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A Bit of Optimism

Revisited: The Secret to Happiness with Harvard professor Robert Waldinger

A Bit of Optimism

The Optimism Company from Simon Sinek

Business, Education, Careers, Self-improvement

4.82.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We're taking some time off to bring you even more episodes of A Bit of Optimism that you're going to love! In the meantime, we're revisiting some of our favorite episodes, like this one with Harvard professor Robert Waldinger. We all want to live a happy life. But what does the research say about how to achieve it? For more than 86 years, researchers at Harvard University have been trying to figure out how humans can live happier lives.  In one of the longest-running and most comprehensive studies of human happiness, Harvard tracked 724 teenagers through every stage of their adult lives since 1938. Some of them are still alive today and the findings are clear: lasting happiness isn’t about wealth or fame—it’s about something much deeper. Robert Waldinger, a professor and psychiatrist, has directed the study for over 20 years. His TED Talk about it went viral with nearly 50 million views, and in 2023, he wrote a book about it - The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.I asked Robert to share what the study has revealed about happiness over the decades, how its insights have shaped his own life, and the one essential ingredient for a joyful, meaningful existence. This…is A Bit of Optimism. To learn more about Robert and his work, check out: The Harvard Study of Adult Development robertwaldinger.com

Transcript

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0:00.0

You might know this because you are a psychiatrist.

0:02.8

How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?

0:06.1

One.

0:07.1

Exactly.

0:08.2

One, but the light bulb has to really want to change.

0:10.5

I love that joke.

0:13.7

We all want to live a happy life.

0:16.0

Of course.

0:17.2

In fact, we want it so much that there's a whole cottage industry built around helping us find it.

0:22.7

But what does a happy life actually look like?

0:25.5

In the 1930s, some Harvard scientists started tracking 724 teenagers.

0:30.4

They kept detailed records about how they lived their lives and what gave them satisfaction.

0:35.6

They tracked all 724 people for their entire lives. Only 10 of them

0:40.2

are still living today, and they are all in their hundreds. But just like the people the study

0:44.3

tracked, the scientists got old too. So the director of the study was handed to subsequent generations,

0:50.3

and Dr. Robert Waldinger is the current director, a position he's held for the past 22 years,

0:55.2

so he knows a lot about what actually leads to a happy life.

0:59.6

I wanted to know the things he's learning.

1:03.0

I also wanted to know how he's changed his own life as a result of the data he reads.

1:08.5

And let's just say I'm making a few changes to how I live my life

1:12.5

too. This is a bit of optimism. I don't know how to ask this without it sounding not polite,

1:22.9

but it's the only way I can think to ask it. How to come they picked you to lead the happiness study?

...

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