A study on human life behavior has been conducted in the united states for 75 years (and still going) measuring people’s happiness throughout their lives in an attempt to figure out what keeps humans healthy and satisfied.
When joining the study at their early age, almost all participants stated that what would make them happy was achieving their dreams of becoming rich, successful or famous, researchers kept monitoring their lives and collecting data regularly, only to find that the healthiest and happiest of those participants were not the ones who reached fame or financial success, but those who were successful at building close relationships whether with family members, friends or life partners where they felt safe having someone they could trust and depend on.
Participants who were successful at building good relationships during their lives stayed healthier for longer, maintained a well-functioning brain and memory, while those who reported being lonely have witnessed deterioration in their physical and mental health and a lot of them died at earlier ages.
The results of this study are not at all surprising to social science, as a matter of fact, it is just as expected, humans are social beings and human happiness is directly linked to a successful social life, which is not measure by the number of relationships one can have, but by the quality of those relationships and the deep feeling of safety, belonging and familiarity.
Having a large social circle is usually time consuming and leaves the individual feeling lonely because of his / her inability to focus and invest in few meaningful relationships, invoking the phrase “feeling lonely in a crowd” social scientists would recommend fewer meaningful relationships over a big shallow social circle.
I wish you a happy life and hope that this article made you rethink some of your choices pushing you to focus more on being happy and healthy rather than being consumed by artificial and material goals.
This article is based on the work of renowned psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, Director of the study of human life behavior, please watch his Ted Talk on the following link