- Marc Schulz, the associate director of the landmark Harvard Happiness Study reminds us to focus on our relationships as they are the single most important factor for our health and happiness.
- Two Buddhists abbots suggest staying focused on behaving in a virtuous way for a sense of wellbeing.
- Arthur Brooks keeps things practical: stop doom-scrolling, invite your friends over for dinner, watch the local news instead of the national, and focus on what you can actually control.
In the Harvard Happiness Study — the landmark research that’s spanned 87 years and is ongoing — the original cohort of men were between the ages of 18 and 21 when the Second World War broke out. Ninety percent went off to war. Half of them, a group that included President John F. Kennedy, had just graduated from Harvard.
“There was real worry that the civilization was going to end, that fascism would rule the world and some of the principles that people held very dearly in the United States would not win the day,” said Marc Schulz, the associate director of the study and a psychology professor at Bryn Mawr College. “They report it was the scariest experience of their lives … but they also, in a curious way, saw this as an incredible part of their life experience.”
The study set out to “understand human health by investigating not what made people sick, but what made them thrive,” wrote Schulz and the study director, Robert Waldinger, in the introduction to their book, “The Good Life: Lessons from the world’s longest scientific study of happiness.” It’s a deep dive into what, over time, makes people truly happy.
“One of the critical lessons from the study is that change and challenge is an important part of life,” Schulz said in an interview. “It is an uncertain time. There’s been a lot of upheaval, particularly on the economic and political front, and people are worried about the future, and feel like life is a bit out of control.”
He’s right. The past few weeks have been economically and politically chaotic. Since taking office, President Donald Trump has declared at least five national emergencies, the Geneva Academy counts 110 armed conflicts around the globe including land wars in the Middle East and Europe, the ongoing ping-pong of tariffs has sown confusion and sent international markets on a roller coaster, and the debates about presidential authority are difficult to parse out. Then there’s the worry about the growing cultural and economic indicators of a recession, of which law school applications and beauty salon sales are known harbingers.
Some Americans, of course, celebrate and welcome the upheaval, believing it’s a necessary course correction, even if difficult for the time being. Others fear that their standard of living today and in the future are in danger.
Regardless of how we interpret the moment, it’s important to note that this is not the first time that the world has struggled through a challenging or difficult period. In the midst of the cacophony that’s coming from the news, it’s as good a time as any to stop and focus on the things that bring us joy and revisit the tools we have to stay happy — some have been studied for thousands of years by clerics and sages, and others are the subject of significant scientific consideration today. And they share many of the same conclusions, one of which is that the best way to weather a hard moment is by leaning into what makes you happy rather than letting darker thoughts prevail. This is something that President Russell Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints warned against at the church’s General Conference earlier this month.
“Two years ago, I called upon us, as covenant followers of Jesus Christ, to be peacemakers. I repeat what I said then: ‘Anger never persuades. Hostility builds no one. Contention never leads to inspired solutions’,” he said.
So what are the commonalities to cultivating happiness — in good times and troubling ones — from those who have paused to reflect on the question, including two Buddhist monks, a Harvard researcher or Arthur Brooks, the professor and author specializing in happiness?
“Focus on what you can control,” Brooks said in an email. “And you’ll have a healthier attitude in response to change.”
That’s similar to what Thanissaro Bhikkhu, abbot of the Metta Forest Monastery in San Diego, told me.
“Let’s just take it one day at a time. What are your options right now and what would be the best things for you to do? How could you express your generosity, virtue, and goodwill?” he said. “Focus on that. You don’t know how much time you have left, anyhow.”
The single most important factor in happiness
There are many relevant findings from the Harvard Happiness Study, which began in 1938, but there is “one crucial factor [that] stands out for the consistency and power of its ties to physical health, mental health, and longevity,” wrote Schulz and Waldinger. “One thing continuously demonstrates its broad and enduring importance.”
That’s “good relationships,” they wrote.
If the research directors had to take all that’s been accumulated from the study and boil it down to one simple suggestion, it would be that “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”
In case study after case study from the cohort of participants, it was shown that those who were the happiest had invested the most energy and time into cultivating their closest relationships. Sure, money made some things easier, but those with quality relationships with their families and friends rated themselves happier than those that focused on careers or financial gain — and this was true over time, too. It is a revelation that, while not surprising, is welcome, given that it’s factor that has the potential to be within our control.
“Relationships serve lots and lots of functions,” Schulz said. “Some of those functions help us in uncertain times, so they help us cope with challenges.” Our relationships, which may include the ones we have with a higher power and our religious communities, are refuges during hard times and are the most likely way for people to find happiness.
Schulz said that when someone is struggling, it helps for them to speak with their people — it might help give them a new perspective to consider, check their thinking or simply provide comfort. “Those are the places, relationships, where we often have our greatest joy, and we can do things that allow us to be absorbed and away from the chaos that feels like it is unfolding around us,” he said.
Among those relationships, married partnerships are the single most important and also the most predictive of our future happiness, according to the research of Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia and author of “Get Married.” Likely, this primary relationship is the first to feel the stresses of financial instability, too.
“The idea here is not to try to do something on your own or retreat to your own individual strategy in the face of a stressful situation, but try to figure out how you can work with your spouse to navigate turbulent financial times,” Wilcox said.
Wilcox reminded folks to be careful not to lash out at each other, to say more positive than negative things to your spouse, smile more, offer a reassuring hand, and try to reiterate the other person’s point so they feel heard. Taking his advice could have a significant long-term impact on happiness, too.
“What we found is that people who were saying that they were happily married were about 545% more likely to be very happy with their lives,” he said.
Determining what we can control
There’s a story from the sacred texts of the Buddha, in which a king visits the ancient sage for a discussion. The Buddha poses a hypothetical question to the king: if a trustworthy person rode in from the north and told him that a mountain was moving down into his territory, killing and destroying all in its path, and then three separate, reliable riders come from the east, the south and the west, all with the same information, what would he do?
The king responds by saying, “Well, what else can I do, but just try to practice goodness as much as I can — that’s the only thing I would have left.”
The Buddha says, “Well I tell you, aging, illness and death are moving in on you, crushing all living beings in their wake. What are you going to do?”
“What else can I do,” the king said, “but try to do as much goodness as I can?”
Abbot Thanissaro Bhikkhu, who both translated the story and recounted it to me, said that this would be his advice for folks who may find themselves feeling overwhelmed during the past few weeks of financial or political uncertainty: Focus on doing as much goodness as possible no matter what’s going on in the world. The happiness that comes from living in a virtuous way can’t be taken from you. If a person has confidence in their actions and life, there aren’t many circumstances that will undermine the integrity of their happiness, the abbot says.
What those “mountains” are, however, can be any number of things for any number of people. There are the larger realities of the world, such as the Buddha referenced to the king, or macro forces like economics and politics. But they can also be the more immediate elements of our day-to-day lives, such as navigating social media and avoiding isolation.
Brooks suggests that we turn off technology as we can in order to focus on those things that truly matter to us.
“Rather than spending all your time watching cable news or scrolling social media — both of which inevitably induce negative emotions — a far better use of our time is to turn the screens off, and instead to focus on the areas of life that bring us happiness,” Brooks said. “Invite your neighbors over for dinner and discuss ways to volunteer in your local community. Focus on the things going well in your life — such as your work, your loving relationships, or your faith practice. These are ways to regain a sense of control.”
Another piece of practical advice came from Ajahn Sona, the abbot of Birken Forest Buddhist Monastery in Canada. “Don’t turn the channel to fear, anxiety, outrage, indignation, so forth, though everybody in the conversation seems to encourage that,” he said. “All this language continuously demands or asks you to feel fear, anxiety and outrage. One has to choose other voices to listen to.”
Abbot Sona suggests listening to the actual human voice of someone trusted — like a therapist, religious leader or relation — as that will calm and clarify your mind. He likens the effect to that of a child who has a toy taken away at the playground needing a mother’s soothing voice to calm down from a tantrum. And, he adds, these voices might not just reframe your emotional structure, but give you the advice you most need to hear at that moment, too.
When times get hard for Schulz, he leans into the things that bring him the most happiness and purpose. He goes out of his way to spend time with friends and family, but he also focuses on his teaching, research and writing. It’s advice he often gives to his students, which is to remind them to just keep doing their jobs and managing their responsibilities ahead of the prevailing concerns of any given moment, year or era.
“One of the things we can do when times get tough is we turn to our routine,” said Schulz. “That may be taking care of your family, it may be work. But those routines and obligations are important for our well-being.”
Among those routines, too, cultivating a physical fitness regimen and finding ways to spend more time in natural light are both proven to have demonstrable affect on a person’s overall happiness. While personal connections are “are as important as getting to be physically active, as important as getting people to stop smoking cigarettes or to drink too much alcohol,” said Schulz, staying healthy and spending time outside can also lead to an improved sense of well-being.
All good things take time
Not all of these suggestions are things that can immediately be incorporated into a life. Relationships take time to build, and routines are hard to change. It takes time to cultivate a peace of mind that is aware of what things are most important to serenity. But, if happiness is your goal, then it might be worth the investment — not only for the unsettled moment that America and the world are currently experiencing, but for the next one that will inevitably come down the road. Today’s uncertainty can be the catalyst that prepares us for the next one.
“Another lesson here — if we want to be more positive — is that things will change,” said Schulz. “This will pass, this uncertainty, and things will change until the next challenge that we have as a society.”
In parting, Schulz had one last piece of advice in reference to the 2014 “Strangers on a Train” study conducted by Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business that’s referenced in “The Good Life.” Participants thought they’d be happier if they were left alone while commuting on a train, but the researchers found that this wasn’t true. People were happier when they chatted with a stranger.
“We have created these cocoons in our world. Because of that, it’s even more important that we talk to strangers, that we talk to people that are slightly outside our central in-group,” Schulz said. “Knowing that other people may be experiencing things — even though they’re at a very different place in their lives, maybe they’re older or younger than us, or they have different financial circumstances than us — it helps connect us to something bigger than just our own circumstances.”