Robert Waldinger, Director of the 1938 Harvard Adult Development Study, the longest study ever on happiness, says: "... it’s not career achievement, money, exercise, or a healthy diet. The most consistent finding we’ve learned through 85 years of study is: Positive relationships keep us happier, healthier, and help us live longer. Period."
Sonja Lyubomirsky, University of California Professor and author of 'The How Of Happiness,' says: "Perhaps most critical to improving and maintaining happiness is the ability to connect with other people and to create meaningful connecting moments and even chemistry..."
Daniel Gilbert, Harvard Professor and author of 'Stumbling on Happiness,' says: “We are happy when we have family, we are happy when we have friends and almost all the other things we think make us happy are actually just ways of getting more family and friends.”
Friendship is the number one driver to happiness! But we have less of it in our lives than we used to. Why? Online too much? Not connecting IRL? Upwardly mobility and geographically separating?
I sat down with Vivek Murthy a couple years ago — between Surgeon General stints — and he talked about our emerging epidemic of loneliness. Loneliness is a huge deal! It's worse for our health than smoking 15 cigarettes a day. In 2023 Vivek Murthy put out a Surgeon General's warning about the epidemic of loneliness and isolation.
So what's an easy 2-minute happiness intervention we can all do in the middle of our days?
Phone A Friend.
That's it.
Phone A Friend.
Just pick up the phone and phone a friend. What if they don't answer? Doesn't matter. A 2-minute voicemail or voicenote over text works just fine.
And who do you call?
Anybody from your 150!
Oxford Emeritus Professor Robin Dunbar, famous for coining Dunbar's Number, shared that we have a certain cognitive limit on friendship. Our brains support about 150 total friends, period, which he defines as "the sort of people you would like to spend time with if you have the chance, and would be willing to make the effort to do so." Friendship is two-way. We may be replacing a lot of previously two-way time with newer one-way digital relationships but we are happier when we feel more connected.
So I'm suggesting your phone somebody in your 150. Ask yourself: Who would come to my wedding if I got married today? Who do I have, or would I have, on my holiday card mailing list?
Now what do you say?
I suggest three things:
State - State the value of the relationship. Tell them you mean something to them! "I was thinking about that time back in college....", "I loved seeing you over the holidays... ", "I just saw our mutual friend..."
Share - Share something going on with you. Something you're thinking about, wrestling with, struggling with. Vulnerability breeds connection! Share something going on in your life. We all have things we feel on top of and things we feel lost in. Share one of each!
Seek - Seek something. Ask a question! Give them something to respond to — a reason to reply with a note of their own. You could go small! "What are you up to this weekend? You could go big! "How do you think about developing your relationship with your in-laws?"
The truth is over the course of our lives we will all spend more and more time alone:
We have the Surgeon General telling us we have an epidemic of loneliness. Yet we know the number one driver of long-term happiness is friendship.
So what's the 2-minute intervention for a happier day?
