A 75-year-long study just revealed the key to happiness, and most of us are getting it so very wrong.

There are lots of things that can contribute to happiness and fulfillment, and they vary with each individual. A 75-year-long study, however, has found one common element that's believed to play a pivotal role in most people's genuine, longstanding happiness.

Good ol' fashioned friendship.

This study, which is considered the longest ongoing study on human happiness, started at Harvard University in 1938 with 724 men, 60 of whom are still alive today (women were added later because misogyny). After decades of observation, one of the study's leaders, Robert Waldinger, came to this conclusion:

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She was too depressed to do the simplest chore. Then her friends showed up in a big way.

People who don’t struggle with depression can sometimes feel at a loss for how to help loved ones who do.

If you’ve never fallen into a mental hole you couldn't climb out of, it’s hard to understand how depression can be so debilitating. And when you're peering down at a loved one at the bottom of that hole, it’s hard to know how to help them out.

You can try to coach them on how to climb, but you don't understand how slippery the walls are. You can try to offer them a rope, but you don't realize that their muscles are too spent to grab it and hold on.

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Think cricket's just for stodgy British types? Think again.

When Neeraj Kher came to live in the United States, he thought he’d made a mistake. He couldn’t find any cricket.

He had always been a cricket player. Born in New Delhi, India, he had learned the sport young, and then lived in two other cricket-playing countries, Australia and England.

But then, he settled in Newport, New Jersey, in 2011 for work and to be closer to his sister.

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There’s a surprising science behind making friends, and this psychologist is teaching it.

Imagine if someone jumped into your conversation at a party without an introduction, interrupting you mid-sentence.

That might strike you as odd or rude. But when we give someone the simple advice to "just go up and introduce yourself," we're skipping many of the nonverbal steps important to making a good impression.

For most, connecting with other people relies on intuition. However, social interactions of all sorts — from just saying "hello" to a new acquaintance to interviewing for a new job — can be challenging. For people with autism, it can be even more difficult to know how to strike up that first conversation.

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