The Power of Vulnerability — Brené Brown

00:12What keeps us healthy and happy

00:15as we go through life?

00:18If you were going to invest now

00:21in your future best self,

00:23where would you put your time and your energy?

00:27There was a recent survey of millennials

00:29asking them what their most important life goals were,

00:34and over 80 percent said

00:36that a major life goal for them was to get rich.

00:40And another 50 percent of those same young adults

00:45said that another major life goal

00:47was to become famous.

00:50(Laughter)

00:52And we're constantly told to lean in to work, to push harder

00:58and achieve more.

01:00We're given the impression that these are the things that we need to go after

01:04in order to have a good life.

01:06Pictures of entire lives,

01:08of the choices that people make and how those choices work out for them,

01:13those pictures are almost impossible to get.

01:18Most of what we know about human life

01:21we know from asking people to remember the past,

01:24and as we know, hindsight is anything but 20/20.

01:29We forget vast amounts of what happens to us in life,

01:33and sometimes memory is downright creative.

01:36But what if we could watch entire lives

01:41as they unfold through time?

01:44What if we could study people from the time that they were teenagers

01:48all the way into old age

01:50to see what really keeps people happy and healthy?

01:55We did that.

01:57The Harvard Study of Adult Development

01:59may be the longest study of adult life that's ever been done.

02:05For 75 years, we've tracked the lives of 724 men,

02:13year after year, asking about their work, their home lives, their health,

02:17and of course asking all along the way without knowing how their life stories

02:22were going to turn out.

02:25Studies like this are exceedingly rare.

02:28Almost all projects of this kind fall apart within a decade

02:33because too many people drop out of the study,

02:36or funding for the research dries up,

02:39or the researchers get distracted,

02:41or they die, and nobody moves the ball further down the field.

02:46But through a combination of luck

02:48and the persistence of several generations of researchers,

02:52this study has survived.

02:54About 60 of our original 724 men

02:59are still alive,

03:00still participating in the study,

03:02most of them in their 90s.

03:05And we are now beginning to study

03:07the more than 2,000 children of these men.

03:11And I'm the fourth director of the study.

03:15Since 1938, we've tracked the lives of two groups of men.

03:20The first group started in the study

03:22when they were sophomores at Harvard College.

03:25They all finished college during World War II,

03:27and then most went off to serve in the war.

03:31And the second group that we've followed

03:33was a group of boys from Boston's poorest neighborhoods,

03:37boys who were chosen for the study

03:39specifically because they were from some of the most troubled

03:43and disadvantaged families

03:44in the Boston of the 1930s.

03:47Most lived in tenements, many without hot and cold running water.

03:54When they entered the study,

03:56all of these teenagers were interviewed.

03:59They were given medical exams.

04:01We went to their homes and we interviewed their parents.

04:05And then these teenagers grew up into adults

04:07who entered all walks of life.

04:10They became factory workers and lawyers and bricklayers and doctors,

04:16one President of the United States.

04:20Some developed alcoholism. A few developed schizophrenia.

04:25Some climbed the social ladder

04:27from the bottom all the way to the very top,

04:30and some made that journey in the opposite direction.

04:35The founders of this study

04:38would never in their wildest dreams

04:40have imagined that I would be standing here today, 75 years later,

04:45telling you that the study still continues.

04:49Every two years, our patient and dedicated research staff

04:52calls up our men and asks them if we can send them

04:56yet one more set of questions about their lives.

05:00Many of the inner city Boston men ask us,

05:03"Why do you keep wanting to study me? My life just isn't that interesting."

05:08The Harvard men never ask that question.

05:11(Laughter)

05:20To get the clearest picture of these lives,

05:23we don't just send them questionnaires.

05:26We interview them in their living rooms.

05:29We get their medical records from their doctors.

05:32We draw their blood, we scan their brains,

05:34we talk to their children.

05:36We videotape them talking with their wives about their deepest concerns.

05:41And when, about a decade ago, we finally asked the wives

05:45if they would join us as members of the study,

05:47many of the women said, "You know, it's about time."

05:50(Laughter)

05:51So what have we learned?

05:53What are the lessons that come from the tens of thousands of pages

05:58of information that we've generated

06:01on these lives?

06:03Well, the lessons aren't about wealth or fame or working harder and harder.

06:10The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this:

06:16Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.

06:23We've learned three big lessons about relationships.

06:26The first is that social connections are really good for us,

06:30and that loneliness kills.

06:33It turns out that people who are more socially connected

06:37to family, to friends, to community,

06:40are happier, they're physically healthier, and they live longer

06:45than people who are less well connected.

06:48And the experience of loneliness turns out to be toxic.

06:51People who are more isolated than they want to be from others

06:57find that they are less happy,

07:00their health declines earlier in midlife,

07:03their brain functioning declines sooner

07:05and they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely.

07:10And the sad fact is that at any given time,

07:13more than one in five Americans will report that they're lonely.

07:19And we know that you can be lonely in a crowd

07:21and you can be lonely in a marriage,

07:24so the second big lesson that we learned

07:26is that it's not just the number of friends you have,

07:29and it's not whether or not you're in a committed relationship,

07:33but it's the quality of your close relationships that matters.

07:38It turns out that living in the midst of conflict is really bad for our health.

07:43High-conflict marriages, for example, without much affection,

07:47turn out to be very bad for our health, perhaps worse than getting divorced.

07:53And living in the midst of good, warm relationships is protective.

07:57Once we had followed our men all the way into their 80s,

08:01we wanted to look back at them at midlife

08:04and to see if we could predict

08:05who was going to grow into a happy, healthy octogenarian

08:09and who wasn't.

08:11And when we gathered together everything we knew about them

08:15at age 50,

08:18it wasn't their middle age cholesterol levels

08:20that predicted how they were going to grow old.

08:23It was how satisfied they were in their relationships.

08:27The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50

08:31were the healthiest at age 80.

08:35And good, close relationships seem to buffer us

08:38from some of the slings and arrows of getting old.

08:42Our most happily partnered men and women

08:46reported, in their 80s,

08:48that on the days when they had more physical pain,

08:51their mood stayed just as happy.

08:54But the people who were in unhappy relationships,

08:57on the days when they reported more physical pain,

09:00it was magnified by more emotional pain.

09:04And the third big lesson that we learned about relationships and our health

09:08is that good relationships don't just protect our bodies,

09:12they protect our brains.

09:14It turns out that being in a securely attached relationship

09:19to another person in your 80s is protective,

09:23that the people who are in relationships

09:25where they really feel they can count on the other person in times of need,

09:29those people's memories stay sharper longer.

09:32And the people in relationships

09:34where they feel they really can't count on the other one,

09:37those are the people who experience earlier memory decline.

09:42And those good relationships, they don't have to be smooth all the time.

09:46Some of our octogenarian couples could bicker with each other

09:49day in and day out,

09:51but as long as they felt that they could really count on the other

09:54when the going got tough,

09:56those arguments didn't take a toll on their memories.

10:01So this message,

10:04that good, close relationships are good for our health and well-being,

10:10this is wisdom that's as old as the hills.

10:13Why is this so hard to get and so easy to ignore?

10:17Well, we're human.

10:19What we'd really like is a quick fix,

10:21something we can get

10:23that'll make our lives good and keep them that way.

10:27Relationships are messy and they're complicated

10:30and the hard work of tending to family and friends,

10:34it's not sexy or glamorous.

10:37It's also lifelong. It never ends.

10:40The people in our 75-year study who were the happiest in retirement

10:45were the people who had actively worked to replace workmates with new playmates.

10:51Just like the millennials in that recent survey,

10:54many of our men when they were starting out as young adults

10:58really believed that fame and wealth and high achievement

11:02were what they needed to go after to have a good life.

11:06But over and over, over these 75 years, our study has shown

11:10that the people who fared the best were the people who leaned in to relationships,

11:16with family, with friends, with community.

11:21So what about you?

11:23Let's say you're 25, or you're 40, or you're 60.

11:27What might leaning in to relationships even look like?

11:31Well, the possibilities are practically endless.

11:35It might be something as simple as replacing screen time with people time

11:41or livening up a stale relationship by doing something new together,

11:46long walks or date nights,

11:49or reaching out to that family member who you haven't spoken to in years,

11:54because those all-too-common family feuds

11:57take a terrible toll

12:00on the people who hold the grudges.

12:04I'd like to close with a quote from Mark Twain.

12:09More than a century ago,

12:11he was looking back on his life,

12:14and he wrote this:

12:16"There isn't time, so brief is life,

12:20for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account.

12:26There is only time for loving,

12:29and but an instant, so to speak, for that."

12:34The good life is built with good relationships.

12:39Thank you.

12:40(Applause)