Robert Waldinger > Quotes

“Spoiler alert: The good life is a complicated life. For everybody. The good life is joyful… and challenging. Full of love, but also pain. And it never strictly happens; instead, the good life unfolds, through time. It is a process. It includes turmoil, calm, lightness, burdens, struggles, achievements, setbacks, leaps forward, and terrible falls. And of course, the good life always ends in death.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“Good relationships keep us happier, healthier, and help us live longer.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“The good life is not always just out of reach after all. It is not waiting in the distant future after a dreamy career success. It’s not set to kick in after you acquire some massive amount of money. The good life is right in front of you, sometimes only an arm’s length away. And it starts now.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: The life-changing bestseller on how to find happiness

“Attention is your most precious asset, and deciding how to invest it is one of the most important decisions you can make. The good news is you can make that decision now, in this moment, and in each moment of your life.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“As an old saying goes, We are always comparing our insides to other people’s outsides.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“For eighty-four years (and counting), the Harvard Study has tracked the same individuals, asking thousands of questions and taking hundreds of measurements to find out what really keeps people healthy and happy. Through all the years of studying these lives, one crucial factor stands out for the consistency and power of its ties to physical health, mental health, and longevity. Contrary to what many people might think, it’s not career achievement, or exercise, or a healthy diet. Don’t get us wrong; these things matter (a lot). But one thing continuously demonstrates its broad and enduring importance: Good relationships. In fact, good relationships are significant enough that if we had to take all eighty-four years of the Harvard Study and boil it down to a single principle for living, one life investment that is supported by similar findings across a wide variety of other studies, it would be this: Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“Scientific studies have told us again and again: human beings need nutrition, we need exercise, we need purpose, and we need each other.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“A FINAL DECISION How do you move further along on your own path toward a good life? First, by recognizing that the good life is not a destination. It is the path itself, and the people who are walking it with you. As you walk, second by second you can decide to whom and to what you give your attention. Week by week you can prioritize your relationships and choose to be with the people who matter. Year by year you can find purpose and meaning through the lives that you enrich and the relationships that you cultivate. By developing your curiosity and reaching out to others—family, loved ones, coworkers, friends, acquaintances, even strangers—with one thoughtful question at a time, one moment of devoted, authentic attention at a time, you strengthen the foundation of a good life.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“Achievement is most meaningful when it is relational. When what we do matters to other people, it matters more to us. We might do something as a team that gives us a sense of belonging, like Loren and Javier, or we might do something that directly benefits others; both are a kind of social benefit.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle. Some things are within your control. And some things are not. Epictetus,”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?” Every culture—from the broad culture of a nation down to the culture inside a family—is at least partially invisible to its participants. There are important assumptions, value judgments, and practices that create the water we swim in without our noticing or agreeing to them. We simply find ourselves in this world, and we move forward. These features of culture affect just about everything in our lives, often in positive ways, connecting us to each other and creating identities and meaning. But there is a flip side. Sometimes cultural messages and practices point us in directions away from well-being and happiness.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“Recent findings in neuroscience have shown that our conscious minds cannot do more than one thing at a time. It may feel like you are able to multitask and think about two (or more) things at once, but really your mind is switching between them. This is a costly process neurologically speaking. Switching from one task to another takes energy and a measurable amount of time. Then, when we switch back, it takes another period of time to really wrap our minds around the original object of attention. And it’s not only about the time cost; it’s about the quality of our attention. If we are always switching from one thing to another, then we are never able to truly focus and experience the pleasure and effectiveness of a focused mind. Instead we live in a state of constant recalibration, or what the writer Linda Stone perceptively calls “continuous partial attention.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“Man plans, and God laughs.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“There are two pillars of happiness revealed by the [Harvard Study].… One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“It’s true that childhood matters, and parenting matters, but no single element of a person’s life fully shapes their future. Parents can neither take as much credit nor as much blame as they think they should for the way their children turn out. Nature and nurture, heredity and environment, parenting and peers are all tightly woven together, and all have served to mold each of us into the adults we are today.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“Our bodies do not take care of themselves in this environment—they need maintenance. If those of us in sedentary or repetitive jobs want to maintain our physical fitness, we have to make a conscious effort to move. We have to set time aside to walk, garden, do yoga, run, or go to the gym. We have to overcome the currents of modern life.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“The more ready we are to be surprised by people, the more likely we are to notice when they do something that doesn’t match our expectation. This kind of noticing is especially important within our families.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“The good life is joyful… and challenging. Full of love, but also pain. And it never strictly happens; instead, the good life unfolds, through time. It is a process. It includes turmoil, calm, lightness, burdens, struggles, achievements, setbacks, leaps forward, and terrible falls. And of course, the good life always ends in death.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“Hold but don’t baby; admire but don’t embarrass; guide but don’t control; release but don’t abandon.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“This is what we call the “You Always / You Never” trap. Our experience with our family members starts so early in life that our expectations about relationships become deeply imprinted, and anything that happens, no matter how subtle, often gets pressed into that old imprint. We have to remember that as we grow and change throughout our lives, so do our family members; by not giving them the benefit of the doubt, we may not see how they have changed.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century. Mark Twain”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest (mentally and physically) at age 80.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“bring some curiosity to each moment you have with the people in your life, especially those you know well and perhaps take for granted. This takes practice, but it’s not hard to get better at it. “How was your day?”—“Fine” needn’t be the end of a conversation. It is your sincere interest that will motivate folks to respond. You might follow up with something a little more playful like, “What was the most fun thing that happened today?” Or, “Did anything surprising happen today?” And when someone makes a casual reply you can dig deeper: “Can I ask you more about that… I’m so curious and not sure I really understand it fully…” Try to put yourself in this person’s place and imagine what they have experienced. Engaging conversations often come from this perspective-taking alone, and curiosity can be contagious. You might find that the more interested you are in others, the more interested they become in you, and you might also be surprised how fun this process can be. Life is always at risk of slipping by unnoticed. If the days and months and years feel as if they are moving too quickly, focused attention might be one remedy. Giving something your undivided attention is a way of bringing it to life and assuring that you don’t float through time on automatic pilot. Noticing someone is a way of respecting them, paying tribute to the person they are in that exact moment. And noticing yourself, checking in about how you move through the world, about where you are now and where you would like to be, can help you identify which people and pursuits most need your attention. Attention is your most precious asset, and deciding how to invest it is one of the most important decisions you can make. The good news is you can make that decision now, in this moment, and in each moment of your life.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“A crucial point here is that our ability to process emotions is malleable. In fact, managing emotions is one of the things we actually get better at as we grow old. And there is strong evidence that we don’t have to wait until late in our lives for this to happen. With the right guidance and some practice, we can learn to be better at managing our feelings at any age.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“As we travel on our own unique paths, we can hurt each other without intending to.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“The primary challenge of happiness research comes in the application of insight to actual lives, each of which is highly individual and does not fit neatly into any group template. The findings and ideas we’ve presented in this book are based on research, but science can’t know the turmoil or contradictions you feel in your heart. It can’t quantify the stir that you experience when a certain friend calls. It can’t know what keeps you up at night, or what you regret, or how you express your love. Science can’t say whether you’re calling your kids too much or too little, or whether you should reconnect with a particular family member. It can’t say if it would be better for you to have a heart-to-heart over a cup of coffee or play a game of basketball or go for a walk with a friend. Those answers can only come through reflection, and figuring out what works for you. For anything in this book to be useful, you will need to tune in to your unique life experience and make its lessons your own. But here’s what science can tell you: Good relationships keep us happier, healthier, and help us live longer. This is true across the lifespan, and across cultures and contexts, which means it is almost certainly true for you, and for nearly every human being who has ever lived.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“The fewer moments we have to look forward to in life, the more valuable they become. Past grievances and preoccupations often dissipate, and what’s left is what we have before us.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“You might believe that making six figures or landing a new job or upgrading from your old Honda will make you happy, but in short order you will have gotten used to that situation, too, and your brain will move on to the next challenge, the next desire.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“Around the middle of our lives, it’s common to ask questions like: Am I doing well compared to others? Am I in a rut? Am I a good partner and parent? Do I have good relationships with my children? How many years do I have left? Does the life I’m leading have meaning beyond myself? What people and purposes do I really care about (and how can I invest in them)? What else do I want to do?”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“About one in four Americans report feeling lonely—more than sixty million people.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness