3–Seek Wisdom, Practice Love, Get Results: Happiness and Success Part 3
Written by Pete Bowen on September 8, 2020
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HAPPINESS AND RELATIONSHIP
We’ve got an 80-year Harvard study that says happiness comes from good relationships. There’s a good reason for that.
As human beings, we are biologically wired for relationship. Relationship is a fundamental part of our human nature and DNA.
Having good relationships fulfills our human nature. That’s why good relationships bring happiness. That’s why we thrive when we are in good relationships. As the Harvard study shows, we are healthier, feel better, live longer and are more productive when we are in good relationships.
In contrast, lonely human beings are much more likely to be anxious, depressed, unhealthy and far less productive. Loneliness can shorten a person’s lifespan by 15 years—the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Want to make a prisoner suffer? Put him in solitary confinement and deprive him of relationship.
What is the worst way to bully someone? It’s not yelling at them or even hitting them. The worst way to bully someone is to shun them.
In ancient societies, exile was worse than death because exile cut you off from your relationship with your identity and your tribe.
If you give infants all the food and water they need but don’t give them love and affection, about 40% will die. More than half the surviving infants will have deep psychological challenges.
Why? Because love and affection help shape our neural pathways. When the affection doesn’t happen, the neural pathways don’t get wired correctly.
Our society feels like its breaking down, and anxiety, depression and suicide are skyrocketing because our relationships at every level of society are breaking down.
As humans, we are biologically wired for relationship, especially love.
That’s why good relationships bring fulfillment and happiness.
That’s why good relationships are so important for our personal, family and work success.
All you need for happiness is to focus on having good relationships. Developing good relationships will make you healthier, a better parent at home, a better leader at work, and a better friend to your friends and family.
Life is all about relationships. Everything else is a distraction.
Why doesn’t everyone already know this?
WHY DON’T WE KNOW ABOUT THIS HAPPINESS THING?
The more I talk with Millennials and GenZ, the more convinced I become that no one told them that life is about happiness. It’s not even on their radar screen. When I bring up happiness, things can get a bit awkward.
How would younger generations know about happiness if no one told them?
For thousands of years, people grew up surrounded by their parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and cousins. Cousins were so close that they were often treated like brothers and sisters.
In late 1800’s and early 1900’s America, that was like the Buffalo neighborhood that my Grandma McGuire grew up in. She was born into an Irish-Catholic family around her 12 aunts and uncles, cousins and other Irish-Catholic families—all members of the local Irish-Catholic parish.
Between her parents, aunts and uncles, cousins and the Irish-Catholic families and parish, lessons about the meaning of life were constantly reinforced from every direction. If nothing else, you picked it up by osmosis and habit.
The same was true of many Italian, Jewish, Hispanic, Asian, Polynesian, etc. communities.
Many of those who rejected the religious aspects of those communities would later call themselves cultural Catholics, cultural Jews, etc.
As America grew larger and transportation got better, individual families increasingly left those close community ties, heading west by wagon train, railroads and eventually cars. The Depression and World War II accelerated that migration as people traveled looking for work or settled on the west coast after the war.
America shifted from a time when multi-generational families often lived together to a time in which the focus was on independent nuclear families.
In television show terms, America transitioned from The Walton’s to Leave it to Beaver. The Walton’s was about a three-generational family living together in Appalachia during the Depression. The grandparents were a constant presence.
In contrast, Leave it to Beaver featured a nuclear family, the Cleavers, with other relatives only appearing in about five of 234 episodes.
In general, the change from multi-generational families living in neighborhoods with the same ethnic groups and religions to the nuclear family living comparatively isolated meant that all those lessons about life learned by osmosis faded.
Many younger people—say those born after about 1980—were literally never told that life is about happiness.
My millennial daughter recommended Anne Helen Petersen’s essay “How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation” to get a good feel for how many Millennials feel about life—and its bad. You can read my detailed discussion of Petersen’s insights at Millennials: Pursuing Happiness and Avoiding Burnout.
Petersen talks about how parents pushed Millennials to ‘optimize’ themselves to ‘win’ in life. There is a never-ending list of things people are supposed to do. When people get exhausted chasing that list, there is yet another list of things they are supposed to do to avoid the anxiety, burnout, and blues.
The result isn’t satisfaction with life, but burnout and disillusionment.
Petersen writes almost 8,000 words about life and never mentions the word happiness. There is almost no mention of relationships.
The concept of happiness doesn’t even seem to be in her frame of reference.
So, how would Millennials and GenZ know about happiness if their Boomer and GenX parents never told them?
Let’s ask that a different way. If Boomer and GenX parents are disappointed that Millennials and GenZ don’t have a strong understanding of life, the older generations only have themselves to blamed.
After all, we’re the ones who raised them.
Of course, there is much more to the story of how we lost sight of happiness and there are deeper dynamics at work. You can find a more detailed history starting with my piece Wisdom vs. Power: A Brief History.
In our next blog and podcast, we’ll talk about the three fundamental kinds of relationship—contract relationships, power relationships and covenant relationships—and what each of those relationship-types means for happiness and success in life.
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Jim Foley On September 8, 2020 at 8:51 pm
Good stuff Pete!