Seek Wisdom, Practice Love, Get Results: Happiness & Success 2

HAPPINESS COMES FROM GOOD RELATIONSHIPS
Harvard University has been conducting the Study on Adult Development for more than 80 years. It includes Harvard undergrads from the 1930’s and disadvantaged Boston youths from the early 1940’s—and their children. The purpose was to find out what makes happy and health lives.

The ongoing study has tracked the lives of thousands of people in over a hundred dimensions including their lifestyle, health, careers, psychology, relationships, and financial success.

The study confirms something you probably already know.

Dr. George Vaillant, who directed the study for more than 30 years, said that “The warmth of relationships throughout life has the greatest positive impact on ‘life satisfaction.’”

In short, Vaillant said, “Happiness is love. Full stop.”

Happiness doesn’t come from money, your education level or your social status.

Happiness comes from good, high-quality relationships.

The Harvard study shows that good relationships don’t just bring happiness. With good relationships, you’ll be healthier, feel better and live years longer.

It is simple. To achieve happiness in life, develop good, strong relationships.

Everything else is a distraction.
WHAT IS HAPPINESS?
What is happiness?

Happiness is a deep satisfaction with life. It is lasting, deep fulfillment. Happiness is the fulfillment of our human nature.

Back in the late 1980’s, I was a young Marine officer learning how to fly jets in south Texas.

A big part of our training was learning how to land on aircraft carriers. You have to fly a very precise, three-dimensional path at exactly the right angle to a small spot on the carrier deck.

If you do it right, the tailhook on your airplane grabs a cable on the deck and you go from 140mph to a full stop in about 2 seconds.

For a year, we practiced carrier landings on runways as part of every flight. Some flights were nothing but practice carrier landings. Every single landing was graded in detail. It was a grueling and often humbling process.

Finally, the day came to fly out to the aircraft carrier to get our carrier landing qualification.

You are alone in your airplane. From 20,000 feet, the aircraft carrier looks like a grain of rice on your kitchen floor.

The pressure is enormous. Your career depends on making the landings. That’s assuming you don’t make a mistake that gets you killed.

The first landing was a blur. You get through the pressure and land on the carrier deck because you’ve practiced it so many times. When you’re under pressure, you fall back on your training, on your habit patterns—an important lesson to remember.

After that first landing, there was an overwhelming feeling of fulfillment. After six landings, there was another overwhelming sense of fulfillment when they told me, over the radio, that I was carrier qualified.

Fulfilled because I fought through fear, stress and uncertainty to pass the test. All that practice and hard work changed me. It changed my relationship with myself.

Fulfilled because we—the students who qualified and the instructors who taught us—accomplished something difficult together. We bonded through that process.

You’ve probably had these moments in life in which we worked really hard for something, accomplished it, and felt fulfilled. It could be a lot of things like:

Getting a well-deserved promotion or professional certification
Climbing a mountain
Running a long-distance goal race
Having kids that grow into good people.
Achieving a goal weight
Ending substance abuse
Completing a big hobby or household project

The more difficult the challenge, the more you suffer to achieve it, the more fulfilling it is.

Easy wins aren’t as meaningful or fulfilling. Tough wins are.

Often, fulfillment comes from just spending time with people that you love. Late night college discussions. Walks on the beach. Having a meal together.