The Happiness Challenge: Take stock of your relationships

In 1938, Harvard researchers set out to find out what makes a person thrive.

They recruited 724 participants, a combination of Harvard College students and low-income Boston teenagers. All were willing to let the researchers follow their lives, from childhood troubles to first loves to the last days.

Every five years, the researchers collected participants' health records. They asked detailed questions about their lives every two years, and in subsequent years took DNA samples and performed brain scans. Twenty-five of the participants even donated their brains to the study after they died.

Now, 85 years later, the Harvard Developmental Study of adults extended to three generations and more than 1,300 descendants of the original subjects; it is, according to the researchers, the longest comprehensive study of human happiness in the world.

From all the data, a very clear conclusion emerged: Strong relationships are what make a happy life. More than wealth, I.Q. or social class, it's the strength of our connections that most determines whether we feel fulfilled.

In a new book , "The Good Life: Lessons From the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness," Dr. Bob Waldinger, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and fourth study director, and Marc Schulz, associate study director and professor in psychology at Bryn Mawr College, distilled the insights from the study.

If you're going to do one thing this year to ensure your health and happiness, say the authors , find time to nurture and grow relationships. To get you started, Dr. Waldinger and I have created this challenge - seven simple exercises, starting with taking today's quiz.

Dr. Waldinger and Dr. Schulz coined a term for the evaluation process and t processing the health of our relationships: "social ability". It's just as crucial as physical fitness, said Dr Waldinger, who added that neglected relationships can atrophy, like muscles. "Our social life is a living system, and it needs exercise," he said. "It's a choice you invest in, week after week, year after year, that has huge benefits."

The Harvard study is far from alone in finding a link between our relationships and happiness. Extensive research shows that the most socially connected people live longer and are better protected against stress, depression, and memory and language decline.

La loneliness, on the other hand, harms our physical health. “I believe that loneliness is one of the major public health issues of our time,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told me in an email. While the pandemic has exacerbated loneliness, he added, “it has also helped many people take stock of their lives and reflect more deeply on the importance of their relationships. It means taking steps in our everyday lives to invest in it. »

It's not just your connections to friends and family that are essential to happiness. These are your relationships with romantic partners and community groups. It's the friendly conversation with your postman or the acquaintance you see at...