An ongoing 75+ year Harvard study, known as the Harvard Happiness Study, conclusively demonstrates that “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier, period.”
According to a recent article titled “Happiness Study: What Makes Us Happy & Healthy?” (which cites the Harvard study), it is not money, power, position, title or other such things that make us happy. “It’s those healthy, sustained relationships that make us truly fulfilled.”
According to the article, three primary lessons on relationships that have been unveiled through the Harvard Happiness Study include:
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Social Connections Matter
- “Researchers have found that people who have more social connections to family, friends and community are happier, physically healthier and live longer than people with fewer social connections.”
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Quality Is More Important than Quantity
- “The number of social connections isn’t [necessarily] an indicator of happiness… Our close relationships must be healthy relationships in order to influence our happiness in a positive manner.”
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Good Relationships Protect Our Brains
- “In addition to longer life and better physical health, sustaining healthy relationships protects our brains as well. Our memories stay sharper longer, especially when we feel we can count on people with whom we have close relationships.”
For decades, I have advocated that the number one priority for a happy, joyful, and truly successful career and life is relationships. Excellent relationships, honest relationships, mutually fulfilling relationships. Deep, long-lasting relationships based on mutual respect, mutual interests, and mutual values.
Here is a critical question for you: Do you spend as much time and energy carefully and consistently cultivating superb, long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships as you spend striving to make more money, obtain a bigger title, gain a more powerful position, or gain and exhibit material wealth and possessions?
There are very few questions to which the answer will have a greater positive or negative impact on your career and your life! When all is said and done, excellent relationships trump virtually everything and anything else in life!
