I Need You And You Need Me
Connection. We all need it.
But what is connection?
No, it’s not looking for the nearest outlet to charge your phone and connecting to the WiFi.
Don’t be ridiculous.
It’s people.
We need each other.
And we seem to have forgotten.
I sure did.
Who Are You?
If the last few years have taught us anything, they’ve shown us that we need each other.
For better or worse, like it or not, we are all in this together—on a giant rock, ripping through the Universe.
So what is connection? How do you do it? Why do you need it?
I’m glad you asked.
Connection has two parts: social connection and connection with oneself.
You need to have healthy relationships with others and with yourself.
With yourself?
Yes, with yourself.
If you had asked me a year ago how to have a relationship with yourself I would have handed you a box of Kleenex and some lotion or a vibrator. Or both.
Now, I probably wouldn’t do that.
Probably.
Connection with yourself runs deep. It’s about getting to know who you are and what you’re all about. It’s about asking yourself real, meaningful questions and being curious enough to want to know the answers: What do you like? What don’t you like? Why? What lights you up? What makes you smile? Or cry? Or pissed? Why you are here and what you are going to do about it? And, most importantly, who do you want to be?
It’s a lot of things, and it takes a long time to peel back the layers of who you really are. But if you are willing to do the work, the rewards are substantial.
Add in emotional intelligence and healing and it goes even deeper.
We’ve Forgotten That We Need Each Other
I’ve come to believe that emotional health may represent the most important component of healthspan. Nothing else about longevity is really worth much without some degree of happiness, fulfillment, and connection to others. And misery and unhappiness can also destroy your physical health, just as surely as cancer, heart disease, neurodegenerative disease, and orthopedic injury. Even just living alone, or feeling lonely, is linked to a much higher risk of mortality.
Peter Attia. Outlive
Loneliness.
Being lonely comes in many shapes and sizes: you might just be alone. Literally. Or maybe you are with someone but feel alone. It’s a tricky thing, loneliness. If you’re not sure, ask Eleanor Rigby.
Of course, all connection starts with connection to yourself first. It starts with mindfulness and gaining awareness around all aspects of your life: who you are and what you are doing here.
But it is so much more than just connection with yourself.
It’s connection with others.
Social connection. You need it. I need it. We need it.1
It’s where true happiness is found: with others.
The longest longitudinal study ever conducted—the Harvard Study of Adult Development—has established a strong correlation between deep relationships and well-being.2
The facts are in: happier people have higher quality social connections. Happier people are kinder. They live longer, are less vulnerable to premature death, more likely to survive fatal illness, and less likely to fall prey to stressful events.3
The Simple Way to Be Happier
It took me a while to recognize this, but feeling connected and having healthy relationships with others, and with oneself, is as imperative as maintaining efficient glucose metabolism or an optimal lipoprotein profile. It is just as important to get your emotional house in order as it is to have a colonoscopy or an Lp(a) test, if not more so. It’s just a lot more complicated.
Peter Attia
The best part of all of this: you can make yourself happier by being nice to someone else!
That’s it.
An unlimited source of happiness-juice sitting, waiting in the people around you. Even strangers.
Gasp!
Yes, even strange, random people you’ve never ever seen before hold a key to your happiness.
It really is that simple.
We didn’t need a global pandemic to teach us that we need actual human connection. That we need each other. But I think we’ve learned our lesson.
For a little bit at least.
But that’s the sneaky thing about the human mind: it goes right back to its baseline as soon as it can.
It’s necessary that we remember that we need social connection.
One of the biggest fears that most people have about connecting with strangers is that they feel the other person won’t want to engage in conversation and that it will be awkward.
This is quite the opposite. Psychologist Nicholas Epley has shown in his studies in Chicago’s buses and trains, that the results are even more shocking. Not only do the subjects who are told to initiate a conversation with a stranger report a substantially higher boost in positivity as opposed to the subjects who traveled solo, but the strangers who were initiated into conversation reported a much, much higher mood after the interaction.4 (Of course, this is assuming that you’re not some super-duper weirdo who tries to lick strangers you’ve just met on a train or something. What? I don’t know you. Yet.)
We All Want Social Connection
People need people. We thrive off connection.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you are reading this now thinking, “Not me. I would not enjoy talking to some random stranger on public transportation. Nope. Never. Not. Gonna. Happen. I would totally prefer to travel solo and just do something on my phone.”
But you’d be wrong.
Miswanting is a term coined by researchers Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson. It states that we (yes, you, too) often inaccurately predict how much enjoyment and satisfaction we will derive from a certain experience.5
In this case, being alone. You might think you prefer to be alone. Work alone. Take transportation alone. But you’d be wrong.
Of course, like all things. That doesn’t mean you have to go around talking everyone’s ear off and hugging all the strangers you meet on the street. It just means that what you think you want is often wrong. And you thinking that you would like to “be alone” is not at all what you really want and definitely not what would make you happiest.
It’s all too easy for you to not pick up the phone and call that old friend, even though you want to.
And it’s all too easy not to send that gratitude card or deliver it in person because you are “busy” or will “do it later”.
It’s all too easy to just walk by everyone and not smile or say “Hello” first because you are staring at your phone or in your own head.
It’s all too easy to forget.
To forget that we need each other.
And that…
Will not make you happy.
- https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/health-happiness/2023/10/11/from-loneliness-to-social-connection-lessons-from-research-and-a-global-pandemic/ ↩︎
- https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/harvard-happiness-study-relationships/672753/ ↩︎
- https://oskarwolthoorn.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Demographics-and-hapiness-in-the-world.pdf ↩︎
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263899201_Mistakenly_Seeking_Solitude ↩︎
- https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2000-07085-007 ↩︎
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