podcast
Chasing Life
All over the world, there are people who are living extraordinary lives, full of happiness and health – and with hardly any heart disease, cancer or diabetes. Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been on a decades-long mission to understand how they do it, and how we can all learn from them. Scientists now believe we can even reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s dementia, and in fact grow sharper and more resilient as we age. Sanjay is a dad – of three teenage daughters, he is a doctor - who operates on the brain, and he is a reporter with more than two decades of experience - who travels the earth to uncover and bring you the secrets of the happiest and healthiest people on the planet – so that you too, can Chase Life.
Living Your Happiest Life
Chasing Life
Aug 6, 2024
How would you define a “good” life? Is it being married with kids? Traveling with friends? Basking in fame and fortune? The Harvard Study on Adult Development has spent nearly 90 years examining what makes people happy and healthy over a lifetime. The director of the study, Dr. Robert Waldinger, has shared the findings in his book, “The Good Life: Lessons from the Longest Scientific Study on Happiness.” He tells Dr. Sanjay Gupta why no one should expect to be happy all the time, and how men and women measure happiness differently.
Episode Transcript
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:00:03
How successful would you say you've been in your career? How many workdays a year on average do you miss because of illness? If given an opportunity to change your present occupation without loss of income, would you do it?
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:00:23
Okay. I want you to be honest. Here are these questions that you're hearing easy to answer. What about these?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:00:31
What type of house did you live in? How neat and tidy was your home? What are some of the social service agencies that have supported you and your family growing up?
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:00:46
Here's the deal. These are some of the survey questions asked in Harvard's Study on Adult Development. It is the longest scientific study of human happiness, and one of the only ones in history to track the same people from their adolescence into their 90s. The man you hear talking, he's in charge of it. That's Dr. Robert Waldinger. He's a psychiatrist, a professor, and a Zen master.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:01:12
No study has lasted 86 years. That's just unheard of. So to be able to follow entire lives for that many decades gives us a view that we've never had before of of human life.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:01:27
'Now, when the study began in 1938, it had just over 700 participants. All of them were white men. Some of them were students at Harvard University. Others were adolescents living in different neighborhoods around Boston. Nearly seven decades later, in 2003, Bob took over the study, and he expanded it to include the spouses and the descendants of the original group. Now, he says, asking the participants these and other questions every couple of years has helped him and other researchers understand what it truly takes to live a happy life - physical and mental health, career, marital quality, much more. Bob has shared his findings in his latest book called "The Good Life Lessons from the Longest Scientific Study of Happiness."
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:02:20
What we found was that no, life is good all the time. Moment to moment, happiness changes. And that's important to remember because we can imagine that I just have to do everything right. And then I'll be happy all the time. And that's not true for anybody.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:02:38
Now that really resonated with me. You see, I've been thinking about this all season. I consider myself to be a pretty happy guy, but obviously I'm not happy all the time, and that's okay. If I've learned anything from talking with happiness experts this season, it's that being able to get through uncertainty and to be able to get through the hard times in life, that's just as important as being able to experience bliss. Sure, there are lots of sources of joy to tap into, both internal and external, but you've got to be able to weather the hard times. So I wanted to hear more about Bob's findings from the Harvard study, and also ask him how we should define a good life, especially if nobody is quote unquote happy all the time. What kind of relationships actually help us maintain happiness? And what should we do in those moments where we have setbacks and things that don't work out? I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent, and this is Chasing Life.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:03:45
I've had the chance to spend a little bit of time with you in person, and obviously I know your work. I've read your book, I've read your research. One of the takeaways that people will, will, will have is just the importance of cultivating connection. And I don't know, I feel like you and I are both doctors. I think maybe in part it's because of the, the rigors of med school. And then I did seven years of training. You start to live a pretty insular life I think. And I felt to be social always felt like a luxury. I didn't, it wasn't that I didn't want to be social, it's just that I usually had other things to do. And when I could be social, it seemed like I was luxuriating in it as opposed to it feeling like a necessity. Is it a necessity or is it a luxury?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:04:35
Well, what we've learned is that it's a necessity. Now, what we found was that the important thing was to stay actively connected to at least a few people. Because we all need a sense of connection to somebody as we go through life. And the people who were connected to other people lived longer and stayed physically healthier than the people who were more isolated. That was the surprise in our study. Not that people were happier, but that they lived longer.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:05:07
If I might, because again, we're both doctors. What is the mechanism, do you think about this in a mechanistic way?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:05:16
Yes, and we'd been spending the last ten years in our lab trying to understand that the best data that we have and other studies have has to do with stress and relief of stress. If I have something upsetting happen today, I can literally feel my body rev up right into fight or flight mode. Heart rate goes up, respirations increase. Circulating stress hormones go up. That's not a problem. That's normal. The fight or flight response. But what we're meant to do is go back to equilibrium when the stress is removed. And if I can go home and, like, you know, complain to my wife or call up a friend, I can literally feel my body calm down. What we think happens is that people who are isolated, people who are lonely, who don't feel connected, stay in a low level fight or flight mode, and instead of coming back to equilibrium. They have higher levels of circulating stress hormones. They have immune systems that don't function as well, so they get infections more easily. And that chronic inflammation breaks down body systems. So it's how, for example, if you're lonely or isolated, you might be more likely to get heart disease. You might be more likely to get type two diabetes or arthritis. But because all of those body systems could be worn away slowly by chronic inflammation.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:06:47
How how good would you sort of characterize the data around this? When we look at studies, there's so many factors and variables you have to control for. Someone who's living an isolated life, maybe they're not caring for themselves as well. How good is the data?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:07:05
It's such an important question because in this kind of research, we can't set up controlled experiments where we assign you to be lonely and have chronic inflammation, and we assign me to be well connected. We can't do that. So we're we are doing what we think of as correlational studies. What that means is that while we can't prove that one thing causes another, when many different studies of many different groups point to the same thing, we we develop more confidence that these ideas are likely to be true. And as far as we know, the best hypothesis we have about social connection is that it helps relieve stress and reduce chronic inflammation.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:07:55
I think there are things that intuitively makes sense. So it's not like you're saying something that is wildly, you know, surprising. We've kind of known this, but now you have data at correlational but large amounts of correlational data to show this. I have three teenagers, Bob and
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:08:13
Talk about stress.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:08:15
Well, I gotta say, you know, I have a lot of respect for parents, you know, more so after I became a parent myself. Yeah, but it is the best thing in my life. Yes, it really is. They're 19, 17 and 15 now.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:08:27
Wonderful.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:08:27
And I said this to my wife last night. We had a, the family dinner. And then, as often happens at our house, a bunch of other kids show up. Yeah, yeah. And, so we're feeding, you know, sort of neighborhood of kids, and it's wonderful. It's just like, I love the energy.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:08:43
Yeah.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:08:43
'But let me ask you this, though. And there are social kids, but they're growing up in a different world than you and I grew up with, primarily with devices and social media. It's me-, it's social, but on media, on screens, on digital devices. Does that count? How much of the the connection has to be in person?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:09:04
Well, we're all wondering about this. We're all concerned about it, right. And and I think that some of the research suggests that there's no single effect of social media, that a lot depends on how we use social media. So I believe it was Jean Twenge whose work suggests that if I
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:09:25
iGeneration, iGen.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:09:25
Yeah.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:09:26
You know, I've spoken to to Jean Twenge and interestingly she she had made the decision not to give her kids smartphones until they graduated from high school, which was a, a big point of discussion that we had. And of course, I had my kids listen to Twenge's, you know, comments about this.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:09:45
'Now, I want to pause here for a moment to emphasize Bob's point about social media and quality connections. Also to mention where Jean fits into all this. She's a psychology professor at San Diego State University, and she's author of "iGen: Why Today's Super Connected Kids are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Rolerant, Less Happy, and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood and What That Means for the Rest of Us." That's the title of her book. I've read that book and I spoke to her on an earlier episode. She had a lot of concerns that today's digital world is making our kids more lonely, more depressed, and that it's negatively affecting their mental health. Now, Bob argues that her work also shows that the way we use social media does matter. It's not so binary to use it or not use it, but rather how you actually use it. Using it as a tool to meet new people or connecting with friends and family - that could help. But doomscrolling and measuring yourself against others. That, of course, is not likely to make you happy.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:10:50
You know, one of the mechanisms they find that makes this, difficult for our mental health is comparison. That when we scroll, it just pulls for comparison. And they've done really good research where they they will ping people all day long and ask them how much in the last hour have you compared yourself to someone else? The people who do less comparing all day long are happier by far, than the people who naturally compare compare themselves to others. So if you're on a social media platform that just begs you to compare yourself to other people, you're going to end up less happy.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:11:30
After the break, I'm going to ask Professor Waldinger here about the Harvard Study of Adult Development. What makes men and women happy, really. And why Bob is confident the findings are more relevant now than ever.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:11:49
I'm wondering if you can just give us an overview of the Harvard study of Adult development?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:11:53
Yeah.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:11:53
That's the study. When did it start and what was the goal? As best you can describe it. At the time it started.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:11:59
'Yes. The study started in 1938. And actually it was two studies at Harvard University. But the studies didn't know about each other. One was a study of undergraduate students, sophomore, college sophomores, 19-years-old, chosen by their deans as fine, upstanding young men. And it was meant to be a, a study of normal development from adolescence to young adulthood. So of course, if you want to study normal development, you study all white guys from Harvard, right? I mean, you know, I mean, we don't do that anymore. But at that time, that's what they chose. The other study was started at Harvard Law School by Sheldon Glueck and Eleanor Glueck, and they were, interested in juvenile delinquencies and particularly how some children from really difficult backgrounds managed to stay on good developmental paths, in spite of their difficulties at home. And so we followed both the children who didn't get into trouble from those those difficult backgrounds in Boston and the Harvard students. And they were they were both meant to be studies of human thriving, which was pretty unusual in the 1930s and 40s, because most of the research we do is on what goes wrong in human development, because we want to see how to make things better. But this was radical because it was, well, what goes right for people?
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:13:27
There was, I think, just over 700 participants. Is that right?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:13:31
Yes. And then we brought in wives and we brought in children. And more than half the children are women. So we have gender balance now in the study.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:13:40
So it was all white men initially. And I think anybody would hear that and say, well, that's not going to be representative. But once you started to bring in, wives but also different socioeconomic backgrounds, everything. Did it change a lot? Like, I guess what I'm asking, are there some universalities to to to the findings?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:14:03
Yeah, that's really important. So in fact, it is still all a Caucasian sample, because in 1938, the city of Boston was 97.4% white. The the the migration of people of color into the city of Boston didn't happen until after World War II. So what that means is we still have, a group of people we study who who are almost all caucasian. So what we do is we make sure that when we present a finding that it is corroborated by studies of more diverse samples. So in our book, for example, we don't present findings that seem idiosyncratic to white people or people from Boston or people from Harvard.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:14:51
I'm Indian background. My wife is Scandinavian. She's Swedish. Would it be fair to say that the same things that make my people, you know, Indians, have a good life, have happiness, are the same things in Sweden?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:15:08
I would say yes, because our biology is so similar. Almost identical. The genetic differences that distinguish among us who are from different parts of the world are tiny compared with how much we have in common. Biologically. That's important. Now, of course, we live in different cultures which shape us tremendously. We also live in different parts of the world. I mean, Scandinavia has a whole different climate, different sunlight patterns right then than South Asia. So, so there are real differences, but that what we find is that what we have in common is so much more extensive than the differences that exist among people.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:15:54
You mentioned the mechanism now, and you gave your own example that, you know, if you're having a stressful day, you might go home and, and, have someone to talk to, in this case, your wife. But if you go back and look at, you know, way back in human evolution. What was the value of being social survival at that point, or what was the value then?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:16:16
That's what we think. You know, of course we can't know because we weren't there. But it seems pretty clear that there was great survival value in being in groups. And so what we know, for example, now is that people who are alone are slightly more stressed, and in fact, people who sleep alone sleep slightly less soundly than people who are not alone. And that's probably because biologically, we got selected out to be in groups that the people who were in groups survived and therefore passed on their genes more frequently than the people who were more isolated.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:16:54
The study started in 1938. You've talked about the scope and the methodology. when you when you took it on. What did you want to do with it?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:17:03
Well, the first thing I wanted to do was bring in more women. I said, we just have to do this. And and many of the wives said, "you know, it's about time you brought us in. We've been, we've been watching our husbands fill out these questionnaires and go for exams for years." And I wanted to bring in new methods. So people had never been videotaped. They'd certainly never been scanned. We put people into MRI scanners and watch their brains light up when we showed them different images. We drew blood for DNA and messenger RNA. And what I love about that is that DNA wasn't even imagined in 1938. And here we were using it in the 2000s.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:17:45
Did marriage matter versus just having lots of social connections?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:17:52
Marriage mattered, but almost all of our folks got married, and that's probably because they were in the World War II generation, where the patterns were so consistently about partnering. Over 90% of our folks got married. That that's not the case now, as we know. But what we do know from studies now is that people who are partnered live longer. For men, it's like, 7 to 17 years longer. For women, it's 5 to 12 years longer. Men always have a better deal in marriage, but it's also probably because women are more socially connected elsewhere, and men tend to be more connected to partners, to wives, and to to let their wives manage the social life, whereas women tend to have more independent social connections.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:18:48
The the mechanism. Again, I keep coming back to this. Like when I first, when I first started thinking about your work, I thought, okay, I'm gonna live longer if I'm married because, someone's looking out for me. Someone's, there making sure I don't eat junk food all the time. They go to the doctor's visits. How much do you think is is is that.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:19:08
That's exactly right. We actually looked into that a bit. Like what? What made some people die quickly after their spouses passed away? Men more commonly than women. It was that they stopped taking their medicine. It was that they didn't eat right. They didn't get off the couch and move. And one of the things we know is that when you have a partner, they get you going, they get you moving. They keep you behaving in healthier ways. That all has tremendous benefit. The other thing we know is that social connection that we have with our partners, for example, stimulates our brains, keeps our moods better, and it also keeps us sharper. And so all of that, all of that could be substituted by other relationships. You don't have to have a partner to do that, but you need that kind of engagement and stimulation to keep life going as you get older.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:20:03
As as you get older.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:20:05
Yeah.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:20:07
Do we become happier as we get older?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:20:10
We do, we do. There's an investigator, a psychologist named Laura Carstensen at Stanford, and she was the first to discover that human beings get happier as we get older. Our moods get elevated, on average. And her work suggests that this has to do with the awareness that life is short. Long about middle age, you can literally track it from about age 45. The awareness of our mortality grows, and you would think that would make us more depressed, right? But in fact, it has the opposite effect that what it does is it makes us savor life more. It makes us stop and smell the roses. It makes us actually trim our social worlds a bit. So we stop, we stop hanging out with those people who we really haven't enjoyed in a long time. We stop going to those meetings or doing those activities that we no longer care about. We begin to say no to the things that don't energize us, and that has the effect of making us happier.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:21:19
The interesting thing about a study like this is you get obviously the, the, the prospective data, but then you get a chance for people to reflect, I guess, on their lives as well, as they get older. What, I wonder if there were any differences between men and women in terms of what they wish they had done more of or less of later in life?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:21:39
'Yes. We asked people when they were around the age of 80, what do you regret the most? What are you proudest of? What everybody was proudest of had something to do with relationships. So some of these people had won big prizes, made fortunes. Nobody talked about that. What they talked about was I was a good parent. I was a good friend. I was a good partner, right. So everybody talked about other people. The regrets - the men again, remember, this was the World War II generation, our first generation. The men pretty commonly said, I wish I hadn't spent so much time at work, and I wish I had spent more time with the people I care about. The women didn't say that as much, but they said, I wish I hadn't spent so much time worrying about what other people thought that. And there's that. That theme of authenticity. I wish I could be myself more. And I think as we get older, I've certainly felt this in my own life. I feel freer just to be me. And I'll give you an example. I, I'm a Zen practitioner, and and I kept that quiet. I kept I thought, boy, that's really separate from my life as a researcher and a psychiatrist. And I didn't talk about it. And then at a certain point, I said, I'm just going to be open about this. And I put up a big picture of the Buddha in my office at Massachusetts General Hospital. And when people would ask me what I did over the weekend, if if I had been there, I said, I went to a silent meditation retreat. I just started being more myself in that way. And it it was liberating.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:23:28
We'll be right back.
00:23:32
You write in the book that broader social networks, more social activity resulted in later onset and even slower rates of cognitive decline.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:23:42
Yes.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:23:43
What is it? What does a broad social network mean? How would you define that?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:23:48
'It depends on whether you're more introverted or extroverted. But let's just take an average. And let's say that a broad social network includes close friends and family, but it also includes work colleagues, some of whom you're not close to, but you say hello to every day. Some of it includes the person in the coffee shop who you see each day and who gives you your coffee. It includes the person in the checkout line, the cashier. That these what are sometimes called weak ties in the research literature, but they're really casual ties, that they matter. They turn out to give us little hints of well-being and belonging. And so you probably know, there's some research on how talking to strangers actually makes us happy or can feel more energized, even though we think we're not going to like it.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:24:41
Yeah, it's really interesting. I feel like I get a greater sort of return, if you will, when I reach out to other people and or just have that longer conversation with the barista or whoever it might be, you know. And I also feel good when I do something nice for other people. Which is interesting because I think what we seem to learn from a very young age is that there's this survival of the fittest notion that I need to get, you know, I need to survive. And it's rugged individualism, not reciprocal altruism.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:25:15
Yeah.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:25:15
Evolutionarily that that is kind of what we think happens to humans and to other species as well.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:25:22
That the individualism?
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:25:24
Yeah. The idea that, you know, fundamentally you survive. And I and I realized Darwin did not say "survival of the fittest," but that was how it was sort of interpreted.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:25:35
Yeah.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:25:35
Right. And fit could mean a lot of different things. But fundamentally it meant I need to get what's mine, you know, versus versus being altruistic. And yet it feels so good to be altruistic.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:25:47
'Well, right. And there's a lot of wisdom about that that points us in the opposite direction. There's an African proverb I really like - "if if you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go with other people." And and there's a quote from the Dalai Lama. He says, "the wise, selfish person takes care of other people." And what he meant by that is that when you actually give to others, you feel better. A lot of the giving ends up coming back to you directly or indirectly. And so, in fact, the survival of the fittest model doesn't work very well because we really can't do it alone. We can't do life alone. And I think that not just ancient teachers, but modern science tells us that we are a whole lot stronger when we give to other people and when they give back to us.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:26:44
Is there a way to to measure the the strength of a relationship? I I've, I've heard things like, is this a person you could call in the middle of the night with a problem?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:26:58
Yeah.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:26:58
Is this someone you could be vulnerable around? How do you think of the strength of a social connection?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:27:06
I think those are really good measures. Like, will this person have my back? If I'm in trouble with this person, be there for me? Can I be myself with this person? But there are other kinds of relationships that do different things for us. I have a neighbor who has every tool you could ever need, and when I need to fix something in my house, I go to him and he loans me tools. He's not my nearest and dearest, but that's not what our relationship is. We kind of help each other out with material things. And so what I think is important is to think about each, each relationship playing its own unique role and and hoping that you can both give and receive in that relationship in certain ways that are useful, nourishing, helpful in your life.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:28:00
I think for a lot of my life, the idea of material success was really, celebrated. There was movies like, like Wall Street, so, you know, greed is good and that sort of thing. The idea of social connection being the aspiration. I think, again, we intuitively know that, but it's not represented. I think in popular culture it is in your book, which is great and everyone should read it. But, you know, the idea that the that we aspire to collect more and more material goods and that is this badge of success. And if we haven't done that, then we haven't, you know, done everything we could in this life. It's a it's a strong force to contend with, I think. I think about this again with my own kids. If you poll young children nowadays or young people, I should say 80% say that they want to get rich.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:28:55
Yes.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:28:56
That's what they say.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:28:57
Yes.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:28:57
So despite the fact that we know these things, they are intuitive, I think in many ways.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:29:02
Yeah.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:29:02
Still, 80% of young people, that's what they say they want to do.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:29:06
You know, if you think about the images we see all day long, it's of wealth. It's of material goods and happy people with, you know, certain they buy certain brands of automobiles or brands of pasta or whatever, you know, and the the subliminal message is, if you have these things, these possessions, you're going to be happier. We we, we post these curated images of our lives for each other. And you'd think we were always on wonderful vacations or, you know, at great parties. So I think that that the images we get of what life is like are not the real image, not the truth of what life is like for most people. That's why actually, we wrote this book, and that's why I'm spending a lot of my time now talking about these ideas, you know, and thank you for helping me bring these ideas to more people, because I feel like there's, it's a counterpoint to all these images we get of wealth and fame and high achievement all day long.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:30:10
Bob is a good life, a happy life.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:30:14
And it's partly happy. Every life has ups and downs. It's a a good life is where we feel that we can meet. Most of the time, the challenges that come our way because challenges are always coming our way. And and a good life is a life where we feel like we are able to be in the world in ways that matter, matter to us and matter to other people. Because I think all of us want to feel like we matter.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:30:44
How can listeners live a good life? What would you tell them?
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:30:51
I guess two big things. One is try to be involved in activities that you care about. That means something to you, and try to be involved with people who you care about and who care about you.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:31:07
Sounds, sounds doable.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:31:09
It sounds doable. It's ,their big projects. Each of them is a big lifelong project, but doable.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:31:15
It's not a destination.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:31:18
No. It's a practice.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:31:19
It takes work.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:31:20
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:31:21
It should take work. For something as important as living a good life. It probably shouldn't be totally easy, but it should be achievable.
Dr. Robert Waldinger
00:31:29
Yeah, yeah. And a constant work in progress. Lord knows my life is a work in progress every day.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:31:39
'You know, I could talk to Professor Waldinger all day. It is nice to be reminded sometimes that sources of happiness and kindness exist in expected places, but also unexpected places. From interactions with close friends and colleagues to these quick encounters with neighbors or the barista down the street. I'd encourage everyone to read his book, The Good Life. After I read it, I had some really thoughtful conversations with colleagues, friends, and family. And maybe it goes without saying, but talking to experts all season long about happiness has really shifted my own headspace. It's been really wonderful for me. It's inspired me to reflect on all the different experiences and habits that bring me joy, making me more intentional about those things. External things - traveling, eating great food to internal things. Just doing nice things for the people I love in unexpected ways, moving and exercising and really savoring every moment that I do. Or just practicing gratitude.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:32:45
All season long, I've wanted to know what brings you joy and how you chase life.
Jamie Lim
00:32:51
Hey, Sanjay. My name is Jamie Lim. Chasing life to me is chasing my family. And the Irish have a saying, "my family, my heart." And I can tell you something, I live by this. So for 30 years, my husband and my three kids supported me while I chased a very high profile, stressful, but gratifying career. And on January 1st, 2021, I retired. Now I have the opportunity to coach and cheerlead three grandsons and I also knit. And that gives me serious time to figure out strategies for chasing life more effectively.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:33:37
That is so lovely. Thank you Jamie. Now coming up next week.
Prof. Laura Vandenberg
00:33:42
If you're sitting out in the sun and you've put sunscreen on your body, you want to know that it's doing the job.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:33:48
My colleague Meg Terrell will break down all you need to know about sunscreen. She's going to talk to sunscreen experts who will share what works, but also what doesn't, and what you need to do to stay safe when you're out in the sun. That's next week. Thanks for listening.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:34:06
Chasing Life is a production of CNN Audio. Our podcast is produced by Eryn Mathewson, Jennifer Lai, Grace Walker, and Jessie Remedios. Our senior producer and showrunner is Felicia Patinkin. Andrea Kane is our medical writer. Dan Dzula is our technical director, and the executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lichteig, with support from Jamus Andrest, Jon Dianora, Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Leni Steinhardt, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Ben Tinker, Amanda Sealy, and Nadia Kounang of CNN Health and Katie Hinman.