Bob Waldinger

0:00Hello and welcome to Happy Place. I'm Fern Cotton and this is the show that wonders if we might be looking for happiness in all the wrong places. Today, I'm meeting Bob Waldinger. The messages are that we'll be happy if we are rich, if we're famous, if we achieve a huge amount at work. And what we find in our study, we had wealthy, famous, high-achieving people, but they weren't any more happy than the people who led regular lives, including people from the poor families in Boston's inner city. Those people were no less happy than the fancy Harvard families. And that's what's really important, that what we found was that if you want to predict who's going to be happiest, look to people's relationships.

0:49A psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and Zen priest, Bob Waldinger has literally written the book on happiness. Along with his colleague, fellow director of Harvard's study of human development, Mark Schultz, he's written The Good Life, lessons from the world's longest scientific study of happiness. this book like I read a lot of books and this book was game-changing for me I as you'll hear when I speak to Bob at times put my I guess efforts and priorities in the wrong places when trying to seek happiness or contentment or just some sort of sense of balance I learned a lot from this book and it's really changed the way that I do things I loved hearing about all of Bob's work because instead of looking at all the things that can go wrong in life, the things we maybe need less of in order to be happy, he looks at what really makes us thrive.

1:43I cannot wait for you to hear this. Right, let's do it. Bob's a great guy. You're going to love him. Here's the show.

2:12Bob, thank you so much for coming to my house today. It's lovely to have you here in the UK. Are you enjoying British springtime so far? I'm loving British springtime. The weather is pretty decent for Britain. It's all right. It's all right. It's bettered by the beautiful blossom that we've got on the trees at the moment. Yeah. It's so pretty. But it's lovely to have you here. And I'm really excited to dig in to this incredible book that you've written with your colleague Mark Short's The Good Life and How to Live It. This book has helped me out massively and I'll talk about why in a moment. But first, for anyone that hasn't read it and everyone should, it's based around the longest study on happiness, which is a Harvard study, which is still going on today.

2:55Can you tell us a bit about this study? Because I know it's not as simple as you just asking random people questions. This is thorough. There's doctor's files, there's blood tests taken, there's video footage of your participants. So just beef that out for us a bit. Absolutely. So this is the longest study of adult life that's ever been done in the history of human beings. So it started in 1938. We're in our 85th year. I'm the fourth director. I'm not that well preserved. And it started as two studies that didn't even know about each other. So one study was of Harvard College undergraduate students, 19-year-old young men, and they were chosen by their deans as fine, upstanding young men.

3:45And it was meant to be a study of normal development from adolescence to young adulthood. And now, of course, we smile because if you want to study normal adolescent development, you don't just study white men from Harvard. But at that point, that's what they did. We've since brought in spouses and children, more than half of whom are women. But at the time, a study of young men and the other study was started as a study of juvenile delinquency and particularly how some children did not become delinquents. Some children in the city of Boston from the poorest families and the most troubled families.

4:26So these families were known to many social service agencies because of domestic violence, parental mental illness, physical illness. And the question was, how, if you're born into such terrible circumstances, do you manage to stay on a good path? So the interesting thing about these two studies, the Harvard study and the inner city study, is that they were both about what goes right in development at a time when almost all the research that had been done was on what goes wrong in development. Understandably, because we want to learn about what goes wrong so we can help people. But this was a study of thriving.

5:08And that's still what we study. it's so interesting because looking at that study and digging into some of the data and the findings in more recent years in 2007 millennials were asked about life goals and 76 percent said that being rich was their number one goal and then 50 percent said being famous a slight spoiler alert for people that haven't read the book those two things don't hold up when it comes to general happiness, the reveal, the big reveal, the answer to a good life is relationships, strong relationships. Ones, it doesn't have to be millions of friends, but really solid relationships.

5:49And I don't think that's necessarily commonly known, sadly. I think the myth that happiness will derive from success, achievement, money, whatever it is, something that's very outward is still commonly the goal. Yes, we get messages all day long in our culture about what's supposed to make us happy, right? And so the messages include buy this car. Yes. And you'll be so happy or serve this brand of pasta to your family and dinners will be blissful, right? You're going to feel amazing. You're going to be, you're going to love this. And so it's all about consuming that you have the money to buy the right things.

6:25You'll be happy, particularly now with the culture in the US, we have people who are famous for being famous, right? We have that. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just fame, right? And fame is this odd thing. Fame's awful, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I've gotten just a taste of it. Horrific. I don't like it at all. No, no, no. It's like people who don't know you having all kinds of wild ideas about you. Yeah. But the messages are that we'll be happy if we are rich, if we're famous, if we achieve a huge amount at work. And what we find in our study, we had wealthy, famous, high achieving people. John F.

7:01Kennedy was a member of our study. Ben Bradley, the longtime editor of the Washington Post who broke the Watergate scandal, was a member of our study. So we had rich, famous, important people, but they weren't any more happy than the people who led regular lives, including people from the poor families in Boston's inner city. Those people were no less happy than the fancy Harvard families. And that's what's really important, that what we found was that if you want to predict who's going to be happiest, look to people's relationships. And it's not just who's going to be happiest, it's who's going to be healthiest.

7:42That was the big surprise. Like how could relationships get into our bodies and make it less likely that we'll get heart disease or arthritis or diabetes. How could that even be? But many other studies have found the same thing. And we now understand that it's a scientific fact. So how does that work? How does it impact the physical body? Because we hear this again and again with whether it's stress, loneliness, you know, other things that we would assume are related to our mental well-being. These are manifesting very, very physically. This is a very real thing. So how is that happening? And we've been spending the last 10 years in our laboratory studying just that question.

8:23How does this actually work? The best hypothesis that lots of studies have developed data for now is that it's about stress. It's just what you said, that stress is a part of life, right? Like, you know, something might happen to me later today and it'll be upsetting. My body will change. My heart rate will go up. My breathing will get faster. I might start to sweat. And literally, you have higher levels of circulating stress hormones like cortisol, higher levels of inflammation. That's normal. We're meant to do that. It's actually good because the body gets prepared to meet a stressor. But then when the stressor is removed, our bodies are meant to return to equilibrium.

9:08And what we think happens is that if you have somebody you can go home to or call on the phone and complain and say, oh, you won't believe what happened to me today. You can literally feel your body calm down and go back to equilibrium. That's what we're meant to do. And what we think happens is that if you have bad relationships or you're isolated, you're lonely, that you don't have that help returning the body to equilibrium. And so you stay in a kind of low-level fight-or-flight mode all the time and that that breaks down many different body systems. And we think that's how it could affect your joints and your coronary arteries at the same time.

9:54Yeah, I mean, it rings true, certainly. My mum had polymyalgia for about five years. This was relatively recently, but she's now luckily absolutely fine. Yeah. But, you know, we've had very open chats about it. She's actually been on this very podcast and we very lightly touched on it. And she attributes it to stress, you know, that that inflammation came from unprocessed stuff that was just stagnantly sitting in her body. and I wonder with loneliness specifically when we look at you know the opposite of having decent relationships we know that loneliness is a huge problem all over the world but there are certain statistics we can see in the states and the UK we had a minister of loneliness put in place here in the UK not long ago which was sort of depressing but also good at the same time I guess because it's a solution but it's like god we're in that dire of a place but with loneliness maybe that feeling of loneliness leads to some sort of fear.

10:52And that's the stress bit. Because if you're lonely, you are more vulnerable, I'm imagining, even on a subconscious level. Exactly. We think that we evolved as human beings to be social animals, to not be lonely or isolated. Because it stands to reason, you know, if you're out there on the savannah, you're safer if you're in a group of people, if you have other people around to help defend you from threats, right? Yeah. And so what we've come to understand is that being isolated is a stressor. That's why exile in ancient times was a terrible punishment because you were less likely to survive on your own.

11:33So the most social people are the people who were more likely to pass on their genes. So we evolved to be organisms that feel better, feel safer when we're in groups. What that means is that we don't sleep as well when we're lonely. We don't eat as well when we're socially isolated. All of those things are built into our biology. And now we know that one in three or one in four people will tell you they feel lonely much of the time. And loneliness isn't about necessarily just being on your own because you could be lonely in a crowd, you could be lonely in a family set up, in a relationship. This is very much a connection issue, I'm imagining.

12:19Properly connecting with people. Exactly. And it's a subjective experience. So some of us can be perfectly content alone on a mountaintop. Right. And just as you're saying, so it's a it's a matter of how we feel. And so each of us can check in with ourselves and see, well, do I feel as connected to other people as I would like to feel? Because you say in the book, this isn't just about being around people. There's spending time with people and there's being present with people. And there is a massive difference between the two. And I'm sure that we can all look back over the last 24 hours of our day and go, right, when I was with that person, was I really truly with them?

12:59Or was I kind of just sat next to them, but not properly connecting with them? That's really vital in this concoction. Exactly. And now we see people out to dinner and everybody's on their phones, sometimes even texting each other at the table, but not actually looking at each other. It's bleak. Yeah, it is bleak. So I'm a Zen practitioner and Zen is all about paying attention. It's all about being in the present moment. And so for me, it's just so painful to watch us all, myself included, get glued to these wonderful screens that we're so dependent on. I know. And not to look at each other. Sometimes my wife and I will come downstairs in the morning and she'll be looking at her email and I'll be scrolling through the news on my phone.

13:48We'll realize we haven't even looked at each other in the morning. Yeah. And that's been normalized, which is the scary thing. I'm not a Zen practitioner, but I do a podcast like this. I've got another one this afternoon and I know I'll be on an absolute high tonight because I've had proper intense connection with sometimes like yourself, someone I'm meeting for the first time. Sometimes it's a guest that I know a little bit. But that feeling is still the same. I've sat with someone without any devices or technology and I've really connected. And that feels it's a visceral feeling. You really feel it in your bones.

14:23You feel better from having that connection. And I guess the scary thing is not only do we have technology that's glued to our hip 24 seven, you know, that's ubiquitous and it has been completely normalized. But we've also just come out of these horrific lockdowns where everyone, you know, if you were lucky enough to be in a family or a partnership, you might have had some decent human connection. But for loads of my mates, they were stuck in, you know, flats, apartments on their own without any contact. And it was really upsetting to see the impact that that had on people. I think that was, you know, probably the biggest takeaway from that whole period was how that has affected people.

15:02And we're living in the aftermath of that still now. Yes. And what we know is that levels of depression have increased. Levels of anxiety have increased around the globe because of the lockdown. So we're now emerging from it. But the difficulty is that the screens are not going away. The digital world is more and more with us, right? So one of the things we do know from research is that how we use the digital world, how we use social media makes a difference in our well-being. that some of the research shows that if we are active in how we use social media to connect with each other, that our well-being goes up.

15:45I'll give you an example. During the lockdown of the pandemic, one of my friends took the time to reach out on the internet to his grade school friends, to his friends when he was eight years old. And they've reconnected. They all live all over the United States. They've reconnected. They have coffee every Sunday morning on Zoom, And they talk about their childhoods. They talk about their lives. Now, they are thrilled. On the other hand, I work with patients every day in psychotherapy, some of whom spend a great deal of time scrolling through other people's Instagram feeds, scrolling passively, consuming digital content passively.

16:25Their well-being goes down. They get more depressed, more anxious. Because they get this sense that other people are having perfect lives. Because that's all we post for each other, right? Our beautiful pictures. And that they're the only ones who have messy lives, who have lives that are sometimes joyous, but sometimes sad and confusing. And so what we know from research is that if we participate in the virtual world actively, we're more likely to be okay and maybe even to get happier and more connected. But this passive doom scrolling, as we call it, will lead us down a terrible path. We all know that that's the equation, that we're going to feel utterly shit after scrolling, but we all do it.

17:13And there is an element of addiction to that. And there is an element of having to find your own version of abstinence and discipline around not using your phone that way and actively choosing to make yourself feel better by using it, as you say, for connection, which is so important. I wanted to get around to telling you why personally I've benefited from this. because we've gone off on so many beautiful tangents. But I loved every, you can see I've dogged many pages. I absolutely loved it. And I definitely fit into the category of person that probably places too much emphasis on work, puts too much of my, or pins too much of my self-esteem to achievement.

17:51And I have done for years and years and years. So it's completely habitual. I don't even know I'm doing it a lot of the time. But I've really tweaked certain scenarios having read this. It's really changed how I'm living my life, which doesn't happen that often with reading books. I read a hell of a lot of books. So, for instance, even today, one of my friends texted me this morning. She's doing a theatre production in a theatre not far from my house. And she was like, shall I pop over at four? I will be finished with the two podcasts by four. In my head, I thought, oh, no, I should probably crack on with this book that I'm writing.

18:24So I could really get a bit done before the kids get back from school. and then I remembered your book and I thought, fuck it, I'm having a tea with her and it's happening. So she's coming over at four and we're just going to have a coffee and keep that connection rolling. And that's because of you, Bob, and your bloody good book. That is the best thing you could say to me. That is a gift because that's why we wrote the book. That's why. No, it's working for me. It really is. And it's also made me deeply grateful for the long friendships I have. I'm very, very fortunate that there's a group of eight of us that grew up on the same sort of block of streets in the suburbs of London throughout the 80s and 90s.

19:04We all went to the same schools, secondary and primary schools together. And we're still great, great friends today. But we all live all over the place now. We're not living all on the same five blocks of streets. Some are really far up north in the UK. We've all sort of spread out. So we put a lot of time and effort into ensuring that twice a year we meet up and we have a weekend together. And I was sort of doing it before because it was fun. But now I really understand we have to do this because you have to cultivate these friendships. It's not just all about luck. Part of it is, but part of it is the cultivation and keeping these threads, you know, really sort of prioritizing them and remembering how precious these threads of friendship are.

19:45Yes. What we saw – so we've followed now thousands of lives and we saw that the people who were the best at keeping good, vibrant social connections were the people who kept making the effort just as you're describing. Where you had a moment of choice and you said yes to your friend coming over even when you thought, oh, it's not so convenient. And you make sure that you have those weekends with your friends, you know, and that what we found was that the people who did that were the happiest, the healthiest, they lived the longest. So we coined in the book a phrase social fitness, and we coined that phrase because we feel like that social fitness really is analogous to physical fitness.

20:30That if we think about taking care of our bodies, right, we think about exercising, you don't exercise today and then come home and say, I've done it, I'm done, never have to do that again, right? I wish it was like that. I wish it was like that too. Well, it's the same with relationships that we need, but they can be small actions. So, you know, for example, your listeners, after they finish this podcast, could just think of a person who they've been a little out of touch with or they miss. You could send them a text, send them an email, call them on the phone and just say hi. Write them a little letter.

21:05Just a little letter, even a write, a little note, a postcard. And just say, hi, I was thinking of you. I just wanted to say hello. So you'll be amazed at how much good stuff comes back to you from doing those little gestures. And if you do them every day or even every week, so much good comes of it in your life. Yeah, without a doubt. And it's never too late. There was a study that really sticks out with one of the participants who, in his earlier life, had consistently said he was quite unhappy. And that was due to the fact that he was very lonely. and later down the line in older age he joined a gym and started to sort of make friends with people at the gym and was sort of then not only seeing him at the gym but having a coffee with them at the weekend and then during the next part of the study Professor feeling so much happier and more connected not all of his sort of you know the problems in his life hadn't sort of been completely negated but he certainly had a much happier existence so it's never too late you've just got to put the effort in if you're feeling lonely I guess Yes.

22:08And he is one of those people, like many people, who say, I've never been good at relationships. It's just not going to happen in my life. And so they decide that it is too late. And I've had people in their 20s tell me that it's too late for them. They're never going to have relationships that are any good. And what I want to say from studying all these thousands of people is you don't know that, that life is full of surprises for all of us. So it's really important to remain open to the possibility that you're going to find people for the first time in your life when you don't expect. Yeah, you could bump into someone in your local cafe today or it could be someone you're working with that's a new colleague.

22:51It's very, very interesting. I guess also it's really important to mention, as well as the effort that you have to put in and cultivating the pre-existing friendships, your happiness will be boosted by those things and bolstered by those things. But you mention in the book your happiness baseline, and that is due more to your personality and just, I guess, your genes? Yes, genes. So there's a psychologist, Sonia Lubomirsky, who did a study about how much of our happiness is under our control. And her estimate is that about 50 % is genes. So it's like either is the glass half empty or half full, that our inborn temperament is about half of our happiness.

23:38And we all know people like that. You probably know people who are cheerful no matter what's happening. You also know people who are gloomy, even when everything is going great. And that seems to be a kind of inborn happiness set point. But then about 10 percent is supposed to be our current life circumstances and 40 percent is under our control. I mean, that's empowering to know that. It's a lot. It is a lot. That you can build, you can do practices in your life that will make happiness more and more likely more of the day. I mean, there will be people listening to this now, I'm imagining, who do feel very lonely, but also have big trust issues due to things that have happened in the past.

24:18And there's a lot of fear there. How would you take those first steps to getting some social fitness going, to finding new people out there, to making better connections? Yeah. Well, there's been study of that. How do relationships start most naturally and easily? And what they find is that when we run into the same people over and over again, when we're doing something alongside them. So it could be the coffee machine at work. It could be volunteering for something in the community. It could be joining a gardening club or a football club or anything. But if you're doing something you're interested in and you run into the same people over and over again, it's a natural place to start conversations because you have a common interest or a common workplace, whatever it might be.

25:09And from there, conversations start most naturally. Some of those might deepen. Some of those might become friendships. And so volunteering, also being of service. Like many of us feel like, well, I'm not really of much use to people. There's so many things we can do with time and energy. We could read to children. We could tutor people. We could teach English as a second language, right? There's so many things. We could volunteer at a food pantry. Many things we can do to be of service. That helps us feel better about ourselves because we're being generous. And it helps us connect with new people.

25:49Yeah, exactly. And I guess we all have that inbuilt fear. Say we're sat on the bus or the train, whatever. That if we approach a stranger, because everyone's so glued to their phones and we're all kind of, we've created these little cocoons for ourselves. You might have sunglasses on, a hat, a hood, your phone. You're just sort of, you know, completely shut off from the world. We assume that we're going to have, we're going to receive a hostile reaction to us reaching out to someone. But more often than not, that's not the case. That's right. And I can talk about that study that we talk about.

26:19Yes, I love that study. In the book. So there was a study of commuters on a train in the city of Chicago. and they were all going to take their daily commute to work. And it was only half an hour or so. And they had two groups at random. They assigned some people to do what they normally do on their commute. Might be listening to music or reading, something they do. And then they assigned other people to talk to a stranger. Terrifying. Yeah. And everybody, so they asked people beforehand, how much do you think you're going to enjoy this train ride? and the people who had to talk to a stranger said, I'm not going to enjoy this at all.

26:57So then they all completed their assignment and they asked people again, how do you feel now that you've taken your train ride? The people who talked to a stranger were so much happier than the people who did what they normally did on the train. Yeah. And I guess there's two parts to that. One is it's lovely to connect with someone, but also it's really good to get out of your comfort zone and to just do something new. I find that all the time. if I set myself a goal or I try and stop doing something negative like doom scrolling, when I do that and I cross that sort of fear threshold, you feel so good about yourself from trying something new.

27:32So maybe do that today, like say hi to the person in the coffee shop, the person behind you in the queue, make a nice comment about what they're wearing, whatever it might be, because that connection is essential. It is those little things that are going to help. Yes. And what you said about the fear threshold, That's important for everybody to remember. It is a little scary for all of us. Yeah. Because we don't know what we're going to find when we talk to a stranger. Or even when I come home and talk to my spouse of 37 years, I don't know what kind of mood she's in. Relationships are always a little risky.

28:04And not to feel like there's something wrong with you if you're a little bit shy of talking to someone. And so what we can do is practice overcoming the little bit of fear and just trying it. Sometimes people won't respond. That's OK. We don't have to succeed every time. But much more often than not, people are going to be glad that we spoke to them. This is so important because, firstly, I love doing this podcast more than anything. I love having these conversations, hearing wisdom, storytelling, etc. But I never there's not been a day where I was set foot in the studio feeling completely chilled and calm.

28:42I'm always nervous. There is always risk because I want the conversation to go well. and there is that human instinct that you want to be liked. You want the other person to like you. You want them to feel comfortable. It all feels risky. And I think when you take that bundle of feelings and apply it to could be long-term relationships, new friendships, whatever, we're not talking about having easy, plain sailing relationships here. We're talking about connection. And those relationships, there could be complications, it could be a bumpy road at times, But it's the connection bit that's important.

29:18We're not expecting people here to have perfect relationships. That's not what counts. What you said is really important because we can give the impression that relationships are supposed to be happy all the time. They're not. A relationship that's important always has differences, often has disagreements. And what we found when we studied relationship disagreements, we asked couples to come into our lab and argue with each other, which they did. You know, about like housework or children or whatever. And what we found was that it wasn't a problem if even if they got angry at each other, that wasn't a problem in terms of how satisfied they were or whether they stayed together five years down the road when we checked in with them.

30:02It was whether there was respect, even as they argued, and some measure of affection. And so what we find is that what matters is that you find ways to work out disagreements. And that if we can work out disagreements with each other in a way that neither of us feels like we've lost, that we both feel like we've come out OK on the other side of the disagreement, that makes the relationships stronger. And so the job in relationships is to welcome the disagreements and find ways to resolve the differences together. I find that so interesting because I can certainly think back to times in my life where I've either had a turbulent time with it could be an ex-partner or in a friendship.

30:52And in those moments, my instinct is to run and think I want to hide. I don't want to see anyone. It's it's too risky to be in a friendship or a relationship. It's too complicated. I don't understand the rules and I just push them all away. And I think, again, reading your books made me realise, no, that's kind of the point is the challenge and how you overcome it together and how that bond grows through that. And I think that, again, is really empowering for people to hear, for people that feel burnt from relationships or feel rejected. I think rejection is a huge problem for so many people. They're so scared to connect with new friends, colleagues, whatever it might be.

31:32maybe it's someone who runs a business they want to hire new people but they're scared about the dynamic of carrying that burden whatever it is I think that sense of rejection and perhaps responsibility in a relationship puts people off but none of this is meant to be easy. No no and really a lot of what's energizing and empowering about relationships is these differences. I mean if we were all the same life would be so boring and so part of it is trying to develop a mindset in which we sort of recognize, actually, it's a good thing that we all have these differences and that you and I are different enough that we can communicate interesting things to each other because I don't know the next thing you're going to say.

32:18Who do I? You're right, right, right. But it's really important not to feel like, well, if we have differences, there's a problem here. That said, some of our relationships are so difficult that we need to step away from them. And I think that's, you know, that's important for us to acknowledge that once we've tried to work things out and there's just no way that it's important to step away, ideally with compassion, with some love, but to step away. Yeah, because you give the example of marriage in the book that actually leaving a very combative relationship, living within that is extremely stressful.

32:58And again, when we look at the physical manifestation of that, very detrimental. And it is actually more, it's a healthier option and more beneficial on a physical level to leave an unhealthy situation like that. As painful as that is, as challenging as that is, and also as hard as it is for, you know, there's going to be a ripple effect there. It's going to affect other people, but it's still better than staying in a combative relationship. Yes. And it's always a matter of discerning what's right in this relationship. So, first of all, how much is at stake? I mean, sometimes, for example, if there are children in a relationship, in a marriage, then it's much harder to step away.

33:38And the threshold for stepping away probably needs to be higher. And there's good therapy that can help couples, many couples, to stay together, to figure out ways to work it out, at least until the children are able to be off on their own. And so on the other hand, there are relationships we really can step away from. And both people can go off and find people who are more compatible. Yeah. And that includes friendships, not just romantic partnerships. I think that's so interesting because I think we probably understand the dance between breaking up with a partner sort of more easily than with a friendship.

34:15With a friendship, it seems the lines are sort of blurred slightly. With a relationship, you go goodbye. Don't want to see you again. Hopefully bags are packed. Hopefully there's an amicable element. But at the end of the day, you just want to go off in your separate ways. With friends, it's so messy. And there is no phone call of we're over. You don't say it's over. It just either fizzles or there's been a big implosion and then you're no longer friends. I think that's really hard for people. I've certainly been through that myself. It's really messy. Right. But in some ways that's meant to happen.

34:49I mean, if you think about it, the people who were your friends when you were seven years old, most of them are not still your friends. And that's okay. Right. And even your friends 15 years ago, most of them probably have moved out of your life. And that's all right. So we do move away because we are constantly changing as human beings. That's natural. And many of us grow apart. That's not necessarily a problem. And so the people we want to keep in our lives, those few people, whether it's the closest friends, family, romantic partners, those are the people who we want to allow to change and ideally even celebrate each other's changes so that we can keep each other in our lives.

35:34But then other relationships, it's OK to let them go. Yeah, it is. I think that's really good for people to hear that if it's not making you happy, you look in the book, you know, I think you even get people to list it. You know, which friends or people in your life really make you feel boosted and energized and which ones drain you? And really having a look at that and maybe doing a bit of life laundry if it feels appropriate. I wonder how much you feel acceptance plays into happiness. just generally in life, how key is it to have acceptance of the things you perhaps can't change? I think it matters an enormous amount because there is a great deal we can't change about our lives.

36:17And we certainly can't change a great deal about other people. I mean, how often have you thought to yourself, I really want that person to be different? Quite often. Right, right. Quite often. Right. I do too. How well does that work out? That trying to make someone, it doesn't work, Right. So we have to either decide, OK, I'm going to take that person as they are or I'm going to step away. Yeah. And and it's really important to realize that we can't change other people. I mean, even the people I'm a psychiatrist, I do talk therapy every day with patients. Even the people who come to me asking for change don't always change.

36:54And change is hard and it's a long process. And so we really have to acknowledge that it's OK to accept other people or allow them to move on. The other part of acceptance, which I think we don't talk about as much, is self-acceptance. Many people come to me as a psychiatrist with terrible self-criticism. They're very hard on themselves. They say, I don't like who I am. I should be different. I need to be different. And oftentimes, that's not the case. Oftentimes, they're just who they are. Oscar Wilde has this great quote. He said, be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. It's the best. Right?

37:38And a lot of what we do in psychotherapy in my office is help people come to accept the things that are perfectly acceptable, but that they've come to feel are somehow shameful. And what we find is that if people are more self-accepting, they're less sensitive, they're less prickly with others because they don't anticipate as much criticism and they move through the world and they move in relationships more easily. So self-acceptance is something that that I work on a lot with the people who come to my consulting room. And how do you do that? Because I'm sure there'll be a fair amount of people listening to this who think, well, how am I meant to accept the things I detest about myself?

38:20You know, I can certainly, again, think back to a time 10 or so years ago where I felt mentally the worst I've ever felt. And there was a lot I didn't like about myself and a lot of decisions and choices I'd made, I felt had informed the misery and pain that I was experiencing. I think if you'd asked me then to find acceptance, I would have really struggled. Whereas now, 10 years down the line, hell of a lot of therapy, lots of interesting work. I feel much more able to do that. But how would you suggest somebody looks to accept the parts themselves they find challenging? Well, often what I do when I'm working with people who come with that is to is to just be curious.

39:01So if someone comes in and says, you know, I'm shy and I feel so bad about myself because I'm shy and I used to get teased because I was shy. And my first question is, what's wrong with being shy? What are you telling yourself about that? What is so bad about that? And just to play dumb because actually I am curious and because I genuinely don't know. What's the problem with being shy? There's no problem with being shy. or any number of things that people tell themselves. I shouldn't be so intellectual. When I was a kid, I used to... I wish I had that problem. Yeah, well, when I was a kid, I used to be made fun of because I loved school, because I loved reading and I grew up...

39:45Who's laughing now, Bob? Well, I don't know. Who wrote this brilliant book? You, not those kids. Yeah, but those kids made fun of me and I wanted to be accepted. Yeah. And so many times I would say There's something wrong with me because I like school and I like to read and I like intellectual things. And so it took a while for me to come to accept, no, that's okay. It's just different. Like I'll never be a great footballer. I wish I were. And boy, when I was a kid, I really wished I were. I'm going to be a brainiac, but it's okay to be a brainiac, right? But I think what I've come to do, and it's the best part of my work, is help people begin to feel like I'm really okay this way.

40:33You know, that seems to me to be the greatest gift we can give to each other. Yeah, and I like that curiosity leads you there. Just sort of being curious that you can ask yourself that question, why is it so bad? A lot of it is societal messaging or expectation that we're supposed to be doing a certain thing on a certain timeline. and it's all a man-made concept. You can do things at your pace in your own special way and I love that curiosity can lead us to that place. There was a quote that I wrote down that I loved so much and I think it's a really important one. We've looked at the importance of understanding that relationships don't necessarily need to be easy to be enjoyed but actually that concept can be really broadened out to everything we're experiencing in life And the quote that I loved is a rich life, a good life is forged from precisely the things that make it hard.

41:29I'm going to read it again because I think it is so important to hear a rich life. A good life is forged from precisely the things that make it hard. I, again, don't think that's common knowledge. I think most of us are waiting for life to get easier. And I find myself doing it even with my children like, oh, and they're a bit older. It'll be easier. No, it won't. There'll be more challenges. There'll be new challenges. And that is the same for everything in our life. There's going to be constant challenges, constant phases. So we've got to stop waiting for it to get easy. Exactly. And that word challenge is the important word here.

42:05So what we know, again, from good research, is that meeting challenges can make us stronger. It can be enlivening. It can give us more confidence. That challenge came along I thought I couldn't face, and I did it. I met it. It was okay. What we know is that if we have the resources we need to meet the next challenge that comes along, we are stronger, we're happier, we grow more confident. If we don't have the resources, if we can't get the right help, if we don't have the right internal resources, we can be overwhelmed. And that's traumatizing. That's why what we do, for example, when we're raising children, is we try to protect children from challenges that they couldn't possibly cope with yet on their own.

42:56And the trauma for children is having to cope with challenges that they couldn't have the resources to cope with. On the other hand, we would not want to shield our children or ourselves from the challenges that are a normal part of life. I mean, we want our kids to learn to be resilient people, right? So when a child is having a difficult assignment at school and they have to write a theme, a paper that they're afraid they can't do, and then they do it, there's such a sense of accomplishment. Or when they work out a difficulty with a friend on the playground, there's a great sense of accomplishment.

43:36We want that because that strengthens those muscles. And so I think that's what we mean in the book when we say the good life is forged from the things that make life difficult. I love it. I just love that quote so much. And I guess, again, looking at the importance of relationships, having people in your life that you can depend on, that you can have honest chats with, that's potentially going to be what stops you sinking rather than swimming with a big challenge. Yes. Yes. You know, one of the things I was taught in my psychiatric training is the mantra, never worry alone. And it was meant to be for a psychiatrist worrying about someone who's in trouble, right?

44:21But I found that it works for almost everything. That if I find myself really worried, so meaning a challenge is coming my way, that if I can talk to someone, first of all it's just unburdening myself getting other thoughts other ideas but then often getting help that that's what we want to learn to do more and more of and that's what we want to teach our children to do that we're never we never want to have to be too alone with problems we want to we want to be in community when we have problems yeah and also remembering that of course it's going to be scary to reach out to someone if you're feeling particularly low again if I think back to my own sort of personal story and put it into that context there was a period where I did feel like well I don't think I can tell anyone what's going on in my head or you know I don't want to be judged I don't want to be rejected and luckily there were two people that I still you know will always be in my heart because I was able to do that and to sort of share thoughts and feelings and I wasn't rejected and they're still very much in my life and I'm very grateful for that.

45:27And I do think, my God, what if I hadn't had those two people that I could talk to? I don't know how I mentally, I don't think I would have got out of bed in the morning, quite frankly. Exactly. And those people are so valuable in our lives. And I think that if some of our listeners are thinking to themselves, well, I don't have anyone like that. First of all, you're not alone if you don't have anyone like that. And that it's a matter of trial and error that often we can find out who is a person who I can confide in and who I can trust, who won't criticize me, but who will be a sympathetic listener and try to offer help and suggestions or just sympathy.

46:09And that it starts with just dipping a toe in the water, maybe sharing something that's not too risky at first and seeing how it's received, and then trying something maybe a little more personal, right? And seeing if that person shares something back, that that's a, it takes a little while to build those kinds of trusting relationships. And if you find that you, you do offer something, you take a little bit of a risk and the person doesn't want to hear it, or the person comes back with criticism, look elsewhere. Yes. You have to find the right person. Because you know what, around that time I did, I did a bit of trial and error and I certainly dipped a toe in the water with those two people and they very quickly shared with me and I felt right I felt safe yeah then I made the mistake which I've really I learned a very valuable lesson from I thought if I confide in someone that to me seemed very shiny and perfect and to have their shit together if they accept me after I've unloaded this stuff then I'm okay if this person thinks that what I've been through is okay then maybe I don't have to worry and they didn't reply to my message and I felt horrific but I knowingly chose the wrong person there I went for the shiny person rather than the one that I knew would react well well and shiny and perfect isn't real like it's not you know I can tell you having studied all these people for so many decades and worked with patients and just in my own life right nobody has it all figured out nobody's perfect even though we can imagine that other people are perfect so it's really important to keep reminding ourselves of that Yeah, without a doubt.

47:47There was also a really interesting part of the study that showed that people in older age often felt happier because they're better at maximizing the sort of happiness they feel and the pleasurable experiences and minimizing pain and challenge. Why is that? Is that just experience? Well, part of it is experience, that we get wiser. We stop worrying about the stupid things as much. We realize, oh, I was worried about that and it didn't turn out to be a problem. You know, we know a lot more about that from life experience. But also, we find that we get happier as we get older because the reality of death becomes more vivid for us.

48:29I mean, it sounds paradoxical, right? As I really understand, now that I'm in my 70s, wow, this death thing, this is real? Shouldn't that make me more depressed? But instead, it makes me happier. And what we think happens, and this is also based on good research, is that we realize that life is precious, that time is precious. So we get better at taking care of ourselves and at prioritizing the present moment rather than delaying gratification, delaying satisfaction. We stop and smell the roses. Yeah. Literally more often. Yeah, because I think you do have that realization. Life is short. And I say, you know, me and my parents talk about this sort of thing all the time.

49:13And my mum and dad, who are about to turn 70 this year, will say, how the hell am I 70? Like, they can't believe it. They're sort of in shock. I am too. Yeah. And sort of shock that time has whizzed by so quickly and their grandparents and they still sort of feel like they're in their 20s. But they, you know, have realised they're not. And you do realise the speed of life and that you do need to slow down. You do need to, I'm not talking about slowing down because you're old. I'm talking about slowing down so you can enjoy what's going on around you and be present and see things and hear things clearly.

49:46Because when we're rushing, we just don't experience any of it. We're just getting to the end of the day rather than noticing the colour of the sky, seeing the colour of someone's eyes when you're talking to them, hearing the birds sing, whatever it might be. I'm imagining that becomes, as you, I can even experience it in my 40s. That becomes of paramount importance every day to check in with those things. It does, because otherwise we end up feeling like we're missing life. We're missing our life even as it speeds by. And actually my Zen practice helps me a lot with that because every morning I sit down and I meditate.

50:22And what it teaches you to do is slow everything down and just look, like look at the color of the sky as you're walking along. I sometimes I just spend five minutes staring at a tree and noticing everything I possibly can about that tree. You'd be amazed at what you can find if you just take the time to stop and look at one thing and notice everything you can about it. All kinds of things open up. It makes life so much more vivid. Yes, it's beautiful. I think that combined with us really understanding the importance of strong connections, as we said right at the start, not millions. You don't have to have a thousand Facebook friends and people that you're out partying with every week.

51:03It's a handful of really good people that you can trust, that you can have one on one, really honest, good conversation with. That is going to really stand up when it comes to having a good life. Not the things that are purported to make us happy, not the things that the media shoves down our throats. I have interviewed so many people probably in the hundreds people who are incredibly famous incredibly successful have ticked every box you could put on a life list of things you'd want to tick off list of dreams who have had times of deep depression absolute unhappiness anxiety you name it we know this is true yet we still get pulled into the myth so it's certainly why your book is so so important to read and why the message is something that I will most definitely check in with daily because as I said, it's already changed my thinking, how much I'm working, where I'm putting my importance.

51:58It's really brilliant. So first of all, thank you for writing this brilliant book, but also thank you for speaking with me today, Bob. Well, I am so grateful for you having me here. What a wonderful conversation. Thank you. Bob, I honestly felt so energised after that chat. Me and the whole Happy Place team did. We were buzzing. that is definitely a man who's got joy sussed thank you so much for your time bob bob's book the good life is out now we touched on the idea that fame and riches aren't the making of happiness and that's something author taylor jenkins reed explores extensively in her novels so do go listen back to the happy place episode with her if you haven't heard it already more from the Happy Place podcast next week.

52:45But in the meantime, let's all continue these conversations on Instagram. You'll find us at Happy Place Official. Come join us there. Let's have a chat. Massive thanks again to Bob, to the producer Anushka Tate at Rethink Audio and to you. I bloody love you.

53:14Thank you.