The Key To Happpiness

Have you ever wondered what leads to happiness? I related a story recently about a very wealthy man who was on his death bed and received a visit from an old friend. The sick man lay quietly in the bed with tubes in and out of his face and monitors showing every breath and heart beat.

When the visitor sat down beside the bed, the wealthy man looked up and noted he was sad because he had recently lost several million dollars in the stock market. Money made him happy, or so it seems. Recent research indicates a different story. Things do no satisfy. Not for long anyway.

The key to happiness

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 05/05/2010

Reporter: Tracy Bowden

A comprehensive study has offered an insight into what makes for a good life and a good old age. The director of the Grant study George Vaillant speaks with Tracy Bowden about his results.

Transcript

TRACY BOWDEN, PRESENTER: Just what is the key to happiness? One person in a good position to know is Dr George Vaillant, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. For more than 40 years he's directed one of the most comprehensive long-term studies in history. The grant study has documented the lives of a group of 268 men from youth through to old age with regular questionnaires, medical exams and interviews. Dr Vaillant is in Sydney for the fifth annual Happiness and its Causes conference and I spoke to him earlier today.

George Vaillant, you've been immersed in this study and these lives for more than 40 years now. Are you saying that the key to a good life is in the relationships you have in your life?

GEORGE VAILLANT, PSYCHIATRY, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: Absolutely. This is the only study in the world where you can take 18 year olds and compare them to themselves at 90 so that to answer the question, "Is love the most important thing in the world?", this study was uniquely set up to do that.

Some kids came from families where their parents were multimillionaires and some people came from families where their father worked in a garage and they were on full scholarship. Social class of your parents 40 years on made no difference at all. So that it isn't the class system that governs how we turned out in life, but it matters tremendously whether we are loved and whether we're able to give love.

And if I feel sick to my stomach, if I feel hungry, if I've got the hots for someone, it's all about me. Whereas if I have compassion, if I feel forgiveness, if I trust someone, it's all about them. And it's that distinction that makes the difference in well-being.

TRACY BOWDEN: Now let's talk a bit about ageing. I guess a lot of people aren't too happy about ageing, but has your attitude changed since you've been looking at the grant study men?

GEORGE VAILLANT: Oh, tremendously. When I was 50, I thought ageing was about the most terrible thing in the world, but I needed to study it to support the grant study. So I wrote this grant that I was going to follow these men's decay, of sort of how they, you know, gradually wound their way to their grave. Dying is terrible whether you do it at 10 or whether you do it at 90, but living is a whole lot of fun and the average person who's going to live to 95 at 90 is still in reasonably good health, and if you just hang out with them, which is what I did in running a grant study - the grant study.

My men were healthy at 80, and I interviewed them and they made it clear that they were happier then than they had been earlier on and the careful research shows that people over the age of 70 - and here I'm using happy not in the sense of excited, "Oh, this is my lucky day" happy, but happy in the sense of not being depressed, seeing glasses as half full and basically being glad you got up that morning and enjoying life.

TRACY BOWDEN: So in the end is the message that you, I guess, would like people to take away, is it that it's all about love? A good life is all about love?

GEORGE VAILLANT: Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. But it's all about positive emotions that are genetically created for survival purposes. So I mean we've evolved to be increasingly altruistic and caring about each other. You do a lot better going to a positive church than you do reading (the atheist) Richard Dawkins.

(As) a psychiatrist... I think it's terribly important that my profession spend more time with positive emotion and more time regarding people's spiritual involvement as a virtue rather than something that if they just read enough Freud they could give up.

TRACY BOWDEN: George Vaillant, thanks for speaking to us.

George Vaillant: I am happy to be here.

Our tag line says, "Building a lifetime of great relationships"(R) That means with God, self and others. In this I want to include pets. I have see the addition of a pet bring harmony and happiness to quarreling families. Try it.