Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. Have you ever been having an

off day you just weren't feeling well, inside, something seemed wrong, so you decided to reach out to some

friends, get together and hang out? And what did you discover? I bet you discovered you felt better.

Why does this work so well?

Or in other words, why are good friends so important

to our emotional state and can change an unhappy day into a good day.

I remember when I really noticed this for the first time in a significant way

when I was at university away from my family and friends and I didn't know a lot of people at the university yet.

I wasn't living in the dorms because my grandparents lived in the town where my university was at, so I lived with them.

So it was hard for me to meet new people.

Well, I knew I needed to do something about my sadness, my loneliness,

so I discovered they had intermaro soccer.

And though I'd never played soccer before, I decided to do that.

They held events twice a week and I would go regularly and I started meeting new people and new friends

and it really helped me increase my sense of being positive and happy at my new university. And really ever since that time I've made a

consistent effort of staying connected with my friends. But why does this work so well? Do you know that one of the longest studies in

history has actually discovered that friends are staying connected is incredibly important.

The study began in 1938 in Harvard and is still going on

and it's entitled,

The Harvard Study of Adult Development and when it began it had

724 participants and now many years later there are still approximately 60 men left, all in their 90s.

The men were chosen from various economic backgrounds, some from the poorest areas of Boston, and some were Harvard undergraduates.

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