What makes a good life? How important are relationships in helping us lead happy and meaningful lives?

Dr. Robert Waldinger is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital, and cofounder of the Lifespan Research Foundation. Dr. Waldinger received his AB from Harvard College and his MD from Harvard Medical School. He is a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and he directs a psychotherapy teaching program for Harvard psychiatry residents. He is also a Zen master (Roshi) and teaches meditation in New England and around the world. His TED Talk about the Harvard study “What makes a good life?” has been viewed more than 42 million times and is one of the 10 most watched TED Talks ever. He is co-author of The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.

"One of the clearest things that we find in studying all of these lives is we know that every life has hardship, every life has sorrow, and nobody's happy all the time. Doesn't matter how privileged you are, how rich, how famous, nobody's happy all the time.

And that's important to name because we can sometimes give each other the mistaken impression that if you just do all the right things, you'll be happy. So if you look at somebody else's social media feeds, they're not posting their photos of when they feel miserable or hungover. They're posting their photos of when they've been at a good party or on a beautiful beach. And so we can give each other the impression that everybody else is living their best life and they're happy all the time. And it's just me who has ups and downs. And what we find and what we put in the book through these life stories...we put in life stories, not of happy endings, but of real stories of ups and downs and challenges and joys as well."

https://www.robertwaldinger.com/
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Good-Life/Robert-Waldinger/9781982166694
https://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org/
https://www.lifespanresearch.org

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