Welcome to the Commune podcast.

My name is Jeff Krasno.

Today on the show, I welcome Robert Waldinger.

Dr. Waldinger is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Harvard Study of

Adult Development, which informed the writing of his recent book, The Good Life, Lessons from

the World's longest scientific study on happiness. He is also a Zen master or a Roshi who teaches meditation. Now the Harvard study of

adult development is considered the world's most thorough longitudinal study on human happiness.

For over eight decades, the study has tracked the same individuals and their progeny asking

thousands of questions and taking hundreds of measurements from brain scans to

blood work with the goal of discovering what really makes for a good life so

Bob and I cover the two main categories of happiness, hedonic well-being,

also known as moment-to-moment happiness or pleasure, and eudaimonia, a Greek term,

which points to a broader sense of life being worthwhile and having meaning. And we get into the importance of flow state,

the integration of intention and action, and the importance of letting go and being present

in order to experience happiness. We discuss Bob's experience as a practitioner of Zen meditation, and why studies show

that a wandering mind is often an unhappy mind. We discuss the relationship between money and happiness,

between forgiveness and happiness, and between altruism and happiness. We probe the

bidirectional relationship between good health and a good life, where good health contributes to

happiness and conversely, how being in a better mood actually promotes better health. And drum roll please, Bob reveals

the number one determinant for self-reported well-being, according to over 80 years of research.

Now this was a fascinating conversation that held many surprises for me, and I hope you enjoy it. But before we dive in,

I want to let you know about some of our programs over on the Commune course platform. If you

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