Robert Waldinger ON: If You STRUGGLE To Find Happiness In Life, WATCH THIS! | Jay Shetty

when we asked our original participants in our study you're 80 years old now when you look back on your life what do you regret the most more than anything many of them said I wish I hadn't spent so much time worrying about what other people thought the best-selling author and host the number one Health and Wellness podcast on purpose with Jay Shetty hey everyone welcome back to on purpose the number one Health podcast in the world thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen learn and grow now I know that you're here because you want to improve your happiness you want to improve your health and you want to improve your healing and there are certain guests that I always love having on the show that I have on multiple times and today's guest this is their second appearance and I couldn't be more happy to speak to them because they also have a new book that I have been eagerly waiting for since I met them I'm talking about the special Robert waldinger a professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School director of the Harvard study of adult development and co-founder of the lifespan Research Foundation Dr waldinger received his a b from Harvard College and is MD from Harvard Medical School Dr waldinger is a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and he directs a Psychotherapy teaching program for Harvard Psychiatry residents he's also a zen master and teaches meditation in New England and around the world and Robert is the co-author of the book The Good Life Lessons From the world's longest scientific study of Happiness this is the book that I want you to go and order the good life lessons from the world's longest scientific study of Happiness if you've ever heard me talk about the 75-year study of Happiness if you've ever read that article it's quoted absolutely everywhere this is the man who completed that 75-year study I believe the fourth of the researchers involved in that program I couldn't recommend this book more Dr Robert wardinger or Bob and I met in Montana courtesy of Arthur Blank who brought us all together at his beautiful Ranch in Montana introduced us to probably some of the most amazing people in the world in this space we instantly connected a because I geek out on research and science but more importantly because we both had this meditation and mindfulness practice that we both deeply love and beyond that we just had a natural flowing conversation so Bob thank you for coming back thank you for flying in from Boston to New York to do this interview it's so good to see you again well it's a treat to get to see you again yeah uh I that that's the big incentive for me to get on a plane and come here to see you no but I appreciate it I want you know my community appreciates it I was just saying to you earlier that we made this rule for on purpose again where we only wanted interviews to be physical because I miss this like I miss looking at someone I miss being able to hug someone I miss being able to have even the before and afterwards when you do a zoom interview you lose the before and afterwards you're there for the interviewing you whereas we've been talking for the last half an hour already and so I wanted to hear from you because you said something interesting to me you said you know I'm sure someone's studying it you're not studying it yet let's think about that a little bit what do you think is gained or what can be done meaningfully through Zoom or virtually but then what is lost in your opinion in your thoughts and from your intuition on that yeah well some of the most important things are about accessibility like what we're finding is that people who can't be together physically obviously can be together online or people who are frightened so you know I'm a psychiatrist and many people are really scared to talk to someone about their problems well what if you could be in your own home and you could just dip a toe in the Water by by trying a video chat with with someone who's a professional and I've seen people do that with huge benefit so in that sense the accessibility is wonderful that's such a great answer people in remote areas and all of that what's lost I think are just what you've been describing this the Casual interactions that we have and that we love that we take for granted I mean it's a reason why you know people talk about the water cooler at the workplace or the coffee machine it's where people run into each other and they have these little conversations that might turn out to be hugely important might turn out to spread ideas or give people a glimpse of a person they find interesting who they'd never met before and so those are the things I'm afraid that we're losing yeah remotely yeah I think that's a brilliant answer and I love the I love the perspective that there's actually a positive and a challenge to every situation in life and if we lean into the positives it can be more meaningful it can be more powerful and instead of obsessing on the negatives but let's let's talk about the 75-year study for anyone who doesn't know about this study could you just give us a quick synthesis or synopsis of what you're looking at the types of things that you're assessing the types of behaviors and then of course the more scientific result that you gain from doing that study so what's wonderful for me about this study is that it has followed the same people for their entire adult lives that's completely unheard of in the history of science it just doesn't happen so we started with people who were teenagers and followed them for now we're about to enter our 85th year uh We've followed people for 85 years most of the original people have passed away as you can imagine of course but we've started studying their children who are all Baby Boomers and what's unique about it is to be able to see how lives really unfold not how we remember them because if you think about it when we try to remember what happened to us there's there are big holes in our memories right and we get creative about you know I'll make up stuff and then like my my wife will correct me and say no it didn't happen that way and she's always right yeah and so I think to to be able to follow lives forward and not know what the outcome is going to be is just amazing so so that's the the big picture we started it started in 1938 with two studies that didn't even know about each other a group of Harvard College undergraduate students who were chosen by their Deans as fine upstanding young men and in a study of how people were going to develop from adolescence to Young adulthood they thought maybe this study would go for 10 years they never dreamed I'd be talking to you today about the studies still going 85 years later the other was a study of boys from Boston's poorest and most troubled families in the 1930s because a group of researchers were interested in why some children from really difficult backgrounds stayed out of trouble how did they stay on healthy developmental paths and so we studied a group of young men who hadn't gotten into trouble even though their families were plagued by poverty and illness and crime and all kinds of difficulty so those two we've studied together two ends of the spectrum and now fortunately we've added women we started out with all white males because that's what the city of Boston had in 1938 for research just to study and fortunately more than half women more people from different backgrounds lots of immigrants so we're very excited about this kind of diverse sample that we've grown into tell us a bit about the findings over the 75 years now obviously 85 but tell us a bit about that core finding because I think the most common finding that stated is that in this Harvard 75-year study that when you look at the indicators of human happiness the quality of our relationships was seen as the number one indicator was there a number two was there a number three or was it just so far out like tell us a bit about the findings and then we'll dive into the number one finding right well the biggest findings were about relationships but also about taking care of our health taking care of our bodies um one of our study members said take care of your body as though you're gonna need it for a hundred years and so what we do find and many other studies find is that getting regular exercise eating well getting decent sleep getting regular medical care if you can all of those things not smoking not using alcohol or drugs not abusing at least that all of those turn out to have huge effects on how long we live how healthy we stay but the surprising thing was what you named which is this finding that the people who stayed healthiest and lived longest had the best and the warmest connections with other human beings when we started seeing that in our data we didn't believe it because we thought well how you know okay I mean if I have nice relationships it'll keep me happy or sure but how could it actually keep me from getting arthritis or type 2 diabetes or how could that be and so we and other researchers have found over and over again that this is the case and that it seems to have something to do with stress and that relationships help us manage stress and help us manage powerful negative feelings um one of the things we all know is that all of us have stress every day right and sometimes really bad things happen during the day we come home and we're upset what we find is that if you have someone who you can talk to at home or someone you can call up who's a good listener who's a sympathetic listener you can literally feel your body calm down and what that means is you can literally feel your body a physiology and chemistry come back to normal and that's the main thing that we think relationships do for us understood so you're actually saying that not only do positive relationships help us monitor stress and maybe regulate stress but challenging relationships can actually cause health issues too yeah the other the opposite is also true very conflicting conflictual relationships yeah so challenging can be good right and that actually doesn't break down our health but relationships where there's abuse relationship where there's constant um unhappy arguing and relationships where difficulties never get resolved those take a toll because they keep us in what we call a fight or flight response you know the fight-or-flight responses are natural response where if you get scared your body prepares to run away or to fight or meet with a challenge that's meant to be temporary we're meant to come back to Baseline to Equanimity if we can't do that um then we're in trouble there's one thing I love about this book is that it's practical it's scientific it's thoughtful it helps us come back to our Essence it's also simple in the sense that it kind of kindly nudges us and reminds us to go back to what we already know but that we keep neglecting and there's this one study that you call in the book and you say in a 2000 survey Millennials were asked about their most important life goals 76 said that becoming rich was their number one goal 50 said a major goal was to become famous now that's in 2007 and I think if that study was done now those things would still hold true to a greater degree and then you say more than a decade later after Millennials spent more time as adults similar questions were asked again in a pair of surveys Fame was now lower on the list but the top goals included things like making money having a successful career and becoming debt free how do we when we talk about the good life which is such a elusive topic for so long you know I feel like we've been studying the good life through culture through spirituality through Philosophy for thousands of years but the amount of advancement we've made in that Pursuit is very little compared to going to the moon or going to space or even health care for that matter I think even Healthcare from a physical Health perspective has had so much acceleration but our understanding of the mind and the heart still seems to be fairly Limited and when you see those goals you see okay that's what people are aspiring for what is someone who's living the good life aspiring for because I think we often think of a good life as these habits but what is a good aspiration if the aspiration is not money not fame not a successful career well the aspiration can be different for different people so they've they've done research on this and and they they have these different types of well-being there's one called hedonic well-being which is um what we all think of as as just enjoying a good party a good meal having a good conversation I'm really enjoying this conversation right now I'm having hedonic well-being right but other people uh well all of us to some extent want also a sense of purpose and a sense of meaning it's called you demonic well-being the best example is you have a small child who you read to at night before bed and you're reading the book good night Moon and your child wants you to read that book for the eighth time and you are exhausted right uh is it fun uh no but is it the most meaningful thing you could imagine doing absolutely and so this sense of I'm doing this because I love it because I'm on purpose because I care deeply about what I'm doing that's a different kind of well-being and then there's a third kind that they've begun to identify witches a psychologically rich life so many of us value just having interesting experiences going to new places doing things we've never done before so those three things having a good time now feeling like I'm doing meaningful activity and feeling like I'm having interesting experiences those are all flavors of Happiness right and I think that each of us is a mix of all three but some of us really want one more than the others is it meant to be balanced or is it that is there a hierarchy of needs there or how what have we learned about those two areas well there's officially there's no there's no right or wrong way but what we know and I think we know this from spiritual Traditions more than than my science that when we do uh invest in things outside of the self we are happier and we're happier for longer and we feel more of a sense that why life is worth living so I would say that we need to be sure we have some of that so we don't end up looking back and saying gosh I wasted my life I feel like one of the most difficult things for a lot of people today is self-awareness in being aware of what we think is good for us what we think is right for us I even had a friend say to me yesterday they said to me yeah I think I'm actually going to say no to that opportunity now because I realized I was only going to say yes because of what people thought and so you see that a lot where so many of our choices and our decisions are based on what other people think is good for us or what other people think is right for us I remember growing up and only wanting to Aspire for things that other people rewarded so if the most celebrated and respected person in my community growing up was an actuary for a career I wanted to be an actuary at 10 years old but if you ask me what an actuary did I had zero idea exactly and I think that this idea perpetuates so what can we do to get closer to knowing what is good for us so that we can truly live a good life yes well and I just want to I just want to emphasize what you said because when we asked our original participants in our study hundreds of them we said when you know you're 80 years old now when you look back on your life what do you regret the most more than anything many of them said I wish I hadn't spent so much time worrying about what other people thought and that's just what you're naming so then the question is well what could we do to change that and I think what I've learned more and more in my own life is simply to check in more with myself about what are the things that raise my energy when I engage in them and what are the things that lower my energy so maybe like doing Actuarial work might might lower your magic can you imagine oh I don't like this oh my God so and and some people actually embark on courses of study and then realize how did I get here I don't like this and so I think one of the things we can do every day is simply to pay attention to that that internal sense of being enlivened or being depleted by activities that we're doing during our day and really pay attention to that and when you can turn toward the activities that are enlivening yeah I often say to people it's like reflecting after you go to a restaurant so what do you do when you leave a restaurant you talk about the food you talk about the Ambiance you talk about the service and you're like oh I really like that dish but I didn't love that one and oh the waiter was so wonderful he was so helpful all and I really like the the design and the aesthetic of that space right so you talk about it uh when you order in you do the same thing when you go to watch a movie or a TV show you do the same thing we go oh yeah that actor's performance was amazing or the actress was incredible or or that scene I'll you know that was brilliant like we analyze things but I find that we don't analyze our lives in the same way like when you go to a sports game you could spend the whole day talking about it or if something happens to another couple in the media or if something happens to a famous person in the media we will analyze it for days and weeks and months but when it comes to our own lives we rarely pay that attention as a psychiatrist and why is that why is it that we can obsess over these external big or minute like we we either obsess over these tiny experiences of food and movies and entertainment or we'll talk about other people's problems for hours and hours and hours but when when it comes to our own we've really struggled to say you know the argument we had last week like let's just reflect on that for a second right right maybe maybe it takes us back to the actuary problem which is which is that we are we are so trained from the time we're small to respond to rewards to respond when people say you know good girl good boy that was a good thing you did right and so so we are trained to respond when people praise us we're trained to respond when people correct us um and we're not trained to look inward you know you have a deep meditative practice you have done a considerable amount of training to look inward to notice what arises in the moment I've spent a lot of my life on a meditation cushion as well doing that it's a radical practice but you don't have to meditate to do this right we know you can be walking along the street you can be looking at a beautiful tree and just start checking in with where you are and what's coming up for you but we have to learn to do it and that's the thing that I think we don't learn enough as we're as we're growing up yeah what what are some of the things that we should reward or not should but what are some healthier things to reward in one another to create a healthy relationship if we're trying to create these positive relationships in our life what would be the things that we should encourage and reward and respect I think we should reward people taking risks with us you know if someone says to me I was upset when you said that my first reaction is to get defensive and say well no no you know to to excuse myself but I've learned that sometimes what really helps is to say thank you for being willing to tell me that right so if someone will take a risk with me I begin to say oh that's a gift and when they do and when they take risks and when I take risks our relationships deepen you know because if if we trust each other and we realize we can trust each other that that you're not going to come back and criticize me you're going to be curious and welcoming when I tell you about something difficult so I would say let's reward each other for take going out on a limb for for taking risks with us um let's reward each other for trying new things um instead of just doing the same old I mean most of the time when someone in our world tries something new we're like shocked like that's not what I expect from you and so it takes a minute to reorient and say oh that person is trying something different that person is is taking a risk is challenging themselves and so I would say let's let's applaud that when we can I mean unless they're doing something yeah yeah but you know yeah let's applaud the things that where people are trying to grow yeah some of the things that other people do that trigger us I feel us so much because we are not allowing ourselves to do those things like I had a friend recently who's moving country and he was telling his friends how some of our friends that he's moving country and everyone just had negative things to say they're like why would you move now like kids are too old they're already in school like it's a tough time for them like it's gonna go wrong or you're gonna come running back and and we were talking about this and it's exactly what you're saying that instead of rewarding that he's trying to do something finally after all these years that's true to himself he is receiving a lot of this backlash from around him and it discourages him it also I think what people don't realize is that it not only discourages the person it distances you from them because now you've not been a part of something that's significant to them in their life I I remember you know when I I've moved to Country I've moved State and every time I've done that when people have not been able to be a part of that decision with me it makes me feel less understood by them if that's accurate and I think this feeling of being understood is what you were speaking about earlier that we're all craving someone that you can pick up the phone to and have that meaningful connection with how do we help people understand us better and how do we learn to understand other people better because if understanding I I mean when I look at relationships I've realized that I think Jamie McGuire says that she says love is an overused word and I've often added to that that I think love is an underdefined word and as I've been on my journey to really unpack what is love between people I often come to words like it's not even gratitude or or care it really comes down to things like safety and understanding when I think about love I'm like yes safety and understand if someone feels safe around someone that's a sense of love and I mean emotionally say physically safe mentally safe and then if I feel understood by someone where I don't have to explain like you didn't really have to explain to me that you were talking about what kind of things someone would be doing as a risk because I understand you and I think there's safety in the understanding so how can we understand people better and how do we help people understand us better one of my meditation teachers gave me uh an instruction just to try as I meditated and he said especially when you're sitting there and you've done this meditation a thousand times or or you're washing the dishes you know for the 3 000th time right when you're doing something ordinary he said ask ask yourself the question what's here now that I have never noticed before and what I find with relationships particularly the relationships with people we think we know so well right our partners or the old friend or my boss is to ask that question what's here that I've never noticed before and then to share it you know I never realized um that you enjoy this or you know I love those sneakers and I I you must have taken some care to pick them you know anything but their birthday gift recently absolutely yeah yeah they're very cool yeah but just to notice right and so what I think what I'm what I'm getting to is curiosity to let ourselves be genuinely curious about people including the people we think we know so well um they've actually done a study of this where they they looked at how tuned in we are to each other when we first start dating someone and then after we've been together as a couple for four or five years and what they find is that when we first start dating we are much more tuned into each other than we are when we've been together for five years because we think we know create what for us when we're dating we're like oh what's this going to be like and is this person into me and you know and so we or when we make a new friend and and so I think really the question is can we Muster that interest and that Curiosity even when we've been together a while and we know this person that is such a great example that's that's a brilliant study I'd love to take more of a look at that because I think that's such a great example of exactly how that diminishing curiosity creates diminishing results in a relationship and I call that concept uh in in my reflection of a new old and old new so when I meet someone new I try to find out something old about them uh that because we might have that in common maybe it's a city we lived in maybe it's a country that we both love maybe it's a Cuisine and like it's something that's inbuilt to us and then when I had known someone for a long time and I consider them an old friend let me look for something new in them as you're saying and so I call it new old old new and it's always been my way of thinking about it because I you're so right there is always something new you can learn about anyone even if you deeply think you know them and I think that with my wife today we've been married for six years and together for ten so it's it's a long enough time of our entire life and I feel like I learned new things about her every day and I think what's as important is learning new things about my wife every day is unlearning misconceptions I've had about her from 10 years ago so there are things that I was so sure about who my wife was a few years ago and at the same time as I have to learn the new things I have to say well wait I have to unpack that old idea I had about her that's not why she thinks that way or lives that way this is the reason currently that she lives that way I think we find a lot of it's challenging to feel that people are changing it's challenging to feel that we are changing and it's challenging to feel that people that we love are changing how do we think about allowing ourselves to change and people to change because that seems to be the hardest thing in marriage and friendship like I'll have friends who'll say to me like Jay you've changed now I don't think that I I think I've I think in my core values and how I construct my life I just I think I'm actually pretty similar yes I don't think I've changed that much my external life has changed for sure obviously since living is a monk and then after and then and then where How I Live Now but I I think I live with the same purpose and the same intention but how do we allow people to change and allow ourselves to change you know that is actually the core of my spiritual practice so as you know that if you don't mind yeah no I want you to go wherever you want to go yeah core of Buddhism is this the truth that everything is always in the process of changing right and that some some things we can't see the rate of change because it's so slow and some things are changing in an obvious way but what Buddhism teaches me is that one of the great sources of suffering in my life is when I try to hold on to things that are changed when I try to fix them when I try to freeze them and what you're describing you know with your wife when you're just what we're describing with a friend of I'm trying I'm trying to keep you in the same category I had you in 10 years ago yeah right so important to really let yourself notice what is what's evolving what's different and same same with ourselves and that yes maybe our core values stay the same but even that we express them differently I mean um we talked with some of our study participants when they were in their 30s about how they were expressing say a desire to take care of their family and of course what they did in their 30s to take care of their families was very different from what they did in their 80s and so the values stay the same but the behavior the expression can change and so all of these things are just can be sources of endless interest and curiosity yeah and I think it comes with that expectation right that when you meet someone you'll hope subconsciously is that they're going to stay this way forever yes it's almost like when you meet a two-year-old and they're just adorable and you're like I hope this child just stays this way forever because you find them you know cute and fun and playful or whatever it may be and it's the same with our partners when you meet your partner you're like God they're perfect the way they are right and that idea that someone is perfect right now is often the issue with progress because they are going to change you're also going to realize how imperfect you both are and and I think letting go of that expectation is what's so difficult it's almost like when you when you buy a phone or you buy a physical item it may be perfect but you know it's going to get knocked it's going to get dropped it's gonna you know it's gonna need an upgrade it's okay so we we accept that to some degree but with people which are these Dynamic vibrant energetic beings we almost like no no be technology like you know it's it's it's a weird mindset and I I wonder how we can really learn to let go of that like it's a constant I think it's a constant process right yeah because our minds do want to hold on to expectation certain expectations certain images we would go crazy if everything were always up for grabs yeah right like at least I knew roughly who I was going to find when I came to see you today yeah thank goodness but the other side of that is just what you're saying that we need to keep looking and see well you know I haven't seen you in three years and and how are we each different now and that's a hard thing to keep doing but yeah but just to remember I think as you're pointing out that we want things to say stay the same and so it's going to take some effort to pay attention to the changes that are happening all the time yeah I think one of the biggest relationships speaking about the good life and talking about relationships I think as as we know through research through studies so much of our expectations as we were talking about our beliefs about love about relationships come from our family and often I find today that the amount of people that say to me that their family is toxic or they experience a really negative energy from their family like I hear that over and over and over again and I'm sure I'm sure you hear it more and more and more and I find like families that were meant to be people's places of Refuge of sacredness often people don't feel that way now I'm not saying that it's all the families fault either I think there's responsibility on both sides and it's it's a complex matter but how does someone navigate what should someone be thinking about if they have family members or a family member that causes them a great deal of stress pressure and insecurity like how does someone not what is some what should someone be thinking about what what could someone ask how do they reflect on that perhaps first to reflect on the positive someone once told me you know no one will ever care about you as much as your family will care about your well-being and and I know there are exceptions to that but basically these are the people who are your people and so if if there are ways to preserve those ties it is worth it sometimes it's not sometimes people need to walk away from their families of origin I totally get that but but to at least be sure that what's there to be invested in has been appreciated right but then often what what gets families into trouble is just what we're talking about which is the problem of allowing each other to grow and change I mean I have a son who's in his 30s and who gets angry at me when I ask him well you know do you need a warmer coat when you go out today where and he says Dad I'm in my 30s why do I you know and I and I stop and I say oh you know if you hadn't been so dependent on me when you were two years old if you hadn't trained me to worry about these things we'd be fine yeah he's he's saying to me dad recognize that I'm grown up right yeah and often the difficulties we have in families are the difficulties of people not allowing each other to grow and change into who they they are at this moment I mean what if your family had said you have to be an actuary and if not you are a failure so yeah so I think so I think what you're saying is is right that that yes many families are filled with this kind of strife and often it comes from this difficulty recognizing that we are all changing and then allowing each other to to change and grow I find that a lot of generations today are obviously more open to therapy more open to these types of reflection I find that when I speak to some people that I know that they may find that certain older Generations are like well what's the need for therapy what's the need for that like you know everything's okay like we can figure this out it's a Family Matter again there's truth on both sides in different ways right but I guess I think one of the biggest challenges is that a lot of people it's like when you're young you always feel the adults don't get it when you're an adult you feel like the kids don't get it right like that's like and everyone and the funny thing is we all experience it it's like there's that famous quote I don't know who said it but it's um the day you realize your parents were right your kids will be telling you that you're wrong like I don't know yeah it's brilliant yeah it's so good uh and I don't know who said it but I always think about that I'm like oh it was so interesting when I was young I used to think this of when I'm 35 years old and I was like oh that's what I used to think of 35 year olds or someone with that opinion now that I'm 35 I'm like oh I think this differently how do we it's like I'm asking questions here that I know there aren't any conclusive answers to but I think they're important questions to ask it's like how do we live a life where we've realized that from a different Vantage Point you're going to have different beliefs and almost opening yourself up and not stereotyping an 18 year old or stereotyping a 21 year old or stereotyping a 60 year old or a 70 year old like I think we have stereotypes about like oh well you know and I'm like well wait a minute when I was this age you did the same thing and we you know that kind of thing like when I moved it's like what you just said about the your son and the coat it's like my when I moved I moved country when I was 28 so I moved from the UK to the US when I was 28 years old and my mom was so scared for me and I was like Mom you moved to London when you were 16. like you left she left like a country where there was a war in Yemen between uh the yemeni and and the British and then she left and moved to England uh during that time and I'm like you left a war-torn country at 16 years old left to follow my purpose and passion and you know like at 28 like you did something way harder but you're so scared for me and I know that that's love of course I know that that's love but it's interesting how it's that you took the biggest risk and you kind of don't even want me to take this one right because hard to imagine to to reimagine ourselves at an earlier age in a way yeah let's talk about that it was quite capable as she must have been as a 16 year old and I'm sure it was incredibly hard and she managed one of these so we uh in our lifespan Research Foundation we developed this program that you were actually part of helping us imagine oh I love this in Montana it was we call it road maps for Life transitions where we have five sessions where we bring some of these insights from our Research into small group sessions that people can really learn from and use and the first session we asked people to bring a photograph of themselves when they were half as old as they are now and then they go into small groups and they show each other their photograph and that the assignment is to tell each other okay what did life look like to you when you were the person in this Photograph and how has life changed how has your view of Life changed now and it really underscores that difference between well this is what it was like when I was 16 and leaving Yemen and this is what it's like for me now and then she gets to think oh my 28 year old son oh it I may have more of a sense now of what life is like for him but it's a a kind of active re-imagining of Life at a different from a different vantage point from a different time I love that example and I remember that exact conversation we had because I talked about how like all my work is dedicated to helping people make life transitions yeah because I think that's where all the pressure the stress like when you're just getting married or you're just getting divorced when you're starting a new job or leaving an old one when you're moving country or moving home like that's where could you share more about that program and some of the insights in the book that what are other ways that people can reflect on life transitions in a healthy way so we do um a session where we ask people to clarify their values you know as you ask people to think about all the time and we ask well what are the two or three values that you couldn't imagine living your life without and then we say map out a typical week in your life and and write down where you can express these values and some people are really shocked that they're not able to bring their values into much of their daily life we do another session where we ask people to map their relationship universe and say well who are you close to who would you like to be closer to who have you had troubles with but you'd like to mend a relationship we do another one where we say actually it's the leaving Yemen it's the we ask what are some of the biggest challenges this the biggest transitions you've had to make in your life so far and what were the strengths that you were able to bring to managing those Transitions and then we ask you what do you see coming down the road and how can you use those strengths that you already have to anticipate dissipate meeting this next challenge that's coming along I love that question because I think I do that subconsciously all the time whenever I'm going through a new challenge I automatically reflect on an old one yeah and think to myself how did I get through that when I got through that like I was telling you about everything went through surgery I was thinking when was the last time I in three surgery I was like okay when I was six I dislocated my wrist I mean I can barely remember it all I remember is I was in the park I was swinging on the the monkey bars or whatever they're called I fell on the last one because I was going too fast and I fell on my wrist and I dislocated I was in agony parents had to rush me the hospital had a cost on my arm for like three to six months everyone was writing on it in school but I got through that when I was six like and I was like well maybe I healed faster at six so I was like okay and then when I was 25 26 I had polyps in my throat which had to be lasered out I had to eat through a straw I couldn't talk for six months so I I practically lost the sound of my voice the texture of my voice had changed I'm now back to sounding how I used to before if not I'm a little bit deeper which is great uh but but that was pretty tough because I was an adult already and yeah going through that was challenging and so I was like okay when I was going through the surgery I was like okay I've got this like I've done hard things before and and that gave me more strength as opposed to like I'm going through a new surgery it's brand new I've never been through anything you know so I I think that's a really really great activity and and I love hearing about these practical exercises uh because I I think that that's what we need we need to make things tangible and visual yes and I think we need to remind ourselves of some of the things that we take for granted like I didn't know what that surgery was going to be like and I and I was okay I calmed myself down I went into it I came out fine you know it's just kind of like I did this I did this yeah and we need to remind ourselves of the hard things we've already done yeah and this time there's one thing that went the other way so whenever anyone talks to me about anesthetic right or anesthesia whenever I have to do one of these surgeries I've always had a positive experience with it because I'll pray and meditate a lot before a surgery naturally and then when I come out I find that those few seconds I don't think I've ever talked about this but the few seconds that I'm like coming out of the the effect of anesthesia I have like really powerful spiritual experiences like some of my favorite spiritual experiences that have happened in those moments and this time the the opposite happened I actually came out of it with something called atelectasis which is a partial collapse of the lung and I couldn't breathe for like a week and so I was like gasping for air and it was so funny because I went into it so positive hoping that I was going to have another amazingly spiritual experience and when I came out the other side I was I was just about just about alive uh and and yeah it's it's but I like that idea of and I think I would love to ask that to my mama actually I would I would love to ask her to reflect on her strengths because I don't think she's probably done that I think she just sees it as that's what we had to do or that was normal or what else could we do like they just see it as they just see it as like well that was the natural journey of life and I'm like no it wasn't mum you could have just stayed where you were but you did something very brave and I I think reminding our parents of that and reflecting with our parents on that could be really powerful so yeah I love I love those activities right I I wanted to ask you going back a bit to the family piece what are the negative effects on our health when there's someone in our life could be family could be a partner could be a friend that's there but they're causing continued issues or challenges or I think there was this beautiful quote you had in here from John Steinbeck you said a sad soul can kill you quicker far quicker than a germ and and I know that that can be you know sometimes it can be your your own soul but um the idea that there's someone in your life that's like it's almost like if we were doing this interview and there was like a constant tapping like a constant tapping we could probably still get by because I'm focused right but there's an irritation there's an agitation there's some sort of distraction that's going on I think sometimes people feel that in their life that I'm trying to get on with my life but there's this like recurring thing this person this individual what a talk to me about what that does to our health like how does that what does that kind of impact her so when does it impact us well what we know is that sources of irritation are stressors and so it has that long-term chronic effect on our bodies we we assume I mean I don't know that anyone's studied um you know a tapping noise and what it does to us although actually noise pollution is one of those yeah cognitive load as well so yeah cognitive load so what we do know is that being in a chronically stressful relationship does break down the body and that there have been a couple of studies that have shown for example with marriages that leaving an a really acrimonious relationship is better for you than staying even though there it's very painful to break up a long-term partnership and all that so I think that the the question then becomes how do we discern when a relationship uh should be worked on and when it's important to step away and and I think it's always a matter of wisdom of bringing wisdom to this to say how much do I have invested you know if we have children if we've built a life together I'm going to work really hard to make sure I don't throw that away until I find that there's just no saving it right and people do that but on the other hand sometimes there are friendships there are relationships that are just chronically irritating and they can be stepped away from and more uh nurturing relationships can be cultivated instead so so it really is a constant matter of discernment but but I will say that I I don't want to Advocate just being done with a relationship because there are difficulties because there are conflicts in every relationship of any depth right they're going to be disagreements many of those disagreements can be worked out and working them out is a source of growth and can often strengthen the relationship so it's important to try where you can to work out difficulties because the potential for benefit is huge and I think that's the challenge right I think we don't have the tools to figure out difficult relationships it's almost like no one ever went to that class there wasn't that class at school your family has its own methodology of how to like some families every family has their own way of dealing with conflict subconsciously or consciously so some people go just put it under the rug we forget about it we'd be civilized some people say well we fight it out and then we never talk again some people say we pretend to be best friends but then behind their back we talk bad about them right like I think we all subconsciously have a family methodology of how we deal with other family members that we don't enjoy being whether we do enjoy being with and so our tools are often scarred by how we were raised in previous experiences like what are some healthy tools to actually address conflict in a relationship because I think that most of us when we're raised we're raised to avoid conflict we're raised to avoid having the uncomfortable conversation we're raised to like well don't go there or you put someone in their place the extreme opposite or you tell them how it is right now neither of those things lead to better relationships I it was so funny I there's someone in my life yesterday that I wanted to send a very clear message to about something that I think I didn't appreciate about what they did for me and it came actually because so many people were telling me so it wasn't even my own thought I didn't even have that bitterness inside of me I didn't even care I'm so in love with what I do but then I had like three people in the same week point this thing out to me and say did you see what this person did like and I know them and they were like you see what this person did like I think you should tell them do you want me to tell them I think you should tell them and so I was being egged on and whenever I'm egged on by an idea that doesn't come from within my own intuition I always have to check whether it's aligned with my intuition and I that's like a practice that I've had for a long time it's like is this idea mine or is this idea someone else's like do I really believe this or am I being made to believe it because someone felt like starting a little fire and I literally wrote out the text and then I pressed delete and I said this is not my idea this is I don't genuinely care I'm gonna let this go funniest thing happened that evening I got a message yesterday I got a message from this person it wasn't about them apologizing for anything but they came back with so many wonderful ideas they were coming at me with so much good energy they were they were out and they were they were somewhere and they were like gee I saw these things and I thought of you and I was like wow like you know it's just I was just about to send this message and this person's thinking about me off their own accord they're not apologizing they don't think they've made a mistake but they're bringing good energy my way and so the reason I'm showing that whole example is just I think we don't have tools one tool for me is always is this how I genuinely feel yes or is this just how someone in my life feels about this person and I'm borrowing that emotion what are other tools that we can use to deal with conflict and issues better in our in our important relationships well first of all I love what you just named because I think I I have been egged on by other people as well and then and I always regret it and so taking that pause do it delete is really important um another tool for that I've found is so important for me is to take a Long View so what do I want with this person in the long run right six months from now three years from now what do I want do I do I not care if they're out of my life and so it doesn't matter how I handle this now or do I care do I want to make sure that we're okay because this person brings energy into my life because I care about this person because it means that I will adjust my response depending on the long game if you will what I really want out of this relationship and so um and usually what that means for me is what you and I were talking about before we started this interview which was ideally everybody needs to win right that there ideally there's no loser and no winner and so if I want to make my point and score one uh so what and the other person ends up feeling bad or put down it leaves us both uh disconnected and in a bad place so how then to to create a scenario where we talk about something that's a problem because if I just suppress the problems I'm gonna grow more resentful and that's gonna be its own difficulty and separation and so how do how do we talk about problems in a way that will allow us both to get to a place of feeling like we've won we've gained something and and ideally we're closer yeah and so usually for me that means writing the angry email and then pressing delete and then sleeping on it meditating on it and what one of my teachers once described as strike while the iron is cold yeah wait till the hot iron cools down that's great and then think back okay now how do I feel about this and how would I what would be the most skillful way to talk to this person about it yeah and so those are some of the pointers that I have to keep using with myself when I'm all riled up about something yeah is that is that kind of aligned with your idea of being reflective versus reflexive like that like exactly yeah exactly yeah no that I I love that long-term thinking I think that is such a great question because what feels right right now might not feel right then right and I think that's how we often play it we go well they need to understand this and they need to learn this and they need to know this and it's like yeah they could maybe appreciate and digest that if you strike while the iron is cold but when you struggle iron is hot for a conversation like that you actually end up completely alienating that person and pushing them away I had a client the other day who called me and said you know my my boyfriend's about to come back in you know it was like it was 9 00 p.m and they're like my boyfriend's about to come back from work in half an hour and I just found this information out about his previous relationships and I'm gonna ask him and I was just like okay wait first of all who did you get the information from and she said oh it's just someone that knows him you know someone that used to know him a few years ago I was like okay that doesn't sound like great information uh I said second what's he been doing today she was like oh he's been at work he's been with his family he had like a event he's been preparing for a wedding for a friend's wedding this weekend like I was like do you think now's the right time to have that conversation like he's had a long stressful day like is this the right time and I'm sure he'll be open to it but does it mean it's ideal and and they were like no I don't think so and I was like okay so we've got two no's so far and then I was like do you again then there was the third question that I asked like do you even believe that this is true like is this even your instinct from your contact with this person they were like No And I was like well then you were just about to go and create another huge argument that didn't need to happen and you could talk about it later on in a better way I think the long term is brilliant another thing that came to my mind when we were talking about this was there's a great book called culture code by Daniel Coyle and he quotes Popovich who I believe is a basketball coach a very successful basketball coach so is my basketball level of knowledge and when he would give feedback to his players he had a really fascinating way of giving feedback which would encourage them to grow and then they looked at studies and they found that when examiners gave their students feedback in this way that the students performed better and so this type of feedback had three key areas to it the first and and I tried and I really try and practice this in my life because I think that not because it's a good technique but because I actually believe it's true so the first was that you make someone aware that you of your standards like you make someone aware like like this is the type of life I want to live this is the type of company I want to build this is the type of relationship I want to have so when I'm talking to my wife I'll often say to her I'll say you know I want a relationship where we're both happy and joyful and supporting each other that's the relationship I want to have and it's like no one can argue with that and that's a long-term view right like what you're saying it's a long-term view of me saying I want to have a healthy relationship that's the kind of relationship I want to be in do you want to be in that relationship too and of course right or like I want to build a company with purpose that is impacting the world where people are happy to be at work every day right and so do we all want to be in that so that's one thing setting a standard the second thing is reminding the person that you're speaking to that you trust and you believe that they can rise to that standard um I I know you want this too and I know you can be there I I know that you can actually I know that if you want that I know you can have that like I I know that we can have that together so it's not like a teacher it's it's together and then the third thing is saying you know what are we both willing to do to get there now that we know we want to be there right we trust we can both get there what are we both willing to do to get there and I think when you think about relationships that way you go oh wow things could be solved um you know if you if you had a effective conversation and I often say to people use us and we not you and me you know there's such a like you versus me whereas us and we brings us together so I'm glad I'm glad we went there because I just think that there were I just think we've never learned these tools and it and it upsets me because I agree with you that I think so many relationships are lost too early yeah or or they've they die early even if we live long in them yeah and that's even worse you know you know there's there's a whole movement to provide what's called socio-emotional learning for children right where they they create you know curricula they create classroom sessions where they talk about this is what feelings are this is what it's like when you have an argument with a friend what are the ways you can deal with your argument with your friend um you know how do you manage these different difficult things in your life and what they find is that when they offer these programs to children they do better in their academic subjects they don't get into trouble as often in school they don't get involved with alcohol and drugs as much I mean all these things that flow from these emotional skills and social skills that are being taught and and many times when they give teachers these programs to teach their children the teachers will come back and say we need this for us please yeah I mean it may makes sense like you think about so much of your work life is interpersonal skills as opposed to just functional things right like and I often think like if you get along with someone you can work with them and Coach them and get it right but if you don't get along with someone it's very hard to put in the time to get it right and and I find that more and more and more like I think for a long time I worked with companies where I worked in companies where people were hired for their proficiency or their skills and they weren't hired for their attitude and you could tell how that affected company culture where if someone had the right attitude they could learn the skill right but if someone had a poor attitude no matter how skilled they were it could be damaging to a work environment right and and when I was inside large organizations I could see that very clearly you talk about in this book something called Social Fitness and in keeping our relationships in shape I was thinking what do we how do we know how do we become aware of this first of all the Social Fitness of a relationship or our social Fitness and how do we keep our relationships in shape well this this concept sort of came out of our finding that many people felt that they weren't spending time with the people who were most important to them and in fact that was one of the big regrets when people looked back on their whole lives they said I wish I had spent more time with family and friends um and so I started thinking about it personally and because I can spend a lot of time working and I can spend a lot of time just on email just you know as we all can right there are just so many things we could do all day long and I began to realize that unless I actively exercise those social muscles and by that I mean if I actively keep in touch with my closest Zen buddy who lives across town but I don't get to see enough if I don't make the decision to call him up and say let's go take a walk let's go have a coffee if I don't do that the path of least resistance for me is to stay home is to do another piece of work on a Saturday afternoon and so what we're talking about is this idea of beginning to prioritize uh nurture it keeping up relationships rather than assuming that they'll take care of themselves yes the idea being that you know I used to think well my best friends are my best friends and they'll always be that way and and my relationship with my partner is going to be fine because it's good now it'll always stay fine we know that's not true that unless we really invest in having new experiences in Long relationships in in reaching out and devoting some of our time to keeping those relationships alive it's not going to happen on its own so rather the path of least resistance unfortunately can be social isolation and and more screen time and so we're talking about social Fitness as a way to get people to think about it like like going to the gym you don't yeah you don't go to the gym one day and say good I'm I'm done I've done that right you think okay I'm going to do that over and over again and we would like people to think about their relationships talking about introverts and extroverts in that social isolation sense it's like I think we've also made this very clear as a society that we're social animals we need to be around people Etc and then we meet people who are surrounded by people or appear to be very popular but still feel alone and then you meet people who are single and feel incomplete and then you meet people who are happy and Solitude and they they enjoy spending time with their own like we're all different we all need different things but can introvert how do introverts find a sense of healthy Social Fitness and how do extroverts also find a sense of healthy Social Fitness because extroverts often appear very socially fit but if you ask them they may feel quite depleted and introverts may like you said potentially rely on isolation because they don't want to step out so how can we think about that differently boy it's such a it's such an important question I mean I think what we realize is that from our work that everybody whether you're an introvert who who wants just a small number of people in your life or an extrovert who loves lots of people that everybody needs a sense that somebody in the world is there for them that there's some emotional safety net um we asked our original study participants at one point who could you call in the middle of the night if you were sick or scared and some people couldn't list anyone and some people could list quite a few people what we know is that if you're an introvert you might just need one person in the world like that but you need somebody and if you're an extrovert you might have more people but you might only need one person the extrovert who's lonely in a crowd probably doesn't have that person and that's what we're really so I think what and this is this comes under the the professional rubric of of security of attachment that everyone needs to feel securely attached securely connected to at least one other person kids need it but we need it all the way through lives all the way into old age and so I think if if someone can find the way to make sure they have a nurture at least one of those relationships the rest is probably much more easy to take care of absolutely everyone I've been talking to the one and only Robert wardinger the book is called the good life lessons from the world's longest scientific study of happiness I hope you go and grab the book as you can see one thing I love about speaking with Bob is that he's great into weaving science and spirituality you know he has this amazing Zen background but then also as a psychiatrist I love meeting people who are at the juxtaposition of two seemingly opposite ideas but actually two things that flow beautifully together uh Bob is there anything that I haven't asked you that you really want to share or something that's on your heart or mind or in your intuition that you'd love to share with everyone I'd love to give you that opportunity okay well I'll just State something that's obvious but might not be obvious all the time which is that in this quest for happiness for the good life it's easy to imagine that it's possible to to be happy all the time nobody on the planet is happy all the time and and the reason I have to say that is because when we look around as we see you know advertisements and social media where people are smiling and and having look like they've got life all figured out nobody has life figured out all the time every day and I just want to name that so that you know that that life is filled with Joys and sorrows and ups and downs and that that you are not having a bad life if there's a mixture of joy and sorrow and boring days and and ordinary days in your life I I love that reminder I think that's such a beautiful thing for all of us to remember because you're so right our external projection is that someone else has it all together whoever that may be and none of us do this uh I love that thank you so much uh everyone who's been watching back at home or if you're traveling if you're on the move you're at work wherever you are listening and watching please do tag us on Instagram on Twitter on Tick Tock let us know what you learned what you took away when you grabbed the book I want you to take pictures of the book tag me to let me know what line you've read what moved you because I would honestly say that the questions this conversation made me ask were deeply personal you could see I was reflecting like these are the things we need to spend more time on and these are the things that we need to focus more deeply on because these are the things that are so simple that we might just miss them right they're they're right there in front of us and so you might just ignore them so thank you so much for listening thank you so much for watching a big thank you to Dr Robert warding as well Bob thank you for making the trip out always a pleasure thank you so much thank you if you love this episode you will also love my interview with Charles duhigg on how to hack your brain change any habit effortlessly and the secret to making better decisions

Channel: Jay Shetty Podcast

Views: 261,429

Keywords: Jay Shetty, Jay Shetty Podcast, Jay Shetty Interview, On Purpose Podcast, Jay Shetty Inspiration, Jay Shetty Motivation, Jay Shetty Video, Self help, Self improvement, Self development, entrepreneur, success habits, purpose podcast, Jay Shetty relationships

Id: EUqBAcSDpL4

Length: 70min 42sec (4242 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 06 2023