Month: April 2017

What makes for a long and happy life?

Most people chase after money and fame as if these were the keys to living long and happy. We live in a society that highly rewards actors, actresses and basketball players over teachers and policemen. Yet we also hear of rich or famous people taking their own lives. So what is the secret really? What should we invest on today to have a happy and healthy tomorrow?

Fortunately, we now have a scientific basis for determining this. Dr. Robert Waldinger, the current director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, shared the findings of this study which began in 1938 with 268 men. At that time Harvard was an all-male school so the participants were all men. The study would later take in an additional 456 boys from Boston’s poorest families — these boys were specifically chosen because of their very troubled and disadvantaged backgrounds.

So what we now have is data that encompasses nearly 80 years of the lives of these 724 men, around 60 of whom are still alive and still participating in the study. What the researchers do every year is to ask these men, asking about their lives at home, at work, their health, family, friends, and so on. They do face-to-face interviews, gather medical records, even go so far as to getting blood samples or x-rays or brain scans themselves. They talk to their wives and children, and even take videos of husband and wife talking together about their deepest concerns.

The result is a robust year by year account of the lives of these boys who grew to different walks of life — lawyers, bankers, doctors and even one president of the United States. Some of them had rags-to-riches stories while others made the journey in the opposite direction.

The founders of the study have long passed away and they would probably never have imagined that what they started would have lasted this long. But we are fortunate that it has because we now have a glimpse of the answer to the question most people ask — what is the key to a happy and healthy life?

And the answer is the good life is built with good relationships. So while it may be interesting to have money and fame and to exercise and watch your diet, the study found that those who live the longest and happiest were those who were in steady and secure relationships — people who knew there were other people they could depend on, whom they could trust with their lives.

Those in the study who were more socially connected turned out to be happier, healthier and they lived longer. The converse is also true — those who were lonelier than they wanted to be, who were more socially disconnected and isolated, deteriorated faster in terms of health and brain function, and they lived shorter lives.

Another insight from the data is that it is not just the number of social connections that you have — meaning it’s not just the quantity of your friends — but the quality of your friendship that matters. Rather than having a large number of casual acquaintances, having a few good friends, or a spouse whom you can really talk to about your innermost desires, anxieties, and so on, is very important.

As Waldinger says about these people, “At age 50, it wasn’t their middle age cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going to grow old. It was how satisfied they were in their relationships. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80. And good, close relationships seem to buffer us from some of the slings and arrows of getting old. Our most happily partnered men and women reported, in their 80’s, that on the days when they had more physical pain, their mood stayed just as happy. But the people who were in unhappy relationships, on the days when they reported more physical pain, it was magnified by more emotional pain.”

Good relationships also seem to protect our brains. Those who reported good relationships in their 80’s had sharper memories than those who were in conflicted relationships.

Some of you who began reading this article would probably already have known the answer. In fact, the answer is not surprising or new to us at all. Yet despite this, why do people chase after the wrong things? Waldinger says that it’s because we usually want the quick fix and the easy solution — and relationships are anything but easy. They are complicated and messy and require a lot of work.

But the payoff is worth it. So what are we waiting for? Let’s get to work.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

A few years ago, I was looking for a sport to replace basketball. I love the game but age had caught up with me and I was already feeling some discomfort in my knee. Then I learned that a friend of mine was into Filipino Martial Arts (FMA). I had always loved to learn martial arts even as a kid, but my desire was cut short one day when my 7-year old self came home from an impromptu karate class at a neighbor’s house, and I told my dad I wanted to join, and he said no.

And that was that.

But then I was around 40 already, and dad could no longer object, so I decided to see what it was all about. At this stage, the only exposure I had to it was seeing a trailer of the Lito Lapid movie, Kamagong, back in high school — and it portrayed two people holding two sticks each in both hands trying to hit each other. So my first thought going in was that FMA was all about using sticks.

I was about to get an education.

I entered the gym to observe the action. My longtime friend and former college roommate, Joepot, met me and explained things as we went along.

Filipino Martial Arts is also called arnis or kali or escrima. Practitioners are called arnisadors or escrimadors. Unlike most other martial arts where beginners learn to fight with bare hands, and are only made to handle weapons at higher levels, novice escrimadors are taught to use sticks right from the start.

The logic is pretty straightforward: As a beginner, if you get into a real fight, you need every advantage you can get. If you went home that night after your first lesson, and found yourself face to face with an intruder inside your house, would you rather face him with your bare hands or armed with a weapon?

In other martial arts, you might spend months or years training before you are prepared to get into a real fight. In arnis, you are taught how to whack someone hard on the head as your first lesson, which is probably as good a defense as any if you find yourself backed to a corner.

As the lessons progress, the weapons become shorter, you move from stick to knife to empty hand. So the assumption is that you only fight with your bare hands when your skill level is high enough, but even then, the basic philosophy is to seize every advantage you can. Any object within reach can be a weapon — a bottle, a vase, even your cellphone. There is no such thing as a fair fight, especially on the street.

My friend then told a story of his law school classmate who approached him one day, after learning that he was an FMA instructor. This classmate said, “So what would you do if I rushed you like this?” And he suddenly rushed headfirst trying to grapple my friend in a bear hug, but he suddenly stopped short when he saw that my friend held a ballpen in his hand aimed towards his attacker’s oncoming head.

“Hey, that’s not fair,” he said.

“Well, you asked me what I would do. That’s exactly what I would do,” my friend replied.

Arnis teaches one to have a healthy respect of weapons, especially knives. The worst thing that a martial art can teach is false confidence — for you to face an armed attacker thinking that you can grapple with him or disarm him with techniques you learned just the other night. Most of the time, the best defense is to run, or to distract or hurt your opponent enough for you to run away.

After that introduction, I was sold.

 

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

Learn Arnis with Mandirigmang Kaliradman YMCA Chapter at the Davao YMCA Gym (near Central Bank/Sutherland Global Services) along Jacinto Ext., Davao City, 6PM to 8PM (T-Th-S).

Last week, I talked about my participation in a leadership and life-coaching program that I joined seven years ago. As I said, I would like to share the lessons I learned there, coupled with the experience of being in a leadership position in our family corporation.

The first lesson is to STEP UP.

Opportunities abound for leadership. You may not necessarily be a leader by position or by rank, but life always offers many chances for you to show some facet of leadership — whether it is your passion, dedication, creativity, diligence, discipline or commitment. The problem is that most people hesitate to show this side of themselves. They don’t want the attention. They don’t want to stand out, and so they lose out.

The second lesson is to RECOGNIZE THE DOERS.

There are talkers and there are doers, and one who is good at talking is not necessarily good at doing.

One of the key points the seminar facilitators drummed into us was that we should always measure our success or failure based on results. That means if you set a sales target of P10 million within 1 month, and by the end of the month, you only achieved 9.99 million, then you have not accomplished your goal 100%. If you set a personal goal not to be late for work throughout the year, and you missed one day, then you have not achieved that goal.

How eloquently you compose your goal doesn’t matter. The reason or excuse why you missed that one day, or why you lack that 100-peso sale doesn’t matter. Your intent and desire to achieve that goal doesn’t matter. Only the results matter, because results don’t lie.

The talkers have their place. They sometimes generate some bright ideas. But ideas without implementation will merely remain as pretty dreams. It is ultimately the doers who will give you results — and some doers are not what you expect them to be.

If you want your organization to go somewhere, place a high value on your doers.

The third lesson is to EMPOWER THE DOERS.

Our seminar group was divided into several smaller groups and each group had a leader. The leaders of each group formed the council of leaders and we had to meet regularly to update each other and plan how to achieve the group goals. Along the way, I noticed that some of the leaders were not so cooperative, and some were only talkers — they would promise this and that but had little or no results.

My coach’s advice was to open the leadership council to other members of the team. We went through the group’s list of names one by one and he helped me identify and recognize those who had potential. So I opened the invitation to the entire team and began to observe who would respond. Eventually, the person who became my most trusted second-in-command was not even one of the group leaders. But he took the challenge to step up and show his interest and commitment, and I rewarded that by ceding more and more control and authority to him.

The fourth lesson is to UNDERSTAND AND LOVE YOUR TEAM.

That old saying is very true — people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Being a very cerebral person, I had difficulty connecting with some people in my team. Thankfully, my coach and teammates were very supportive in helping me in this regard. I went to the point of personally calling each member of my team just to talk to them and get to know how they are.

Do not always sound high and mighty. Do not act like a know-it-all. Be humble. Show people you are willing to listen and that you care.

 

* The seminars mentioned are still being offered by OCCI Global. The program trilogy consists of 3 courses – FLEX, ALC and LEAP. You can read more at www.occi.ph. This is not a paid endorsement.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.