The secret to a happy life -- lessons from 8 decades of research | Robert Waldinger

TED Health

TED

Health & Fitness, Fitness, Shoshana Ungerleider, Medicine, How To Be Healthier, Ted Shoshana, Ted Talks Health

4.2 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2023

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The happiest and healthiest people are those who have an abundance of warm connections with others, says psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, who leads the Harvard Study of Adult Development -- one of the longest-running studies of adult life ever conducted. Exploring the link between social bonds and quality of life, he shares insights into how to identify and strengthen the relationships that impact your well-being most. (This conversation, hosted by TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers, was part of an exclusive TED Membership event. Visit ted.com/membership to become a TED Member.) After the talk, Shoshana shares a surprising perspective shift that may boost your happiness.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective
0:07.0	Hey Lasgers, this is Ted Health. I'm Dr. Shoshana Unger-Lighter. The search for what
0:18.1	makes us truly happy is as old as, well, pretty much forever, whether you look for happiness
0:25.8	in religion, work, or art. It seems like there's no one true answer, but a monumental scientific
0:32.9	study from over 80 years of data has isolated one extremely consistent variable, strong relationships.
0:41.2	Psychiatrist and Zen Priest, Dr. Robert Waldinger, the lead researcher on this study, talks about
0:47.5	the seemingly simple but extremely profound value of close ties. And stick around after
0:53.5	the talk, as we'll find out how an unconventional shift in perspective might be an effective
0:58.7	strategy for increasing happiness each day.
1:16.9	Got a business problem? There's a Ted Talk for that. Stay updated on everything business,
1:21.3	Ted Business, a podcast hosted by Columbia Business School Professor Modoupe Akinola. Every
1:26.9	week, she'll introduce you to leaders with unique insights on work, answering questions
1:31.3	like, how do four-day work weeks work? Do will a machine ever take my job? Get some surprising
1:37.3	answers on Ted Business, wherever you listen to podcasts.
1:40.6	In 2015, I gave a TEDx talk in a little elementary school auditorium and much to my surprise, the
2:01.4	talk became one of the 10 most viewed talks in the history of Ted. And in that talk, I conveyed
2:10.7	one simple scientific finding. The finding that when we study hundreds of people over their
2:18.3	entire adult lives, the people who turn out to be the happiest and the healthiest are those who
2:26.4	have good, warm connections to others. So today, I want to take you deeper into this whole subject
2:36.2	by exploring how relationships matter in our lives, how they affect our health, what kinds of
2:43.4	relationships give us this big benefit in happiness and which tools you can start using today to make
2:52.3	your relationship stronger. So I do direct this Harvard study of adult development. It's as far as
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