Jan 15

Jan 15 The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

Author: Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

What makes for a happy life, a fulfilling life? A good life? According to the directors of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted, the answer to these questions may be closer than you realize.

What makes a life fulfilling and meaningful? The simple but surprising answer is: relationships. The stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying, and overall healthier lives. In fact, the Harvard Study of Adult Development reveals that the strength of our connections with others can predict the health of both our bodies and our brains as we go through life.

The invaluable insights in this book emerge from the revealing personal stories of hundreds of participants in the Harvard Study as they were followed year after year for their entire adult lives, and this wisdom is bolstered by research findings from this and many other studies. Relationships in all their forms—friendships, romantic partnerships, families, coworkers, tennis partners, book club members, Bible study groups—all contribute to a happier, healthier life. And as The Good Life shows us, it’s never too late to strengthen the relationships you have, and never too late to build new ones.

Dr. Waldinger’s TED Talk about the Harvard Study, “What Makes a Good Life,” has been viewed more than 42 million times and is one of the ten most-watched TED talks ever. The Good Life has been praised by bestselling authors Jay Shetty (“Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz lead us on an empowering quest towards our greatest need: meaningful human connection”), Angela Duckworth (“In a crowded field of life advice and even life advice based on scientific research, Schulz and Waldinger stand apart”), and happiness expert Laurie Santos (“Waldinger and Schulz are world experts on the counterintuitive things that make life meaningful”).

With warmth, wisdom, and compelling life stories, The Good Life shows us how we can make our lives happier and more meaningful through our connections to others.

TL;DR Review

The Good Life is one of those rare “self-help” books that actually uses all its pages well. I really appreciated the way it not only presented the research but also provided helpful, actionable tools to carry to its advice in real life.

For you if: You like to read stories from other people’s lives and then learn from them.

Full Review

First, thank you to Simon & Schuster Audio and Libro.fm for the gifted audiobook! My curiosity about this book was piqued when the NY Times ran their January 2022 7-day happiness challenge around its findings and advice, so when I saw the audiobook in my app, I decided to dive right in.

The authors, Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, are the current leaders of Harvard’s nearly 100-year-long study on happiness and what makes for a good life. The study began by following the lives of kids in Boston all the way through their lives, and today it also follows many of their children and new participants as well. It’s the only study of its kind, but the book draws from its own findings as well as many other studies on happiness to reinforce the key takeaways.

The main takeaway from the study is that the #1 most important thing to leading a long and happy life is having strong relationships with other people — more so than any sort of health factor or economic privilege. You might be wondering how they can turn that simple finding into an entire book — I know I did. Books in this genre have a tendency to ramble; they’d be better served as a simple TED Talk. But I’m happy to report that the authors did a really good job of making use of the space in this book. They filled it with interesting stories about real participants’ lives that had clear takeaways, and they offer a lot of advice (and lessons they learned directly from those participants) on how, exactly, to strengthen those relationships, even if you’re introverted or estranged from your family or whatever it is.

This was an easy listen that made me reflect on how I’m living my life and energized me to put its advice into practice. I’m glad I read it, and I hope others do too.

Content and Trigger Warnings

This book contains stories about real people’s lives, but summarizes and does not go into great detail. The following triggers are mentioned, but minor.