The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

A Book We All Need
This book is a great read. It really helped to put my mind in a more positive space. I am a big believer in gaining insights from everyone I possibly can who have been through situations that I am trying to figure my way through. This book provides a really good study and insights into finding happiness in this world, what gives people true happiness in this world, and where your focus should be to find happiness. I have recommended this book to all of my friends and family, and I cannot wait for them to finish. This is a great book for anyone struggling or just trying to figure out life in general.

An important lesson from 80 years of longitudinal study of a 50s Harvard class
My Goodreads review of this bookThe Good Life by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz is based on the Grant Study, an 80-year longitudinal study of a select group of Harvard graduates from the 1950s. The Grant study has been to the study of healthy mental and social adaptation akin to what the Framingham study has been for the study of cardiovascular health and the development of cardiovascular illness. These types of studies identify people who have not yet manifested illness and follow them prospectively over time. These studies are like a photo album over the course of one’s life rather than a single photograph. The prospective study design allows one to identify risk factors for the development of cardiovascular disease in studies like Framingham.In the Grant study, factors like the use of recognized psychological defenses or adaptive behaviors can be correlated with subsequent psychological or social outcomes. The outcomes typically are discussed in terms of a range, for example happy, long-term marriage versus unhappy union with or without divorce, versus the choice to remain single. Social and cultural norms and biases influence the interpretation of many of these psychosocial outcomes. This makes the process more nuanced than medical outcomes like heart attack or stroke, which are uniformly seen as adverse. The separation of desirable from adverse psychosocial outcomes can be facilitated by using the individual’s own interpretation of satisfying versus unsatisfying or happy versus unhappy.One can look for an association between explanatory variables like the use of specific psychological defenses and different outcome variables, like a satisfying career or happy marriage. By comparing the relative strength of these associations, one can infer whether specific outcomes are more or less likely among groups with and without the different adaptive behaviors and/ or use of known defenses. The inferences are bolstered by vignettes from many individuals’ stories.The Good Life is a follow-up to the report by George Vaillant, Adaptation to Life. In my Goodreads review of Adaptation to Life, I mentioned several motifs that Dr. Vaillant advanced:• Isolated childhood traumas appeared to be less important than sustained relationships with important people in the subjects’ lives.• Lives changed over time.• The key to understanding the subjects’ psychology or psychopathology was to understand the subjects’ adaptive mechanisms or use of psychological defenses.• Human development continues throughout one’s life.• Mental health can be considered somewhat independent of moral and cultural values.These themes are developed further in Waldinger’s and Schulz’s book, The Good Life. It continues to emphasize the important role of close relationships in the observed subject’s physical and mental health, sense of satisfaction, and personal happiness.Critically, this book begins to generalize some of the things we readers might learn from the more, and less, adaptive members of the observed cohort. This process begins with one of the most important lessons I took away from my medical school psychiatry rotations: try to observe how we feel in the presence of our patients. Our feelings can be important clues to our patients’ psychiatric diagnoses. This insight can be applied to interpersonal dynamics with relatively healthy people including our family and friends.From this simple but fraught insight comes the acronym of this book: WISER which the authors apply to all sorts of close human relationships aiming in each case to improve the quality of those relationships. W stands for Watch as in observing our own feelings. As the psychiatry adage goes, ‘Don’t just do something. Sit there.’ And while sitting, observe our own feelings. The I stands for Interpret, whereby we are to ponder, why am I feeling this way? The trained therapist continuously aims for greater understanding and empathy, and less judgment, in answering this question. Based upon one’s answer to the previous question, we consider our options as to how to respond. The S stands for Select, whereby we choose from among the options. We then are to Engage or implement with care, meaning with awareness of the other person’s feelings. The R stands for Reflect. After trying this sequence, we reflect on how it went, and what we can learn from the sequence. Much of the book consists in applying these steps to our important relationships (marriage, parenting, work), based on the data and stories of participants in the Grant Study.Part of the frustration I had with psychiatry, as a medical trainee, was the emphasis on deterministic factors (nature and nurture) over which I, as a physician had no control. My therapist-daughter and I joke about this limitation with the question, ‘How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? It only takes one psychiatrist to change a light bulb, so long as the light bulb wants to change. It was no accident that I became an interventional cardiologist, a field in which some of my efforts could produce changes largely independent of my patient’s compliance, at least over the short haul. For example, when I implanted a coronary stent during an acute myocardial infarction, my efforts could enhance blood flow and relieve myocardial ischemia, without depending upon the patient’s desire or efforts to change.My biggest gain from reading both Adaptation to Life and The Good Life is the sense of hope for facilitating, not causing, or controlling, healthy change in my relationships with other people, including my family members, friends, and my patients. It starts with the efforts to change myself, particularly in becoming more understanding and empathic, and less judgmental.

I couldn’t put it down, a rarity. Excellent storytelling and writing combined with useful and practical facts.

Great!

Inspiring