Love the Ones You’re With
The Case for Connection
When my children have experienced a big transition–a new grade or school–or even after they graduated from college or started a new job–and they’ve felt alone, I’ve always told them to connect with the people they already know and to make one new friend. And when they do, it makes all the difference to their experience and usually leads to more connections. This is advice that I’ve followed, and it’s always worked.
We all know that warm, positive connections enhance our lives: they bring us love, joy, companionship, a sense of belonging, and someone to count on when we want to celebrate or are going through a rough patch.
Yet, when we’re most stressed or ‘busy’ (in good or bad ways) or going through major life transitions or transformations, friendships are often the first thing to go. We quickly begin to feel isolated, not always realizing that we're the ones who cut ourselves off in the first place.
Modern life is challenging all of us; more people feel lonely and disconnected on a regular basis:
52% of Americans report feeling lonely (Source) and 35% of Europeans (Source)
47% of American adults report that their relationships with others are not meaningful (Source)
Single or not, 57% of Americans report eating all meals alone (Source)
And it’s not just our connection with others that we’re losing; often, it’s our connection to ourselves and our purpose; 38% of Americans “say a lack of purpose perpetuates their loneliness.” (Source)
One of the most common challenges my clients raise (or discover) is how disconnected they feel from themselves or others before, during, and after a life transition or transformation, and the impact that lack of connection is having on them.
Depending on the person and situation, I may suggest they aside a specific amount of time each day and week to meaningfully connect with those they love or care about.
For connection to self, we cultivate habits of mind, body, spirit, and heart, experimenting with and establishing a rhythm that can support them.
Some clients are initially perplexed by this step; many wonder what they’ll actually do with the time and question the benefits–until they experience the benefits, that is!
We are naturally wired for connection, and we know it, yet we’re never really taught how to do it. That's why it’s especially hard when we have to work to connect with others while we’re going through a challenging time. But, research shows that it is during these moments that connection–to ourselves and others–is most critical. In fact, it turns out that there’s WAY more to connection than meets the eye.
Connection is vital to your health
As I’ve been working on my book, I’ve been rereading books and articles, re-listening to podcasts, and reviewing notes from published research and my own, beginning with work related to connection. (I’ve added a list at the end of this post in case you’re interested.) Even though this is my second or third look at some of this work, the findings still stop me in my tracks:
Relationships shape our physiology
Connection lessens depression and increases hope
Finding your tribe or Moai will lengthen your life
Relationships shape our physiology
Science has demonstrated a powerful correlation between the ‘warmth of our connections with other people’ and our overall physical health, ‘how long we live and how happy we are’ (Source). Studies consistently find that our long-term physical health is directly linked to how ‘connected we are to other people’ (Source). Positive, warm, relationships serve as stress regulators.
When stress moves us into fight-or-flight, trusting relationships help us return to a calm state. When we don’t do that and, instead, endure chronic stress alone, “our bodies never quite go back to baseline.” Physically, this means we will suffer from “increased inflammation and elevating levels of circulating stress hormones,” for example, which, over time, “will break down multiple systems in the body, coronary arteries, joints…” and more.
Dr Robert Waldinger, MD, the director of the longest-running study on happiness (running since 1939), says that the most surprising finding is that relationships can predict healthy longevity.
“What are the strongest predictors of who will be healthy and happy at age 80, when we look [at them] at age 50? When we looked, it wasn’t their cholesterol levels; it was how happy they were in their relationships [at age 50].”(Source)
So, if you’ve got positive, warm relationships in your life at 50, you are likely to be healthier at 80 than those who don’t, so much so that you won’t likely develop diseases typically associated with aging until later, or, perhaps not at all.
Connection lessens depression & increases hope
Research also indicates that connection plays a huge part in depression and anxiety diagnoses and recovery. Many of the initial understandings of depression (e.g. chemical imbalance and genetics) are giving way to the acceptance that depression is a more complex disease that we have yet to fully understand.
There is some agreement that depression is also (and often likely) caused by something going wrong in your life, or prolonged periods of something going wrong. This will make sense to anyone who has gone through challenging times like divorce, chronic financial troubles, poverty and or toxic stress in childhood.
There are at least seven types of disconnection that may influence depression and anxiety, including disconnection from meaningful work and values, the natural world, childhood trauma, status and respect, and a hopeful or secure future (Hari, 2018). And (you guessed i!t) depression is also linked to the lack of connection to other people.
With the new understanding of depression comes new approaches to therapy, including ‘social prescribing.’ In, Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope, author Johann Hari shares how ‘social prescribing’ is positively impacting a community of patients at the Bromley-by-Bow Medical Center in East London.
The lead physician there saw many patients with depression and anxiety who were not improving with medication alone. Spending time talking to patients helped him understand that people needed support to change their lives and address the root problems causing their depression. To coaches, therapists and educators (and grandparents) this may seem incredibly logical, but, in his field, ‘social prescribing’ was an “unprecedented experiment.”
“When you went to see your doctor, you didn’t just get pills. You were prescribed one of over a hundred different ways to reconnect–with the people around you, with society, and with values that really matter.” (Lost Connections, p.234)
Among these were community-based projects, where patients worked as a self-led team to transform an abandoned space into a garden, for example. The experimental ‘social prescribing’ led to a breakthrough: working on a shared goal can move people from strangers to a community of friends and both the sense of connection to the community and the project can improve depression and anxiety.
This is just one way in which warm relationships contribute to supporting mental health and a healthy connection to oneself.
Finding Your Tribe or ‘Moai’ Will Lengthen Your Life
All of this research links beautifully to the findings of the renowned Blue Zones study on longevity–that is, places in the world where people routinely live healthy lives into their 100s, like Okinawa. One of the vital practices found to sustain the longevity of Okinawans is the Moai.
Moai are formal “social support groups that start in childhood and extend into the 100s.” Think of this like friends who live near one another, but who are intentionally grouped together:
“Traditionally, groups of about five young children were paired together and it’s then that they made a commitment to each other for life. As their second family, they would meet regularly with their moai for both work and play and to pool resources. Some Moais have lasted over 90 years!” (Source)
As people age, they can rely on this trusted, close group of friends whom they see each week to support them through everything in life. And they are not the only group that sees healthy longevity benefits from close relationships; there are others across the world, including the Amish. All of this reinforces the physical and mental benefits of investing in warm relationships and community.
Go ahead & connect now
A few years back when I took extended time off work to recover from burnout and the sudden death of my mom, after a couple of months, I remember missing some of my friends who I used to see daily at work. I wanted to reach out, but I felt like I’d disappeared and would need to explain. And, the voice in my head (who was not well trained back then) said that perhaps they wouldn’t want to talk to me either. I reached out anyway and to my surprise, despite me feeling a little awkward, everyone I reached out to was delighted to hear from me. Connecting with them raised my spirits, energized me, and reinforced some long-standing friendships! You just never know where a connection might lead.
Finished reading? Why not grab your phone and call a friend? While you’re at it, I love connecting with readers, so connect with me over on LinkedIn or Instagram!
Some References on Connection
The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, by Dan Buettner (2008)
Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope, by Johann Hari (2018)
The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study on Happiness, by Robert Waldinger, MD and Marc Schulz, PhD (2022)
The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware (2011)