Do you want to learn the secret to a long and happy life?

What if I told you this secret is available to everyone and cost you nothing?

Stay tuned.

I'm Cathleen Toomey, host of the podcast Seniority Authority.

Where I track down the experts to answer your questions on aging.

Welcome to Seniority Authority, where we get smarter about growing older.

This all started because of a cocktail party.

I live in a small town and I've worked at a retirement community for sixteen years.

Recently, friends started pulling me aside at parties to ask.

I think my dad has Alzheimer's, but how do I know for sure?

My aunt needs assisted living.

What is that?

And how do I find a good one?

I'm not a nurse, but I know some very smart ones.

So I would find the answers.

Then I realized if my friends have these questions, so must others.

That's how Seniority Authority was born.

A place to find the answers to your questions on aging.

I tracked down the experts and share the latest news and research so you can get smarter about growing older.

Today, I've tracked down an expert who's figured out the secret to a long and happy life.

This secret was identified in the world's longest scientific study of happiness over 85 years conducted by Harvard University.

And the secret is available to everyone and costs you nothing.

Without further ado, let me welcome Dr. Robert Waldinger, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the Harvard Study for Adult Development, Ted Talk top ten speaker, Zen priest and author of the new book The Good Life.

Welcome to the show, Dr. Waldinger.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

Oh, it's so great to see you.

And what I want to do is talk about why this study began.

What was the goal of this scientific study of happiness?

It was an unusual goal in 1938 when it began.

The goal was to study what helps people thrive as they go through their lives.

Most of the research that had been done was on what goes wrong.

So we can help people, you know, improve.

But this was a study of what goes right in development, young adulthood into all the way into old age.

What are the things that predict who's going to thrive and who's going to have a good life?

Now, this study, which has been ongoing for 85 years.

There are so many variables that you cover in the study from the books on the shelves to what they ate, to what they believed to their exercise and physical health and marital status and financial status.

But it boiled down to one important factor, which I can't believe after 85 years, what was the one factor that made the determinant?

Well, we couldn't believe it either.

So you're not alone.

So what we found was that the people who stayed happiest and also healthiest were the people who were more connected to other people, who had more connections, warmer connections with others in their lives.

And we it made sense to us that you might be happier if you had better relationships with people.

But how could that actually get into your body and change your health?

And that's what we've been studying.

Many other research groups have found the same thing.

So we know that this is a scientific fact.

Because this was not just the Harvard study.

This has been verified by other studies as I understand it.

Absolutely.

And our Harvard study started both with Harvard College undergraduates, a really privileged group, but also a group of boys from Boston's poorest neighborhoods and most troubled families.

So both very privileged people and very underprivileged people.

And it worked.

The same way in both groups.

That's incredible.

So good relationships make the difference between a long, happy and healthy life.

Let's take an example.

Let's see an example of someone who actively sought out new relationships.

Umm my name is Willard Foss.

But I go by Bill, and I'm 82 years old.

You're only as old as you feel.

And I really don't feel 82.

Curiosity is part of that component because, you know, you get up.

I'm wondering about things.

What's going to happen today in my world where I'm engaged here in a retirement community, amongst residents and staff?

As far as I'm concerned, they're my family.

I moved here in 2012 after my wife passed away in 2009.

My mom was diagnosed in 1987 with breast cancer when we had to put her into hospice care in the house that it was 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

So that was very stressful.

It was very difficult for him to let go.

You know, when you lose your your life partner, you know, it's a struggle.

It's a physical loss, but it's a spiritual loss, intellect a loss.

And it was it was a difficult period for me.

I lived alone and I could see the fact that I was aging, you know, so I had that inside inclination that there was something more to my life.

Now that I have lost my spouse.

I said it's time to maybe to move on.

I believe it was on a Saturday evening.

I was sitting there switching it on to Windows to the Wild, and it was, Willem Lange, see if he can do that.

Maybe I can do that.

And I said, you know, I like the outdoors.

I'd like to maybe give that a try.

After a few years I discovered that we have 700 acres next door.

Wow.

What a giant sandbox that is.

I just love it.

And I love to be there.

And nature is very healing.

And I get a great deal of pleasure out of just sharing some of that process with my right family here.

No, he's encouraged everybody.

No matter if you got a walker or a cane has some, you know, sight disabilities, hearing disabilities.

You need to be out there.

He's been a great advocate for that trail.

I have.

My suspicion is that I've made an impact in many ways that I have no clue on what I've done.

I don't I don't look at it that way necessarily, but just maybe some of the thousands of pictures I've taken in, some of the thousands of words that I've written in my daily blogs.

Maybe, just maybe, some thing has happened in a way that has afforded that trail to take place.

If I've and a part of that process.

Thank you.

So I'm very pleased when Betsy or anybody else gets down there that might not otherwise be able to enjoy hugging the black gum tree.

You know, that's that's the key.

And I can't imagine any place better what I've been exposed to a year.

I mean, I have the best of all possible worlds.

And as I say, how can you not love this?

That is such a wonderful example of the experience of loss and then the experience of moving on from loss.

So, you know, he was very clear that this was his life partner.

It was a huge loss.

And actually, he didn't get right back up on the horse right away.

He grieved for a while and he said, you know, he took a couple of years before he picked his head up and said, okay, what now?

And I think that what we want to do as we suffer these losses that happen to all of us is to mourn the losses, to really grieve them and then get beyond that to a place where we say, okay, what now?

And what he chose was connection, social connection, and he chose it through nature, in part, you know, in moving into a community where he had ready availability of new people, of people he could be connected with day in and day out.

Those are such important elements in continuing to thrive even after we have a big loss in our lives.

I think that's exactly right.

And what I also noticed about Bill is that he embraced change.

And I think that's another lesson for all of us who are aging, is that even if terrible things happen to you and you grieve them.

Don't be afraid to change and seek a new environment where all of those good relationships are going to be more available to you.

And where he had this opportunity to explore this passion, nature.

And now he's leading people.

So it's just very exciting to me.

You know, the other point to take away from this is never to give up.

So actually, in the book we just wrote, the last chapter says it's never too late, because what we found studying the thousands of people across many decades is that people would find new connections, new things they love to do, new people They wanted to be with.

They would find those when they least expected it.

So even if today you feel like giving up and my life is over and the future doesn't hold anything for me, know that that's going to change.

And listen to those voices of people in your life who say it's not too late.

There are things to do to move on with your life.

Listen to those voices and let yourself act on it when you can.

You know, that is one of my favorite chapters in The Good Life is it's not too late because it really talks to my feeling that we need to be positive as we get older.

And I think that relationships are particularly important as we get older.

And it's not too late to start them.

And let let me just say that, you know, we need to be positive, but we don't always feel positive.

So I don't always feel positive.

Some days I'm down in the dumps or just maybe for an hour or two.

But I don't always feel upbeat.

And that's where our relationships can help us.

So when I'm feeling kind of down, it's so great to have other people around who feel better, who can be more positive, who can help me imbibe some of their infectious energy.

And that's one of the reasons why people help us get through hard times, because they help us feel more positive when we're not feeling so good about life.

So that's right.

Continuing to build relationships later in life is important, but so is your mental attitude.

Life can throw you curveballs and how you respond can make all the difference.

Well, Paul is a very caring guy.

He's not afraid to say, I love you.

Did I tell you I love you?

He's just such a sweetheart.

So happy wives happy life.

She found the love of her life.

The passion between them is something for me that's new that I've seen in her.

And that the happiness is something new that I've seen in her as well.

I thought I was in love before, but this is different.

I think our communication skills between the two of us are just topnotch, top notch.

You know, here's a woman who's fabulously older who says, I want to be called old, but she's fabulously older.

Mature is a better word.

And just really living her life saying, what have I learned from the previous relationships that I've been in and how in this next phase and period in her life, how she can find love and true happiness?

Right.

They believe in happiness and they believe they deserve it.

I think this time around we both chose to be happy and put happiness is a priority in our life.

To say you know what?

Life is too short.

We had just come come back from vacation when we found out the diagnosis.

I thought he had a cold.

The cold wasn't going that way.

And at that point, it was a shock.

I couldn't believe it.

But I said to myself, I need to be strong.

It was traumatic, right?

It's like, here we are, just like, off, like the honeymoon and the wedding, and we're all happy.

And then getting that news is like.

Like she just found the man of her dreams, like.

And now it's, like, turned into a nightmare.

We knew right away, you know, the battle was was a huge battle.

I told him, I said, no, it's not happening on my watch.

I said, Paul, and you are not going to die on my watch.

I will take care of you.

And I did.

Through it all.

Oh, my gosh.

She was so optimistic.

We're going to get through this.

We're going to fight and we're not going to we're not going to think negatively.

And her positivity throughout the whole process helped the entire family get through it.

You definitely see life in a new light.

You know, like she said, you're not going to die on my watch.

Yeah, it has brought us really closer.

Actually, it has brought us to a point where we know life is too short.

It's so important to be happy.

So that's an example of how life can throw you a curve ball and your relationship can make the difference.

Is that consistent with how you've with your research, Dr. Waldinger?

Absolutely.

Every one of our people faced challenges, faced illness, faced illness in the spouse.

And one of the things we know is that the people who can savor the preciousness of life are the people who stay happy, even during the hard times and not happy every moment.

You know, that's a difficult diagnosis.

I'm sure the illness was very difficult for both of them, for the whole family.

But to be aware, oh, my gosh, life is short.

That infuses life with a kind of preciousness that makes us value.

Each morning, we can wake up each day that we have together.

And so I think that one of the things that I love about our aging research is that it shows us what we know, which is that we as as human beings, we actually tend to get happier as we get older.

If we savor the preciousness of life as life gets shorter, I love that you're sharing that because I believe that we can be happier as we get older and that we should think of getting older as a gift that not everyone gets to unwrap.

So there's so much negativity these days around aging, but if we change our mental attitude, then our experience of every day can change.

You know, aging, actually, as you say, is a gift.

It's a privilege that some people don't get to have.

If I'm aging, that's the better of the two options.

The other option being not being here at all.

And so there are ways to hold that frame of mind and to say, okay, what's here for me now?

Even when life seems hard, even when I'm facing challenges.

What about life Right in this moment, including just looking outside and and looking at a tree or watching a bumblebee, anything like that.

Or taking a walk in the woods.

All of that is a way to remind us.

My gosh, being alive is amazing.

That is great.

Great advice.

And we've only scratched the surface here.

But Dr. Waldinger, if you could leave us and all of our viewers with one recommendation, what can our viewers do today, tomorrow to increase their chance of living a long and happy life?

It would be to invest in other people.

So take small actions.

We're not talking about anything big or difficult.

It means speaking to someone you don't know on the street or in your community.

It means a calling up a friend who you haven't seen in a while and saying, Let's have a chat or Let's have a cup of tea.

Small actions that if we repeat those actions over and over again, talking to new people, reconnecting with people who we want to keep in our lives, if we do those small actions, we will find that we're healthier, we're happier.

Life feels more vibrant and alive for us.

That's something we can all do.

That's something that is doable.

And as you say, do it a little bit at a time until it becomes habit and becomes part of our day to day life.

Thank you.

Dr. Waldinger, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the Harvard Study for Adult Development and author of the new book The Good Life.

I love talking about these things, and it's always a pleasure to get to talk with you.

Thank you.

I feel the same.

And thanks to you for watching.

Together, we'll get smarter about growing older.

Do you have a question on aging?

Want to learn more?

Email me at info at seniorityauthority.org.

Check out the podcast and stay tuned for more.

We have additional seniority authority content for you on our web site.

Visit us at NIH.

PBS dot org Backslash Seniority Authority.

Here you'll find more resources about healthy aging, including short videos to help us all get smarter about growing older.

Enjoy this peek at one of my favorite topics.

How to stay positive as we grow older.

Getting older isn't easy.

What's there to be happy about?

Let's admit it.

Growing older brings tremendous challenge.

It's not easy to stay positive.

New York Times reporter John Leland set out to chronicle the problems of aging.

He spent a year following a handful of New York City residents, age 80 and above, to write about their issues.

But what he got was totally different.

His lessons are captured in this book.

Happiness Is A Choice You Make.

He discovered that each elder defined happiness differently, but they all found new purpose and value at the stage.

They chose to focus on what they were capable of doing and remained engaged in the world on their own terms.

What unified them was the knowledge that it was within them to choose happiness each day.

So focus on what you are capable of doing despite your challenges and choose happiness.

Let's get smarter about growing older.

I can't live without you and you say the same things.

We are so open to each other.

It hasn't stopped.

It's still the same thing from the time we met.

We still get the butterflies.

Yeah, I still do.

Yeah, we still do.

This is a remarkable walkway here.

Every time I come down here, it's like home.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

It's peaceful, it's quiet.

It has sustain you and replenish you.

You can take many.

I'm going to say human lessons from nature.

If you just let your mind go in that direction.

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Authority is provided by Proulx Oil and Propane.