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