Speaker 1: We know so much about people that if we want
Speaker 1: to look at what predicts who's going to live longer
Speaker 1: and stay healthier, it's going to be blood pressure, it's
Speaker 1: going to be cholesterol, It's going to be those things.
Speaker 1: And what we began to find was that the strongest
Speaker 1: predictors were how satisfied we feel in our relationships with
Speaker 1: other people.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious conceit
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Robert Waldinger,
Speaker 2: a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of
Speaker 2: the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital
Speaker 2: and co founder of the Lifespan Research Foundation. He's a
Speaker 2: practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and he directs a psychotherapy teaching
Speaker 2: program for Harvard Psychiatry Residence. He is also a zen
Speaker 2: master or Roschie and teaches meditation in New England and
Speaker 2: all around the world. He is co author of the
Speaker 2: book The Good Life Lessens From the World's Longest Scientific
Speaker 2: Study on Happiness.
Speaker 3: Hi, Bob, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you great to be here.
Speaker 3: I'm really excited to have you on. We're going to
Speaker 3: be discussing your book, The Good Life Lessons from the
Speaker 3: World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness, and we also might
Speaker 3: discuss zen practice, because you are a zen teacher and
Speaker 3: I We'll see where this goes. But let's start like
Speaker 3: we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's
Speaker 3: a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 3: and hatred and fear. The grandchild stops, they think about
Speaker 3: it for a second, they look up at their grandparent
Speaker 3: and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says,
Speaker 3: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 3: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 3: your life and in the.
Speaker 1: Work that you do. It's so resonant for me because
Speaker 1: we notice. I noticed that I could feed either wolf
Speaker 1: at any moment.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: There are all these choices all day every day, you know,
Speaker 1: the choice to be kind or the choice to give
Speaker 1: in to my nastier nature. Right, And so that idea
Speaker 1: that we're constantly choosing which wolf to feed just seems
Speaker 1: right on target for my day to day life. The
Speaker 1: other thing I know for myself, but also often for
Speaker 1: the people I work with in psychotherapy, is that you
Speaker 1: know that nasty wolf isn't the one you want to
Speaker 1: parade around to the world.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: You don't want to say, gee, I've got this nasty
Speaker 1: wolf inside of me, And it's very tempting to tell
Speaker 1: ourselves that we don't have that. No, I'm not that way,
Speaker 1: I don't have that in me. That's also dangerous. I
Speaker 1: find that I don't want to feed that wolf, but
Speaker 1: I want to really remember that the wolf is there,
Speaker 1: right and acknowledge it, not try to bury it, not
Speaker 1: try to push it away, just say oh, yeah, that's there.
Speaker 1: That's a possibility because the more I try to push
Speaker 1: anything away, as you know from Zen practice, the more
Speaker 1: you try to push it away, the stronger it gets.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to feed that wolf, but I
Speaker 1: don't want to pretend it isn't there either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's sections later in the book where you talk
Speaker 3: about avoidance. You know, you talk about how people who
Speaker 3: avoid difficult things in midlife turn out to be less
Speaker 3: happy later in life. And so that's speaking to a
Speaker 3: little bit of what you're saying is we're going to
Speaker 3: be talking about relationships, which is a lot of what
Speaker 3: we're going to talk about here today. Avoiding problems or
Speaker 3: trying to push them away and pretend they don't exist,
Speaker 3: is not a helpful or a skillful relationship strategy or
Speaker 3: a life strategy.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. I think the difficulty is when we say no,
Speaker 1: I can't be having this problem or this can't be
Speaker 1: part of who I am, right, so that the gradual
Speaker 1: greater and greater acceptance that comes sometimes with just the
Speaker 1: wisdom of getting older. Sometimes it's the wisdom that comes
Speaker 1: from sitting on a cushion meditating, but their variety wisdom
Speaker 1: practices that usually include a lot of self acceptance.
Speaker 3: So before we get into the results of the study,
Speaker 3: just give us a couple minute overview of what is
Speaker 3: this study that you have been the director of and
Speaker 3: that research informed so much of this book.
Speaker 1: Sure, this study is called the Harvard Study of Adult Development.
Speaker 1: As far as we know, it's the longest study of
Speaker 1: human life that's ever been done, the longest study of
Speaker 1: the same people, the same families. It started as two
Speaker 1: studies eighty five years ago, and at first the studies
Speaker 1: didn't even know about each other. One was started at
Speaker 1: the Harvard Student Health Service, and it was a group
Speaker 1: of college sophomores, nineteen year old young men who were
Speaker 1: thought by their deans to be fine, upstanding specimens, and
Speaker 1: so they were going to be part of a study
Speaker 1: of healthy development from adolescents into young adulthood. You know,
Speaker 1: and now that makes us smile, because you know, of course,
Speaker 1: if you want to study normal development, you study all
Speaker 1: white males from Harvard. No you don't, But at that time,
Speaker 1: that's what they thought would be a good group of
Speaker 1: people to study for this. Also, though, on the other
Speaker 1: side of the Harvard campus, at Harvard Law School, there
Speaker 1: was a law professor and his partner, a social worker,
Speaker 1: who were interested in juvenile delinquency, and they were particularly
Speaker 1: interested in how some children born into really difficult circumstances
Speaker 1: managed to thrive. So they chose four hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: six boys average age twelve, from Boston's poorest neighborhoods and
Speaker 1: most troubled families, and their question was, how did these
Speaker 1: boys stay out of trouble? How is it how is
Speaker 1: it possible that they say out of trouble? What are
Speaker 1: the things in their home lives that would predict them
Speaker 1: not getting into trouble? So that's what they studied, and
Speaker 1: then eventually my predecessor, I'm the fourth director. My predecessor
Speaker 1: brought the two studies together and we've studied them as
Speaker 1: contrasting groups, very underprivileged, very privileged. We've brought in their spouses,
Speaker 1: We've brought in their children, more than half of whom
Speaker 1: are women, so we have good gender balance.
Speaker 3: Now I know you've brought in their children, you've brought
Speaker 3: in their spouses. Have you brought in more men that
Speaker 3: were not part of this original cohort, or is everybody
Speaker 3: that's part of the study somehow related to that original cohort?
Speaker 3: Everybody is related to the original people. And the reason
Speaker 3: why we did that we thought, you know, particularly because
Speaker 3: everybody's all white in our study, because in Boston in
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty eight, the city was more than ninety seven
Speaker 3: percent white. Wow, so if you want to start a
Speaker 3: study in nineteen thirty eight in Boston, that's what you'd get.
Speaker 1: But we thought, well, should we bring in more diverse
Speaker 1: groups of people? But the real value of our study
Speaker 1: is that we have these long family histories, and that
Speaker 1: you can't manufacture anew if we bring in people now.
Speaker 1: And so we said, Okay, other studies are looking at
Speaker 1: people of color, people from more diverse backgrounds. We're going
Speaker 1: to just be the study we are of this group
Speaker 1: of people and these families over time. So over eighty
Speaker 1: five years, these are the people we've got.
Speaker 3: However, in working on the book, you certainly looked at
Speaker 3: lots of other research that was far outside your study
Speaker 3: to come up with a sense of like the conclusions
Speaker 3: I'm coming to here to these hold up as I
Speaker 3: look at more diverse groups.
Speaker 1: They do, and we're really careful to present only the
Speaker 1: findings that are applicable that have been found in more
Speaker 1: diverse groups, because we don't want to present as facts
Speaker 1: findings from our study that are only specific to a
Speaker 1: group of white people, you know, of the World War
Speaker 1: two generation. We don't want to do that, so we've
Speaker 1: made sure that our findings are corroborated, are replicated by
Speaker 1: other studies.
Speaker 3: So before we get to the main conclusion of the study,
Speaker 3: I want to start with a basic idea that you
Speaker 3: say very early on, and you say, the good life
Speaker 3: is complicated for everybody. So let's talk about why is
Speaker 3: the good life so complicated? I mean, you and I
Speaker 3: were talking before we started. We got all these ancient
Speaker 3: wisdom traditions, thousands of years and thousands of years of philosophers,
Speaker 3: and all kinds of modern psychology, and why is it
Speaker 3: still hard to live a good life?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: I think the ancient wisdom is there because we need
Speaker 1: correctives over and over again, because these wonderful minds and
Speaker 1: bodies that we've evolved have terrific advantages for our survival. Well,
Speaker 1: but they also lead us astray over and over again.
Speaker 1: So in many ways. We keep practicing spiritual traditions and
Speaker 1: religious traditions to try to bring us back to feeding
Speaker 1: the good wolf, the kind, compassionate wolf, because that other
Speaker 1: wolf is there, and we evolved to have that other
Speaker 1: wolf in us too, And I think that that's one
Speaker 1: of the big drivers of life being so complicated for
Speaker 1: all of us. We're always fighting against parts of our nature.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: You go on to say in that section that there
Speaker 3: are a couple of common reasons why we have a
Speaker 3: hard time finding this happiness and satisfaction. And one is
Speaker 3: you say, the good life may be central concern for
Speaker 3: most people, but it's not the central concern of most
Speaker 3: modern societies. And the second, and you sort of alluded
Speaker 3: to this, our brains, the most sophisticated and mysterious system
Speaker 3: in the known universe, often mislead us in our quest
Speaker 3: for lasting pleasure and satisfaction. So our culture tells us
Speaker 3: certain things are really important, and our brains go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: those things are really important. And it turns out that
Speaker 3: when we look at the research, those things don't tend
Speaker 3: to lead to the lasting happiness in the same way
Speaker 3: that some of the things we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1: Do that's right, that's right. We get these messages all
Speaker 1: day long if you think about it. You know, from advertising, certainly,
Speaker 1: from social media, subliminal messages on TV and in films
Speaker 1: everywhere about what ought to make us happy? You know,
Speaker 1: if you buy this car, you're going to be happier.
Speaker 1: If you serve this brand of pastay, your family, your
Speaker 1: family dinners are going to be blissful, right, you know,
Speaker 1: it's all these ideas that if you consume the right things,
Speaker 1: if you purchase the right things, if you look the
Speaker 1: right way, you're going to be happy. We know that
Speaker 1: that's not true, and yet the feeling we get when
Speaker 1: we look at all that is, gee, that's not my life.
Speaker 1: I'm missing out. I need to get those things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you say that, money, achievement, and status. Part of
Speaker 3: the problem is they're not complete mirages. And I've often
Speaker 3: talked about this on the show, like we all know
Speaker 3: that getting a new car isn't the answer to happiness,
Speaker 3: and if the new car gave us no enjoyment and pleasure,
Speaker 3: it would be an easy thing to see through. But
Speaker 3: it does actually for a little while. It's just not lasting,
Speaker 3: and so we chase these short term things that actually
Speaker 3: we know we'll increase our pleasure temporarily versus this unknown,
Speaker 3: sort of longer term fear. I can't say that word, yes,
Speaker 3: thank you. Certain words just seem to be unpronounceable by
Speaker 3: me in my fifties. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 3: But these other things are easier to see, so they'd
Speaker 3: be easier to see through if there was nothing there.
Speaker 1: Well. Right, the other thing is that they're measurable. So
Speaker 1: if I have a certain amount of money, I can
Speaker 1: measure that. I can show that to you, and I
Speaker 1: can compare it to how much money you have. Right,
Speaker 1: if I've achieved a certain amount and I win this
Speaker 1: award or I have this title, I've got that, I
Speaker 1: can show that to other people. You know, think about
Speaker 1: the life and the number of followers. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a whole new way of creating essentially false measures of
Speaker 1: achievement and popularity. But boy, they're there and they can
Speaker 1: be measured. And the thing we're going to talk about,
Speaker 1: which is relationships, you can't measure that, and they are
Speaker 1: complicated and they're always changing, and so you can't point
Speaker 1: to it and say I am the greatest at relationships.
Speaker 1: I've won the Nobel Prize in friendship that doesn't exist.
Speaker 3: So let's not bury the lead any further here. I mean,
Speaker 3: you say relationships are significant enough that if we had
Speaker 3: to take all eighty four years of the study and
Speaker 3: boil it down to a single principle for living, one
Speaker 3: investment that's supported by similar findings across a wide variety
Speaker 3: of other studies, it would be this, good relationships keep
Speaker 3: us healthier and happier period.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: And that's what we didn't believe at first. You know,
Speaker 1: we figured, Okay, we know so much about people that
Speaker 1: if we want to look at what predicts who's going
Speaker 1: to live longer and stay healthier, it's going to be
Speaker 1: blood pressure, it's going to be cholesterol. It's going to
Speaker 1: be those things. And what we began to find was
Speaker 1: that the strongest predictors were how satisfied we feel in
Speaker 1: our relationships with other people. We didn't believe it at first,
Speaker 1: because we said, all right, relationships keep us happier. That
Speaker 1: makes sense if we have good ones. But how could
Speaker 1: they make a difference in whether or not you get
Speaker 1: coronary artery disease or type two diabetes? How could that
Speaker 1: even be a thing? And then other research groups began
Speaker 1: to find the same thing. Now we know that warm
Speaker 1: social connections and more social connection are related to physical
Speaker 1: health across many, many studies. It's a very robust scientific fact.
Speaker 1: But at first we didn't believe it, and so we've
Speaker 1: spent the last decade or more trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how it works. How could relationships get into our body
Speaker 1: and shape our physic theology.
Speaker 3: It's interesting I've said this about the show. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't know how many episodes in now six hundred,
Speaker 3: maybe I don't know, somewhere around there. And when I started,
Speaker 3: if you'd asked me, like, what's most important about living
Speaker 3: a good life or being happy? I would have said
Speaker 3: it had something to do with going inside and knowing ourselves.
Speaker 3: I was a zen practitioner. I had the sense that
Speaker 3: it was about that. It was about quiet and solitude
Speaker 3: and going inside. And while all that is beneficial, the
Speaker 3: thing that I have been surprised by I shouldn't be
Speaker 3: surprised because within the first year the pattern was fairly
Speaker 3: clearly emerging that like, well, that's not the whole story,
Speaker 3: because it's our connection to others that really matters. I
Speaker 3: want to ask you a question about relationship though, because
Speaker 3: like many things in life, these things can cut both ways. Right,
Speaker 3: Like I was in a twelve year bad marriage that
Speaker 3: nearly destroyed me. Right, it was just so difficult and
Speaker 3: no matter what we tried to do, we just were
Speaker 3: the wrong fit for each other. We met when I
Speaker 3: had started drinking again. Anyway, there's a bunch of reasons
Speaker 3: why it wasn't the right thing. We could never really
Speaker 3: get it working well. And so in that case, I
Speaker 3: feel like that took ten years off my life, yeah,
Speaker 3: versus adding to my life. So let's talk about what
Speaker 3: it is in a relationship that is important in our
Speaker 3: well being, happiness and longevity. What are the characteristics? And
Speaker 3: knowing that most relationships are going to be a blend, right,
Speaker 3: no close relationship is without its stresses and its moments,
Speaker 3: So how do we know if the relationship is one
Speaker 3: that is actually contributing to our well being?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And you know, there have been some studies that
Speaker 1: show that really stressful marriages may be worse for your
Speaker 1: health than getting divorced. Probably are worse, so I think so,
Speaker 1: and yeah, and really it's stress. Stress seems to be
Speaker 1: the operative word here that the best hypothesis we have
Speaker 1: about how relationship chips work is that they are stress
Speaker 1: regulators that they can either ramp up our stress or
Speaker 1: they can help us regulate and relieve stress and manage
Speaker 1: negative feelings. If you think about it, we're having stressors,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes all day long, but certainly many times
Speaker 1: a week, something stressful happens and the body goes into
Speaker 1: fight or flight mode. So heart rate goes up, blood
Speaker 1: pressure goes up, higher levels of circulating stress hormones, higher
Speaker 1: levels of inflammation. Right, that's normal because we want the
Speaker 1: body to go into a mode where it can react
Speaker 1: to challenge, but then when the challenge is removed, we
Speaker 1: want the body to go back to equilibrium. And what
Speaker 1: we think happens with good relationships, and we can demonstrate
Speaker 1: this with experiments, is that when I'm going through something
Speaker 1: stressful and my partner takes my hand or it says
Speaker 1: something kind, literally, my blood pressure goes down, my heart
Speaker 1: rate goes down. Right, What we think happens is that
Speaker 1: people who don't have anybody who they can talk to
Speaker 1: about what's troubling them or the person they live with
Speaker 1: as a source of stress chronically all day long. We
Speaker 1: think what happens is that the body stays in a
Speaker 1: kind of fight or flight mode. And what that means
Speaker 1: is that there's a low level, constant increase in circulating
Speaker 1: cortisol and other stress hormones, in low level inflammation that
Speaker 1: can break down multiple body systems. So that's how, for example,
Speaker 1: a very stressful relationship or social isolation could make you
Speaker 1: more prone both to arthritis and to coronary artery disease
Speaker 1: because it works throughout the body.
Speaker 3: So there's a statement that's running its way kind of
Speaker 3: all around the culture these days. It relates to loneliness,
Speaker 3: and it says, you know that being lonely is the
Speaker 3: equivalent of smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day
Speaker 3: or a whope, know what the number is, right, and
Speaker 3: whether that's an exactly true statement or not, it points
Speaker 3: directionally at what the same thing you're saying, which is
Speaker 3: that relationships are important. Let's take that loneliness for an example.
Speaker 3: So I can see where if I'm having a stressful situation,
Speaker 3: having somebody in my life who can help me regulate
Speaker 3: that is valuable. I can also see how our relationships
Speaker 3: can ramp up that stress. In the case of loneliness,
Speaker 3: it's not that they have a bad relationship, not that
Speaker 3: the relationships are causing them stress. There's just very little there, right,
Speaker 3: are we saying that the danger there? To your point,
Speaker 3: we think is the same thing. It's just harder to
Speaker 3: regulate our stress response alone, yes, versus other people, and
Speaker 3: other people are an extraordinarily useful and adaptive way of
Speaker 3: regulating that stress response.
Speaker 1: Yes. What we think, and again this is speculative, is
Speaker 1: that we evolved to be social animals.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: That you know, evolution is about having the greatest chance
Speaker 1: of passing on your genes. So evolution probably moved in
Speaker 1: the direction of us being social because when we were
Speaker 1: banded together, we were safer. We could ward off threats
Speaker 1: more easily if we were together. Right. So what happens
Speaker 1: then is that isolation is a stressor. The body perceives it,
Speaker 1: the brain perceives it as a stressor. We don't sleep
Speaker 1: as well when we're alone as when we sleep with
Speaker 1: someone we feel safe with. Right. So what we think
Speaker 1: happened is that we evolved to be social animals, and
Speaker 1: then as society has made many of us more isolated,
Speaker 1: the natural stress response ramps up. That's built into our DNA.
Speaker 3: I'm reading a fascinating book right now called The Goodness Paradox,
Speaker 3: and I don't remember the name Rangem maybe he wrote
Speaker 3: a book previously called Chasing Fire. I think he's an
Speaker 3: evolutionary biologist, perhaps by training. There's a lot of really
Speaker 3: interesting things in it. But one of the things that
Speaker 3: many people believe is that human beings are domesticated animals
Speaker 3: and we self domesticated ourselves, which is a fascinating idea,
Speaker 3: but it speaks to I've got two domesticated animals behind me.
Speaker 2: Here right now.
Speaker 3: They get extraordinarily unhappy when I'm not around here. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like they are domesticated to me, and so they don't
Speaker 3: like it. You know, one of them may start whining
Speaker 3: in any minute here, like, hey, would you sit on
Speaker 3: the couch with me and stop this stupid conversation. But yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway,
Speaker 3: that's off topic, but it's a concept I never thought
Speaker 3: of before.
Speaker 1: Let me just throw out one other idea from you've
Speaker 1: all Harari who wrote about he thinks that the wheat
Speaker 1: plant domesticated humans that.
Speaker 3: Oh you know what, I kind of vaguely remember.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is really cool, really cool idea that essentially
Speaker 1: from the from the evolutionary point of view of the
Speaker 1: wheat stock. You know, they domesticated us to cultivate them,
Speaker 1: so that we now he's a very successful species on
Speaker 1: the planet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's extraordinarily successful. You know, corn is giving
Speaker 3: it a run for its money.
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So one of the things that I think is difficult
Speaker 3: about this sort of research around relationships and loneliness makes
Speaker 3: me think a little bit about the last five years
Speaker 3: of sleep research. Right. What I think happens is that
Speaker 3: we hear loneliness is really bad for you, not sleeping
Speaker 3: is really bad for you, And yet we have people
Speaker 3: who are extremely lonely and who can't sleep. And I
Speaker 3: sometimes worry that what we've done now is basically ratcheted
Speaker 3: the stress response up another knowledge by saying, well, not
Speaker 3: only are you lonely, but you're going to die from
Speaker 3: it faster. Not only you having trouble sleeping, and that's
Speaker 3: a pain in the ass, and it's uncomfortable, and your
Speaker 3: day to day life is bad now you know what
Speaker 3: dementias in your near future. So how do we take
Speaker 3: this sort of stuff and then turn it into something
Speaker 3: that is useful for us and not something that further
Speaker 3: pushes us down.
Speaker 1: That's such a good question because if you think about it,
Speaker 1: we do this with obesity, we do this with smoking.
Speaker 1: Not that I'm a fan of smoking, but there are
Speaker 1: people who just can't stop or don't want to stop, right, So,
Speaker 1: how do we name the things that keep us healthy
Speaker 1: without shaming or making more anxious the people who can't
Speaker 1: or don't want to do those things? And I think
Speaker 1: that's a really important question. The other side to that
Speaker 1: is that some people don't want more relationships. You know,
Speaker 1: there are many people who want a quieter, less social life,
Speaker 1: and they're content, actually healthier, less stressed when they have
Speaker 1: a lot of solitude, a lot of alone time. So
Speaker 1: the one thing I know from having followed these thousands
Speaker 1: of people across their lives is one size never fits all,
Speaker 1: one prescription never fits all. So I guess my hope
Speaker 1: is that people get this message so that when they
Speaker 1: can and want to, they choose connection. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like the one you feed that they feed connection when
Speaker 1: connection is an option for them and seems desirable. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean you have to, That doesn't mean you're
Speaker 1: doomed if you don't do that.
Speaker 3: Yep, it's a great way of looking at it. So
Speaker 3: let's go into type of relationships a little bit. So
Speaker 3: if we say, you know, the evidence from your study
Speaker 3: and many others, is that good relationships? If you're going
Speaker 3: to invest in one thing, that's the thing you could
Speaker 3: invest in. What type of relationships are we talking about here?
Speaker 3: And how many do I need? Do they need to
Speaker 3: be varied? Do I need to eat from all the
Speaker 3: food groups? I mean, like, what are we talking about here?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well you've asked a lot of questions, so yes,
Speaker 1: that's no, no, no, no, that's okay. Just help me remember
Speaker 1: the different ones because you raised they're really important points
Speaker 1: that you just raised, and there are several of them.
Speaker 1: So one is easy. How many friends? There's no set number,
Speaker 1: and again, one size doesn't fit all. For some people,
Speaker 1: it's like one or two trusted people and that's all
Speaker 1: they need, that's all they want. For some people, it's
Speaker 1: lots of people. Because we're all on a spectrum from
Speaker 1: being introverts to being extroverts, and there's nothing better about
Speaker 1: being an extrovert than being an introvert, even though our
Speaker 1: culture tends to glorify the party folks. So no set
Speaker 1: number of friends. It's a felt need for more or less,
Speaker 1: and each person needs to check in with themselves about
Speaker 1: that and then which types of relationships. One of the
Speaker 1: things we know is that almost all types of connections
Speaker 1: can give us what I sometimes call hits of well being. So,
Speaker 1: for example, like, yes, absolutely having a romantic partner can
Speaker 1: be a great thing, but you don't need a romantic
Speaker 1: partner to get these benefits. Could be friendships, could be
Speaker 1: family relationships, could be workmates. The other thing we know
Speaker 1: is that casual relationships often make us feel good. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the cashier at the grocery store, the barista
Speaker 1: at the coffee shop. Having a nice, friendly interaction with
Speaker 1: someone like that day to day again makes us feel good.
Speaker 1: It makes us feel we belong, it helps us feel seen.
Speaker 1: So all kinds of relationships can have this benefit. And
Speaker 1: then I think you ask something else.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the last part of it you kind
Speaker 3: of hit there, which is that you know, different types
Speaker 3: of relationships can be beneficial, but we don't necessarily need
Speaker 3: all the different types right.
Speaker 1: Right, Again, it is a subjective experien It's how I feel.
Speaker 1: If I feel like I would like more connection, then
Speaker 1: the question is, well, what kind of connection do I want?
Speaker 1: More people to have fun with? Do I want more
Speaker 1: people to confide in? Do I want someone to drive
Speaker 1: me to doctor's appointments when I need it? You know,
Speaker 1: there are so many things that relationships do for us,
Speaker 1: So each one of us can check in and say
Speaker 1: do I want more? And if so, what do I
Speaker 1: want more of? And then how could I build that?
Speaker 4: Yep?
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting to think about how these forces
Speaker 3: that we talked about earlier, for money or status or
Speaker 3: prestige can corrupt our connection seeking. So, for example, there's
Speaker 3: a phrase that has become famous in self help circles,
Speaker 3: which is, you're the average of the five people you
Speaker 3: spend the most time around.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: You've never heard that one?
Speaker 4: Huh.
Speaker 3: No, you're the average of the five people you spend
Speaker 3: the most time around. And I actually think, like anything,
Speaker 3: there's some true in there for sure.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: The challenge, particularly in the achiever space, is that people
Speaker 3: start going, Okay, well, I'm going to jettison those relationships
Speaker 3: for these other relationships because I want to be successful,
Speaker 3: so I'm going to surround myself with these successful people
Speaker 3: or C. S. Lewis used to talk about the inner ring.
Speaker 3: Everybody believes there's an inner ring out there of special
Speaker 3: people and if.
Speaker 1: They were just in that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, So all of a sudden, these desires to be
Speaker 3: more successful, to have more money, to have more prestige
Speaker 3: start driving the type of connection that we can seek
Speaker 3: out and that we can look for. And I wanted
Speaker 3: to name that because as I was reading your book,
Speaker 3: I was sort of reflecting on those ideas, you know,
Speaker 3: and the sense that good relationships there's a given, a take,
Speaker 3: there's a give in, and there's a receiving kind of
Speaker 3: thing to it.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. You know, that point about reciprocity is
Speaker 1: really key. That one of the things that characterizes good
Speaker 1: relationships of any consequence is that there is that give
Speaker 1: and take that I don't just take and I don't
Speaker 1: just give because it doesn't feel okay for it to
Speaker 1: be really lopsided. Most of the time. Now, in fairness,
Speaker 1: with young children, yeah we give a lot more, but
Speaker 1: we get other things. But you know, if you think
Speaker 1: about it, the person who who simply needs us to
Speaker 1: listen and to give, give, give, that person eventually makes
Speaker 1: us feel kind of more alone and kind of depleted. Similarly,
Speaker 1: if we don't ask for help, if we don't allow
Speaker 1: ourselves to be helped by other people, which I personally
Speaker 1: have had a hard time. I've had to learn more.
Speaker 4: About that me too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know that that again makes things feel lopsided.
Speaker 1: So I think reciprocity is really important when we think
Speaker 1: about the quality of our relationships.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think those of us who are in a helping
Speaker 3: profession or a teaching profession tend to slide into those
Speaker 3: roles really, really naturally and easily, and at least for me,
Speaker 3: they're not the right role to be in in a
Speaker 3: lot of my friendships. That's the wrong place to go
Speaker 3: or you know, I need to slide out, but it's
Speaker 3: a conscious choice.
Speaker 2: I have to go up there.
Speaker 3: I'm doing it again, exactly out of that mode into relationship.
Speaker 3: You know, that is not that sort of hierarchy. That's
Speaker 3: not hierarchical, but you kind of get the sense of
Speaker 3: what I mean, one person's helping. It's one of the
Speaker 3: insights that I love so much about twelve step programs,
Speaker 3: where you know, the fundamental insight of alcoholics anonymous was
Speaker 3: that when one alcoholic talked to another, there was a
Speaker 3: reciprocal benefit relationship. So I could be fifteen years sober
Speaker 3: talking to somebody who's two days sober, and it looks
Speaker 3: like I'm helping the person who has two days sober,
Speaker 3: but that relationship is actually completely reciprocal.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: Right, That's a deep insight, you know. Is that for me,
Speaker 3: the more I recognize that, the better I'm able to
Speaker 3: be in those situations skillfully.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, really important, really important. I'm a shrink, right,
Speaker 1: and I'm a psychotherapist. I work with people every day
Speaker 1: in therapy, and it's really easy then in my personal life,
Speaker 1: as you were saying, to slip into that mode of well,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna listen and let other people, you know,
Speaker 1: and then I really like, oh my gosh, here I
Speaker 1: am doing it again, you know, and then rather than
Speaker 1: realizing no, this this needs to be a two way street.
Speaker 3: That's a great point. Yeah, me too, I'll just sit
Speaker 3: back and look. Yeah, yeah, I'm like, well, you know,
Speaker 3: I kind of need to move out of interrogation mode
Speaker 3: and you know, talk about myself a little bit. You know,
Speaker 3: interviewing people for a living doesn't, right, Yeah, all these
Speaker 3: things we just do what comes easy to us and
Speaker 3: comes natural. You know. It seems to me that depending
Speaker 3: on where you are in your life and in your relationships,
Speaker 3: there are different skills you might really need. So for example, well,
Speaker 3: you may be a person who has a significant other, couple,
Speaker 3: family members, and several good friends, but there's tension throughout
Speaker 3: many of those relationships, and so the skill that's needed
Speaker 3: is probably to learn to improve those relationships and feel
Speaker 3: connected within them, et cetera. And then there are other people,
Speaker 3: and this is more the loneliness epidemic we're talking about,
Speaker 3: who don't have relationships Like I know a woman she's
Speaker 3: been part of our Spiritual Habits program before, where in
Speaker 3: rapid succession, she lost several family members, several friends, I mean,
Speaker 3: went from somebody who had a relatively connected life to
Speaker 3: completely isolated, right, And so now all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: her challenge is how do I rebuild that from nothing?
Speaker 3: You know, and not everybody's going to be that extreme,
Speaker 3: but it does seem that there's these couple of skills
Speaker 3: that we need some ability to do, both of which
Speaker 3: is how do I improve the relationships I'm in and connect
Speaker 3: with them more? How do I learn to cultivate new ones?
Speaker 3: So I thought, maybe as we move forward and talk
Speaker 3: about some different ways of doing this, we could sort
Speaker 3: of think about them in those two buckets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those are great buckets. Okay, so let's start with
Speaker 1: how do I improve the relationships that I'm in.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, one thing we find in studying so many lives
Speaker 1: is that being proactive in taking care of your relationships
Speaker 1: matters a lot. So when I was in my twenties,
Speaker 1: I used to think, boy, I got my friends, you know,
Speaker 1: from grade school, high school, college, you know, they'll always
Speaker 1: be my friends. But what we would see is that
Speaker 1: people would let totally good relationships just wither away and
Speaker 1: die from neglect because they wouldn't do anything about them.
Speaker 1: And there's so many pressures work and family and so
Speaker 1: many things to do. But what we found was that
Speaker 1: the people who were good at this, at maintaining the
Speaker 1: relationships and strengthening the relationships they already have, is by
Speaker 1: being active reaching out. So I've had to learn this,
Speaker 1: so you know, I'm a professor. I could work a
Speaker 1: NonStop twenty four to seven, and at times I did that.
Speaker 1: What I find is that because of my research, that
Speaker 1: if I don't reach out to my friends, I don't
Speaker 1: see them, they kind of drift away. So now I
Speaker 1: make sure that I go for walks with friends every week.
Speaker 1: That usually I'll have dinner with somebody once a week,
Speaker 1: and I'll make it a point to reach out, and
Speaker 1: usually they will reach out to me as well. It's reciprocal.
Speaker 1: So I'm more active than I used to be, and
Speaker 1: I think that each of us can do that. It
Speaker 1: can be tiny actions, could be just sending a little
Speaker 1: text saying hi, I was just thinking of you want
Speaker 1: to say hello? So that's one thing.
Speaker 3: Can we pause there for a second. Yeah, you gave
Speaker 3: a talk to not a TED talk, but a talk
Speaker 3: to a smaller TED audience or TED members. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I quite know what it was. But you had them
Speaker 3: do something in there that I thought we could just
Speaker 3: have listeners do right now. You gave them a challenge.
Speaker 3: Do you remember what that challenge was?
Speaker 1: Well, I think it might have been the what I
Speaker 1: just said, which was so I could do that now?
Speaker 1: Do you want to do it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1: So the challenge is this, think of somebody in your
Speaker 1: life who you don't see as much as you want to,
Speaker 1: who you just you know you miss them, or gee,
Speaker 1: you think to yourself, we should get together more, or
Speaker 1: I should be in touch more. Think of that person,
Speaker 1: hold them in your mind. Now take out your phone
Speaker 1: and just send them a text or an email just
Speaker 1: saying Hi, I was thinking of you wanted to connect.
Speaker 1: That's all you have to do.
Speaker 3: Just do that now, So listeners, you can hit pause
Speaker 3: on this and do it. And I really recommend that.
Speaker 3: Like that little strategy is one that I've incorporated over
Speaker 3: the years of just occasionally sitting down and scrolling through
Speaker 3: all my old text messages. I mean, like, god, it's
Speaker 3: been six months since you know, And so listeners, that's
Speaker 3: your challenge. Pause for a second, hit pause, send a
Speaker 3: message to somebody in the way that Bob just described, you.
Speaker 1: Know, and then they could let you know do you
Speaker 1: have I don't know if there's a place where people
Speaker 1: can leave you comments, but you can leave comments like
Speaker 1: what happened with it? So sometimes when I do this,
Speaker 1: sometimes I've done it where I'm talking to a live
Speaker 1: audience and I'll do this, and then during the question
Speaker 1: and answer, I'll say, did anybody get anything back from
Speaker 1: that text you just sent? And all these hands go
Speaker 1: up and people will say, oh, this person was so
Speaker 1: glad I reached out because they just had surgery and
Speaker 1: they really wanted connection, or somebody just made a dinner
Speaker 1: date with me for next week. You'll be amazed at
Speaker 1: what comes back to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, so listeners, if you want to do that,
Speaker 3: we've been spending more time on Instagram where it won
Speaker 3: underscore you underscore feed. Those are all spelled out. I'd
Speaker 3: love to have you just share if you did this
Speaker 3: challenge kind of how'd it go? What happened? That actually
Speaker 3: wasn't a planned promotion, but Bobby teed it up too good.
Speaker 3: I couldn't resist. I couldn't resist. So that's one is
Speaker 3: to be proactive.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Along those lines, you said something else in there that
Speaker 3: I think is a really great idea and a really
Speaker 3: important idea, which is to establish routines with people. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like the constant decision making of having to decide things
Speaker 3: again and again and again is difficult. So if we
Speaker 3: can decide something once and have it more or less
Speaker 3: be the rule exactly, right, Like Saturday morning, I go
Speaker 3: to my zen group to sit and I go out
Speaker 3: to eat with them afterwards. That's the standing rule, right,
Speaker 3: And do I do it every Saturday?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: Like things come up, but I don't have to keep redeciding,
Speaker 3: or I'm going to see my friend and we're going
Speaker 3: to walk Thursday afternoon. That's the rule, and it's just planned.
Speaker 3: We don't have to keep rethinking it. So establishing these
Speaker 3: routines can make it easier to keep these connections going exactly.
Speaker 1: My co author Markschaltz is a friend and a research collaborator.
Speaker 1: Every Friday at noon, we have a call for ninety
Speaker 1: minutes and it's just in the calendar, and you know,
Speaker 1: of course we talk about our research and our writing,
Speaker 1: but we also talk about our lives, and we have
Speaker 1: to cancel that otherwise it's just a given that it's
Speaker 1: going to happen. When my kids were little, someone told
Speaker 1: my wife and me to have a date night, and
Speaker 1: so we hired a babysitter to come every Thursday night
Speaker 1: at six o'clock, and so we had to cancel her
Speaker 1: if we weren't going to go out. So it meant
Speaker 1: that we just went out, even if we just went
Speaker 1: to the mall and bought underwear. I mean, we just
Speaker 1: you know, And it was so great because, as you say,
Speaker 1: we didn't have to choose every single time. We could
Speaker 1: just do it. So if you have one or two
Speaker 1: people who you want to make sure you're with every
Speaker 1: week or even every month. Set it up regularly.
Speaker 3: We've given our Instagram account a new look, and we're
Speaker 3: sharing content there that we don't share anywhere else, encouraging
Speaker 3: positive posts with wisdom that support you and feeding your
Speaker 3: good wolf, as well as in behind the scenes video
Speaker 3: of the show and some of Giniani's day to day life,
Speaker 3: which I'm kind of still amazed that anybody would be
Speaker 3: interested in. It's also a great place for you to
Speaker 3: give us feedback on the episodes that you like, or
Speaker 3: concepts that you've learned that you think are helpful, or
Speaker 3: any other feedback you'd like to give us. If you're
Speaker 3: on Instagram, follow us it at one underscore you underscore
Speaker 3: feed and those words are all spelled out one underscore
Speaker 3: you underscore feed to add some nourishing content to your
Speaker 3: daily scrolling. See you there. Let's get one more idea
Speaker 3: from you about sort of the cultivation of the existing
Speaker 3: relationships or even in some cases, the moving that balance
Speaker 3: in that relationship from one of I feel like I'm
Speaker 3: getting more stress out of this than I am. You're
Speaker 3: a couple's counselor so I'm sure you could give us
Speaker 3: twenty hours of stuff like this, but if we wanted
Speaker 3: to give people just a couple of small ideas.
Speaker 1: One idea that I find really works is just bring
Speaker 1: curiosity to a relationship, particularly a relationship with someone who
Speaker 1: you think you know so well. One of my zen
Speaker 1: teachers once gave us an assignment on the meditation cushion.
Speaker 1: So here we were. We've meditated, you know, thousands of times,
Speaker 1: but he said that the meditation today is going to
Speaker 1: be to ask yourself, what's here right now that I
Speaker 1: have never noticed before? And if you do that with
Speaker 1: another person. So if I have dinner with my wife tonight,
Speaker 1: and I've had thousands of dinners with my wife thirty
Speaker 1: seven years, if I have dinner and I ask myself
Speaker 1: that question, like it might be something about her hair,
Speaker 1: it might be some expression she uses in conversation, it
Speaker 1: might be anything, but just to notice, just to actively
Speaker 1: be more curious, and then ideally to notice it with
Speaker 1: the other person. People feel so valued when we see them,
Speaker 1: when we're curious about them. Everybody loves to have someone
Speaker 1: notice them. And so what I would say is, see
Speaker 1: if you can bring curiosity to those relationships that might
Speaker 1: be getting a little old and stale.
Speaker 3: That's a beautiful one. Curiosity seems to be one of
Speaker 3: those all purpose tools that is helpful in nearly any
Speaker 3: scenario you find yourself in, with the possible exception of
Speaker 3: like there's a lion chasing me, you may not be
Speaker 3: curious about the lion or but for most things, all right,
Speaker 3: So let's talk about for people who find themselves in
Speaker 3: the situation where it's like, I don't have many relationships.
Speaker 3: I want more, but I'm fifty five years old, and
Speaker 3: it feels either too late or too hard, or I
Speaker 3: just don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, first of all, it's never too late. We
Speaker 1: have a chapter in our book titled It's never too late,
Speaker 1: because when we follow all these people, we find that
Speaker 1: many of them have these surprising events in their lives
Speaker 1: where they find relationships or they find love when they
Speaker 1: least expect it. So what can you do if you
Speaker 1: think I'm not good at this or it's never going
Speaker 1: to happen for me. Well, they've actually done research on this,
Speaker 1: and they find that one of the best ways to
Speaker 1: make new relationships is to do something with other people
Speaker 1: over and over again, with the same people. So what
Speaker 1: do I mean. So it could be that you join
Speaker 1: a gardening club, or you join a biking club, or
Speaker 1: you join a church group, or you volunteer to work
Speaker 1: for a political cause or to prevent climate change, whatever
Speaker 1: it might be. But you do something that you're interested in,
Speaker 1: and you do it alongside the same people week after
Speaker 1: week who are also interested in that. It gives you
Speaker 1: a natural conversation starter because you're both interested in something similar,
Speaker 1: and you're more likely first to start new conversations and
Speaker 1: then to have those conversations deepen when you see those
Speaker 1: people again and again. So that's one thing. Find things
Speaker 1: you're interested in, do it with other people.
Speaker 3: I want to echo something you said there that I
Speaker 3: think is really important, and I'm speaking from experience with
Speaker 3: this one, which is that, Okay, I want to develop
Speaker 3: more community. Of course, I'm going to go find people
Speaker 3: who have shared interests and show up and volunteer or
Speaker 3: show up at the meditation group. My trap has been
Speaker 3: I haven't done the second part of what you said,
Speaker 3: which is to do it again and again and again.
Speaker 3: I show up, and then I immediately am in judgment mode,
Speaker 3: because that's what many of us do when we're in
Speaker 3: a new group, we're either judging ourselves or judging others
Speaker 3: because we're uncomfortable. And it takes me a while to
Speaker 3: feel at all comfortable in a new group of people.
Speaker 3: And so after a time or two, I conclude the
Speaker 3: connection I wanted isn't here, and so I quit. And
Speaker 3: I've done this a lot of times in life, right,
Speaker 3: and I'm finally onto myself years later, you know, and
Speaker 3: after I started to see a lot of the research
Speaker 3: out there that talks about how long it takes to
Speaker 3: actually build a friendship as an.
Speaker 1: Adult, Like, it just takes time.
Speaker 3: So it's this matter of kind of what you said,
Speaker 3: which is to continue, Yeah, you know, to continue. Now
Speaker 3: that's not to say that like if you're in the
Speaker 3: wrong community that you just go forever, but it just
Speaker 3: takes time to feel like you're at all part of it,
Speaker 3: at least for me. Some people may jump in faster
Speaker 3: and feel more comfortable faster, but I don't.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm really glad you've named that, because the other
Speaker 1: thing we need to put out there is that it's
Speaker 1: not going to succeed every time. So let's say, let's
Speaker 1: say you just did the little challenge and you send
Speaker 1: somebody a text, not everybody's going to answer you back right.
Speaker 1: Or you go volunteer for something, or you go, you know,
Speaker 1: to a church group, or you do something, and you're
Speaker 1: going to feel uncomfortable. So I think the first thing
Speaker 1: to do is expect that you're not going to hit
Speaker 1: a home run every time. That it's going to take
Speaker 1: going again and again, getting up to bat, trying again
Speaker 1: and again. Sometimes you're going to strike out, and you
Speaker 1: try some place different, and sometimes it's just trying it
Speaker 1: again and again until you succeed. But don't expect it
Speaker 1: to succeed every time.
Speaker 3: Or right away. I mean, I do this thing called
Speaker 3: a food rescue. I'm part of a national organization, and
Speaker 3: basically what we do is we go and we take
Speaker 3: food from places that are going to throw it away
Speaker 3: and we deliver it to places that need it. And
Speaker 3: it's kind of a solitary thing, like I just pick
Speaker 3: up a route and I go grab food from one
Speaker 3: place take it to the other. One of the reasons
Speaker 3: I like it is because I can just grab a
Speaker 3: route and am I'm very busy. But there was a
Speaker 3: period of time a couple summers ago where every weekend
Speaker 3: a huge semi of food would arrive, all fresh produce.
Speaker 3: I believe it was some national initiative, and so we
Speaker 3: had to kind of take it all off, unloaded, package
Speaker 3: it back up in different ways. So I was around
Speaker 3: these food rescue people every Saturday for I don't know,
Speaker 3: maybe ten weeks. I feel like the first three weeks
Speaker 3: I just felt like I was on the outside looking in.
Speaker 3: But about the fourth or fifth week, all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: I was like, well, now I'm starting to strike up
Speaker 3: a couple more conversations. Now I'm starting, you know. And
Speaker 3: by the end of it, I was like, well, wow,
Speaker 3: I really like all these people. This is a great group.
Speaker 3: And so I share that story only to say like,
Speaker 3: it just can take a while depending on your personality type. Right,
Speaker 3: And we talked earlier about self acceptance, right, like how
Speaker 3: important self acceptance can be or maybe that was in
Speaker 3: our pre show conversation. I don't know, it doesn't matter,
Speaker 3: but this self acceptance for me, that's a self acceptance thing,
Speaker 3: just going that that's who I am. Yeah, instead of
Speaker 3: feeling like I should be more extroverted, instead of feeling
Speaker 3: like I should do it faster, I'm just gonna do it.
Speaker 3: The way I do it exactly and know that about
Speaker 3: myself and just be okay with that for a while.
Speaker 1: Exactly. That self acceptance is so key because then you're
Speaker 1: out of judging mode.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: You're not saying I'm not doing this right. You just say, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to keep showing up, just putting one
Speaker 1: foot in front of the other, and see what happened.
Speaker 3: Ye, you used a term. I don't know if you
Speaker 3: used it in the book or it got used in
Speaker 3: the ted thing that I listened to, but it was
Speaker 3: the idea of social fitness.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love that idea. And in that talk you say,
Speaker 3: you know, if we think about it like we would
Speaker 3: normal fitness, we would realize that you don't go to
Speaker 3: the gym once, you have to keep going, and that
Speaker 3: idea of social fitness same thing. We have to keep
Speaker 3: nurturing relationships. The other part of that analogy that I
Speaker 3: really liked is it made me think about those of
Speaker 3: us who are out of practice or let's say, lonely
Speaker 3: and you need to build new skills or whatever. When
Speaker 3: we start back to an exercise routine after having been
Speaker 3: off of it for a while, it's extraordinarily difficult in
Speaker 3: the beginning, Yeah, right, it feels hard. I'm like, I
Speaker 3: don't remember it being this hard, and I don't like it.
Speaker 3: And then over time we sort of catch our stride
Speaker 3: and it becomes sort of easier. And as I was
Speaker 3: thinking about social fitness, I was thinking about that analogy too,
Speaker 3: which kind of ties to what we were just saying. Yeah,
Speaker 3: when you show up in a place for the first time,
Speaker 3: it may take a while, and the same way it
Speaker 3: takes a while of going to the gym till you're
Speaker 3: kind of back in the groove of.
Speaker 1: It, exactly. And the other analogy is that you build muscles.
Speaker 1: So if my muscles are out of shape, it takes
Speaker 1: a while, and then you realize, oh, it all gets
Speaker 1: easier because I've built up right the ability to do
Speaker 1: it better. I'll give you an example. I never used
Speaker 1: to talk to Uber drivers, Lyft drivers, taxi drivers. I
Speaker 1: just didn't do that. I wanted to sit do my
Speaker 1: phone thing and everything. And then I started taking my
Speaker 1: own medicine. I said, Okay, I'm just going to strike
Speaker 1: up a conversation. And many of these drivers are people
Speaker 1: from other countries, so I just started asking where are
Speaker 1: you from, and they would start to tell me, and
Speaker 1: it would be so interesting. I mean I got to
Speaker 1: hear so many stories about so many parts of the world,
Speaker 1: why people came here, what's it been like to come here,
Speaker 1: what's it like to go back home? I mean, it's
Speaker 1: like my muscles got stronger. And so now if I can,
Speaker 1: I want to talk to a driver, because more often
Speaker 1: than not, it's going to be really interesting. It's going
Speaker 1: to make the ride go a lot faster.
Speaker 3: You share a study in the book about people on
Speaker 3: a subway? Yeah, will you share that because it ties
Speaker 3: to what you just said.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. This was done in Chicago where there are
Speaker 1: a lot of commuters taking the train, and the researchers
Speaker 1: assigned people to do one of two things when they
Speaker 1: were about to take their daily commute. One was do
Speaker 1: what you normally do, read the newspaper, stay on your phone,
Speaker 1: listen to music. And the other people were assigned to
Speaker 1: talk to a stranger. And they asked people before they
Speaker 1: took the trip, They said, how much do you think
Speaker 1: you're going to like this? Well, the people who were
Speaker 1: assigned to talk to strangers thought, I Am not going
Speaker 1: to like this. After they completed their assignment and they
Speaker 1: got off the train, they asked them again, how do
Speaker 1: you feel now? And how much did you enjoy it?
Speaker 1: The people who talk to strangers were way happier on
Speaker 1: average than the people who did what they normally do.
Speaker 1: And it's taken as one example of how we're often
Speaker 1: not so good at predicting what's going to make us happy,
Speaker 1: because when you stop and think, do I want to
Speaker 1: talk to a stranger, it's like, no, that's probably going
Speaker 1: to be awkward.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that study is fascinating because, yeah, it
Speaker 3: shows what you just said, which is we don't know
Speaker 3: what will make us happy. I think if I recall
Speaker 3: other wording from that, there was this sense that people
Speaker 3: thought like this could be kind of messy, and you know,
Speaker 3: it could be awkward, and it usually wasn't as much. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you know, I think the caveat there, right being
Speaker 3: what you said earlier. You're not always going to hit
Speaker 3: a home run. You may sit down on the subway
Speaker 3: and start a conversation with somebody that you're three minutes
Speaker 3: in and be like, okay, maybe right, maybe I wish
Speaker 3: I didn't do this right. Yeah, But more often than not,
Speaker 3: particularly if we can bring curiosity, you know, But I'm
Speaker 3: completely that way. Put me in a public situation, and
Speaker 3: I just I want shields up, Give me a book,
Speaker 3: let me read, let me do my processing, let me
Speaker 3: do you know. And yet those are not the memorable
Speaker 3: times I've spent doing stuff like that. The memorable times
Speaker 3: are when I've interacted with somebody right exactly.
Speaker 1: So it's just another way to rethink what your routines are.
Speaker 1: I'll give you another example that I learned from a
Speaker 1: woman who's in the clergy, and she said, what she
Speaker 1: has started doing. She travels and when she goes through
Speaker 1: security lines, she looks at the security workers name tag,
Speaker 1: looks the in the iye, calls them by name and say,
Speaker 1: how are you doing, Joe, how's your day going. And
Speaker 1: people love it. They love being seen. They love being
Speaker 1: called by name, because usually they're seen as these functionaries,
Speaker 1: these automatons that were just to be passed by, you know,
Speaker 1: gotten by. You know. Again, this idea that if we
Speaker 1: really notice each other, so much good stuff can happen.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: There was another part in the book, and this is
Speaker 3: off tangent a little bit, but you were talking, I
Speaker 3: believe about social media and how we can connect with
Speaker 3: social media in ways that are helpful and not helpful.
Speaker 3: But you shared a little bit about a photograph from
Speaker 3: nineteen forty six. You shared that in nineteen forty six,
Speaker 3: a young Stanley Kubrick published a photo and look magazine
Speaker 3: that would be very familiar today. A subway car of
Speaker 3: New York commuters heads bowed nearly every single one of them,
Speaker 3: absorbed in their newspapers. Their newspapers, right, And I just
Speaker 3: thought that was interesting because I'm not saying that we
Speaker 3: don't need to be very conscious of how we use
Speaker 3: our digital devices, but I love that analogy because it
Speaker 3: shows we're always predicting these huge problems with what technology is.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm sure there were people in nineteen forty
Speaker 3: six being like, why aren't these people talking to each other?
Speaker 3: But I think the point in the book was further
Speaker 3: that this fracturing of our attention is not a new thing.
Speaker 1: That's right, It isn't a new thing. And we can
Speaker 1: use media to take us away from each other. So
Speaker 1: it's perfectly good to read the newspaper or perhaps to
Speaker 1: use social media, but what function does it serve? And
Speaker 1: if it serves the function of keeping us from each other,
Speaker 1: then we're in trouble. Example, my wife and I come
Speaker 1: down to the kitchen in the morning and sometimes I
Speaker 1: realize she's on her email, I'm looking at the news feed,
Speaker 1: and we haven't even looked at each other. We've hardly
Speaker 1: said good morning, right. Can we be more intentional and
Speaker 1: more deliberate about not letting these media take us away
Speaker 1: from each other when we need to be with each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's so interesting. I was in a
Speaker 3: restaurant the other night with my mother and she was
Speaker 3: looking at the table over and she was like, those
Speaker 3: two people have not talked to each other at all.
Speaker 3: They've been on their phone the whole time. The initial
Speaker 3: judgment was like, oh, that's terrible, and then I thought, well,
Speaker 3: you know, sometimes that's what Ginny and I do. Like,
Speaker 3: you know, when we're traveling in Europe and we've been
Speaker 3: together for eighteen straight days, twenty four hours a day,
Speaker 3: it's like, well, you know what, maybe this is we
Speaker 3: don't need every single moment of connection. So it's kind
Speaker 3: of like you said, no one size fits all. But
Speaker 3: I do think that's a really interesting thing and to
Speaker 3: be conscious of. For example, Giny and I like to
Speaker 3: watch certain TV series, right, I think like we're in
Speaker 3: a golden age of like art being.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we do too.
Speaker 3: My original reaction is TV's bad, don't do it right, right,
Speaker 3: you should be reading instead. But what I've realized is
Speaker 3: that reading doesn't always have to be But in our
Speaker 3: case is a solo activity. Watching TV together is a
Speaker 3: group activity. However, too much of it does pull us
Speaker 3: away from each other exactly right. Where some of it
Speaker 3: feels like it brings us together, too much of it
Speaker 3: feels like, Okay, that's taking up the special time we
Speaker 3: have together. And then trying to think about ways of
Speaker 3: like can we talk about what we saw?
Speaker 1: Can we talk about what we watched?
Speaker 3: Like can I use it as a tool to engender
Speaker 3: future connection in a way? And I just think there
Speaker 3: are ways to approach all of these things. To use
Speaker 3: a Buddhist term skillfully or less skillfully, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And to see everything as focusing on the
Speaker 1: right processes. So the process of connection is what you're
Speaker 1: trying to focus on. That doesn't mean you have to
Speaker 1: connect every moment, And it doesn't mean that TV is
Speaker 1: good or bad. It means am I using TV or
Speaker 1: the newspaper or other things in my life in a
Speaker 1: way that at least doesn't detract from my connections with
Speaker 1: what's most important to me and maybe enhances what's most
Speaker 1: important to me. So, you know, using TV as a
Speaker 1: way to talk to each other about something could be
Speaker 1: a great thing in terms of your relationship. So again,
Speaker 1: it's really looking at what do I most care about,
Speaker 1: what do I most value? And does this further that
Speaker 1: is it skillful in that way?
Speaker 4: Yep, yep.
Speaker 3: So we're nearing the end of our time and we
Speaker 3: haven't gotten to talk about Zen, which we probably could
Speaker 3: do for the next three hours. I hope we get
Speaker 3: a chance to do it at some point. But I'm
Speaker 3: wondering if I were to sort of give you a
Speaker 3: pop quiz here, which would be like, talk to me
Speaker 3: about how the work on the Harvard study and the
Speaker 3: work that you've done as a ZEN teacher as a
Speaker 3: ZEN student all these years, where's a commonality here or
Speaker 3: where are some things that they might inform each.
Speaker 1: Other they do inform each other. So Zen is about
Speaker 1: the big questions of life and death. What does it
Speaker 1: mean to be alive? What does it mean to be
Speaker 1: a human being in the world? And the Harvard Study
Speaker 1: is about human life. It's about what does it mean
Speaker 1: to have a whole life, to be able to look
Speaker 1: at entire lives? And for me, that's such a privilege.
Speaker 1: And so I get to ask questions informed by my
Speaker 1: Zen practice. I get to ask questions in research like,
Speaker 1: as you look back on your life, what are you
Speaker 1: proud of stuff? As you look back on your life,
Speaker 1: what do you regret the most? I wouldn't have asked
Speaker 1: those questions if I weren't a Zen practitioner and focusing
Speaker 1: all the time on my own life and what it
Speaker 1: means to have this moment and this day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you write beautifully in the book also about attention,
Speaker 3: which is, to me, is a core Zen idea, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, where is my attention? And how can I
Speaker 3: sharpen that attention? And how can I notice, as you
Speaker 3: said earlier, something I haven't noticed before. And so I
Speaker 3: saw a great overlap there too. As you were writing
Speaker 3: about that, I was like, this sounds like a guy
Speaker 3: who's had some contemplative practice in his background.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and you know my Dharma great grandfather, So
Speaker 1: he was my teacher's teacher's teacher, John Terrant. He said,
Speaker 1: attention is the most basic form of love. And I
Speaker 1: love that quote because it is so true when I
Speaker 1: think about you know, what I give to other people,
Speaker 1: that's what other people really want.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think he also said something around like, to learn
Speaker 3: to attend is the path? To learn to attend more
Speaker 3: and more deeply is the rest of the path. I'm
Speaker 3: not getting it right. Yeah, yeah, but John Terren has
Speaker 3: talked about attention in a number of different ways. Well, Bob,
Speaker 3: thank you so much. I've really enjoyed having you on.
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed the book, and I really enjoyed the
Speaker 3: prompts that it will give me in my own life.
Speaker 3: And I hope others to get out there and make
Speaker 3: relationships and connection really important.
Speaker 1: Well, this was a delightful conversation. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: You're welcome.
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