The secret of influencing, happiness in this life, and a true resource is good relationships. Recently someone sent me a video about the longest running study in Harvard, on human behavior. It has been running for 84 years.  

https://youtu.be/hUl--G-vlsI

Dr. Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development and co-author of ‘The Good Life’, discusses lessons learned from the world's longest scientific study on happiness. The object of the study is, ‘What makes a good life’. Originally there were 724 participants.  268 were sophomores at Harvard. Among the sophomores were the future President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, and future Washington Post editor Ben Bradley. Later they included in the study, 450 Boston Boys – less privileged inner-city children. Then they expanded the pool to include 1300 descendants. They have been tracking these people for 84 years and the retention rate is an amazing 84%. Every 2 years they answer a lengthy questionnaire. Every 5 years they surrender their medical records and every 15 years they have a face-to-face interview. And the lesson? Good relationships keep us happier, and healthier. How does social media factor into this? Especially given the problems with anxiety, depression, and mental illness. Waldinger says, “If you use social media to connect with people, it increases our happiness levels. But we only consume the social media of others, Instagram posts, (and I will add Twitter and worst of all WhatsApp university), happy pictures of holidays and beaches and so on then it tends to make us unhappier as we feel that we are missing out on the good life.” In their parallel case studies are two Harvard sophomores from highly privileged backgrounds. One became a high school teacher and retired. The other became a very prominent attorney, won lots of awards, and became very wealthy. In the study, the high school teacher came out the happiest and the attorney the least happy. Waldinger says that the study showed that this had entirely to do with how they maintained or failed to maintain relationships.

I submit to you that all relationships depend only on two things, appreciation and forgiveness. I want to propose to you therefore that you remove one word from your vocabulary – TOLERANCE. And replace it with another – APPRECIATION.

Why do I ask you to do this? I do because when you ‘tolerate’ someone, you are really saying to yourself, ‘This is really a nasty piece of action that I wish I didn’t have to deal with. Given a choice I would be far away from this person. But since I have no choice in the matter and I don’t want more grief, I will tolerate him/her.’ Think tolerance or tolerating and you will not be thinking of someone you love, or a double shot of espresso, or a triple chocolate Sunday, or a glorious sunset, or your dog or cat. You will not be thinking of anything that brings a smile to your face or a warm glow in your heart. You will be thinking, “O My God! Him again? Okay, let’s get it over with.” But when you think appreciation, you are thinking love, gratitude, missing someone, the pain of parting. You are thinking beautiful pictures, sounds, voices, dreams. So, I say to you, ‘Forget tolerating anyone. Ask, ‘How can I appreciate them?’

That opens a whole new world starting from enquiry in a non-judgmental way. To learn more about. Not to judge. It opens the doors in my mind and heart which may have been locked up by prejudice, racism, anti-otherism, all part of my childhood conditioning maybe. Let us remind ourselves, “I am not a child. I consider myself to be an adult. An independent, educated, discerning, intelligent adult, capable of making my own decisions. Then why am I still stuck in my childhood conditioning? Why do I allow attitudes that I developed unthinkingly even unconscious...