2023-01-12
1 小时 8 分钟Perfectly good, warm relationships will wither away and die of neglect if we don't connect, if we don't reach out, if we don't see each other, if we don't call each other right.
And so suddenly people will turn around in their thirties or forties and say, I don't have any friends.
I've fallen out of touch with my college friends, with my school friends, whatever.
And so what we find is that the people who are better at maintaining these connections and making new ones are the people who really thrive.
So what if the key to living a good life is actually closer than we all realize?
I mean, whether you're a longtime listener of the podcast or this is your first time tuning in, I bet some part of you is searching for the answers to living a good life, a meaningful life.
You probably wondered what the keys to happiness or good health or fortune are.
And in our last episode, I shared a simple model for a really good life that I call the good life buckets.
If you haven't listened, by the way, be sure to tee that up right after this.
Now, one of the three good life buckets that I spoke about is what I call the connection bucket.
It's all about the depth and quality of our relationships and the effect they have on our ability to live good lives.
And today we're diving even deeper into the role that relationships and people play in our ability to feel human, to feel alive, and to flourish in all parts of life.
With a very special guest, someone who is passionate about uncovering and sharing the keys to living a good life.
Doctor Robert Waldinger.
He is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, co founder of the Lifespan Research Foundation, a practicing psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and director of the psychotherapy teaching program for Harvard psychiatry residents.
And he's also a longtime practitioner and teacher of Zen.
Teaches all over New England and, in fact, around the world.
But he's also the director of something called the Harvard study of adult development at Massachusetts General Hospital, which is often shorthanded as the grant study.
This is, from my knowledge, the longest running study on human flourishing ever conducted, now spanning something like over 80 years.
The insights that have come out of it are profound and also, for many, really surprising, especially in the context of the importance of relationships on our ability to be happy, no matter what else comes our way, from health, to good or bad fortune, to money or lack thereof.