The Grant study
What ist the key to a healthy and happy life? Harvard did a 80-year study on happiness. They followed over 750 people and their families throughout life.
And there was ONE overall keyfactor over the course of those 80 years (I quote Robert Waldringer, the director of the ‘Grand Study’) . It’s 3 things:
The quality of our relationships, relationships, relationships.!
It’s not the amount of people they were connected to on Facebook or the amount of people they had stored inside of their cellphones, but it was the quality and the dept of their closest relationships.
Happines or lack of happiness came from their relationships.
So what can we learn from these people over this 80-years of study? If you want to be happy and healthy and succesfull (were success must be defined by your own definition!), there is one thing that you should focus on. And that is the quality of your relationships. Deep, meaningful, close relationships. How can one know oneself without knowing oneself in relationships to other?
Some food for thought and fuel for introspection
See the full show of my conversation with Peter Clarke here
I recommend this TED talk from Robert Waldinger about the Grant Study