What is the Key to a Happy Life? This Study Has the Answer
If you had to pick one thing that would improve the quality of your life, what would it be? More money, perhaps. A bigger home for you and your family. A better job, with more meaning, status or respect. Being able to live a life which is more aligned with your values. More holidays. Improved sleep. A healthier diet. Regular exercise. The list of possibilities is endless.
But what if I told you that there was one, scientifically validated thing, that has been proven to improve the quality of people’s lives. And that this thing, although it’s not easy to achieve, is at least achievable for us all. It’s free. And opportunities to enjoy it are in plentiful supply. Would you be interested? I thought so. But before the big reveal, a little background on one of the key studies to offer up this life-changing wisdom.
Regular readers will know that I have spoken of this study before, but it’s worth revisiting because it offers such a remarkable, deep dive into what it means to be human, and to live a flourishing life. It’s called the Harvard Study of Adult Development and is the longest in-depth longitudinal study of human life ever done. The Study began in 1938 and, remarkably, it’s still going strong almost 90 years later. There were originally 724 participants (268 sophomores at Harvard University and 456 inner-city Boston boys from tough neighbourhoods), but it has expanded to include the men’s wives and 1,300 of their descendants.
In what was, at the time, a bold move, the Study sought not to understand what made people ill, but what made them thrive – the secret ingredients to a happy life. And what is so fascinating is that it has studied the 724 men in such depth, gaining granular detail of every aspect of their lives, with regular – and very long – questionnaires about their physical and mental health, work lives, friendships, marriages, parenting style, how they cope with adversity and much, much more. Some of the men opened up their entire lives, from adolescence until their final days.
If you would like to read about it, I strongly recommend The Good Life and How to Live it: Lessons from the World’s Longest Study on Happiness, by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz (the Study’s current director and associate director). It’s a lovely, warm, inspiring book full of stories about the men, and later women, who let researchers into every aspect of their lives. So what is the magic ingredient? Well, it’s simple – warm, loving relationships. More than any other factor, whether that be genetic inheritance, class, level of income, diet or material possessions, maintaining warm relationships was the clear finding of this and other longitudinal studies. It was far and away the best predictor of a happy, meaningful and flourishing life.
Fulfilling relationships are not easy
I have been re-reading this wonderful book as I enter the final stretch of writing my own self-help book, on healing childhood trauma. Chapter Ten (the final chapter!) is all about post-traumatic growth, so I am devouring books about how to find happiness after crises or adversity. And this is another key strand of The Good Life, because the authors make clear finding happy relationships is not easy. It takes work, dedication and commitment. Many of the Study participants have been through terrible tragedies and transformative traumas. A number of the men fought in World War Two and so would have seen and experienced things no human should ever have to go through. But the relationships they returned to after the war – their birth family, friends, partners and children – helped mitigate the horrors they had experienced.
And this is one of the lessons we can all learn. Many of us have been through traumatic events in our lives. Some not too severe, some truly awful. And these events cause wounds (in fact the original meaning of trauma, in Ancient Greek, is ‘wound’). And many of us struggle to form secure, nourishing, supportive relationships. Sadly, the two problems are often related. But, as I am always saying in these posts, we can always heal, whatever we have been through and however deep our wounds. It’s also true that we can always improve the quality of our relationships, if we make them a priority and put the work in. You may need help with that, from a trauma-informed therapist, but it’s still possible for us all.
I hope that helps – and do read this wonderful book, you won’t regret it.
Also, I have just recorded a new breathwork practice for Insight Timer you may enjoy. It’s called Five-Finger Breathing and is a lovely, simple practice that will help you feel calmer and more at peace, so do give it a try. Just click on the button below to listen now.
Love,
Dan ❤️