LISTENED TO TED TODAY - "A GOOD LIFE"

What keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life? If you think it's fame and money, you're not alone – but, according to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, you're mistaken. He was the director of a study which may be the longest study of adult life that's ever been done. For 75 years, they tracked the lives of 724 men, year after year, asking about their work, their home lives, their health, without knowing how their life stories were going to turn out.
So what did they learn? What are the lessons that come from the tens of thousands of pages of information that were generated on these lives? Well, the lessons aren't about wealth or fame or working harder and harder. The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: 

Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. We've learned three big lessons about relationships.

• The first is that social connections are really good for us, and that loneliness kills. It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they're physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected. 
• The second lesson that we learned is that it's not just the number of friends you have, and it's not whether or not you're in a committed relationship, but it's the quality of your close relationships that matters. It turns out that living in the midst of conflict is really bad for our health.
• The third big lesson that we learned is that good relationships don't just protect our bodies, they protect our brains. 

So what can we do? Well, the possibilities are endless. It might be something as simple as replacing screen time with people time or livening up a stale relationship by doing something new together, long walks or date nights, or reaching out to that family member who you haven't spoken to in years, because those all-too-common family feuds take a terrible toll on the people who hold the grudges.

Mark Twain, more than a century ago, was looking back on his life and he wrote this: "There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickering, there is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that. The good life is built with good relationships.

Click on the picture above to listen to this TED Talk.