and wealth
and high achievement
11:02
were what they needed to go after
to have a good life.
11:06
But over and over, over these 75 years,
our study has shown
11:10
that the people who fared the best were
the people who leaned in to relationships,
11:16
with family, with friends, with community.
11:21
So what about you?
11:23
Let's say you're 25,
or you're 40, or you're 60.
11:27
What might leaning in
to relationships even look like?
11:31
Well, the possibilities
are practically endless.
11:35
It might be something as simple
as replacing screen time with people time
11:41
or livening up a stale relationship
by doing something new together,
11:46
long walks or date nights,
11:49
or reaching out to that family member
who you haven't spoken to in years,
11:54
because those all-too-common family feuds
11:57
take a terrible toll
12:00
on the people who hold the grudges.
12:04
I'd like to close with a quote
from Mark Twain.
12:09
More than a century ago,
12:11
he was looking back on his life,
12:14
and he wrote this:
12:16
"There isn't time, so brief is life,
12:20
for bickerings, apologies,
heartburnings, callings to account.
12:26
There is only time for loving,
12:29
and but an instant,
so to speak, for that."
12:34
The good life is built
with good relationships.
12:39
Thank you.
12:40
(Applause)
— end of transcript —
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