An 86-year-old study, The Harvard Study of Adult Development, that began in 1938 has caught my attention not once but twice in the course of the past months. Last week I listened to the Mel Robbins podcast where she hosted the Director of the study doctor Robert Waldinger, a medical doctor, professor at Harvard Medical School, and a Zen priest.
They observed and closely followed the lives of two hundred and sixty-eight Harvard male undergraduates, very privileged individuals among which was John F. Kenney Junior and Ben Bradley, long time editor of the Washington Post. A second group they studied was made up of four hundred and fifty-six boys from Boston’s most disadvantaged families, the intercity kids. This group had the Boston strangler in its ranks. The study went on to include spouses and children. It started out as a means to discover what makes us thrive, what aids us in crossing the threshold from adolescence to young adulthood in healthy patterns. Most people in these groups were normal people who were tracked with questionnaires, medical exams and records from their doctors, visits to their homes every ten years to look into the most vital matters such as mental health, work life, relationships.
Along the way, the latest techniques in science were brought in to investigate the same old queries about wellbeing.
The big secret they uncovered was that people with more relationships and warmer relationships with other people live healthier, happier and longer lives. Go figure!
This goes to show that we need to intentionally seek connections on a daily basis. Make a conscious effort to maintain the friendships we have or spark new ones by showing genuine interest in people like the person in line in front of you at your local coffee shop. Notice the delight you feel when you have a pleasant little chat with a strangeror when for just a moment, you make someone feel seen and understood.
Now for the most surprising finding of all, the one they had to retest multiple times over the past ten years to prove its scientific truth, was that relationships keep us physically healthier. The right relationships are stress regulators, prevent type 2 diabetes, and coronary artery disease. The act of picking up the phone to call a loved one after something inevitably stresses you out will calm your nervous system. Just as the right relationships are medicine for the soul and the body, the wrong ones will keep you in a low-level fight or flight mode, a higher level of circulating stress hormones and a higher level of white blood cells ready to fend off danger. These elements are slowly deteriorating the body over time.
In a nutshell, the most accurate predictor of who will be in good health at age eighty when observed at age fifty is not your cholesterol levels as one might rationally assume. It is how happy you are in your relationships.
Hence, choose wisely who gets to share your life, from friends to lovers to family members, and seek out genuine connections as often as you can and as much as you’re comfortable with. Those are the cherished secrets to a long and happy life.
TWEET YOUR COMMENT