The Good Life - a Book Report - For Friends!!

 The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness by Robert J. Waldinger and Marc Schulz Ph.D

I have just finished reading this exceptional book, and I would like to highly recommend it to FRIENDS.  And YOU are one of those. Thanks for that. Read on to see why. 

I spent the past decade reading about neuroscience and brains and emotions and stuff like that. I started out trying to understand why people sometimes are not doing “rational” things. I was very analytical about it. The authors of this book already know all of that stuff that I have been reading - ALL of it. And they put it to much better use than I have. But they have an extremely valuable resource which I do not have: the Harvard 80 year longitudinal study. They were all men in the beginning. They expanded it to their families and descendents. Many of the men in this study lived wonderful, happy lives. Some had major problems, psychosis, depression. They lived through the great depression and WW II and many other traumatic parts of our history. 

The authors are also a practicing psychiatrist and PhD psychologist with a world of experience with all manner of patients. They also do formal research in this field.

The book is focused on how we can use the experience of all of the people in this study, together with science from many other similar studies and research, to give ourselves the very best shot at a “good life”. A life full of meaning and purpose. A life with more joy than sorrow.

First of all they tell STORIES. Real stories of real people - most of them drawn from the Harvard study. They are great stories - they stick with you.

Then they describe the RESEARCH. This is key to me. I am not fond of authors who express their personal wisdom and opinion to the exclusion of what science has discovered about us. As it turns out, many of those old and wise authors and philosophers did understand the same things, but the scientific filter gives me a better shot at understanding and learning. It may be the way I am built. 

And they SIMPLIFY all of this to strategies to apply this wisdom in your own life. They talk about birth, death, and love. They talk about loneliness, happiness, family, friends - all of the parts of life. 

And the key, as they tell you right up front - it is all about RELATIONSHIPS. The quality of your relationships will determine the quality of your life, for emotion, happiness, health and length of life. They analyze the relationships, good and bad in the subjects of this study, and make concrete recommendations for how you can improve yours. I took several to heart. 

And there are ways to teach our children how to do this. A few schools call it SEL (Social Emotional Learning). Others call it Emotional Intelligence Training. We already teach our kids how to do Math and Science and Reading. Humans are born with that potential, but we really need formal training to learn those things. The same is true of our emotional / relational selves. We are absolutely social - but it is a learned skill, and we CAN improve it. Reading, Riting, Rithmetic and Relations. 

It is a great read - right down the last page. I learned something on almost every page. 

I am tempted to give a copy of this to everyone I love. We shall see!

Thanks. Stay Safe. You can do this.