Whenever billionaire philanthropist Melinda French Gates contemplates a tough decision, she seeks input from her three closest friends of more than 30 years.
Every Monday morning, the four women go for a walk — a ritual that often serves as a site for deliberation, she told Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King in an episode of French Gates' "Moments That Make Us" YouTube series, which published last week.
"If you're in town, you walk," French Gates said. "They are my truth counsel. Whenever I'm going to make a really hard decision or make a big transition, I know I have to have the courage to tell them."
For example, the trio of friends was the first to know when French Gates began to consider ending her marriage to Bill Gates after 27 years, she said — and they offered her unanimous support.
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"I would not have gotten through my divorce without my three closest friends. There's no chance," she said. "You actually need a friend who will tell you the truth, even when you don't want to hear it."
French Gates learned the importance of quality over quantity in friendships early in life, she said. Research backs her up: A decades-long study conducted by researchers at Harvard University found that positive relationships are the key to a happy, healthy and long life.
"Our social life is a living system, and it needs exercise," the study's directors, Marc Schulz and Robert Waldinger, wrote for CNBC Make It last year. "Social fitness requires taking stock of our relationships, and being honest with ourselves about where we're devoting our time and whether we are tending to the connections that help us thrive."
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Schulz and Waldinger listed seven integral types of support that humans depend on each other to provide, including safety and security, learning and growth, and emotional closeness and confiding. You can take stock of your relationships by writing down a tally of how many types of support each one offers, they wrote.
It's normal for many relationships to not offer every dimension of support — so your goal should be identifying the support gaps in your life, the duo added.
"You might realize that you have plenty of people you have fun with, but no one to confide in," Schulz and Waldinger wrote. "Don't be afraid to reach out to the people in your life ... It's never too late to deepen the connections that matter to you."
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