Good Life – What is true happiness? Many people are probably trying to find the answer to this question as well, because in today’s society, being happy is really difficult.
When a life is born, each life follows the path that they believe will lead to the goal of their life. We struggle to work hard, try very hard, and exchange many things to get the life we want. No one can tell if what we are doing is really the right path or not. Will this path really take us to the destination we want? And will we really get the reward from our efforts?
“A story about wealth and fame”
He recently conducted a survey of millennials, asking them about their ultimate goal in life. It was found that 80% of them said that their ultimate goal was “to be rich.” In the same group, about 50% said that they said “to be famous.” Both of these things are the result of being taught since childhood that we must work hard, we must be dedicated to our work, we must strive and try hard in order to have a good life and be successful.
“As far as I know, looking back is not always clear and accurate.”
What adults teach us about life are just their own recollections of the past, images of our best efforts being rewarded with success. In reality, such things rarely happen. Teaching our children and grandchildren about the past is too diluted to be reliable, because we tend to forget parts of the past. Some people choose to remember the good things, while others choose to remember the bad things, while some fragments of past memories are embellished to heal the pain in their hearts instead.
“This is the longest human life study project ever conducted.”
The Harvard Study of Adult Development is a 75-year study of 724 men, learning about their jobs, well-being, and health year after year. They were kept informed without knowing where their lives were going or where they were headed. Of the 724 participants in the study, 60 are still alive today, in their 90s, and the researchers are working on more than 2,000 of their descendants.
This project began in 1938 with two groups of men selected for study:
- A group of sophomores at Harvard University. They all graduated during World War II, and almost all dropped out to join the war effort.
- A group of boys from some of Boston’s poorest neighborhoods, they are put into the program because they are judged to have the most difficult and disadvantaged families. They live in rental apartments, many of which don’t even have running water.
“Some people climb the social ladder from the bottom to the top, and some people go the opposite way.”
What the research team did was interview them, do physical examinations, go into their homes to look at their environments and talk to their parents. And then they followed their lives and found that each of them grew up in a very different way. They became factory workers, lawyers, bricklayers, doctors. One was the president of the United States. Some were chronic alcoholics. And a number of them had schizophrenia.
“Good relationships make us happier and healthier.”
To be clear, we didn’t just send them questions to answer. We interviewed them in their living rooms and documented their medical history, taking blood samples, doing brain scans, and even sitting down with their children. And the answer that emerged from a 75-year study wasn’t wealth, or fame, or hard work to achieve success. It was relationships.
In addition, throughout the 75-year project, there have been three main ideas related to relationships, as follows:
1. Social relationships are very useful.
People who are surrounded by friends, family and a loving community are happier, healthier and live longer. Sadly, more than 1 in 5 Americans say they are lonely. Loneliness strikes even when we are standing in a crowded street or sitting at a family dinner. Loneliness is a poison that can cause premature aging of the body and mind and shorten lifespan.
2. Quality of relationship
It’s not so much about the number of friends or serious relationships we have, but the quality of intimacy we share with each other. For example, a marriage that struggles to survive can be more damaging to mental health than divorce. In a study of 80-year-old men, we found that their blood cholesterol levels at age 50 didn’t tell us whether they would be a happy 80-year-old grandfather. Instead, they could tell us how satisfied they were with their relationships at age 50.
3. Good relationships protect us from the negative effects of aging.
Another study of 80-year-old men who were in satisfying relationships and had people close to them who cared for them found that feeling like someone could depend on them helped them to have good, sharp memories over a long period of time, while those who felt isolated and unable to depend on others experienced memory loss more quickly than normal.
“A good relationship is not one that has to be smooth all the time.”
Just because a couple has been together for 80 years doesn’t mean they never fight. But as long as they feel that they can rely on each other, fighting will not affect their memory. A good relationship and closeness are good for health and life. It’s something that almost everyone knows, but why is it so difficult and so easily forgotten?
“Because humans like easy and quick solutions.”
Anything that is easy and has an immediate positive effect on our lives is what we as humans want. But relationships are difficult and complicated, and caring for family and the people around us is too difficult to do. We are led to believe that fame and fortune are what we need to be successful, but the truth is that the people who are successful are the ones who can devote time to their family, friends and community.
Conclusion
Sometimes people try to reach for things that are far away to decorate themselves because they are mistakenly thinking that having those things can make their life happier and more perfect. Such an ideal life causes us to lose many things along the way, whether it be dreams, time, identity, or even relationships with people around us. On a day when we are tired from trying to achieve the success we have set, it can be heartbreakingly lonely because when we look back, we see no one beside us. We can strive for money and fame, but we must not forget that a good life must also come with good relationships.
“Life is so short that there is no time for quarrels, apologies, jealousies, and criticisms. There is only time to love, and that too is short.”Mark Twain
What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness | Robert Waldinger gest study on happiness | Robert Waldinger
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