"The secret to a happy life -- lessons from 8 decades 

of research

The happiest and healthiest people are those who have warm connections with others, says psychiatrist 

Robert Waldinger, who leads the Harvard Study of Adult Development -- one of the longest-running studies 

of adult life ever conducted. Exploring the crucial link between social bonds and quality of life, he shares 

wisdom and insights into how to identify and strengthen the relationships that impact your well-being most. 

When it comes to the people in your inner circle, "Turn toward the voices that make you feel more open

 and more inclusive," he says. (This conversation, hosted by TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington

 Rodgers, was part of an exclusive TED Membership event. 

Visit ted.com/membership to become a TED Member.)

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Well, one of the best theories, for which there's now some pretty good evidence, is based on the idea of stress. That, as we know, stress is an inevitable part of all of our lives. Stress happens to us every day. And what we find is that good relationships turn out to be stress regulators. So let me give you an example. Let's say that I have something upsetting happen to me during the day,and I find myself, like, ruminating about it and really thinking about it and unhappy. I can feel my body go into what we call fight or flight response where literally my heart rate goes up and I might start sweating a little bit and I'm just not feeling as well. Now, what we're meant to do is to come back to equilibriumwhen a stressor goes away. That's the way the body is supposed to work. But what happens if I go home at the end of my upsetting day and I have somebody to talk to? Either I can call someone on the phone or it's somebody I live with. I can literally feel my body calm down. I can feel that fight or flight response subside.

But what if I don't have anybody to go home to? What if there's nobody I can call? What we find is that people who are isolated, are lonely, don't have those stress regulators that we get from good relationships and that we stay in chronic fight or flight mode, that our bodies have this chronic stress, chronic levels of inflammation and circulating stress hormones that wear away our happiness and break down different body systems.

Well, what kinds of relationships seem essential to well-being?And this is interesting. We asked people who were our original participants in our study. We asked them, Who could you call in the middle of the night if you were sick or scared? And many of our people could list several other people they could call if they were in trouble. Some people couldn't list anyone. There wasn't a person on the planet who they could turn to if they were sick or scared. And what we find is that having at least one person in your life who you feel really has your back, who you could go to if you were in trouble, that's essential for maintaining our happiness and our health. When we asked these same people, when they got to be in their 80s, to look back on their lives and to tell us what they were proudest of, almost everybody said something about their relationships. They didn't say, "I made a lot of money"or "I won some big awards." They said, "I was a good mentor," "I was a good friend," "I raised healthy kids," "I was a good partner."And so what we find is that what seems to mean the most to people when they get to the end of their lives is the strength and the warmth of their connections to others."