The Secret of Happiness

By Clif Mathews

https://www.linkedin.com/in/clifmathews/

Website: www.clifmathews.com

Keynote Speaker & Executive Coach | Helping Leaders Reclaim Their Humanity | Deloitte M&A Partner (24 yrs)

Greater Boston

The secret to happiness isn't as complicated as you think. Harvard spent 85 years researching it.

Thanks to Felix Bertram for this image.

A lot of senior leaders make this trade-off without realizing it.

The further up we go, the more our careers can crowd out everything else. We make small sacrifices in our relationships, thinking it'll make us happy.

But these researchers followed graduates across their whole lives and found that isn't the case. Most of us know relationships matter. Now we have 85 years' worth of data to back it up.

Here are the seven lessons worth sitting with:

1️⃣ Relationships drive health and happiness.

Close relationships support both physical and mental health over the long term.

2️⃣ Quality matters more than quantity.

A few trusted relationships matter more than a large network of contacts.

3️⃣ Loneliness is genuinely harmful.

The researchers found isolation was as damaging to health as smoking.

4️⃣ Connection protects the brain.

Having people around you keeps your brain healthier.

5️⃣ Supportive partnerships reduce stress.

People who feel supported handle pressure and pain better than those who go it alone.

6️⃣ Healthy habits matter alongside everything else.

Looking after your body and mind shapes how well you age.

7️⃣ People can change at any age.

It's never too late to build stronger habits and deeper relationships.

Many of us accidentally build a version of success that doesn't include any of this. But when you strip back the titles and endless running, these are the things that hold up.

Worth thinking about.

I write about the more human side of leadership in my newsletter, A Normal Tuesday.

If you want to lead better, don't miss the next one: https://lnkd.in/ebgpHCwB

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