 Well, first, welcome to the show, Bob. It's great to have you. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Now, Johnny and I have talked a lot about the Harvard study of adult development on the show. Probably over the years, our audience has heard us in various forms discussing it and its points as relevant to our reason for starting the show, building great relationships. And I was laughing with Johnny because I think there's a lot of misconceptions around the study. So we posted a video on TikTok. One of our guests, Arthur Brooks, was talking about the study. And the comment section was full of vitriol. What could we learn from a bunch of white, rich men 100 years ago? Right, right, right, right. Yeah. So I think it'd be really helpful to first just set up the study itself and talk about what the study is about. Because I think people have heard about it in pop culture. It's been thrown around. But I don't think very many people actually know how the study is run and what actually is going on behind the scenes. Great. And I'm really glad to be able to clear up some of these myths. So let me tell you about the study. It started in 1938. And it started actually as two separate studies that didn't even know about each other. One was a study of Harvard undergraduates, 19-year-old sophomores, who were chosen by their deans as being fine-upstanding young men. But half of them were on scholarship, had to work at least part of their way through school. So mostly middle, some upper-middle-class families, not so many wealthy people. But still, obviously a privileged group. That was one-third, 268 young men. The other study was started at Harvard Law School by Sheldon Gluck and his wife, Eleanor Gluck, who were studying juvenile delinquency. And they were studying why children from some of the most troubled and disadvantaged families managed to stay on reasonably good developmental paths. So they were studying why some kids managed not to become juvenile delinquents, even though they were born with so much against them. Those were not just the poorest kids, but the kids whose families were so troubled that they were known to on average five social service agencies for domestic violence, alcoholism, severe mental illness. So we're not talking privileged here. More than half of them were from immigrant families. So I just want to clear that up because it's really important that two-thirds of these kids were actually among the poorest and the most troubled of the population of Boston in 1938. And then since then, so they were all men, right? But then we brought in first the spouses of our first generation, and then all the children are more than half women. So now we have more than half of our study subjects are women. And it's still ongoing, correct? Yeah. We're collecting data even as we speak. Yeah. So I think that's a huge takeaway because as it gets talked about in pop culture, it's easy to write it off for those exact reasons that we talked about. But it's a longitudinal study. So how is this different than most studies that we think about when we think about social sciences? That's what's so rare about it. Most studies of human life are snapshots where we ask people to remember the past or we test them at a moment in their lives. What's really different is to study the same people over and over again, year after year after year as they go through their whole lives from teenage years into their 90s. A few are still over 100. I mean, so to follow people for this long is absolutely unheard of, and it means that you get to see how life progresses. You get to see how intimate relationships go up and down in their satisfaction. You get to see how happiness varies depending on whether your kids are living at home or they're launched. There's so many things that change that morph and change in our lives, and that's what this study lets us do. And if I'm a participant in the study, what does the interview process actually look like? Because I think we've also heard of studies that are a few questions, but this is pretty in-depth. These interviews really cover a lot of ground. Oh, yeah. So we started with detailed physical exams, psychological exams, visits to their homes. So they visited their parents and wrote detailed notes about what was being served for dinner and what the furnishings were like and the disciplinary style of the parents. I mean, so much detail all in the 1930s and 40s. And then the questionnaires where we asked about the big domains of life. So mental health, physical health, work life, like, did you get promoted? Did you get fired? How satisfied are you with your job? Relationships and not just intimate relationships, but friendships, other family relationships, community relationships. So all of that got asked about. And then we're kind of a history of science. So as new methods came online, we started using them to study the same things. So we started audio taping, videotaping, drawing blood for DNA. I mean, DNA wasn't even imagined in 1938 when the study started. And then we've been putting people in the MRI scanner and showing them different kinds of pictures and watching how their brains light up. We stress people out in our lab and see how quickly they calm down from the stressor. So these are the different kinds of ways that we come at this whole domain of human thriving as people go through life. Now, you mentioned happiness. And a lot of times it's referred to as the happiness study. Happiness is a big part of what people discuss around the study. But for many of us, happiness feels very fleeting. And it feels almost not worth studying in that way. You can't live a life of pure happiness. So what exactly are we talking about? What is the good life and what's behind what we're looking at here? Thank you for asking that because they always call us a study of happiness and we're not. I mean, it includes questions like how happy are you, but we're really a study of human well-being, human thriving, both physical and emotional and psychological as well. And so moment to moment happiness gets included and you're absolutely right. You can't be happy. Nobody's happy all the time. Not one person on the planet. But there are people who feel that their lives are basically okay for long periods of time and that they have what they need to feel like life is good enough and meaningful. And that's what we're interested in. And then we have quite a few people whose lives have gone really downhill who felt that they've never had good lives. And we're interested in that too. Why does that, why do lives unfold that way as well? I think when we think about happiness, when we talk about happiness, of course, the first thing that jumps to everyone's mind is money and its ability to unlock happiness in our life. And of course, there's another study by a group of Daniel Kahneman around the $75,000 number. And you write about it in the book as well that this number is often a misnomer. It's again, a snapshot study, right? If we look at the difference in studies, it's a snapshot in time that his group was looking at it. And of course, we all feel financial pressures and we feel happier when we have more versus having less. So how does money come into this equation? Because as you talked about earlier, you have various socioeconomic backgrounds and you also are tracking people at their best and at their worst through their career. As you go through the study, some people lose jobs, some people have massive promotions and windfalls, et cetera. So how does money come into this equation? Well, as you say, money, after we get our basic needs met, money doesn't make your happiness increase. So once you get above whether it's $75,000 or $100,000, whatever, but basic needs, once you get those met, then you could make $75,000,000 and it's not going to make your happiness go up. Happiness isn't correlated with being rich. So our Harvard undergraduate group wasn't happier on average than the inner city Boston group that grew up in such disadvantaged circumstances. And that's really important because especially when we're younger and we're starting out in life, we think, if I can get rich, I'm going to be really happy. And the other thing is we're sold these messages all day long about this. I mean, think about the commercials you see where it's like, if you buy this car, you are going to be so happy and your family is going to love you more. If you serve this kind of pasta at your family dinners, you are going to be a happy family forever. All this stuff that we know is false and yet we can develop this idea that there is some way to purchase the right stuff to finally be happy forever. And that is just not the truth of any of the thousands of lives we've followed. With that in mind, obviously hopping on the study, you had some preconceived notions or ideas or things you're probably looking for interested in the data. So what were some surprising perspectives that came out of your work in the study? And what were some things that you think are the next frontier of studying? Because you're talking about a history of science here and many of these new tools that you're using and bringing in, well, it's opening up entirely different areas of perspective and scientific research around this group. Absolutely. Well, one of the biggest surprises for us was that relationships keep us healthier. It made sense that it keeps us happier, good relationships, more happiness, sure. But how could good relationships make it less likely that you would get coronary artery disease? How could that happen? Or that less likely that you would get type 2 diabetes? How could that be a thing? And so this next frontier, well, it's a current frontier is we're studying how that works. How do relationships actually change our physiology, change our bodies? So we're looking a lot at stress and stress management. And one of the things we're getting pretty clear on is that good relationships are stress managers for us. You can sort of see that. If I have something upsetting happen in my day and I can churn about it and ruminate about it, you know, if I go home and I talk to my wife or I can call up a friend and I can really vent, I can literally feel my body calm down. And we think that that's a lot of how this works actually, that good relationships return our bodies to a kind of baseline equilibrium after we've been stressed. And since stress is a normal part of life, we want those stress regulators in our lives. So then when you're asking, well, what's the new frontier? Gosh, I mean, I don't know what it is, right? But right now, cutting edge includes, like messenger RNA, it includes the systems that turn genes on and off. So it's not just knowing which genes control happiness, which we may never know actually, because there are probably thousands, if not millions of genes that do. But then it's also seeing how different kinds of proteins get made or not made depending on which genes get turned on and off in our bodies. And so I think that's going to be one of the frontiers as we develop better ways of looking at the brain while it's functioning. So while we're in scanners, we're going to know more about what does talking with you do to my brain right now, right? I think I'm having a good time. And there are things that I know annoy me where I don't have a good time. What does my brain look like? And as we get better and better at visualizing brain processes, we're going to know more. Those are my best shots. I think for me what stood out, obviously the relationships piece is a big part of why we do what we do. But now looking at this concept of social fitness, and we've had a lot of experts on the show talk about social media and our media consumption as a whole has gone up. And you actually do some quantification in the book around just thinking about how much time you actually spend with people in real life and these relationships in your life versus time on screen and time viewing media and time interacting with things that don't lead to the happiness as we talked about. This concept of social fitness, I had never heard it before reading it in your book. So I'd love to unpack it for our audience and think about how we can actually give ourselves a little bit of a social fitness test. We thought about this as social fitness because it seems analogous to physical fitness. Like if I go to the gym today and work out, I don't come home and say, good, I'm done. I never have to do that again. Physical fitness is an ongoing practice and we all get that. Whether we do it or not, whether we practice it or not, we know that's what would be best for our bodies. And what we realized was that as we looked at these lives, we saw many people's social worlds start to shrink. Not because there was anything wrong and not because they had relationships, but because they neglected their relationships. And what we saw was that many perfectly good relationships just wither away from neglect. So we said, okay, what if it's like exercising muscles, exercising your social muscles? And then your question is, whoa, how do you do that? Well, I suppose the first thing would be to check in with yourself and say, what am I getting from my relationships? And we get different things, right? So we get fun, we get like someone to confide in, we get like my neighbor who always has the right tool for the thing I'm trying to fix. And I don't have any good tools. And you get people who help you in different ways. And so think about what do you have in your life? What would you like more of? And could you get that either by livening up a relationship you already have or reaching out to some new people? So I think that then what we can do is say, well, who might I like to either strengthen a relationship with or reach out to a new? And this is where what we talk about in the book are these little tiny choices you can make to do this. Like, okay, so right now, after people are listening to this podcast, you could think, okay, who do I miss? Who would I like to touch base with? You could just send them a little text saying, just thinking of you and wanted to say hi. And if you do that, you will more likely than not get something back. And probably it's going to be somebody's reaction where you see that you've made somebody happy, you have made them want to connect more with you again, right? You're going to see that this little choice you can make now is going to have ripple effects. And that's what we keep noticing when we, you know, we talk with lots of people, we test this with lots of people. And it really makes a difference to take these small intentional steps to make our relationships better. I certainly enjoyed that term and it piqued my interest as much as it has piqued AJ's. And I think all of us just went through this ridiculously long, still going on social experiment, which COVID has isolated us. It has shown us the, our social fitness and being isolated for a certain amount of time, everyone is coming out of that. And I talk to young men and women every day who write into the company or call in and they all talk about how they have noticed since COVID, things are been opening back up and they have gotten complacent in the new routines that they developed to get through COVID. But also they're now that things are opening back up, they want to get back out there. They realize they're in isolation, but they're nervous about it. They don't feel like it. They make every excuse in the world why they shouldn't be going out much just like the gym. We all know that we have to go to the gym. We all know we have to eat, right? But yet when it comes down to it, everyone wakes up in the morning and starts going through their excuses, Rolodex to figure out how can I get out of going to the gym today. And we're seeing that when it comes to our social fitness. Where in the past, we didn't mind going to the networking event or going to the birthday party because these are things that we had always done and we cherish those relationships. But due to COVID due to isolation, those connections at your feet and it's making it difficult for people to pick them back up. Yeah. And that is such an important point. And what we're seeing is that actually the universe is conspiring to keep us isolated. So these screens that we love so much, myself included, are designed to hold our attention, to capture it, to hold it, to keep us on our screens, not let us alone to be with each other in the real world, right? Because attention is the commodity that they're after. The difficulty now is that the path of least resistance is to stay isolated. That's the path of least resistance and it requires being more intentional. And then as you're saying, Johnny, what do you do when your gut is saying, I don't want to do this? I don't really want to go to that networking event or that party. And that's where we can check in with ourselves. One of my friends was telling me yesterday, he said, I realized that when I actually let my partner drag me to a party, I end up feeling better. But my first reaction is, no, I don't want to go. And they did a study of this where they studied people who were about to take the subway in New York. And they randomly assigned them to, you read about this, AJ, but they randomly assigned people to either you're going to do what you normally do, which is like, listen to music, stay on your stage, keep to yourself, or you are randomly assigned to talk to a stranger. And they asked people, how much do you think you're going to enjoy this assignment we've given you? And the people who were going to have to talk to strangers thought they were going to be much less happy afterwards than the people who could just do their own thing. Then they asked people after they completed their assignments, the people who talked to strangers were way happier than the people who kept to themselves. So again, it's just a reminder that we're not good at knowing what's going to make us happy. And so we have to often remember back and say, oh, yeah, I really did like it when somebody dragged me to that party. So we have to be more intentional and we have to get over some hurdles. This is why I do this. I really care about getting these ideas out there because I see us all, myself included, so easily becoming more isolated. Well, there's certainty with the device. There's certainty that you'll get the dopamine, you'll feel good, you'll be entertained. There's uncertainty of what's going to happen at the networking event, or if you reach out to a friend and they ignore it or they don't respond, right? There's uncertainty in all of these little actions, but there's so much value in these little actions to the quality of our relationships, which then trace back to the study, which is ultimately the quality of your life. And so many of us also get caught up on this idea that I call it checking boxes. You talk about this in the book, this mini road map of adult relationships, and how basically we feel that we need to be doing certain things at certain times. We need to be getting the degree, we need to be getting the job, then we need to find the partner, then we need to find the house, then we need to have the kid. And you feel based on cultural influences, family influences that you're either ahead of time or you're falling back on time. And in actuality, chasing after all of those things external lead you further from the happiness that you're looking for. Yeah, absolutely. That sense of being on time is so deflating to many people. I haven't found a partner and everyone else is finding a partner or I haven't had my first child or I haven't gotten the promotion that all that stuff. It turns out when you watch people's lives over time, you see that they're all these meandering paths that most of us take and that that's totally okay. It's just that we have this idea in our head, these clocks in our heads about what we're supposed to be doing at different times in our lives. Fortunately, I think that's changing and opening up a bit where people are feeling more latitude to take different life paths than they used to. I think it gets murky there because of our internal clocks are being eschewed due to an extended adolescence that is going on that which is like, well, you know, I was out on my own at 18. And in the book, there's a bunch of studies going on with some of the younger generations. And there was even terms in certain cultures for failure to launch in these generations. So they're staying at home till mid twenties, mid thirties. And it's difficult to understand where you want to be at certain stages of your in your life if you haven't set off and had to put those things together for yourself. If you're being fed by your parents and you only have some menial tasks to do, you're in this clock that is trying to find out if you're on time or off time is out of whack because it's it's not focused on the things that move you forward, getting a job, moving through, uh, moving through your career, engaging in a relationship that is fulfilling to have children. Though those things are all going to be staying the same, right? Like a woman's biological clock isn't going to stop and or start until she leaves the house. That's going regardless. And we all as human beings, due to all this technology, have to understand that our lifespan, though it may be extending a few years due to medical advancements, I still have a certain window of time to make certain things happen. And what I really enjoyed about the book, it lays out the, the Heraksonian stages and to look at it in a more, I guess, more extended path, when you can see things in its totality, it makes it easier to see these stages rather than getting kind of antsy that you're not hitting on certain milestones. You know, and I think what you're, you know, what you're pointing to, which I said actually as we were designing the book, I said, you know, the biggest driver of development is the fact of death. And everybody said, oh, that's too depressing. People won't want to hear about that. But, you know, but that's what you're pointing to, really, because you're saying, look, time is limited. And, you know, if you want to stay in your bedroom and play video games until you're in your 60s, that's your life. We have to unpack the age difference, right? So obviously, Johnny's view of time, you talk about in the book, midlife to later adult stages, like time and the way we view time is a lot different than we're in our 20s. And when we're in our adolescence, so we're busy on time, we feel short on time in the near term, I have a lot of things to do, I have a checklist, I have kids to take care of. But we often have this longer time horizon in the future of like, well, once I get the house, then I'll have time to do that. And once I go on vacation, then I'll have time to do this. But in actuality, as we move through these developmental stages, our view of time shifts. That time is where we're putting our attention. And now we have technology fighting for that attention and robbing us of that attention that we could be putting towards relationships that make us happy. Absolutely. And I think, you know, when I was talking about the fluidity of like, you know, being able to take different life paths on different, you know, time courses, what I wasn't talking about was staying in your bedroom and playing video games that I think the important thing is to be engaged in the world. But there are people who don't have to be engaged in the same lockstep way that they used to. I mean, there are women who raise kids and then go out in the working world and become CEOs in their 60s, whereas they were mommies for like the first 20 years of their adult lives, right? You know, and so those are paths that didn't exist when we started studying our first generation. And that's what I find so cool that there are different, you know, there are more different ways to move through life. Even so, you have to and you have to engage in order to take advantage of all those new ways. Sitting in your room playing video games, well, there's no extra paths for you. No, no. So you reference the cultural influence that it has on creating this time and creating these influences and the choices that we make. And I think what's really unique about the study, obviously, starting in the 1930s to where we are now 100 years, almost 100 years later, culture has changed. You know, women are in the workforce, we're taking on different roles, different things are acceptable. So how has culture influenced the answers to some of these study questions and influenced the way you view happiness in this study? Culture makes a huge difference. You know, most of our original couples were, you know, the World War II generation. And we would send our 20-something young women interviewers to visit these couples. And they would talk to these older women in their 70s and 80s and and ask questions like, well, weren't you frustrated being at home all the time? And these women would say, no, not at all. I had a really rich and rewarding life being at home, working in my community, doing all that, you know, so it was a lot about the expectations that they were part of a generation where this is what many women did. And our younger, our younger women who were going to be career women were saying, no, this is this can't be okay. You can't have had a fulfilling life. And what they were bumping up against were these cultural differences. And so what we see is that all of this keeps changing over time, as it should change, right? But that that our ideas about what constitutes a fulfilling life are very culture dependent. And that's probably never going to change, because culture gets transmitted through parenting, through schooling, through all the things that make us who we are. Well, a lot of culture in my mind centers around prestige. And it certainly is a driver for a lot of our actions, especially for our listeners. And yet, you write about two gentlemen in the book, one goes to law, one goes to become a teacher. And the law path is chasing prestige, chasing accomplishment. And he has a much different experience in life versus the teacher who probably wouldn't be celebrated as a very prestigious job wouldn't be considered a great job based on the amount of money earned. But his view of happiness and quality of life and the purpose that he found in in serving those children and teaching those children and having this vibrant family really led to him feeling happiness in a way that the lawyer didn't in his life. The teacher is the man we call Leo in the book. All these are real stories, but all the names are disguised so that but but Leo actually, one of my predecessors dubbed Leo one of the most boring men in the study. And he turns out to have been our happiest person in the study for just the reasons you were talking about. He had a career he loved teaching, he loved mentoring kids, he loved teaching history to kids. He had daughters who he taught to sail and just spent a lot of time with them and a happy marriage and a career that we would think of as no big deal. Like okay, but he did the same thing his whole life and then he retired by far that one of the happiest people. And this lawyer was one of the had one of the most prestigious jobs and he was one of the least happy. He was one of the most miserable people. And they are extremes, but everybody's on that spectrum in some way in our study. And what we really do is try to lay out these these stories with their ups and downs and their quirks to help people see that that these lives are so rich and complicated and that they don't conform to the stereotypes we think they will, like that wealth makes you happy or prestige makes you happy. It just doesn't work that way. And a lot of that chasing and prestige leads to selfish behaviors that damage those important relationships that we talk about. So the pursuit of these accomplishments, the pursuit of advancing your career comes at a cost to his family and to friendships and to those weak ties even in his life that ultimately lead to the sustained happiness versus Leo, the teacher who has relationships with his students, vibrant relationship with his wife, a family that he's really involved in. All of those relationships go on to have a huge impact on the quality of Leo's life. Yeah. And what we find, and other studies find this as well, is that people who invest in things beyond the self, beyond I, me, and mine, that people who invest in whether it's causes or people or whatever, that those people are happier, they feel that their lives have more meaning than the people who are really all about the self. And so we look at some of these people in our culture who seem to be only about themselves. They are not happy fulfilled people. They're desperately hungry people because you can never really shore up the self enough to feel good about yourself if that's all you're doing. And it pushes people away. It robs you of those relationship opportunities that us as social beings really need to be healthy, to have great social fitness. And you talk about the stay-at-home moms who then got involved in charity work when they became empty nesters. Well, a lot of their work raising a family isn't about the self, right? Raising kids is in service to your family and then charity work in service. So a lot of times we get so caught up on, and of course, with the rising costs of tuition, the expense that college is, it does put a financial burden that drives people to chase prestigious jobs that often are high-paying jobs and furthers this myth that if I just get that next raise, if I just get that next promotion, that next accomplishment, then I'll have the time to invest in the relationships. And we hear this from our clients and X Factor all the time. I wish I would have started this 10 years ago. I wish I would have invested in these relationships 20 years ago. I'm 50. I got divorced and I realized I don't have a social circle. And my ex-wife doesn't want to spend any time with me and I'm starting over. What I loved about the book is it's never too late. And with this longitudinal study, you see that people later in life make these changes, start to invest in relationships and see a direct impact on their life. So for those in our audience who are feeling like, well, is this it? Is this what I have for the rest of my life? How do we make that change and how do we inspire them to take action towards these relationships? Yeah. Well, first, what we say is it really is never too late because we have the data to show it, right? That there are people who find their tribe for the first time in their 60s or they find love in their 80s. It's kind of astonishing. And we have 20-somethings who have said to me, I'm no good at relationships. They're never going to happen for me. They're sure that it's just not going to work out for them. And so the message we can give, backed by science, is that's not the truth, that it is really not too late. But then you're asking the big question, like, well, what then what? What do you do? And I think that it involves doing some of the things we've been talking about, that it involves figuring out what could you do? What small steps could you take? And one of the things I want to name is that people should expect a little bit of failure. Not everybody you reach out to is going to respond with warmth. They may ghost you. They may not respond at all. They may feel annoyed, right? Sometimes that happens. And so I think when you think about starting to reach out, it's important to remember that there are going to be times when it doesn't work. It's like shooting baskets in basketball. You're not going to make the basket every time, right? And that has to be something we prepare ourselves for. And then to think about, maybe a place to start is, think about something you love. Think about something you love to do. It could be anything. It could be bowling. It could be playing the banjo. It could be knitting, gardening. It could be working to prevent climate change. It could be anything. And think about ways to do it alongside other people who share a similar interest. Because that's a natural place. That gives you, first of all, it gives you something in common. It gives you a place to start conversations. And then one of the things that research tells us is that if you put yourself in situations where you're going to see the same people repeatedly and maybe have casual conversations, those conversations can start to deepen. That's why the water cooler or the coffee machine at work was so important. We don't know what we're going to do now that those are falling out of existence. But these are the kinds of things we can do. All of those things certainly help. And for our X Factor members, these are people with careers. They have lives. They have families. And so that throwing stuff off the wall and hoping it sticks, it can be a bit frightening. Because it's just like, well, who has that time to waste? Well, again, it's like going to the gym. It is for your development. But this is why for us and all the work that we've done, we have done all the research. All the research has been done on what is and what makes for effective, efficient, rapport building. And there are frameworks that will give you guidance to help you with these relationships so that you don't have to go out and flail around and hope something sticks. And once you have those frameworks, the flailing around part actually becomes kind of fun because you actually, you have your least, you know, you're doing things that are effective, that have been researched and the science backs it up. And all you have to do is give it a few executions and you'll start to see that development. And that's, and then you use that momentum to start building out your network. So you guys actually offer people frameworks for doing this kind of thing. Yeah, this is fabulous. Small talk, building rapport, storytelling, stories connect us, validating emotions and others. And part of the reason, so you talk about propinquity, being around people over and over again, just getting that exposure leading to small talk. But then you also have the shared emotion that really builds relationships by doing things that you enjoy that someone else enjoys, right? So you're both in a place of having and experiencing great emotions that you not only tie to the place you're at and the activity you're doing, but mentally we also tie to the people we're surrounded by when we're doing that activity. So the bowling league, the ax throwing league, those very quickly become social circles because it's scheduled. It is an environment that is social and it's an activity that everyone is engaged in. But I want to touch on the first point because I think that's also really scary, especially coming out of the pandemic of how do I reach out to people and how do I rekindle these relationships? And as you started saying, most of these relationships die simply because no efforts put in. We rationalize that, oh, well, the other person's not interested. We tell stories about how the other person's thinking or feeling and you use the basketball analogy. I prefer a baseball analogy. I give everyone three strikes. I throw out an opportunity to hang out. I follow up and I follow up one more time. And if after three chances that person doesn't respond, doesn't show up, doesn't express interest, that I know, as Johnny said, I gave it my best shot and I can move on to other relationships in my life. And the book talks about, I think a lot of us have this misnomer around friendship that we need this deep confidant who's just there to support us through the thick and the thin and cheer us on and have our backs when things go sideways. In actuality, your life is full of seasons. There's going to be friendships that are perfect for that season in your life that are perfect for your entrepreneurial journey, that are perfect for your retirement journey, that are perfect for your college experience. And sometimes you have to let go of those relationships, recognize the season of your life that you're in, and plant new seeds to build new relationships to fit that season of your life. And these are the lessons that we're talking about with our X Factor accelerator members because it is daunting. It is scary to wake up, recognize that you've neglected these relationships. You haven't put in any effort there because you put effort in your career. You put effort in your family. You put effort in your partner, your spouse, who you're no longer together with. And as you talk about in the book, we don't teach this. We teach reading. We teach writing. We teach arithmetic. We don't teach relationship building. And of course, there's a lot going on now with groups working together in groups and you look at Montessori, but a lot of these social skills, it's just sink or swim. And then, of course, we're told, oh, you're an introvert. You're an extrovert. We label ourselves. And that creates disadvantage. So what we're doing in the program inside of the group coaching is providing opportunities for people to also share in this experience of like, hey, I'm going through this too. Hey, I'm feeling a little bit lonely, but I want to take action on this loneliness because I know that there is more to life. I know that I can get more out of my time here than just playing video games, hoping that I'll meet a friend, hoping that I'll connect with the coworker. I will add to AJ's point about the baseball strikes as well, because once you've given them three opportunities, the ball is in their court and they know that. And so there's guilt that is tied to that like, oh, well, AJ's reached out to me three times. I've been busy every time I've blown him off. I have to reach out to this guy. And so it puts a little pressure on that person to reach out. You know, I like the idea that you guys have created a community where you can support each other in this, because I think we do need support. You need support when it doesn't go well. You need support when you're afraid to take a little risk and sort of have other people saying, yeah, you know, this is a little scary for me too. It's a big deal because many of us feel like we're like alone or like we're unique in our worries about these things. Like everybody else has it figured out, especially if you look at social media and it looks like everybody's life is perfect, except mine. And so to have these kinds of conversations where people can say, yeah, this is hard for me too, is enormously helpful. Look at how much support everyone needs just to eat right and to go to the gym regularly. If that's something that you are not trained to do, right, you work yourself up to that where you don't need that support anymore, and then you look to help and support other people. But if you are getting fit in that area, well, you need extra support, you need people to talk to. This is why everyone who gets involved in workout groups, they call it a cult. You start going to SoulCycle or Berry's Bootcamp because you start to know everybody there. You get excited about going. And then all of a sudden that's what you're talking about your diet, you're talking about your exercises that you're doing, and you're fired up about it. That's part of the process of getting fit, which is going to be the same process and getting socially fit. Having other people that you're going out with to networking events or working on and helping other people with their mission so that you have an opportunity and a reason and an intent to go out. You know, the other thing we talk about in the book that I think is important, I bet you guys deal with this a lot, is that we can do this at work, and actually we should do this at work, that if you have a work situation where you can make new relationships, deepen relationships, start to find friends, that what we know, the Gallup organization did a survey of 15 million workers, and their question was, do you have a friend at work? And only 30% said yes. And that meant, do you have someone you could talk to about your personal life? What's going on in your regular life? Only 30% had a friend. Those people were so much happier at their jobs. They were better performers at their jobs. They were much less likely to leave those jobs for another job because it mattered that they had people at work they wanted to see every day. And guess what? Those people become your network to find your next job, to support you on the rest of your career journey. So as you talk about in the study, you know, everyone's lives in this study is ups and downs and decision trees and leaving jobs and moving places. And the more you have the ability to create these great relationships in your life, the more opportunity you create for yourself. Not just in love and finding the partner, which we'll talk about in a second is obviously one of those really important relationships. But your social life, more opportunities there by putting yourself out there. Also your work life. So my wife has found her last two roles through her network by making friends at work. So when I hear that only 30% of people at work feel like they have friends, it's really sad to think that 70% are really hurting not only themselves socially and hurting their health, their physical health, but they're also hurting their career health. You know, and there are small ways to start. If you don't have any friends, like just like notice something that somebody has on their desk, you know, notice something that they display because usually we display things that tell something about us. So just get curious. Like, Oh, what is that thing? You know, or, you know, what's that poster you have? Or, you know, just something to start up a conversation. We love to talk about ourselves. We humans, right? So if you give somebody the opportunity, if you're curious about them, about something, that's often a really nice way to start up a casual conversation with somebody you don't know, but might be working at a cubicle nearby. Everyone's Instagram or social media becomes their desk, right? Everyone's putting up the things that they're putting up their children, they're putting up their vacations, they're putting up their dinner that they ate, right? And so there's plenty of things that you can talk about. I mean, it doesn't end. Looking at relationships, the one relationship for many of us in our life that is the most important is our partner, our spouse. And you were talking earlier how you had this great opportunity to bring partners and spouses into the study and interview them as well. So I'd love to unpack what you've seen looking from the partnership side of things and how that impacts our ability to not only live a rich life, but support each other through those ups and downs and those difficult moments. We saw so many different kinds of partnerships. I mean, so many different kinds, like some where people felt they found their soulmate and they were inseparable, some where people lived really separate lives, some nasty relationships, and a bunch of divorces. But there were some characteristics that were really important. One was that we realized that here were two people who decided to get together and to stay together. And all of us are moving targets. All of us are changing every day, right? And you realize that when you get together with someone, you're changing, that person is changing. You are not going to be the people 10 years hence that you were when you got together. So how do you deal with two moving targets moving together? And I think one of the things we found was that the couples that were the most satisfied were the couples who really welcomed change in the other person and rolled with it and adapted to it and supported somebody in taking chances, trying new things, that kind of thing. It didn't insist that somebody be who they were on the day they got married or the day they had their first date, that that is a recipe for a disaster. The other thing is that the people who were the most satisfied were people who kept being curious about their partners. So one of the things they find in research studies is that we are most tuned into our partners when we first start dating. And if you think about it, it makes sense because you're like worrying all the time, is this person into me? What are they thinking? What are they feeling? Right? So you're really preoccupied with what's going on for this person. And then as we stay together, we think, oh, yeah, I know what they're going to say. I know what they're going to do. And then what they find is that people are actually less tuned into their partners the longer they've been together in perfectly good stable relationships. So one of the things we found was that the people who managed to keep relationships vibrant were the people who kept being curious about their partner. Who is this person today? Actually, one of my meditation teachers taught me this exercise, this meditation that's really useful. And you can use it in relationships. The question you ask yourself is, what's here now that I've never noticed before? So it could be while you're sitting and breathing, which you've done thousands of times, right? Or it could be while you're having dinner with your partner, which you've done over and over again. What's here now that I've never noticed before? And see what comes up. Yeah, I think with that, where we're putting our attention and utilizing our attention with our partner in a way that creates that environment for curiosity and creates that environment for sharing. So much of what we're doing now, and we talk to our clients, I fall into this trap where both me and my wife are on our phones, right? You just you reach for this device. Again, going back to the certainty of feeling good and feeling entertained. And yet, at the same time, there is still so much more to know about this person. We're both on journeys. We're both going through feeling emotions, having experiences at work or with the kids or moving about town that we want to share. And we want to feel validated in the emotions that go along with those experiences. And just creating that opportunity of setting the phone down, giving that person full attention, appreciating who your partner is, and giving them an opportunity to really share what they're going through, creates that space. And over time, builds the closeness that leads to these great relationships, these fulfilling relationships in our lives. Yeah. And you're reminding me of this quote that we have in the book from one of my Zen teachers that attention is the most basic form of love. And I think that's like one of the best quotes ever because it is the truth. Like if you think about it, giving each other our undivided attention is probably the most valuable thing we've got to offer somebody. And now it's becoming increasingly rare that we do it. Especially when we're working in situations on screens, right? So you mentioned the water cooler. It's like, how can we give full attention when we have zoom and notifications and emails popping up and this device in our pocket? It is a challenge. And it's something that I think the more we realize that this attention is love, the more we can bring it to all of our relationships in life, the happier we'll ultimately be, the more fulfilled we'll be in those relationships. I love asking this question, you're sitting on this treasure trove of scientific data and research. What have you done personally in your life to take away from this study in action? Yeah, it makes me pay more attention to just what we've been talking about. So like, I'm a Harvard professor. I could work 24 seven until I'm dead, right? I mean, I could just, I could be writing another paper. I could be answering more emails. That's just like the way it is. And what I came to see was that if I didn't pay more attention to my friendships and my relationships, they were gonna die. Especially I found that once my kids were launched, like they weren't home to drag me to drive them to soccer games and be with other soccer parents and, you know, all that stuff, that my world was shrinking to my work life and my wife. And I thought, this is just not okay. And so now I deliberately, you know, I've got to walk a range for Saturday afternoon with somebody I, I used to go see science fiction movies with and I haven't seen him in a while. And you know, I've got like, I do these things more actively, more intentionally than I used to. And that's because of the research. You mentioned launching kids and the book talks about this happiness in families. So newlyweds to having children to then the children actually leaving the nest. And I know we have a lot of newlyweds and new parents listening to the show and they might not be feeling the happiness that they thought they would in these moments of their life. So what is a science show about this time specifically in our lives around family? Yeah, well, it does show that we are not as happy, particularly in our intimate relationships because often you become a tag team with your partner when you have young kids, because there's just so much to do. And you have to divide up. And so you don't often get to pay attention to each other in the same way you did before kids came along. And kids are a joy. And like, I'm really glad I had them, but they, you know, what a lot of work. So, so I think what we have to do is remember to pay, you know, to keep, you know, nourishing those other relationships. Like we, you know, my wife and I finally realized we had to do something. So we got a babysitter to come every Thursday night. And no matter what, she came. And so we were going to go out. We didn't have to like arrange it every week. It's just that she was going to come, she was going to feed our kids dinner, play with them, put them to bed, and we were going to go out and it was a godsend. I mean, we might have just gone to the like the local coffee shop and, you know, had a bite to eat. Sometimes we'd go to the mall and buy underwear that we needed. But just going out, just, just doing something together that wasn't with the kids and wasn't about the kids was just so great. And having it be a regular thing. So that's a very personal thing. But what I think what I'm saying is that if, if there's a way when you're in this crunch time of being a, you know, like having big work pressures, having a lot of family pressures, if you can find ways to carve out that time, it's such a good investment in making, making your life, the rest of your life more livable. Well, I think that's the important piece there is that if that is your intention, you have to figure out a way to do it. And let's just say that you and your wife, we're going to do this on Thursdays. But then when you figure out what you're going to do, then you'll call the babysitter. And, and you know, as well as I do, it's, it's, that's like, Oh, when I get up, maybe I'll go to the gym. I'll see how I feel in the morning that it doesn't work that way that you have to schedule it. And that's what you're doing that day. You realize beforehand that you do this because you know that it's going to, that you're going to feel better and that you're going to appreciate that you did that. But even an hour before it starts, the brain starts going and you're like, Oh, I could have been watching a movie. I don't know if I really feel like this. It was a tough day at work and blah, blah, blah. But you know that if you go out and you're, once you're at the mall and you're, and, and you're under the lights and you're having a wonderful time, like, Oh, it was worth it. I'm so glad that I forced us to go out there to do it. And this is another thing where I tell our folks, people are tired. They're at work all day. They get, they get beat up. They get the moralized a networking event. Are you kidding me? I've been at work all day. It's like, well, no one's saying that you need to be out for four hours. You realize that like going to the gym that let's just block off this hour. And if I'm having fun, then I'll stay out longer. If, if I'm beat after that hour, at least I put in my time. I promise myself I'll do this. I can go home and feel good that I did what I told myself I was going to do. Yeah. And you know what works really well as a motivator is having somebody depend on you. So if you have a buddy who's waiting for you at the gym, you're much less likely to cancel or not go, right? Well, I said I'd be there, right? So I'm going to go, even though I don't feel like it so much with our babysitter. If we canceled, she needed that babysitting job. She, she's a college student. She's putting herself through school. And so we'd say, well, we can't, we can't cancel Angela. We have to go out. And so even when we were exhausted and didn't feel like it, we went out and then we were so glad we did. What's fun about that is we've done that with our X Factor Accelerator members. And they're not even the same location, but they'll check in on each other. So they made a commitment during the week to go to this event, to go to the bowling, to go to the axe throwing. And they know that they have to report to the other person, send a photo or share how it went, how they were feeling, and vice versa. And then we'll join our group session. And they'll both be sitting there saying, well, I knew I had to go because I had to send you a text message, but I didn't really want to go. And the other one's saying, I didn't really want to go either, but I knew I had to send you it, but they both ended up having a great time. So that accountability piece can really break through when you are slammed with work. There are a lot of other things that would be a more fun distraction than the meaningful thing in your life. Exactly. So we love asking each guest one final question. What is your X Factor? What do you think makes you unique and extraordinary, Bob? I think I'm a voyeur. I really like learning about other people. I like finding out how other people live. Like when I was a kid, I used to like looking in windows as we would drive by at night, you know, like just to see how other people lived. Like I became a shrink, right? So you get to talk to people all day long about their lives. I started, you know, I took over this study, which is like masses of records of people's lives. And I started Zen actually as a way to like investigate my own mind, you know, and body through meditation. I think I'm basically like just endlessly curious about what it means to be alive and to be human. And that's kind of my that's my thing. Well, we deeply appreciate your curiosity. And thank you for coming on the show and sharing the book with us. Where can our audience find out more about the book and all the great work that you do? Well, the book has a website, thegoodlifebook.com. And you can also come you could come to our study website to get really technical boring papers, adultdevelopmentstudy.org. And yeah, those those two would get you started. Thank you for joining us. This is a fun conversation. This was really fun for me too. Yeah, thank you both so much. Really enjoyed this.