YouSaid · the spoken record

Robert Waldinger

lines on the record: 93
first: 2023-05-11
most recent: 2023-05-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“What you've just told me is a real gift because that's what I would hope. That's, you know, when we talked about what my mission is right now, it's hoping that this kind of information and these ideas move people to shape their lives differently. And so it means a lot.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would be Make your default setting kindness. Just go back to that whenever you have a choice, whenever you're at a point where you're trying to decide how to take the next step. Make that your choice. It's what Tiknat Han the Zen teacher used to call nourishing healthy seeds that if you nourish those seeds that's what grows. If you nourish other seeds like the seeds of power or dominance or anger, that's what'll grow.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would go back to Ninth century China and I would be a Zen monk. Because it was the way to know about life in a radically different way than society was going at the time. And I would just like to know, just because I've studied koans and I've studied ancient Zen literature and I'd just like to know what it really would feel like to be one of those monks in one of those monasteries with a teacher and I can envision it in my mind, but I'd really love to experience it. So if I could time travel, that's where I'd go.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think so I think so. And the problem is, you know, we evolved, we think, to be social animals, that it was safer to be in groups. And that's why, you know, we passed on our genes more often if we hung together in groups. And so the problem is that the way we evolved, it's a stressor to be alone. It's a stressor to be more isolated, but life is taking us in these directions of greater isolation. I'm not hopeful and you called me out on it. You could see it flicker across my face and then I think I was trying to hide it.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And everybody's losing their social fabric and their social role. And so I think there's a great deal of worry about this. You're noticing this and you're saying, wait, I want to knit this fabric back together. I want my friends to come together. Let's all hang out together and support each other. My wife and I are saying, you know, we should develop this old people's home as we get older and we should get all of our friends who are getting old to get together and live together, but it never kind of works out that way because everybody's kids are moving to a different place. And, you know, and so it's this question of how do we manage these social fabrics that are fragile, that once they're torn, it's really hard to put them back together, but they provide so much benefit.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's what we're seeing this actually these social fabrics are breaking down in more traditional societies where people did stay in the place they were born. So India people are really worried about this in India now, certainly in China, where people are leaving their villages. So in a typical family, there would be the grandparents, maybe even great-grandparents, and the parents and the children, right? And the grandparents' job was to take care of the grandkids while the parents went off and worked. Now what's happening is that people are leaving their villages to seek economic opportunity elsewhere, like in Dubai or in the big cities in China.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know some people have said, well, if you're shy, does that mean you're screwed, that you're, you know, you're not supposed to. Be shy, and no, it doesn't. What it means is that all of us are on some kind of spectrum temperamentally, from shyness to extroversion, and that some people don't need many people in their life at all. And in fact, having a lot of people around is stressful. Other people get their energy from lots of people, and they want more people in their life. So there is a way that you really can check in and say, what do I need more of? What do I have enough of? Maybe what do I need less of right now?”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You just check in with yourself. I mean, seriously, the reason I say that, you know, it gets to this kind of introverts versus extroverts spectrum that”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It doesn't feel natural. Yeah. Yeah. Because so many benefits come back. It's not, you know, they see us through hard times. They, you know, what they find, for example, is that your most peripheral relationships are the people who are most likely to find you your next job, not your closest friends, right? So even these peripheral relationships are of great value to us. And that happens to be because they're not in your social network. They know many people who you've never heard of and can connect you with people you would have no other connection with.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The most self sufficient, you know, who's the healthiest? And what he found was that for every dollar we invest in age zero to four, that we get a huge payoff compared to every other age group. That doesn't mean we shouldn't support people in other age groups, but it means if we could invest in children, in young children and childcare, ah, so much so much less poverty, substance abuse, misery down, twenty years, thirty years down the line. It's a long-term investment.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I would introduce is massive support for children and the people who take care of children because it's the best long-term investment that actually they've done some studies of this. There's a James Heckman is an economist at the University of Chicago who published a paper in science where he Analyzed hundreds of studies of when we invest in an age group, where do we get the biggest bang for the buck, right? If we invest in zero to four years old or five to eight or all the way up, what happens when people get into adulthood?”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was one of those badges of achievement, right? And so for me, what I've gotten wrong is thinking that the badges of achievement were going to be satisfying and realizing that they're not. I mean, for me, a conversation like this is actually satisfying. I'd rather do this. And I don't even care how many people listen to your podcast, although I'm sure it's a lot of people. I understand it is, right? But I don't care. What I really care about is having this conversation with you that that feels like a really good use of my time.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've gotten so much wrong. Where do I start? But okay, I'll start. Okay, top of the list, top of the list is I've worried too much about what other people thought. So one of the things I've done is I've, for example, I was in a job that was very prestigious when I was young I was director of a training program at a prestigious program for psychiatrists and I hated it. I realized and I was on a track to be the chair of a psychiatry department at a fancy academic institution and I realized I just hated the work. I just hated being an administrator. To me it was like washing dishes. The same problems came up over and over again. And I would sit in these meetings with people who were obviously very engaged and I'm glad they were engaged. But I just didn't care about it. And I finally had to say to myself first and then to everybody else I don't want to do this. This is not my path. And it took me longer than I wish it had, but I'm glad I did it. I had to learn that lesson in order to, you know.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know, we matter for the moment and we matter to each other. I mean, that's another reason why I've spent so much of my adult life prioritizing relationships and studying relationships because I think what can we do? Well, we can matter to each other. What”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The point is what we make of it. There is, you know, this is the evolving of the universe. The universe is constantly changing. It's morphing and changing. Our species is going to morph and change, probably be extinct, right? Every species eventually becomes extinct.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It makes me feel like my life has some purpose. That and being with my family, you know, my wife and my kids and my friends, because the question that Zen keeps asking and making me ask is, well, what's being human about? I mean, it's so unlikely to be born, first of all, right, and then to live a life. And so why am I doing this? And so that's the answer I have given myself. It's not by any means the right answer. God knows it's not the only answer. It's just my answer. And it's my answer for now.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because relieving suffering is one of the most meaningful things I can do with my life. And given that I'm not going to be a remembered 50 years from now, easing some suffering right now is the best thing I can think of to do.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so what we found was that people were hungry for this kind of information. I mean, the reason why my TED talk went viral was because I was speaking about things that we know from science that we haven't told anybody in the wider world. So my mission, I said, look, I don't have that many years left in my career. My mission now is going to be to bring this science that we've worked so hard to develop and bring it to people in ways that they can use to bring it in understandable form rather than highly technical, geeky form, which is what most of my scientific papers are.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's definitely a framework For me it goes back to that vow of service. So this study has been going for eighty five years. We've published hundreds of scientific papers. But we publish them in academic journals very technical, no one reads those journals, literally almost no one.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm playing defense, and the defense has to be so complete. So think about the people who are so self-aggrandizing and have to tell you with every sentence how wonderful they are, who can never apologize, who can never admit doing anything wrong. Those are often the people who feel the most vulnerable, and who put up this rigid defense because to entertain that they're fallible, that they can make a mistake, that they can do something wrong, threatens a total collapse. And so those many times are the people who just can't at all entertain that question of what could I be doing that I might be able to change to make things better?”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There is some responsibility, some responsibility for some people, it's humiliating, it's impossible to even imagine that I am the architect of some of my own misery. Actually, many times a couple will come for couples therapy, and if one person says the only thing you have to do is fix the other person, you know that it's not going to work because any couple has learned a set of dance steps they've developed. And what you have to help the couple to do is look at their dance steps and then modify them. And it's always two ways. It's always both people contributing to difficulties in the couple, just as both people contribute to what goes right. It's the person who says no way am I any part of the problem here. That's the person who can't really be helped by these means.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The ones who can be helped are the ones who are willing to look inward. So some people will never go for help, right? They'll never want to be curious about themselves, often because it's scary at the deepest level, who are saying, this is my story and I'm sticking to it. This is my worldview and I am not going to inquire about my own role in my difficulties, right? The people who can be helped are the people who sooner or later get to a point where they say, oh, Okay, maybe I'm making some contribution to my troubles, and if so, what is that?”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They can't go to work, and Let's talk about that. Let's talk about your loved one. Let's talk about what the loss is like. And when you really take people through that and take people through what's hurting so much, a lot of times the pain will ease tremendously. Sometimes we use medication to help and that's good, but many times it's not needed.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“me that some mornings wakes up feeling kind of lost and you know like I don't know what I'm doing with my life or down with the curated lives that we see on social media or the game faces that we put on for each other I mean you know we're you and I are trying to look okay for each other you know we're not telling each other about our miseries right now because we have a job to do we're doing this interview and that's fine that's good we need to do that but it can leave each of us with the impression that other people are always fine they've got it figured out and I don't so a lot of my work as a psychiatrist is to help people see oh no this is actually part of being human that you know yes when you lose a loved one this is a trauma and that yes many people feel like they don't want to get out of bed in the morning many people feel like”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And yeah, I mean, you can, if somebody, if it's life and death, I will often use medication right away to make sure somebody stays safe. But many times people will come and after two or three meetings they will feel less depressed because they've been able to unburden themselves and to talk about something they feel is so horrible or so shameful. And I can help them understand it. And often normalize it. A lot of what I do and a lot of what my research does is normalize things to say, yeah, this is part of being human. And for many people, you know, a lot of times, one of my teachers used a phrase that I find so helpful. He said, we're always comparing our insides to other people's outsides. You know, I'm always comparing them.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Depressed, we talk So I am a psychiatrist, but I tend not to reach for my prescription pad right away. I do use medication when we need it. But first we talk. And often if I can help somebody just to tell me what's wrong, a lot of the symptoms will ease.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They might come with depression. They might come with anxiety. They might come with a sense that Life is meaningless and they're not getting any joy in life, they might have come because a spouse has died, or a child has died, and they are not able to cope. They are just finding life doesn't seem worth living anymore”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Theme for her Well, I would say that sense of not being enough is a very important, very common one. And it speaks to a sort of larger problem of self criticism that many of us are quite critical of ourselves for just any number of things. All of us have a different set of things we're critical about, but a lot of what I work with with people is first showing them the self-criticism because often it's like the air they breathe.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very, very stark. Well, and it goes back, I think, to the stress hypothesis that there's something about having no autonomy being confined and constantly frustrated that keeps I suspect, keeps the body revved up in a kind of chronic stress mode that then breaks it down.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, huge predictor. In fact, in the UK they did the first study of this Michael Marmot? You know, who did this amazing study, the White Hole studies, where he found that the people who had more control and more autonomy stayed healthier, they were under less stress and they stayed healthier”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And people love this meeting. It's their favorite and it's their favorite part of the meeting, right? Because they get to know about each other. I didn't realize you were into fencing or you were into magic tricks or, you know, whatever it was. You know, people just talk about their lives. And so I think what we can do, even with remote work, is structure ways of knowing each other better, the ways that we used to be able to take for granted, you know, like you come to a meeting in an office and you spend a moment or two chatting with the person you happen to sit next to, and you might find out something about their life. How do you do that remotely? How do you do that on Zoom? And that's what I think we have to figure out in some way. If we're going to have any hope of having meaningful connections in the workplace.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To your question of what advice would I give to CEOs, first I would say that the culture of fostering social connection needs to start with the CEO. It needs to start with leadership. It can't just be something you delegate to your human resources department. But then I would say also be intentional, structure it. And that can be structured even on Zoom. The Surgeon General in the United States, that's the kind of head doctor. He's like the figurehead of medicine, of public health. Vivek Murthy is his name. His platform has been emotional well-being and decreasing loneliness, particularly in the workplace. So what Vivek does is he has a staff meeting every week where the first five or ten minutes are devoted to one staff member talking about something in their personal life that they'd like everybody else on the staff to know.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think well, what we know, right? And what do we know? Well, we know that some things are filtered out. If you think about it, when you were locked down and you were just on screens with people, and then you saw people again in person, I felt this upsurge of like, whoa, this is so great. It's so good to see you in real life, right? And so we know that there's some truncation of the interpersonal experience. We just don't know all the elements of it. By contrast, so I'm a psychiatrist and I do psychotherapy. That's my specialty. So every day I see people in talk therapy. If you had told me I could do talk therapy remotely that was meaningful, I would have said you were crazy. Well, turns out you can, and most of my colleagues are doing it. So there are aspects of remote work, of remote connection that are much better than we thought. We're having to learn about this.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. But we don't know enough yet about the difference between remote work and in person work. We don't know, for example, what gets filtered out on Zoom. You know, what aspects of emotional communication get filtered out? We don't know. And so we're going to learn more in the next few years because people are studying this. But then the question is, what do we do?”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, right, we don't think it's our business, and it turns out to be so much our business. The other thing is we most of us spend more waking hours at work than we spend doing anything else in our lives, for most of our adult life. I mean, so if you're not going to get the benefits of good connections with other people at work, you are missing a huge part of your life experience.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nearly all of them, whereas the thirty percent were much more engaged in their jobs. So if you have friends, you're also more engaged in your work. There's something about those connections that is energizing, enlivening, and it spills over into the work itself.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those thirty percent then they did all kinds of assessments of those people and talked to their bosses. They were better workers, they earned more money, they were better with customers, they were less likely to leave their jobs for a better offer because they had people they wanted to show up for every day. And so what many leaders in the workplace think of as a distraction socializing at work turns out to be a hugely powerful factor for increasing productivity and increasing wellness and happiness at work. Those seventy percent of people who said no, I don't have a friend at work. Eleven out of twelve of those people said I'm pretty much disengaged from my job.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, again, that path of least resistance. So we do know some things about this from some good research coming out of business schools. They do a lot of this kind of research on the conditions of work, but also the Gallup organization. They did a survey of 15 million workers all over the world, all ages, all cultures, all ranks in a workplace. And their main question was Do you have a best friend at work? Only thirty percent of those fifteen million workers said yes I have a best friend. What that meant was I have someone who I talk to about my life, about my personal life. You know, it might be my child is struggling with math or it could be anything, you know, but just to talk about what's going on in your life.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really nourishing. I mean, and it gives us energy, it gives us a sense of peace and equanimity to be in that kind of state.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My wife is not a meditator she has no interest in it, but she loves music, and she's an avid pianist. She can sit for an hour and just be transported playing the piano. That's her flow state. For some people it's skiing down a ski slope, for some people it's working in a garden, for some people it's being on a soccer pitch. It's, you know, so my hope for people is that they find a flow state or maybe more than one and that they allow themselves those experiences of flow from time to time where they're just so in the activity that time passes by effortlessly without noticing.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I don't know if I can prove it, but actually there's been some good work by Cheekset Me High. That's his name, and I can't spell it. It's this long name. He has since passed away, but a very brilliant psychologist who did research on flow states. I'm a meditator and many people say to me when they find that out I should meditate and I often say no you shouldn't You should see if meditation feels good to you and if it does do it if it doesn't feel good find another state a flow state if you will find another pastime that for you makes the time just fly by”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. You're really switching back and forth really quickly. And it's super inefficient. It's an incredible waste of energy because your brain takes a moment to get back into gear in the thing you've switched back to. And then it's switching off again to something else. And so this idea of multitasking, oh, I can do so many things at once is a fool's errand, basically.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, there's actually good research on this from a different research group where they would actually ping people throughout the day at random times and say, are you thinking about what's right in front of you now? Are you thinking about what's current? And that's where they get this data that says most people will respond. No, I was thinking about something else, the future, the past, whatever. And then they would also ask at the same time, how's your mood right now? How happy are you? And they found that the people who spent more time thinking about what's right in front of them. were far and away happier. So a wandering mind is a less happy mind.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Relationship. And if you do that, you find that I'm happier in the relationship, even though there are plenty of times when it's boring, it's predictable, it's annoying as any long relationship is, there's so much to be grateful for.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Catch each other being good. Instead of catching each other at doing the things that annoy you, right? I'm really good at noticing when my wife does things that annoy me. And I am not good at remembering, oh my gosh, you know, she just made this great meal. She just made sure that I was on time to this meeting. She just reminded me to take my medication. It's like all these things that, oh my God, if she weren't here, I would be a mess, right? And so what I would say is it's really practicing gratitude. Gratitude practice is really just flipping our negatively biased minds on their heads. An essentially finding what's good, what's going right with the partnership. And when we do that, there's usually so much to find that's not wrong, that's right about the”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. I mean, I don't know if you remember this old Billy Joel song. I love you just the way you are, in which the lyrics are saying, don't ever change. I just want you to be exactly the way you are right now. And that's completely unrealistic. And so we do. We have these expectations of who our partner is going to be. Parents have this of children. I mean, sometimes I'll catch myself telling one of my sons who's in his 30s, are you sure you don't want to wear a warmer coat when you're going outside? And he looks at me as his dad. He lives on his own. He's lived on his own for years. It's like, come on. But I have to get out of this mode of being his parent in this helicoptering way, right? So we're always having to readjust our expectations of each other in order to make relationships work.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Years ago. I mean, I had never heard of Zen 37 years ago, and now it's a big part of my life. My wife had to figure out what do I do with this guy now who practices Zen. My wife has developed in ways I never expected. What we've had to do is learn about each other as we change and accept those changes and hopefully support each other in changing, which I think mostly my wife and I have been able to do, but it's part of its luck. I mean, it's not like we're such wonderful people. We've just been lucky to be able to support each other in those changes. But part of it is intentional. And so I think that the best relationships involve being able to support each other in exploring new things, taking risks.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of things people talk about a lot is being able to be themselves, to be authentic, meaning not to have to hide important aspects of who I am in a relationship. And it's not that we're bearing our souls all the time, but do I have to pretend that I'm someone I'm not? That's exhausting and depleting. And so the idea is to be able to be yourself in a relationship of any consequence. I think the other thing we find in good relationships is that people allow each other to change over time. I mean, we're all constantly changing. We're all moving targets. And so if we can allow each other to change and maybe even celebrate that change, the relationship is stable and is likely to last. I mean, I think about, you know, my wife and I are about to celebrate our 37th anniversary. We are so different than we were 37 years ago.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sometimes there isn't, and those relationships need to be ended. But I want to point out that most relationships of any consequence have conflict. And so the real issue is not are there conflicts. The real issue is can we work out conflicts regularly in ways that make us both feel okay about ourselves and about each other? If we can't do that, then those relationships often need to be stepped away from.”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, as with so many things one size does not fit all, it is a huge amount of discernment involved. So if you think about it, one question for a toxic relationship is how much is at stake? How much do I have invested? Let's say you're married and you have children together, then you The idea is to work really hard to see is there a way to salvage this relationship, if only for the children, but also because the partnership could have benefits And so what we would say is if there's a lot invested, then we work harder to see. Is there any way we can find ways to work out our differences?”
2023-05-11 · The Diary of a CEO · 7 Life-changing Lessons From The Longest Ever Study On Health & Happiness! Dr. Robert Waldinger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT