Can Happiness Make You Healthier?

About Tori Thurmond

Tori Thurmond combines her creative writing background with her marketing experience in her role as the Content Specialist at Brookdale. When she's not writing, she's probably spending time with her two cats or knitting.

In January, we had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Robert Waldinger to discuss how happiness can have an impact on our well-being in our Great Full Life webcast series.

Waldinger is the Director of the Harvard Study on Adult Development, the longest study of the same people for their entire lives that’s ever been conducted.

Originally, the study started as two separate studies, one focusing on male Harvard undergraduate students chosen by their deans and the other consisting of children from families residing in Boston’s neighborhoods with the highest concentration of poverty. Both studies tracked the development and thriving of their participants. Eventually these studies were combined—today the study follows 724 families.

This blog is a high-level overview of an hour-long event. For more insight, make sure to check out the webcast recording here.

Warm Relationships Keep Us Healthy

Over the course of the study, the people who have stayed the healthiest and lived the longest were those most connected to other people. When these findings first became evident, Waldinger says, they were hard to believe. How could warm relationships impact physical health? In time, other studies have echoed these findings.

So what constitutes a “warm” relationship? According to Waldinger, it’s not necessarily relationships that are smooth all of the time but the ones that make us feel good and allow us to be our most authentic selves. Another important part of warm relationships is the ability and openness to change and grow.

Happy People Value Relationships Over Achievements

When the 724 couples were in their 80s, they were asked to look back on their lives and think about the things they were proudest of in life and what they regretted the most. A significant majority of participants identified relationships as the thing they were proudest of. Some were proud of being good partners, mothers, siblings or mentors and others were proud of the fact that they did good work that benefited others. Waldinger recalls that the participants never focused on how much money they made or achievements they earned when thinking about the proudest moments of their lives so far.

On the other hand, some of the things people regretted were spending too much time at work and away from loved ones and worrying too much about what others thought of them.

All Types of Relationships Contribute to a Healthy Well-Being

While our relationships with the few people we are closest to are integral to our well-being, other types of relationships also contribute. Making friends at “work,” regardless of whether work is a volunteer project or a traditional office setting, can boost happiness and encourage better performance. Additionally, casual interactions—like engaging in small talk with your cashier at the grocery store or your barista at a coffee shop—give us what Waldinger calls “little hits of well-being.” Don’t discount relationships that might be dismissed as superficial because even small interactions with others help us feel more connected to the world around us.

Warm Relationships Can Help Regulate Stress

Waldinger explains that the best theory we have of how relationships affect our health is related to stress. Stress can cause your heart rate and blood pressure to go up and your breath to quicken. When the stressor is removed, your body is designed to go back to equilibrium. One of the ways our bodies achieve equilibrium after stress is through good relationships. When we have someone to talk to about the stress we’re experiencing, we calm down more quickly.

Talking to others about our negative feelings also can show us that others are going through similar situations, making us feel less alone. If you don’t feel that you have people in your life you can confide in, Waldinger suggests looking for community in spaces like therapy, support groups or places of worship.