Robert Waldinger: How to Be Happy

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People. We're in a mission to make you remarkable.
We're starting the year with answers to the mother of all questions, “How do I achieve happiness?”
Providing the answer is Robert Waldinger.
Robert is the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. This study is the longest scientific examination of happiness ever conducted, more than eighty years in the making.
His TED Talk, What Makes a Good Life? Lessons From the Longest Study on Happiness, is one of the ten most popular Ted talks of all time, forty-three million views in counting.
He is currently a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital, and co-founder of the Lifespan Research Foundation.
He has a great new book called, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.
Partial spoiler alert, money is not the key to happiness. Keep listening to find out what is.
I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. And now here is the remarkable Robert Waldinger.
How does it feel to be the center of knowledge about happiness in the world? This is a big responsibility.
Robert Waldinger:
I feel like a phony. So I'm not the center of knowledge.
Certainly we have studied what helps people be happy, what helps them thrive, but I don't claim to have the last word, that's for sure.
Guy Kawasaki:
You may not have the last word, but arguably you have the most data, no?
Robert Waldinger:
We do. We have a huge amount of data. It's pretty wonderful to be able to see a whole life over eighty-five years. It's absolutely amazing.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm an author and I have been involved with software projects and hardware projects and one of the first things that I wondered about immediately is just what kind of mental approach does it take to do a research project that's more than eighty years old and is going to continue after you and who knows what's going to happen.
So how do you even approach that?
Robert Waldinger:
That's such a good question. Actually nobody's ever asked me that question.
The way I approach it is as being a steward. As this is a relay, right? I took the baton from my predecessor, the third director of the study, George Vaillant, and I'm going to hand the baton on perhaps.
It really feels like a privilege to have inherited this study and I feel like there's a lot to make sure we put out there.
One of the reasons why we're doing this, why we wrote the book and why I'm so glad to be talking to you is that we've been publishing papers in journals that nobody reads, highly technical academic journals.
And at a certain point I began to say this, "We know things that can help people." And that was when I began to say, "Okay, I want to spend a lot of my effort going forward trying to get out what we know to places where people can go."
Guy Kawasaki:
I read the New England Journal of Medicine regularly, just FYI. No, I'm kidding.
Robert Waldinger:
I was going to say, I don't.
Guy Kawasaki:
A personal question. So do you have kids?
Robert Waldinger:
I do. I've got two sons. One is thirty-four and one is thirty-one.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Do you think someone can experience the good life, happiness, eudemonia, if you don't have kids?
Robert Waldinger:
Yes. And actually there's research on that. So they've studied families, couples, individuals who choose not to have children and who choose to have children.
And on average the people who have children are not happier and they're not less happy than the people who choose not to have children.
Guy Kawasaki:
Really?
Robert Waldinger:
Really. Isn't that amazing? I can't imagine my life now without having had my kids, but it's another path, right?
It's a road not taken for me. I would've undoubtedly done different things with my life.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes.
Robert Waldinger:
Because think about all the time you spend driving the kids to their soccer games and doing all these things that we spent so many hours doing.
Guy Kawasaki:
To be subtle, I think if I didn't have kids, I would be a self-centered asshole, which some people say I am already, but even more so.
Robert Waldinger:
I agree. And for myself, I think I would be much more self-centered if I didn't have kids.
Guy Kawasaki:
Let's say that I'm picking out a random number. Let's say that your estate is worth five million dollars. Okay? Or ten or one hundred. Pick a number, whatever you want.
Robert Waldinger:
Those sound good to me. Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
You being so knowledgeable about what ultimately creates happiness and goodness, good life, how would you leave that money? Who would you leave it to? How much to your kids, how much to not-for-profits? What do you think the money will do?
Robert Waldinger:
If I had a billion dollars, I'd take the billionaire's pledge. Do you know about that pledge where you can commit to giving at least half of the money away during your lifetime? And so I think I would do that.
I'd commit to giving at least half of it away. I think if I were going to give to just one thing, which I probably wouldn't do, but if I were going to give to just one, it would be to support early child development and the people who care for young children because there have been studies that show that for every dollar we put into early child development, the payoff is enormous in terms of kids growing up to be self-sufficient, productive members of society, not drains on society.
And so that's what I would do. But it's a long term.
Guy Kawasaki:
We had a guest named Dana Suskind and she makes the case that education begins from the second you're out of the womb and you should not wait until you're five years old in preschool I forget about the number. 30,000 or thirty million or 300,000 words thing that kids who have much more interaction, hear more words, are much better developed because of the interaction that starts immediately.
Robert Waldinger:
They are. Absolutely. And we know that Head Start, for example, made a huge difference for kids. It was hard to see it initially and they almost stopped Head Start.
They almost discontinued the program as soon as it was started. And then what they saw if they followed these kids over several years is that they were way ahead of their peers in reading and all the school indicators, right? The kids who didn't get Head Start were much behind the kids who did.
Guy Kawasaki:
Now, you successfully evaded the question a little, but I really want to know what you would give your two sons. So now you gave 500 million to the pledge, you have 500 million left, how much do your sons get?
And what I'm trying to get at is, do you think that giving them money is going to create happiness or unhappiness?
Robert Waldinger:
Oh, okay. I can tell you something about research, not just about the world according to Bob Waldinger. So the research, as I bet you know, has looked at how much we get happier as we earn more money.
And what it's shown, and this is done maybe five years ago, is that once you get above about 75,000 in annual household income, your happiness doesn't go up much after that, the more you earned.
So before 75,000, your happiness really does go up because we get our material needs met and that's crucial to our happiness. But once you get your basic needs met, you don't get much of an increase at all.
Guy Kawasaki:
So are you saying you're going to give your son 75,000?
Robert Waldinger:
No, I'd give them more. I would give them enough for a down payment on a house if I could. And you know what I would do if I could? I'd start an education fund for grandchildren.
We don't have any yet, but my older son is engaged to be married. I would give the kind of support that allows people a leg up on having the basics that they need.
And particularly children, children's education I would try to help with and giving my sons the ability to make a down payment on a house.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Got it.
Robert Waldinger:
How's that?
Guy Kawasaki:
That's good. Okay, I'm going to let my kids listen to this. Not that I have a billion dollars to give.
I have a scientific question now, could there not be a real serious Hawthorne effect that is being measured in the study affects the happiness of the subjects because they're being observed?
Robert Waldinger:
You are totally right. The gold standard would be to be completely hands off as a researcher to not intervene at all, to not even smile at them when we go see them in their homes, to try not to influence our research subjects and not influence what we find.
Of course that's impossible. But my predecessors decided they weren't going to do that, that they were going to be a hands on study. So, many people came to us when they were young even and said, "My marriage is in trouble. Can you help me? Or I need this kind of a doctor." And we would help them.
I have personally found a couples therapist for a couple in their eighties who were fighting like cats and dogs who were from our study. And so at one point we asked people, "How has being part of this study affected your life?"
And some of our participants said, "Oh, it's just been a nuisance. I hate all your questions." Some of them said “It hasn't affected it at all”, but many of them said, "It made a huge difference in my life, that your questions every so often got me to think about myself and where my life was going."
So we know that the fact that we were studying these people had this effect that you're talking about. It probably had all kinds of different effects that we can't fully describe, but we know that it changed people.
Guy Kawasaki:
So we have both the Hawthorne effect and the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle at play.
Robert Waldinger:
Yeah, we do. We were participant observers, we were involved with these people and we were observing these people. And you can't quite do both. You certainly can't do both in a clean way.
Guy Kawasaki:
Next scientific question. In a longitudinal study, how do you control for the "After this, therefore, because of this"?
For example, the conclusion is people with social connections are happier, but maybe they were happier so they got more social connections, so which came first?
Robert Waldinger:
Yeah. Guy, I love these questions. I really do. I just want to say these are great questions.
Guy Kawasaki:
Do I have better questions than the New York Times and NBR?
Robert Waldinger:
I don't know. I can't say that for sure, but I can say that you got fabulous questions.
Guy Kawasaki:
How about you just wink?
Robert Waldinger:
Yeah, okay, I'll just wink. You wouldn't tell anybody. These are really great questions. No, they are. Seriously.
Because when you do this kind of observational study, when you follow people along through their lives, you can't prove cause and effect. The only way to prove that this causes that is if you completely control an experiment and you vary one condition.
Guy Kawasaki:
Right.
Robert Waldinger:
So let's say if I could assign some children to difficult childhoods and some children to perfect childhoods and then see the outcomes, and of course our human subjects committee would never allow us to do that and we'd never want to, it would be unethical, but we have to simply observe.
And what that means is just what you're saying, that the chicken and egg phenomenon. “Do good relationships cause us to be healthier or does being healthier allow us, give us the energy to form better relationships?” Undoubtedly, it's some of both. Undoubtedly it's a two-way street.
And so there are some ways of teasing this out and time can help. So for example, we see what precedes what? Often depression and alcoholism go together. And if you ask people who suffer from both, "Which came first? Your depression or your trouble with alcohol?"
They will almost always say to you, "Oh, I got depressed. And that's what made me start to drink." When we look at our people who actually developed both, it's almost always the reverse. It's almost always that people started to drink too much and then depression seemed to come afterwards.
Whether we can say that alcoholism caused the depression isn't quite scientifically valid, but you can get a much better indicator that the alcohol was what contributed to the depression more than vice versa. And that's just an example. Your question is right on target, and we can't fully answer it.
Guy Kawasaki:
What has been the benefits and/or tolls on the people who worked on the project because they're meeting all these people, they're questioning them, they're taking blood tests, they're asking them all these things?
Robert Waldinger:
I'll tell you a little story about that. So we started studying couples in their eighties. When our original people had reached their eighties, we went and we interviewed them with their partners and did very rich interviews.
Our interviewers, they were all young people who were graduated from college, they were going to go to grad school and they wanted to work in our lab, so they did. And they went out to interview these people who were their grandparents' age. And several of the couples said to them, "You're not asking us any questions about sex. Don't you think we have sex?"
And our young twenty something interviewers came back to our lab saying, "Oh my God, they asked us why we're not talking about sex." These were usually lovely young women who were saying, "I don't want to talk to these grandparent age people about sex." So we have all kinds of uncommon effects.
I would say that for all of us, certainly for myself, it makes me think more about my life. It makes me think more about how I'm conducting my own life.
And that has made a difference for me in some of the things I choose. And many of the people who come to work with us, and there have been hundreds now, say that it just causes us to ask these questions about what's really important and what do I prioritize?
Guy Kawasaki:
I bet it does, yes.
So you mentioned a story in your book that a woman named Ananya was skeptical about the sampling, right?
These are all Harvard self-selected, these are rich people, these are white men, et cetera, et cetera.
Robert Waldinger:
Exactly.
Guy Kawasaki:
So she was skeptical about the sampling and therefore the data. And then she read some cases and she got absolutely hooked.
So what is it that hooks people who are scientifically skeptical?
Robert Waldinger:
So what she was thinking, and she was a terrific student, and she was thinking, "What do I have in common with these white guys from Harvard?"
And then what happens when you read these life stories, and these are like great big fat files, you flip through the pages and you read about their struggles, about their insecurity in their freshman year of college, about what it's like to get their first job and to feel like they don't like their job, or how scared they were going to World War II, or early arguments with their spouses after they got married. And it just feels so human, right?
And then you get to read about these lives. And that's why she came back and said, "I want to do this" because what you see is what we all know, which is that really all these things that we think make us so different are not nearly as important as so many of the commonalities of just being human and going through the life cycle.
I think that's what gets us. It got me hooked when my predecessor said to me, "How would you like to inherit this study?" I said, "Let me go check it out." And it was reading through these life stories that got me hooked.
Guy Kawasaki:
Studs Terkel is probably smiling someplace right now when you said that, right?
Robert Waldinger:
Yeah. Absolutely. One of the best storytellers, right?
Guy Kawasaki:
Absolutely. Yeah. So you're a teacher, and I have great appreciation for teachers. And so as I was reading your book, I asked myself, "Do you think teachers are eudemonia junkies?" Is that what drives them? Because we know it's not the money and now they can't even pick textbooks and parents are telling them what to teach and all that, but they still do it. So how do we still have good teachers?
Robert Waldinger:
That's a great question. I think they're the people who are junkies for what they call in my field “Generativity.”
Ideally, we all get to a point where we care about fostering the next generation. And that could be being a good parent, being a good mentor, but we care about who's going to come after us in the world and what's the world going to be like with those people.
I think that what teachers love is fostering the welfare and the development of younger people and watching a child light up with a new idea or a new sense of possibility.
So that's my sense of what the best teachers love about what they do. We're lucky that they care about that more than they care about great big fat paychecks.
Guy Kawasaki:
And has there been a harder time to be a teacher than now?
Robert Waldinger:
No, not at all. One of my closest friends is a high school teacher and he talks about just feeling so worn down, but he has much more compassion for the kids who are even more worn down than the teachers in many ways.
Because many of them are feeling quite lost, were, when they were isolated at home.
So, really hard time. These are like the heroes of our world that are not recognized enough.
Guy Kawasaki:
Your book chronicles the life path of... Was it Leo and the other guy was the lawyer and Leo was the high school teacher?
Robert Waldinger:
Yeah, Leo and John. Yeah. Those are disguised names, but they're real people. We tell their stories. We disguise their names so that we protect their privacy because they are quite real.
Guy Kawasaki:
One of the insights you and your team must have gained that many people could learn from is how did you build trust with these participants? Because you are in their faces, you're taking blood samples.
This is not just, "Go to a website and click a few buttons."
Robert Waldinger:
No, this is, "Get into our FMRI machine. This is let us stress you out and then measure your heart rate." Yeah. So how did we engender trust? One of the ways is that we stayed in good contact.
So we'd send them thank you notes when they sent back a questionnaire. We'd send them birthday cards.
The other thing is that we promise confidentiality. And what that means is that they feel safe to tell us very private things about their lives. Sometimes things they never told anybody.
And we've had, for example, a spouse or one of their children ask us, "Can you tell me what my parents said about this or what my partner said about this?"
And we have to say, "I'm sorry, we can't." So whatever you tell me, if you're one of our participants, whatever you tell me is confidential even from your relatives. And that's one of the things that makes them trust us.
Guy Kawasaki:
Now, as time went on, it seems to me that multiple studies in multiple locations have all said the same thing.
So at this point, do you believe that the pool of subjects and everything is statistically valid and balanced? And it might not be perfect science, but it's definitely repeatable.
Robert Waldinger:
What we do is we try to only bring out those findings in this setting that are repeatable. So what we published in the book where the findings that other studies had found as well, because as you know, I'm sure no single study proves anything, particularly studies of development.
Really they don't. What you want is the same studies pointing at the same findings, right? Because otherwise we could have findings that just happen by chance. Statistical flukes.
I wouldn't have written this book and you and I wouldn't be talking about this unless many different studies of different groups of people found the same thing, which is that investing in your relationships is so powerful for your happiness and your health.
Guy Kawasaki:
So now let's just get into the tactics, seriously. First of all, how would you define the good life?
Robert Waldinger:
You don't ask easy questions, Guy. The good life is being engaged in activities you care about with people who you enjoy and respect. That's the good life.
Guy Kawasaki:
And yet many people are pursuing "wealth, power, fame," et cetera, et cetera.
So do you think you're going to change people's minds? And what's going to happen? Is Elon Musk going to renounce his entire behavior set and start worrying about the next generation?
Robert Waldinger:
I know better than to speculate about the inner life of Elon Musk, that's for sure.
But your question is, “Is anybody going to change their minds?” I don't know because we are up against a torrent of messages that draws in the other direction.
So think about the messages we get all day long from the media, from our phones, from our screens that say, "Buy stuff, it'll make you happy. Buy stuff, it'll make you sexy. It'll make you always look young." Just so many things.
So buy stuff, make a lot of money because the people in beautiful settings who are beautifully dressed look endlessly happy, right? It's all those messages that are subliminal, but sometimes just right out there, right up front.
I think that those messages make us believe, "Wait, there has to be some way to get it all figured out to be happy once and for all the time." And the truth is nobody's happy all the time and nobody finally arrives in the place where it's all good forever.
And that's one of the things we talk about in our book a lot. We tell these stories of these people going through their entire lives.
What we are really careful to do is talk about the ups and the downs. Because I think that otherwise we can get the impression, "If I'm not happy, it's because I'm not doing the right stuff. I don't have enough money, or I'm not with the right people, or I'm not wearing the right clothes."
So we just want to be one more voice. Getting the message out there with data, scientific data that says, "That's not the truth. Don't believe all the hype we're getting all day long."
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, speaking as a marketer, it would be helpful if someone of your scientific authority could point to some visible people and say, "See, this person is genuinely living a good life and happy."
So is there anybody that is an example of how to live?
Robert Waldinger:
There are lots of people. There really are. And they're not necessarily poor people. Some of them are very rich, but it's just people who live with integrity.
And certainly one of my heroes, of course, is the Dalai Lama. Now he lives in a very particular way because he's completely devoted his life to Buddhism and to teaching that. But there are wonderful people who live lives of meaning and integrity that are not flashy and not full of hype.
Guy Kawasaki:
Can you name some names? I need some names here.
Robert Waldinger:
You need some names. All right. Who? Gosh, one of my heroes is Barack Obama. Yes, he's a politician, but when you hear him speak, he speaks just with a lot of integrity and a fair amount of humility about what any one person can know and do.
I actually feel that way about Michelle Obama too, the people who just come across as fairly real and down to earth. There are plenty of other people. I'm just randomly pulling them from my memory banks.
Meryl Streep happens to be a person who I've always thought of when I hear her speak is just really down to earth despite being tremendously famous.
Guy Kawasaki:
How about Jimmy Carter?
Robert Waldinger:
Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely Jimmy Carter.
Gosh, who else? I happen not to agree with her politics, but I think Liz Cheney has been one of those people who just has a whole lot of integrity and believes in what she believes in and says what she thinks. I think the people who I feel are happiest are also the people who I feel have some kind of good solid moral compass.
And because I think that goes along with having a life that you feel is meaningful, where you're not saying stuff that you know isn't true. You're not saying stuff just for advantage.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, I just thought Jane Goodall has to be near the top of that list too, right?
Robert Waldinger:
Yeah, totally, totally. Absolutely.
You know who else? Bryan Stevenson, the man who has defended death row in May. So there are just so many people. They don't all have easy lives.
Mother Teresa had a terrible life with many dark nights of the soul, but she just dedicated herself to relieving suffering. And that's what made her life meaningful.
There are people who are philanthropists, people who have made a ton of money and then spend a great deal of time trying to make the world better. And I have enormous respect for those people.
Guy Kawasaki:
Is there a critical mass for social connections where if you want to have this good happy life, you need X at least?
Robert Waldinger:
No, there isn't, and I'll explain why I say that…We know temperamentally that we are all somewhere on a spectrum between introversion, shyness at one end, and extroversion, being a party animal at the other end and that each of us is somewhere along that spectrum.
I have some extroverted qualities and some shy qualities. What that means is that I'm not really good at cocktail parties. I love talking with you right now. That's fun for me. It's energizing. But put me in a cocktail party where I don't know anybody, it's, "Oh gosh."
So I think what we've learned is that some people just need one or two good, solid relationships, and actually more people in their life is exhausting and maybe a little scary. Other people get their energy from being with people and they need more people in their life.
And so each person needs to take a reading for themselves. "What's okay for me? What's right for me in terms of the amount of social connection that I have?"
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, do only humans count in the sense that what if you have a great relationship with a horse or a dog or nature or God?
Robert Waldinger:
Yeah all those things count. They do count, because one of the great benefits of relationships is that they help us manage stress. They help us calm down when we're afraid or upset.
And yes, people can do that for us for sure, and we think that's one of the great health benefits of warm relationships. But a good relationship with God can do that, a wonderful pet. Some people's best friend is their cat or their dog or their parrot.
What we know is that the presence of an animal can really center you, calm you down, bring you back to some kind of equilibrium. So no, it doesn't have to be a human.
Guy Kawasaki:
Of all people, I think you can opine about this, which is the proverbial work life balance. Is that a myth?
Robert Waldinger:
Yeah, it is, because it's a balance that's always in flux. Sometimes I work harder than other times. Sometimes I'm more involved at home than other times and it's ever changing.
The other thing is that it implies a kind of sadness that work is here and my life is there. And work is our lives. Think about how much of our waking life is spent at work, right?
So I think what we talk about in the book a lot is the idea that we can try to really create relationships at work that are nourishing, that help us feel like we matter, that are places where we can talk about what's important to us.
And that doesn't have to be separate from and different from the rest of our lives. And the other thing we know, and I bet you know this, is that people who have a friend at work are more engaged at work, they're more productive, they're less likely to leave their jobs.
So it's a great thing even for an organization's bottom line when people have friends that they look forward to seeing at the workplace.
Guy Kawasaki:
Therein lies a great catch because you said seeing at work, which for two or three years we haven't been seeing anybody at work.
So can Zoom take the place of this?
Robert Waldinger:
No, not completely. I think we're all aware of that. We know that virtual interaction filters some things out as we relate to each other.
You and I are having a nice connection right now and a friendly conversation. But what gets filtered out? What are the subtleties of emotional communication that gets filtered out on a virtual platform? I think there's some research going on now about this, but we don't really understand it yet.
And I think we will understand more in the future. But the bottom line is I don't think we can replace in-person interaction with virtual interaction. There's some things that we know are missing.
Guy Kawasaki:
And yet you would probably say that grandparents visiting their grandchildren on Zoom is better than seeing them twice a year.
Robert Waldinger:
Totally. Totally. And so that's the other thing. Thank you. So what we also know is that virtual interaction allows us to do things that we otherwise wouldn't be able to do.
So it's not that it's just bad or it filters things out that we need. It's that it's really good. I know people my age, older people who have reconnected with elementary school friends on Facebook and they start having weekly calls, video chats on Facebook with these people who they had lost touch with and they're having so much fun doing it and feeling so much more connected again to the world.
So all of that is to say, absolutely, there's a lot that these screens are providing for us.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. So how can people improve and energize relationships?
Robert Waldinger:
First thing is to take stock of what you would like more of. So relationships give us all different kinds of things and we get different things from different people. You may have some relationships where they're for fun, that's what you do together.
And then you have some other relationships where you get emotional support, some other relationships where you need someone to come help you take down a wall or lay out a new garden, that's a material assistance kind of help. There are people give you rides to the doctor.
So what do you have in your life? What would you like more of? So that's the first step.
And then the second step is to be active in seeing if you can strengthen the relationships or make new relationships that'll give you some of what you'd like more of.
And we talk about something we call social fitness, which is kind of like physical fitness. So I go to the gym today and I come home. I don't say to myself, "That's done. I don't ever have to do that again."
But a lot of times we do that with our relationships. We say, "I have my good friends. They're always going to be my good friends. I don't have to do anything about that."
But what we find when we study people is that it's really easy for friendships to wither away, not because there's any problem with them, but just because we don't take care of them, we don't invest in them.
So what I would say is people can be proactive. Like you could be proactive right now. I'll give a little challenge in case your listeners might want this. Think of somebody you miss, somebody you'd like to have a little bit of contact with. It could be for any reason.
And just reach out to them now. Just send them a little text or an email or pick up the phone when you're done listening to this and just send them a little pinged. And then notice what comes back to you.
Now it won't work all the time, but you will be amazed at the number of times when you will get an enthusiastic response. And often that will restart a contact that you've wanted to rekindle.
Guy Kawasaki:
I noticed that you ended your book with that exercise, which I thought was very interesting.
Robert Waldinger:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, because we wanted to do that because it's what we've started doing in our own lives and it works.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'll tell you a story that maybe you can use someday in your three TED Talks a year.
Madisun and I get literally hundreds of requests for people to be on this show.
Robert Waldinger:
Wow.
Guy Kawasaki:
And we only can do fifty-two a year, so we turned on the vast majority of requests. And I would say that we respond to every request.
We don't just blow them off or ignore them no matter how ridiculous the request is.
Robert Waldinger:
Good for you. Good for you.
Guy Kawasaki:
I am constantly amazed that a personalized rejection can generate such gratitude that, "Thank you for letting us know. At least you let us know. We understand how busy it is. We love your podcast, we'll listen to it also," and et cetera, et cetera. And this is by taking thirty seconds to just letting people know the answer is no.
Robert Waldinger:
Yeah, because you know what you did? You let them know that they matter, that they're just not someone to be ignored. It doesn't take much to let people know that they matter.
That's really great that you do that. I try to do that too. I was trained as a physician and I still practice. And so my understanding is whenever someone contacts, you have to get back to them, particularly if it's in a patient care setting.
Guy Kawasaki:
Sure.
Robert Waldinger:
So I've just been trained all the time to get back to people, but just like you, people have been surprised that I get back to them. And it means so much that you guys do that.
Guy Kawasaki:
And as I think about it more and more, this says a lot about the other hundred podcasters they contacted trying to get on. The fact that we're so unusual to respond at all says something.
Robert Waldinger:
Yes. Yes. And I think that's something to remember. When you stop to think in your own mind, "Do I have to get back to this person or not?", if you think about it, do it unless you're really afraid of some engagement with them. Otherwise, if it occurs to you, just get back to them even if it's just to say a polite, "Sorry, I can't do that."
Guy Kawasaki:
What's your advice on how to get past rough spots in relationships?
Robert Waldinger:
One of the things that's really clear from studying these thousands of lives is that all relationships have rough spots. Any relationship of any depth or any length has conflict in it.
Because we don't always agree. I think what we learn is that working out the problems usually makes the relationship stronger. And so it's worth the investment to try to get over a rough spot, to try to work out a misunderstanding.
And that be surprised at how much more closely bonded you can feel to this person who you've had a disagreement with if you guys come to some better understanding.
Guy Kawasaki:
Is there a rock solid reasonable signal to know that it's time to end the relationship?
Robert Waldinger:
Yeah, there is. The most rock solid is if it feels abusive.
First of all, if a relationship is physically abusive and you can do it, get out, get yourself safe.
That if it feels emotionally abusive, you may want to check it out with someone you trust because sometimes what feels emotionally abusive may not be, it may just be someone else seeing the world differently.
But if it is emotionally abusive, nobody should be shaming you, nobody should be making you feel bad about yourself.
And so in those instances, if somebody won't stop that once you ask, you step away.
Guy Kawasaki:
I don't want to impugn your book, but can people decide because they got enlightened by your book or your TED Talk or whatever, and just decide, "Okay, from now on I'm going to pursue the good life, the happiness?" And kind of sincere real that you're discussing. Or by definition, if you're seeking something, you'll not find it?
Robert Waldinger:
Ooh, I like that question. My zen background includes this idea that when we go after things, often they are elusive and they receive from us. But I think what we are talking about is not pursuing the good life in the abstract.
We're talking about some very small specific things you can do today, you can do each day, you can do each week. Not everything's going to pay off, but over time a collection of these small actions will pay off.
So yes, I think you can. I do think you can do that, which is different from some grand abstract pursuit of greatness or happiness.
Guy Kawasaki:
I got to ask you, what are these small actions?
Robert Waldinger:
So it's reaching out to people. When you think about connecting, reach out and connect unless it's 3:00 AM, but obviously at the appropriate time. Don't hold back.
Almost always people will be happy to connect. You can cultivate certain talents like making casual conversation, even talking to strangers. And you'll be surprised at how much you enjoy it when you do that. So there are these kind of simple actions.
Again, working out difficulties as we just talked about.
Another small action and people could bring this particularly at family gatherings, which can be hard, is to keep bringing curiosity.
So those relatives who you feel you know everything about and you know what they're going to say and you know the stories they're going to tell that we stopped being interested in each other. So one of my zen teachers gave me this instruction, which I've used now in these kinds of situations, which is to notice, "What's here right now with this person or in our conversation that I haven't noticed before?"
So this person who I think I know everything about and it's all old head, "What's here? Let me find something that I've never noticed before and see if that doesn't liven things up a little."
Guy Kawasaki:
I'll give you one that I think is applicable. I forget who I got it from, but it was somebody I interviewed in this podcast, which is in this kind of worst case scenario when someone has just diametrically opposed to something you believe, so let's say you believe in vaccination and the other person doesn't.
And so they said the best sort of bridge you can build is by asking them not “What do you believe” or “Why do you believe it”, but “How you came to believe that vaccination is bad” by asking how.
It's not a value judgment. And you may learn something about the person that makes you empathize and understand what and why they believe.
Robert Waldinger:
That is a great pointer. Absolutely. The other thing that I've heard along those lines is that you can ask someone, "What are you most wanting and how does this affect it? How does your decision not to get vaccinated get you something or let you live out some purpose? How does it work?" Because often you'll hear things about, "Well, I'm doing it because..."
I was in a doctor's appointment and a nurse was there and she said to me, "I almost didn't get vaccinated." And this was a nurse at a famous Harvard teaching hospital. I said, "You almost didn't get vaccinated?"
She said, "I had read something that it might affect your fertility," which it does not affect your fertility, but she read that it might. And so she was afraid because she and her husband were trying to have their first child.
And so then I began to have, again, more empathy and began to understand, "Oh, I could see why if what you really care about is having a child, you don't want to jeopardize that." And her assumption was wrong that getting a vaccination would jeopardize that, but she was operating in good faith.
Guy Kawasaki:
At an extreme, you could make the case, we're going to go down in a little cesspool hole here, but you could make the case, "How did you come to support Donald Trump?"
And if you listen to the person and the person says, "I'm underemployed. I can't do this. I'm a veteran, I can't get my VA treatment. Blah, blah blah." There may be a reason why-
Robert Waldinger:
There may be.
Guy Kawasaki:
... the person is attracted to what Trump says.
Robert Waldinger:
Exactly. Actually that's great because then what you learn is what someone is most upset about, feeling most deprived of, and then you can have a conversation about that.
You don't have to get into who your favorite candidate is, but you can get into, "Oh boy.What are some of the ways? What are some the things that are happening now in your area?”
Someone says, "They're closing the coal mines and that's all I've known my whole life. Mining." That gives you a lot of empathy for somebody.
And so I think that kind of discussion where it's bridging these divides, it's by understanding what we all have in common, which is that we're trying to suffer less, we're trying to be okay, we're trying to take care of our families. It's that kind of thing.
And when you can connect around those things, the culture wars can fall away.
Guy Kawasaki:
My last question for you, and I already know the answer, but I want everybody to hear your answer, which is, is it ever too late to start trying to build social relationships to build a good, happy life?
Robert Waldinger:
And you know the answer because you read the book, right? Because one of the title of our chapters is It's Never Too Late. And the reason we say that is that there were many people in our study who felt like it was too late for them.
They said, "I'm not good at relationships or people don't seem to like me," or whatever the story is that they've told themselves for a long time. Some of our people who were like that when they got into their fifties, sixties, even seventies, had everything turn around for them.
One man for the first time started going to a gym, made a group of friends who he loved and they loved him. And for the first time in his life, he had a little tribe of people who he felt connected to.
And so this man who had felt that it was too late, started living a life in his sixties where it wasn't too late at all. And so I just want to name that because we've had people in their twenties say, "It's too late for me." Because if you've had a lot of social failures and you get to your twenties and you say, "I just can't do this," we want you to know that it's not too late.
Guy Kawasaki:
I took up surfing at sixty.
Robert Waldinger:
Wow. Good for you. You're great.
Guy Kawasaki:
Speaking about the names of chapters, I have to tell you that I loved one of your chapters. God, I can't remember the precise wording of it, but it was something about all friends provide benefits.
Or it was a play on friends with benefits and sex.
Robert Waldinger:
Exactly. Exactly. And this chapter's not about sex, it's about what we've learned from research that even our most casual ties, so the person who delivers your mail, the person who you get your coffee from at Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks every day, that those connections turn out to have benefits.
That if you smile, if you exchange a few words, you get a little hit of positive energy that turn out that those hits build up and they matter to our health and our sense of wellbeing.
So that's the All Friends Have Benefits chapter. I really enjoyed this. Thank you for a terrific conversation.
Guy Kawasaki:
When someone from Harvard tells you that, I've really arrived.
Robert Waldinger:
You've arrived.
Guy Kawasaki:
There you have it. The key to happiness based on science, not some kind of woo-woo fantasy.
This came to you from Robert Waldinger. Well, Robert Waldinger and over eighty years of research.
I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People.
My thanks to the Remarkable team, they make me so happy. Peg Fitzpatrick, Jeff Sieh, Shannon Hernandez, Alexis Nishimura, Luis Magana, and the drop-in queen of Santa Cruz, Madisun Nuismer.
May you now go forth and create a happy life. Mahalo and Aloha.