Lessons From the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness | Dr. Robert Waldinger
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2023
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Today's guest is the man in charge of the world's longest scientific study of happiness, a study that has been running since 1938.
Dr. Robert Waldinger is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital, and co-founder of the Lifespan Research Foundation. He is also a Zen master and teaches meditation in New England and around the world. His TED Talk is one of the most viewed of all time, with over 43 million views. He's the co-author, along with Dr. Marc Schulz, of The Good Life.
In this episode we talk about:
- What the Harvard Study of Adult Development is and how it got started
- How much of our happiness is really under our control
- Why you can't you be happy all the time
- The concept of "social fitness"
- Why you should "never worry alone"
- How having best friends at work can make you more productive
- And why, in his words, it's never too late to be happy
Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/robert-waldinger-549
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the 10% happier podcast. |
| 0:06.3 | I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:08.3 | Hello, everybody. |
| 0:12.3 | Today, we are going to talk to the man in charge of the world's longest scientific study |
| 0:18.4 | of happiness. |
| 0:19.6 | The Harvard study of adult development has been running since 1938 and has shed an enormous |
| 0:25.6 | amount of light onto what actually works when it comes to human happiness. |
| 0:30.9 | There are many game-changing learnings here, but there is one clear screaming simple headline |
| 0:37.0 | which I will let my guest reveal. |
| 0:40.1 | I will say without a spoiler here that this headline may sound simple, but it's something |
| 0:45.2 | many of us overlook or downplay because our culture really militates against it at |
| 0:50.2 | every turn. |
| 0:51.8 | Good news, though, is that my guest has a lot of practical tips. |
| 0:55.5 | Robert Waldinger is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the |
| 1:00.0 | Harvard study of adult development at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-founder of the Lifespan |
| 1:05.4 | Research Foundation. |
| 1:06.6 | He's also a Zen Master and teaches meditation in New England and around the world. |
| 1:11.3 | His TED Talk is one of the most viewed of all time with over 43 million views and his |
| 1:17.1 | new book which he co-authored with Mark Scholes is called The Good Life. |
| 1:21.6 | In this conversation, we talked about what the Harvard study of adult development is and |
| 1:24.9 | how it got started, how much of your happiness is really under your control, why you cannot |
| 1:31.0 | be happy all the time, the concept of social fitness, how friends can make your problems |
... |
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