Hi, We’re Rick and Teresa Starr. Welcome to I Thrive At Life! We're so glad you're here.
At I Thrive At Life, we teach evidence-based strategies to help YOU get unstuck and learn to Connect, Thrive, and Create so that you can live with optimal health, passion, purpose, and peace!
Each week, we will present values-based strategies, statistics, and stories to help you build better relationships, enjoy optimal wellness, and work toward creating your most meaningful life.
How did we come to do this work? Well, it goes way back to our first date, hiking the Superstition Mountains in Arizona. Somehow, we started talking about a book my dad had introduced me to: The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale.
We also talked about other books such as Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz and The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale. On our hike, we discovered that we were both fascinated by the fact that the results we achieve in life come from how we choose to think.
That’s right. As we were hiking, we really connected on the idea that your mindset goes a long way to create your reality. You don’t always get to choose the circumstances of life, but you can choose your attitude, and your attitude forms your overall experience and has a huge influence on how you feel about that experience.
And even if you don’t feel that you were born with a positive attitude or a natural dose of optimism, recent research in positive psychology shows that a growth mindset, optimism, gratitude, grit, and resilience are all skills that can be learned and developed.
So, basically, we fell in love because we shared the same outlook on life. First and foremost, we shared the same faith as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Second, we shared a passion for the idea that how we think and act in life ultimately creates the direction and the outcomes of our lives.
Over the next 40 years, we got married, had 5 kids, and did our best to raise our family. In the process, like many of you, we experienced a lot of ups and downs in life. There were difficult financial challenges, health challenges, relationship challenges, and career challenges—basically many of the same challenges that most people go through in life.
What kept us going through it all was our faith in God and our belief that our attitude and mindset make a huge difference. The bumps we hit in life were somehow more manageable when we chose to see them as growth opportunities. We love the famous saying, “That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” And it’s not to say it was always easy. Many times, we felt that the hardships we faced would lead to our demise—some challenges are just that hard. Over the years, however, we’ve intentionally done a lot of studying about how to meet life with perseverance, passion, optimism, gratitude, and faith.
Eight years ago, we enrolled in a certificate program in Positive Psychology. Then we pursued certifications in coaching, relationships, resilience, positive education, and eventually a master's degree in Positive Psychology and Coaching. Over the past seven to eight years, we’ve loved learning, teaching, and coaching in all of these areas. We are passionate about helping people realize that the joy they experience in life is directly related to the thoughts they choose, the actions they take, and the lifestyle habits they keep.
Even when life is difficult, life can also be meaningful. As we look back over the years of our lives, we can see how some of our most heart-wrenching challenges were actually some of the best gifts (or at least biggest learning opportunities) since they’ve taught us things we might never have learned otherwise.
As we mentioned, our weekly Thrive at Life podcast is based on three thriving essentials: Connect, Thrive, and Create. Here’s what we mean:
It's interesting how most people think that once you reach mid-life, you just start going downhill, but that is actually not true. Recent research shows that the most productive time of your life is when you hit 60-70. The second most productive is shown to be when you hit 70-80. And the third most productive time in life, according to the study, is between the ages of 50-60.
So, if you want to be fit and healthy enough to really enjoy what researchers call the three most productive times in your life, start as early as you can to lay a healthy foundation for the rest of your life. And even if you’re at the latter part of life, it’s important to know that it’s never too late to start thriving at life…Which is what our podcast is all about, and we hope you’ll join us each week.
As we said, each week we’ll be sharing the topics of our three thriving essentials, which are Connect, Thrive, and Create. This week we’ll start with Connect. Basically, it’s the science behind why healthy relationships are the most important factor in your well-being.
So here’s a crucial question for you: “How healthy are YOUR relationships?” Have you ever noticed that some healthy relationships come so easily while other relationships can be very challenging—even toxic? People who struggle may wonder if relationship building is even worth the effort because of the hard work it can sometimes require.
While it is true that ALL relationships take effort, you’ll find that once you learn the skills for understanding yourself and others, relationship building can actually be extremely rewarding, even fun, and fulfilling, especially for successful people like you who value relationships and really care about what matters most.
Everyone knows about the COVID-19 pandemic which, for the last several years, has posed a threat to the health and well-being of everyone on our planet. But did you know that our world, for the past several years, has also been facing an additional public health concern? It’s a connection crisis known by researchers as the loneliness epidemic. Many people feel that their relationships are unfulfilling, strained, or dysfunctional, leaving them feeling frustrated and lonely.
Researchers report that one-third of adults in America suffer from loneliness. The UK has even appointed a loneliness minister as they and many other nations around the globe are also dealing with this connection crisis.
The saddest kind of loneliness is when you feel lonely in your own marriage because the truth is, relationships that are unfulfilling, strained, or dysfunctional leave people feeling lonely. Here’s a little bit more about WHY relationships matter so much to your happiness, health, success, and longevity!
A 2010 meta-analysis reviewed 148 studies involving over 300,000 participants and concluded that having weak social ties was as harmful to health as being an alcoholic, twice as harmful as obesity, and equivalent to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.
Perhaps one of the most dramatic studies is the one we mentioned in our opener: The Harvard Study of Adult Development. It’s the longest-running continual study on adult life. The study began in 1938, and it’s still going on, nearly 80 years later. Researchers followed the lives of 724 young men from their teenage years into old age. Some are still alive and well into their 90s.
This is an ongoing longitudinal study of mental and physical well-being. Dr. Robert Waldinger is the fourth and current director of the study. Every year, for 80 years, these men had to answer questionnaires from the researchers. They were interviewed, and their spouses and families were interviewed. They had their blood drawn, their brains scanned, plus lots of other testing. All of their medical records were meticulously analyzed. After thousands and thousands of hours of research, the thing that stood out most to the researchers is this:
The number one predictor of long-term happiness and mental and physical well-being is the quality of people’s relationships. Plain and simple: People who are more socially connected to family, friends, and community are happier, physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected.
The other thing that researchers learned after studying all these men for all these years is that loneliness kills! In fact, according to Dr. Waldinger, “The experience of loneliness turns out to be toxic!” People who are more isolated than they want to be from others find they are less happy, and their health declines earlier in mid-life. Their brain functioning declines sooner. They live shorter lives.
This shouldn’t surprise us. Most of us have learned about how orphans in third-world countries are more susceptible to illness, and many of those children die in the orphanages from failure to thrive. It’s been said that they die because of a lack of love. Research shows that failure to thrive due to low-quality relationships not only harms babies; it’s also detrimental to children, teenagers, and adults. We need each other, and we need quality connections in order to truly thrive at life.
Some people might say, “I’m surrounded by people every day, so this doesn’t apply to me.” Unfortunately, as Dr. Waldinger points out, you don’t have to be living on a desert island, isolated from the world, to feel lonely. Many people report feeling disconnected and lonely—even when they’re in a relationship. Studies show that, at any given time, 1 in 5 Americans report that they feel lonely.
That’s true. You can feel lonely in a family, in a marriage, or in any other relationship. You can feel lonely in the workplace, lonely in a crowd, and lonely in your community. If loneliness is toxic and 1 in 5 people report feeling lonely at any given time, is it any wonder that so many people struggle in life? Ironically, the fact that loneliness is toxic could be the reason solitary confinement has been used as a form of punishment, even torture. Sadly, many people around the globe now experience social isolation on a daily basis. Others go through daily life not feeling understood, valued, or loved, and not knowing how to connect in meaningful ways.
Loneliness in relationships can also happen when there’s a lack of empathy. Without empathy, people don’t understand or care about how others think and feel. Unfortunately, one study shows that empathy has declined 70% in the last 30 years.
After studying several hundred individuals for over 80 years, the Harvard study reported the following: People who are more isolated than they want to be from others find that they are less happy, their health declines earlier in mid-life, their brain functioning declines sooner, and they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely. The chronic stress of being lonely gets into the body and breaks it down.
But here’s the good news from the 80-year Harvard study: Quality relationships enliven and heal.
Teresa: Researchers also found that people who are more socially connected to family, friends, and community experience:
Thanks for joining us for week one of our Thrive at Life podcast. Please join us next week to learn about some of the longest-living and happiest people on the planet and the health and wellness strategies that are just part of their everyday lives—yet crucial to their longevity and meaningful living. Learning about and adopting their healthy living patterns can have a big impact on your life as well!
For sure! We’re super excited to share more Thrive at Life strategies with you next time. We’ll be talking about the research on the Blue Zoners—some of the healthiest and happiest people on the planet. We hope to see you soon.
Thanks for joining us! Have a GREAT day.
- Connect: We’ll be teaching research-based strategies and tools to help you cultivate quality relationships with family, friends, others, yourself, and God.
- Thrive: We’ll share studies and science to help you build lifestyle habits for optimal health—physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and spiritually—so that when life’s challenges arise, you’ll have the resilience, strength, and skills you need to persevere and bounce back even stronger.
- Create: In this area, we’ll help you develop the vision, grit, passion, and perseverance you need to achieve the goals and dreams you’re hoping for in life.
- Being in secure relationships is protective to the brain.
- Love reduces basal metabolism, heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, and muscle tension, all of which lead to better health.
- Love can literally strengthen and heal our hearts.
- Having had a loving and stable marriage at 50 predicted mental and physical health at 80 better than did a person’s weight, exercise habits, or cholesterol levels.
- Greater levels of happiness
- Improved mental and physical health and well-being
- Increased immune function
- Longer lifespan