← Raising Good Humans
Raising Good Humans
The Secrets to Building a Happy Life and Raising Happy Kids w/ Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:59:12
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
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Dr. Eliza Pressman
Welcome to Raising good humans. I'm Dr. Eliza Pressman and I hope that you had a wonderful, meaningful holiday. Joining me in conversation is Dr. Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and the director of the longest running study on happiness and well being.
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
He.
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Dr. Eliza Pressman
He is here to discuss the secrets to building a happy life and raising happy kids. He's sharing insights from this incredible study run at Harvard. He's actually taken over because it's, it's such a long study. It's been decades and decades and decades in the making. And he offers practical advice on how.
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Unknown Speaker
To cultivate strong relationships, find purpose and.
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Dr. Eliza Pressman
Meaning in life, and create a positive environment for our kids to thrive. If you enjoy this episode, please write a little review so I can bring more episodes like this and give it a five star rating if you're so inclined. And we'll get more of these episodes.
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Unknown Speaker
Out to more people.
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Dr. Eliza Pressman
Also, if you're doing, you know, holiday shopping now that Thanksgiving is over, may I recommend that you buy the five principles of Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans for holiday presents? It's half off right now and it's great for any parent with kids ages 0 to 100.
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
So first, let me tell you about the study. So it's called the Harvard Study of Adult Development, and It started in 1938 and it has repeatedly gone back to the same people over and over again year after year to ask them questions and take measurements about their lives, the big domains of their lives, mental health, physical health, work, life, relationships. And it's gone over 85 years. The first generation has almost all passed away. A few are still alive in their late 90s and early 1/ hundreds. And the children are all baby boomers. And at first the studies were two separate studies that didn't know about each other. So one study, about a third of our original participants were Harvard College undergraduates, 19 year old sophomores who their deans thought were fine, upstanding specimens. Right? And they would, they wanted to study healthy development from adolescence to young adulthood. So of course, if you want to study normal, healthy development, you study all white males from Harvard males, Right? It's so politically incorrect. Like, what could be worse? No diversity. One gender privileged for sure. Right. But then the other study was started by a Harvard Law School professor and his partner who was a social worker. And they were interested in why some children from really disadvantaged backgrounds managed to stay on good developmental paths. How did they not become juvenile delinquents? That was their question. And so they went to Boston's poorest neighborhoods and to the most troubled families. So families really troubled by domestic violence and alcoholism and lots of illness. And they found boys at that time, they were all like middle school age who were doing well. And so that group, that's about two thirds of our original study group, my predecessor, George Valiant, combined the two studies. And so now we had this privileged sample and this underprivileged sample. When I came into the study, we brought in women first, all the wives of our original participants, and then the kids. And the kids are more than 50% female. So we have this very now rich, long term sample of people, and we have, we have data on their whole lives. You can go to our file room and take out someone's file, a family's file, and see, you know, you can start at 1938 and you can go up to the present and see all the questionnaires they returned, and you can see their Rorschach tests, you can see brain scans. It's amazing.
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Unknown Speaker
It's so incredible. It's so incredible. Just the idea that you then could look at the partners and the children and these whole relationships and how the relationship with the adults would manifest in experiences of the kids and brain health and their.
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Dr. Eliza Pressman
You.
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Unknown Speaker
You took physical health measurements, right?
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
Oh, absolutely.
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Unknown Speaker
What's the gist?
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
Okay, the gist. So there are two, you know, hundreds of papers, almost, maybe 10, 11 books. Okay. But it all boils down to kind of two big things. One is taking care of your health really, really matters. And so I'm telling you what your grandmother could have told you, right? But if you eat well, if you exercise regularly, if you avoid alcohol abuse or drug abuse, these things really matter. That you stay healthier longer as you grow older and you live longer. And we see these dramatic effects when we look at the people who don't take care of their health and compare them with the people who do. So that's the first thing, not a surprise. The second thing was a surprise to us, and that's what we wrote the book about. The second big finding was that the people who stayed healthiest and were the happiest and lived the longest were the people who had the best relationships with other people. And at first we didn't even believe our own findings. We thought, this probably isn't real, that we know the mind and the body are connected. But we really, like, how could, how could the quality of your relationships make it less likely that you would get heart disease? Or good relationships make it less likely that you would get arthritis? How could that possibly be? And then other research groups began to find the same things. And you know, as you know from your background, what we really want is for many different studies to point in the same direction so that we can have confidence that what we found wasn't just by chance, wasn't just a fluke of our little group we studied. So everybody began to find that relationships really impact our physical health and our brain health. We saw that people who are more connected to others experience cognitive decline later. They are less likely to develop dementia, and that the people who are lonely or in really difficult relationships are people who have more trouble with cognitive decline.
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Dr. Eliza Pressman
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Unknown Speaker
This is the perfect gift for you.
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Dr. Eliza Pressman
It's Skylight Frame. It's a touchscreen digital photo frame your whole family will love.
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Unknown Speaker
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Dr. Eliza Pressman
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Unknown Speaker
Look at how and by the way, not to minimize how extraordinary this is, I had the benefit of reading your work. So I've already been blown away. And it is to your point. This is not like a correlational study. And we don't have, we haven't seen it in multiple places. So this is easy to buy. So now let's say we buy into this. How do we, I guess I have like 12, 12 main questions.
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
Okay.
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Unknown Speaker
First I want to know how to, how do we operationalize that in our day to day life in the busy time period? Very specifically, like, did you find anything in the busy time period of onset of parenting?
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
Right.
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Unknown Speaker
And sort of through the teenage years? Because that's who's listening for the most part. And that time period, what I'm hoping for is that even though we get swept away by so much, how can we step back and benefit from this research to make the kinds of choices that will not only serve our health, but our children's health that's so important?
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
You know, one of the things we know is that parenting can be quite isolating. Even though you may be surrounded. You know, you've got kids, you've got carpooling, you may see people that as you drop your kids off at school, whatever it might be, parenting can be quite isolating. And so one of the things our work points to is the idea that we need to be deliberate and intentional about the effort in nurturing relationships, that otherwise we can fall into loneliness and isolation even if we're surrounded by people. So you're asking this key question, which is what can people do? And I think that the first Thing perhaps is to just sit down and take stock of what, what you have in your life, in your relationship life. What do you get from different relationships? And we get different things from different relationships. So some people we have fun with and some people are our confidants. We can tell really personal, private things too. Some people tell us how to make great muffins when we have company coming. And some people, you know, lend us their tools to fix something or come over and help us fix something in our house. So many different things we get from relationships. So the first thing would be to take stock what do I have and what would I like more of? And then think, well, how could I have that? How could I get that? And one possibility is to develop relationships you already have. Maybe you have someone who you have fun with but you've never actually talked to about personal matters. Maybe you see what it's like. You dip a toe in that water and say, well, what if I trust them a little bit and see how they handle something personal in my life? Right? So there are ways of taking a relationship you already have and seeing if that relationship could broaden and offer more. There's also finding new relationships. But the most important thing I think is to be active. So I used to think, well, my good friends are always going to be my good friends, my college friends, my elementary school friends, they're always going to be there. That's not true, that perfectly good relationships can wither away from neglect. So one of the things that your listeners can do right now, just when they finish this podcast, is they can think, well, who am I missing? Who do I miss and would like to connect with? Take out your phone, send a text, write an email saying I missed you and just wanted to say hi or wanted to connect so you can do these moment to moment things or, you know, can I come over when my kids have a play date with your kids and can we just have a cup of tea together? Or would you come over to my house or know that we, we are more intentional about arranging our own play dates, if you will, you know, asking someone to go for a walk, including your spouse. Right? So, you know, if you think about it, when we're at that phase of life, when we have young kids, we're kind of more like a tag team than a great, than a couple. Often, you know, okay, you drive this one here and I'll drive that one there. And so I think it's being more intentional about saying, let's just, you know, once the kids are in bed, can we just sit down and have a cup of tea and talk about our day? Or if the kids are old enough to be doing their homework, let's go take a walk and, you know, do something you don't normally do. You don't have to have any agenda. Just clear the space. No phones, no screens. Just clear the space to be together and just let whatever topics come up, come up. And you will find that that relationship is enlivened because you're not just dividing up tasks around logistics.
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Unknown Speaker
In this world where we're trying to make everything so curated and perfect for our kids and show up for every game and every practice and do all of that at the expense of these other relationships, I often wonder, is it even the right message to be like, I'm throwing out everything else that matters and I'm gonna just be at your game all the time, judging you, cheering for you, whatever, versus, you know what? I'm not gonna make it. But I am going to be at dinner with dad or I am going to have coffee with my college friend, whom I also really want to see. And I know you can do a great game anyway, or I don't know, because I know that. Okay.
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
I'm so glad you raised this, because it is really important. You know, when we think about how we raise our kids, the most important thing we do is model behavior. Right?
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Dr. Eliza Pressman
Exactly.
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
Watch us a lot more closely than they listen to us. Right. So, yeah, unfortunately. Right. So do you want to model a life that's martyrdom to parenting? Do you want to model for your child the idea that when they have kids, it has. That's it, your life, the rest of your life is over. Is that what you want your kids to take away from what it's like for you to be a parent? Or do they want to see you having other interests in your life, Other things in your life? Do they want to see you having fun, having alone time with your partner? Right. No. You can't have mom and dad all the time. Mom and dad need time with each other. It's really important. Not just to nourish ourselves, which is super important, but also because otherwise we're modeling the wrong things for our kids.
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Unknown Speaker
I'm so glad you said that because I think what happens is the way in to convince people to take care of themselves sometimes is to acknowledge that it's actually in the service of their parenting.
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
Yeah.
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Unknown Speaker
Because so many times this martyrdom, no matter what we say, nobody's going to be convinced. No matter how much research there is. No matter who the experts are, you still, there's still a sense of like, yeah, but I'm going to really get this perfect even if you say I can't. And this martyrdom is going to help my children feel so important that they'll never experience that feeling of not being seen or felt or connected to me. And really it's not.
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Dr. Eliza Pressman
It.
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Unknown Speaker
It feels like, if anything, what you're saying can help us understand that that's not only not serving you, the adults, but in the process imagine the perspective of your child and how much pressure that is for them to, to be the anchor for your meaning and, and, and to not cultivate meaningful relationships outside of that because they didn't have that modeling. So.
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
Right.
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Dr. Eliza Pressman
I guess if you're not going to.
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Unknown Speaker
Do it for your own health and flourishing, maybe the side door in is to do it for your children's flourishing and health.
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
Yes. Also, you know your kids need challenges. Right? What we want, we don't want everything to be good for our kids all the time. They won't grow up into resilient, healthy adults with good coping skills. Right. If they're never challenged. What we want is for them to be challenged in ways that they have the resources to deal with. We don't want them to be overwhelmed by troubles, but we want them to have to delay gratification. I can't have mom's attention right now because Mom's talking to dad or mom is at her book group or mom is doing whatever that something she loves that, that's really important because also it's unrealistic to believe that someone else is going to devote their whole life to you the way a helicopter parent. You just don't, you don't want to create that expectation. That isn't the definition of love.
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Dr. Eliza Pressman
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Unknown Speaker
Okay, so since you looked at attachment in adult relationships, I'm so excited and curious. And maybe we start with because you just you said that isn't love. Can you explain the secure attachment relationship in between the caregiver and child and what you've seen in your research when it comes to secure attachment relationships in adulthood?
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
Yes. So attachment comes from Actually, animal research first, where they observed. It's like observing little ducklings who immediately imprint on their parents and waddle after them because the ducklings need their parents care, right? And then, of course, humans, a human baby can't survive without a parent, at least one who really takes care of them. So the theory is that human beings, as infants, start developing ways to keep their caregivers around and to stay close to their caregivers, right? And secure attachment, when you're an infant, is feeling like, okay, I have confidence that my caregiver will be there when I need him or her and that I'm lovable. And so that's what we try to give to our kids. And many of us, most of us, come out with some security of attachment. I'm, you know, the world will be there when I need help. I am lovable. And that seems to persist all through our lives. That if you think about what we look for in a partner or even in a friend, it's this sense of someone being there for me when I need them. So we actually asked our original study participants, we said, who could you call in the middle of the night if you were sick or scared? List all those people. Some of our people could list several people. Some of our folks couldn't list anyone, not a person on the planet. And some of them were married, and they couldn't list anyone. So what we think is that all of us need one, at least one secure relationship where we feel like, boy, whatever happens, this person will be there for me in a time of need, and hopefully I will be there for them. And so one of the things we measure when we look at adults is both a sense of being able to receive help from another person and the ability to give help to another person. And then, in addition, what attachment theory says is that if we're securely attached, we can go off and explore the world because we know that that person will be there when we want to come back. And so you think of a toddler who toddles, you know, at a playground, who toddles off and then needs to come back to grab onto your leg, to kind of just feel secure again and then can toddle off again because you're right there, that secure base. Well, we find that adults need that, too. And that one of the things we notice in secure relationships in adults is, are that they feel able to take risks. So what you want is a relationship where you feel confident enough that this person is there for you that you can go explore something new. You can take chances. Because if you fall down, there's going to be somebody there to help you get up again.
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Unknown Speaker
And did you find a relationship between, I guess. Well, I should ask, did you look at a relationship between the subjects and their sense of secure attachment or their attachment relationship in their parent child relationship and then their subsequent choices or ability to have a secure attachment, adult relationship?
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
We did. We looked at how warm their childhoods were as rated by them and their parents when they were teenagers. And then we looked at how securely they were attached to their partners in their 80s.
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Unknown Speaker
Incredible.
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
Found a connection that people with warmer childhoods had more secure attachment in their 80s. And it's, you know, it was not a gigantic correlation, but it was big enough. And it's very hard to find links that really, that you can demonstrate scientifically across 60 years, which is what we did. And what we find is that your childhood really does influence your ability to form good, warm, secure attachments in adulthood. That's not all that matters. And so what we also know is that people can have really good relationships later in life. People who didn't form secure attachments in childhood can have healing relationships in adulthood that allow them to form more secure models of attachment to people in their adult lives.
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Unknown Speaker
So that was actually going to be my next question is what are some concrete ways if you feel like, oh, I, I don't feel so, so comfortable in my adult relationships. I do tend to seek people out who don't make me feel the way I'm hearing. It's healthy to feel. What are some things that they can do to shift that and to have those healing relationships?
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
That's such a good question. I mean, sometimes psychotherapy really helps because one of the things that psychotherapy can do is, is help people realize, oh my gosh, I'm like choosing the wrong people. This happened to me when I was, when I was in my 20s. I had never been in psychotherapy, never thought I would be. And then I went to therapy because I'd had several long relationships that didn't work out and I didn't know why. And then I realized from being in therapy and really looking at it for the first time that I was choosing the wrong people. And so I think what's possible is to say, am I really attracted to people who are not going to be there for me? And that doesn't mean just romantic attraction. It can mean friendships. And do I feel like, do I discount the people who are loyal, who are there? And so one of the things we can do is kind of take stock of this and and try to experiment with what if I look for a different sort of person to be my friend? It's not easy, but it's really doable. And then what you find is once you have a secure friendship and you know what that feels like, then it's a real game changer in terms of your sense of what's possible in your relationships.
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Unknown Speaker
So how, as you're thinking about watching your kids develop their friendships and peers and connections and you're thinking, okay, relationships really are this foundational, this key to flourishing, lifelong flourishing, how much can you step in and, and support the relationships that seem to be the positive relationships and, and tweak maybe the tendency to lean toward what feels like unhealthy relationships? Are there, are there, are there things that you can say as your kids are opening up to you about things that didn't feel good or would you without helicoptering and managing it?
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you can help kids learn strategies for working with it. So first you can ask kids just to notice how, how do you feel when you're with this friend, you know, and how do you feel when you're with that friend? And is there any way that you could make it better with this friend who you don't feel so good with or if that friend is a bully or if that friend, you know, makes you feel bad about yourself? You can, you can just help your child check in with him or herself, right, and say, oh, okay, I don't feel so good with this person. I want to be, spend more time with the people who I feel good with, you know, and, and it's a way to, to give, to empower kids, right, to check in with themselves rather than someone else telling them this is a good friend. That's not, you know, you can, and we can help them observe. Well, what do you think of this person's behavior? I mean, we can certainly ask them to reflect and be curious, but I think helping them develop their own good judgment about which relationships are nourishing, that's the key rather than our being the judges for them.
- [33:25]
Unknown Speaker
Exactly. That's so wonderful to be curious, to wonder and to help them learn to make the, to reflect and think about it versus our totally. I get the well meaning tendency to want to say like that's not a good friend. Don't talk to that person if they don't feel good inside. But it's so much more powerful in terms of giving lifelong tools to think about going in with curiosity. And there's some wear and tear in the process. And it can be hard to watch. And it's, I'm struggling because I want so much to focus on adult development, because I deeply believe that much of our the thrill of becoming parents is this new opportunity for developmental growth. Because we are, we have the incentive to grow. So I want to take advantage of this moment in time, of wanting to, I guess, of motivating to become healthier, to cultivate meaning in our lives that help us flourish. And it's just interesting that it's at a time in life when we often say, I'll get to it in a decade or I'll get to it in 20 years. And you talk about that in this book. And I wonder if you could speak, speak to parents who feel like they're pressing pause on getting to cultivating these relationships, whether it's within their romantic relationships or their friendships or even we forget with our own children because we're so in the throes of trying to navigate making their childhood perfect, we forget about just the relationship. So I wonder if you can talk a little bit about how you sell the idea of not waiting.
- [35:23]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
You know, from I'm a Zen practitioner and you know, when you practice meditation, you realize that the only time we have is this moment, right? So if we're waiting, I mean, I might be dead tomorrow. We, you know, and we don't like to think that way, but it is really the truth that none of us know how long we have. And so to say, well, I'm just going to put everything on hold is really missing what's possible in our lives because our lives are now moment to moment. And so, and yes, I, you know, we know that parenting is hugely demanding and takes so much time, but to say this is all I'm going to have in my life for now is, I think, selling ourselves short. The other thing is that time goes really quickly, childhood goes really quickly. And on the one hand, that could make you say, well, I got to spend every moment with my kids. On the other hand, it might make you say, I need to make sure I have a life when my kids are launched because otherwise you're not going to let your kids go. You know, having, having a life is essential to being able to let your kids have their lives.
- [36:44]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
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- [39:30]
Unknown Speaker
My kids love it.
- [39:30]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
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- [39:55]
Unknown Speaker
The irony there is Some irony. Do you find this. Have you heard this, like you're a Harvard professor? But my bet is that a lot of the kids that show up in your class have not been focused on relationships because they didn't have time.
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Dr. Robert Waldinger
They've been focused on achievement.
- [40:16]
Unknown Speaker
Yes. So how do we come to terms with that?
- [40:20]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
Achieving things we care about can be really satisfying and meaningful. So it's not that achievement is to be ignored or it's bad. But I think what you find, particularly at Harvard, I mean, Harvard selects for or super achievers like me. And one of the things I had to do, and partly it's my research, and partly it's having my kids, is realize, boy, I could spend my whole time working. And I will have missed my life, I will have missed my kids, I will have missed my relationships. And so it has really helped me to realize that achievement is something to be kept in its place. That within reason, as long as it feels meaningful and nourishing. And you put bread on the table, of course that's important. But that beyond that, achievement isn't that gratifying. I mean, if I win one more award, I might feel good for about 10 minutes, and then I'm just on to the next thing. Whereas a friendship keeps on giving. You know, my friend Mark, who I wrote the book with, Mark has been my friend for 25 years. We have a phone call every Friday at noon. And yes, we talk about research, we talk about writing, but we talk about our kids. We just talked about how Thanksgiving was and who was annoying and it was fun to see. And, you know, and so I think, you know, all of this is to say that if we. If we let anything, like, if we let achievement take over or we let parenting take over. Right. And we don't have a variety of things that nourish us, we are selling ourselves short. And that. That's really, I think the bottom line, that there. There have to be multiple sources of meaning and multiple sources of energy in our world. Can't just be our kids, can't just be our work.
- [42:29]
Unknown Speaker
I do like what you said because I had a conversation with my daughter, Lee, because I don't make enough of a thing about her internal drive for achievement and grades. And she works so hard. And I don't comment probably because I'm so desperate for her not to feel that her value is related to her achievements.
- [42:53]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
Yeah.
- [42:54]
Unknown Speaker
But in the process, she feels like I'm not appreciating who she is, which is a person who values her achievements. And it's this cycle that we get.
- [43:02]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
Into, you know, I think what we can do is, is emphasize, is this satisfying for you? Are you enjoying this? Is. Are you glad you got that A in math? And was it fun? Was it interesting? Are you proud of doing well in algebra or whatever it might be? And so that we can move from the badge of getting the A to what was the experience like? Because I think one of the things, one of the things I've had to learn in my life, I've had a couple of jobs that really I didn't like at all, but they were very prestigious jobs. And so I would be in the. In a job and say, well, I'm supposed to like doing this because everybody says it's a great job and I should feel so lucky to have it, you know? And so I think that what I've had to learn more and more is to check in on my experience of doing whatever I'm doing. So if your daughter can keep learning to check in on her is this. Do you like doing this? Because if you like doing this and you're proud of that A, you go girl, right? You know, that's great. If you hate it, don't only do what you have to to get by. Right. And turn toward the things you love, because that's really the message we want to give. Like, turn toward the things that you love when that's possible.
- [44:33]
Unknown Speaker
And maybe it's also being flexible enough.
- [44:35]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
To say, and if the thing that.
- [44:36]
Unknown Speaker
You love is something that I think would be very unpleasant, that's my problem. I can support what you love. And that's probably what's happening there, as.
- [44:46]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
Long as it's legal. Right. And doesn't harm anyone.
- [44:50]
Unknown Speaker
Right? Right. No, that's so true. And I think that that's. It's easy to get into value judgments about what matters to each of us, but if what it. What matters to you is personal.
- [45:02]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
I have some friends from India and they say that in their families you have four options. You can be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or a failure. Right?
- [45:14]
Unknown Speaker
Oh, God.
- [45:15]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
And so that's what you're talking about. It's like, you know, we think we know what's going to make someone else's life good, but it's their life. And boy, the best thing you can do for your kids, I think we can do for our kids is help them really pay attention to what lights them up.
- [45:35]
Unknown Speaker
What's so interesting and useful to me is tying together. But I also want to make sure that your work comes across in the adult development arena and not just trying to keep tying it back to. To parenting. So. Because everything doesn't have to tie back to that. It's just that it really does tie back to that for me, because that's what gets me lit up, is how humans like development over time and how we come to be who we are.
- [46:06]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Is epically interesting to me.
- [46:09]
Unknown Speaker
But as I get older, I'm finding that I'm like, oh, I hit that point. Point in life where I am curious about what else is there and what's happening. And I do spend a lot of time in meditation. I don't do Zen meditation, but I do spend a lot of time moving away from my. I used to cling very much to certainty, and I didn't really see the benefits of uncertainty. Like, I didn't see plain of possibility opening up. Like, I'm finally, finally at a place where uncertainty doesn't equal terror because it equals curiosity. And, like, possibility. That. That is brand new for me. That must. I can't think that it doesn't have something to do with middle age. It seems developmentally appropriate.
- [47:08]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
Yeah. You know, and I think that being able to embrace uncertainty can be so freeing. I mean, think about it. You, when you started a podcast, you didn't know what it was going to be like. You didn't know how it was going to go, so you took a risk, right? And so if you had to know everything in advance, you never would have been able to do this. And, yeah, that's true. You know, and I think that for me, that's happened. Like, you know, I gave a TED Talk, like, seven years ago, a wonderful TED Talk, but I was scared to death. So I thought, my colleagues are going to think I have gone over to the dark side, right? My serious research colleagues, you know, because here I am, a Harvard professor, getting up and giving a TED Talk to a general audience, but about research. And I was like, oh, no, what's going to happen? But I just, you know, what we do is we take these risks. And I think your idea about not knowing, about uncertainty is what allows us to take risks if we can tolerate it. There's a saying by a Zen master that I love. You've probably heard this. His name was Suzuki, and he used to talk about beginner's mind, about not knowing, about letting yourself not know, even the things you think you're sure of. And he said, in the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are few. We can bring beginner's mind to Parenting, you know, well, what if my child does try this thing that I don't think is a good idea, but nobody's going to get harmed? Why not? What if it turns out to be great? I don't know.
- [49:02]
Unknown Speaker
And then being able to just allow that opens up this world of possibilities also for our kids to know that they can do something like that and it's not terrifying like it is for us. Because I will say that no matter how much I, I pay lip service to it, there are still moments when I'm like, I do know better. And we could save ourselves a lot of time here. And it's hard to stop that voice from coming out. But when I do, I'm, I'm always, I would say maybe not always, but most of the time I'm like, huh, go figure.
- [49:47]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
You know, one of the things that helps me is to think back on the times when I was sure something was going to come out really badly or something was a terrible idea and it wasn't. And things happened that I couldn't have predicted and it turned out fine and maybe even turned out great. And so I can remember back, I was fired from one of my first jobs as a psychiatrist. And I, oh my God. He said, you know, my boss said, there's really no future for you.
- [50:19]
Unknown Speaker
No.
- [50:20]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
This hospital. Yeah.
- [50:22]
Unknown Speaker
Wow.
- [50:23]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
And so I went and found the job that led me into my research career. But I wouldn't have done that if he hadn't. He actually did it in a well meaning way. He was trying to, he was trying to tell me the truth. There's really not a future for you here. But if he hadn't kicked me out, I would never have gotten to this place where I'm doing what I'm doing.
- [50:46]
Unknown Speaker
Now, because maybe you would have been comfortable enough to just think, I'll just stay here.
- [50:51]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
Yeah.
- [50:53]
Unknown Speaker
It's interesting because there is this world of wanting to let our kids feel the experience of failure as opening up the plane of possibilities. Knowing what it's like to not have it all work out and to get up the next day and keep going. And yet it's very scary because the world is set up in this way right now in certain places, particularly in the United States, where if you fail at a certain time point, it feels like it's going to make or break whether you get into a particular college or whether you get into, get a particular job. And so reminding ourselves of, you know, exactly what you, what happened with you, where it just wasn't the right place, and having, getting out of that just ended up launching a completely wonderful and it seems very meaningful career trajectory.
- [51:54]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
Yeah, yeah. That I could not have predicted.
- [51:59]
Unknown Speaker
Well, that really helps also with anxiety, because part of the reason why I started to do meditation was because becoming a parent and being living in a world where. I forget who said this, but somebody described this as this experience of, of parenting as your heart living outside of your body. I had many feelings about it, but it also terrified me because all of a sudden I was like, now I'm not just responsible for me, but I'm. And I'm so. You don't realize how young you are until your kids are older and you're like, how was I allowed to do that at such family? But so anyway, I started meditation because I needed something to help me not think that not knowing exactly and not having certainty, which I never had, but thought I had, wasn't the most awful thing in the world. And making sure that that's in the water in my household is a big focus for me. But it's hard because it comes from a place of living a lot of decades where I would have very much clung to certainty. And even now, there are certain things that you want to know for sure and you can't. So I wonder if you have any, any way to get closer to embracing uncertainty.
- [53:26]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
You know, as you're talking now, I'm reminded of a quote by Joseph Campbell who wrote the Power of Myth. He said, if the path before you is clear, you're probably on somebody else's path.
- [53:41]
Unknown Speaker
Oh, yes. Oh, God, that's so right.
- [53:45]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
You know, and just to think of, of ourselves, but also these beings that we bring into the world, that we're all on different paths, that we're all finding our way every moment. Right? And so for any of us to say we know what your path should be is so confining and so harmful. It doesn't mean we can't give advice. And certainly we pretend protect kids when we need to. So yes, you know, when my toddler wants to run out into the street, I don't let them. That's not right. You know, but. But when my 20 year old wants to dip, wants to stay out, you know, till 3am and turns to me and says, dad, you wouldn't know where I was if I was on, on my college campus, I have to say, you're right, I wouldn't. I have to let this go. I have to let you find your own way here.
- [54:45]
Unknown Speaker
My last question for you is, through all of your research, what have been the Most defining features of close, connected romantic relationships and these long relationships. So I'm thinking about marriages and partnerships.
- [55:00]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
Yeah. Of romantic relationships. So I would say the most defining them, teachers of the good ones, are a kind of bedrock of affection and respect. That we even studied this, that we had couples who could argue a lot and pretty vocally and how much they argued didn't predict whether they were going to be a stable couple. It was whether when we watched them argue literally on videotape, whether we could see affection and respect even when they were disagreeing. And so I think holding on to that sense of respect for each other is really key.
- [55:44]
Unknown Speaker
And what about in those defining features of. Well, okay, can I just expand that one quickly that question. Because you can imagine when you're in the throes of parenting, particularly when you don't necessarily have the same background, like you were parented by different. Hopefully you had different parents and so you had different experiences that you're bringing to the table.
- [56:10]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
And so then the question is, how do you resolve them? Do you resolve them in ways that make you feel worse or like somebody won and somebody lost? Or do you resolve them in ways that make you feel like you're on the still on the same team? Right. And particularly with parenting, you really want to be on the same team. And so even if you and your partner disagree, you want to find a way to go forward with the kids where you're a united front, basically. And that means sometimes you give in to your partner, sometimes your partner gives in to you, but that you really want to find ways to resolve these differences. The other thing is that as we know that kids will sniff out disagreements and try to get in between and play the mommy daddy game and all that. And so I think it's really about finding those ways to work out differences where everybody ends up feeling okay.
- [57:10]
Unknown Speaker
And in terms of the defining features of positive relationships with other people, what. What did you find over time that really held people together?
- [57:29]
Dr. Robert Waldinger
Definitely mutuality. So relationships that were one sided, where one person gave most of the time and the other person took a lot and didn't give much, those were less satisfying, less stable. So mutuality is really important. I think the other thing is that feeling that you can be yourself, that you don't have to stifle parts of yourself that are important to you in a relationship. There are some people who give you the message that they don't want you to be certain ways, they don't want to see certain aspects of you. And if you can find people who really let you be yourself. Those are the relationships that are freest and probably the most stable. I suppose the other thing to say about that is that adult development means. Development means change, right? We're each always changing. So in any relationship where there are two people, each person is constantly changing. Foreign.
- [58:53]
Unknown Speaker
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