September 1, 2023 • 33 mins
Ever find yourself yearning for a deeper bond with those around you?
Creating deeper connections doesn't have to be an exhausting or daunting task.
We can still create connections in the simplest most ordinary ways if we make time for it and show sincerity.
From the hustle and bustle of everyday life to the moments of solitude, we'll uncover the secrets to forging relationships that stand the test of time. Your social life doesn't have to feel like a performance – let's make it a celebration.
Let's explore how broadening your emotional language can be the key to unlocking a world of deeper connections. Say goodbye to surface-level chatter and say hello to discussions that spark genuine connections. From sharing smiles with strangers to using technology to our advantage, each habit is a stepping stone to deeper relationships.
In this episode, you'll learn:
How to bridge connection gap
How to tune into yourself before making connections
How to be more vocal about your emotions
How to make new memories with old friends
How to start engaging conversations
Hope you're able to genuinely connect with someone today. Let's make every connection count!
With Love and Gratitude,
Jay Shetty
What We Discuss:
00:00 Intro
01:36 Do you sometimes feel lonely, or disconnected from the people around you?
07:58 Habit #1: Check in with yourself - Does your social life start to feel like work or when your social life feels like it's non-existent?
14:14 Habit #2: Expand your emotional vocabulary - If you wanna see, hear, and understand and value other people better, you need to expand your emotional vocabulary
17:56 Habit #3: Old new and new old - While we use nostalgia to build connection, try to build new memories with an old friend
20:44 Habit #4: Ask interesting questions - Go for more open and fascinating questions that won’t pressure other people to answer
23:05 Habit #5: Deep versus shallow time - Take the time to invest in creating a small group where you can build deeper connections
26:07 Habit #6: Look for patterns and connections where others don’t see them
27:20 Habit #7: Smile at strangers and say hello creates an energy for small moments of connection
28:40 Habit #8: Use technology to your advantage and connect with people you haven’t talked with in a while or reconnect with them anytime
30:04 Habit #9: Giving creates connect - When you give someone a part of you, a piece of you, a truth about you, it allows you to connect with them
30:52 Habit #10: Invite people for ordinary tasks - It’s okay to spend time with people in boring ways and connect with them
31:34 Habit #11: Connecting with people in all ages
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Of course, there are benefits to solitude, but according to
the National Institute on Aging, the health risks of prolonged
isolation are equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Social
isolation and loneliness have even been estimated to shorten a
person's lifespan by as many as fifteen years. All the
(00:20):
studies show that the quality of our relationships makes a
huge difference in our life. Hey, everyone, welcome back to
on Purpose. I am so genuinely grateful that you chose
to spend some time with me today, whether you're walking,
(00:42):
whether you're driving, whether you're cooking, whatever you're up to.
Thank you for choosing on purpose always. I love the
connection we're developing, and whenever I bump into any of
you and you tell me you listen it on purpose,
all I want to do is give you a big
ug and say thank you, because it truly, truly means
the world to me. I bumped into a few of
you who even came to my shows recently at some
(01:04):
restaurants when I was in LA and it just warms
my heart to know that we're building this community without
even knowing how deeply it's impacting all of us, including me.
So your feedback, your love, your support, your reviews, your
subscribing to the podcast means so much to me. Now,
(01:25):
I want to talk today about something that I know
a lot of us are struggling with in different ways.
Let's just start with a quick poll. How many of
you have ever felt lonely? I'm guessing there's quite a
few of us. How many of you have ever felt
(01:46):
disconnected from the people around you. I'm guessing there's quite
a few of us as well. And how many of
you felt that you don't feel authentically connected to your community,
that you find yourself having potentially negative judgments, or even
if it isn't going down that way, you may just
(02:08):
feel a bit distant from the people around you. I
want to take a moment to point out that it's
so natural and normal to want to feel connected. It's
so normal, so natural, so real to want to feel connected,
but we don't often know what that means. Right. We
(02:29):
say things like I don't feel connected to you, I
don't feel connected to the people around me, I don't
feel supported. But really, what it means to be connected
is that you feel seen, you feel heard, you feel understood,
and you feel valued. Plus you make other people feel seen,
(02:53):
You make other people feel heard, you try your best
to understand others, and you intend to make people valued
for real. This isn't just a technique or a hack
or an activity. Wanting to be connected requires it to
be sincere and genuine and real. Now, I want to
(03:17):
start off by just pointing out how normal it is
to feel disconnected. Only fifty nine percent of Americans say
they have a best friend, and twelve percent say they
feel they have no close friends at all. I'm taking
this from the rootsof loneliness dot com ridden by doctor
Christy Hartman, a pH d in psychology, who shared this
(03:39):
incredible research that she found through the National Library of Medicine,
the Centers for Disease Control, YUGOV, Health Resources and Services Administration,
SAGE Journals, Taylor and Francis Online, and others. Fifty two
percent of Americans report feeling lonely, while forty one percent
(04:00):
report their relationship with others are not meaningful. So you
can see those two things there. One is us feeling
disconnected and removed, and the other one is saying, actually,
I'm around a lot of people, but I don't feel
like it's meaningful. How many of You go to a
lot of parties or a lot of events, you come
across a lot of people, but you don't really get
that depth of connection. Right, We've got so lost in
(04:24):
this breadth and scale of connecting that we've often lost
the gift and depth of connecting single or not. Fifty
seven percent of Americans report eating all meals alone. Now
we've gone from doing an activity that we used to
do potentially even with your parents. So just like ten,
fifteen years ago, or maybe just five years ago, you
(04:46):
were eating every meal surrounded by your family, your siblings,
your parents, and all of a sudden, now you're eating
all of your meals alone, whether you're single or not.
That takes a while to get used to. And as
we look at the trail across the world, of course
we're living more separately now we travel across the world.
Like me and my wife when we moved to New
York and then we moved to la we now have
(05:08):
lived without family around us for seven years. If we
lived in London, we would have been able to visit
our family every weekend or even in the evenings, whereas
now we're seeing them after so much more time. So
there's a lot of shifts also in the way we
live and the way we conduct our lives that impacts
how we feel. Fifty two percent of Americans have felt
(05:31):
left out at some point in their lives. Now, it's
really interesting, how I think if you thought about the
first time you felt left out, it might be on
the field at school, or it might be in the playground.
And it's interesting how when we get left out as
an adult, we're triggered back into that mindset of a kid,
and instead of using our rational, logical brain to make
(05:54):
sense of it now, we often go back to using
that child brain to adapt or react or respond to
what we're experiencing. And we're going to talk about that
a little bit today. Fifty three percent of Americans cite
shyness as the reason why it's difficult to make friends.
How many of you feel shy? I can relate to
this one. And I know you think you Jay, you're
not shy at all. Trust me. If I'm in a
(06:15):
new environment where I don't know anyone, I give you
one of the shyest people in the world. And at
the same time, if I'm in an environment where I'm
flourishing or thriving, I can be the most confident person
in the room. But I realize that shyness blocks so
many of us. We've never been taught how to approach someone.
And what's really interesting is that shyness often gets seen
(06:36):
as ego or coldness, and often social anxiety gets seen
in the same way. And so we're looking at other
people going, oh, they don't seem to care about me
or find me interesting. They're thinking the same about us.
Fifty eight percent of Americans reported that they sometimes are
always feels like no one knows them. Well, maybe you're
(06:59):
someone who's traveled country. Maybe you've traveled, you know, across
the world, and no one speaks your language where you live,
no one really knows your heritage, no one really knows
your background. It's so fascinating for people to recognize the
reasons why it's natural for us to feel this way. Now.
(07:22):
Of course, there are benefits to solitude, but according to
the National Institute on Aging, the health risks of prolonged
isolation are equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Social
isolation and loneliness have even been estimated to shorten a
person's lifespan by as many as fifteen years. All the
(07:44):
studies show that the quality of our relationships makes a
huge difference in our life, and this episode is all
about the habit needed that we need to reconnect with
to create connection. So this segment about connectivity is brought
to you by AT and T. AT and T believes
(08:04):
connecting changes everything. I recently went on tour for my
second book, Eight Rules of Love, and brought so many
people together from all over the world. Part of the
show was inviting people from the crowd up on a
stage to reconnect with a loved one they haven't spoken
to in a long time. We had parents reconnect with
their children, fathers reconnect with their sons, siblings reconnect with
(08:26):
each other, and so many more. Deep human connections are
vital for mental and physical health because they fulfill and
innate human need to belong. Connected relationships allow you to
open up, be authentic, and feel truly supported by those
around you. If your relationships seem to be lacking depth,
improving your capacity for connectedness can make you feel closer
(08:48):
to friends or loved ones. Build your emotional support system,
increase your social charisma, help you approach conversations in a
more meaningful way, expand your social group improve your profet
sesational success, increase professional productivity, improve your financial success, Provide
a feeling of belonging in safety, reduce your risk for
(09:09):
mental health issues, and reduce your risk for mental health challenges.
If you're feeling isolated from your loved ones, family, or friends,
I encourage you to reach out to them today. It
will inspire you to grow and ultimately improve your connection
with them and others. Take advantage of having access to
Wi Fi calling and texting. There are so many ways
(09:30):
you can use a phone to stay connected, even when
you're traveling or living in a place that is far
from your friends and loved ones. Here are four common
methods you can use today besides apps for staying connected
with others. Number one video conferencing when you're away from
your significant other, friends, your family. This is a great
way to celebrate birthdays and adversaries in special moments by
(09:52):
sharing a moment over video and seeing their face. I
know it's not the same, but I love having the
opportunity to face down my family and friends who still
live in the UK. Number two emailing. Sending an email
is a great way to stay connected to old colleagues, professors,
or even bosses. It may not sound like the most
intimate way, but I found it can be a great
surprise for a professor or teacher when you also use
(10:15):
it as a way to explain the impact they had
on you. Now, texting, we all text. It's simple and easy,
but if you use text to send a thirty second
to sixty second message of gratitude to one person personally
and one person professionally a day, it can change the game.
And of course calling, I mean we don't do enough
of it anymore. When someone calls you just for a moment,
(10:36):
even if it's just to check in, hearing someone's voice
can make you feel like you're at home, and it
can be so grounding. This has been brought to you
by AT and T. AT and T believes connecting inspires, unites, heals,
and helps us grow. Connecting changes how we live our
lives for the better. So the first thing I'm going
to ask you to do when we think about becoming connected,
(10:58):
a habit that really makes it difference is checking in
with yourself. Number one. Check in with yourself. Is your
social brad tree drained or is your social battery charged?
Are you ready to spend time with people or is
that going to tie you out right now? And this
is someone something you have to check in with yourself.
(11:20):
I think a lot of us go through bouts of
like overextending ourselves and then under extending ourselves. And usually
when we're under extending, we feel lonely, and when we're overextending,
we feel overworked. Right it's when social when your social
life starts to feel like work, or when your social
life feels like it's non existent. We don't really live
in this balance state. And the balance state is not
(11:41):
about how much time you spend with people. It's about
how you feel energetically. For example, you could just go
out for one night a week and feel completely socially
battery charged, so you're really happy with that and you're
okay with that, or you could go out for one
night and feel completely drained based on what you do,
And so I want you to check in with yourself
(12:02):
right now and go this weekend, do you feel charged
to spend time with people or do you feel drained
and you need time alone? And I want you to
base on how you feel, not what's going on, not
how many events are happening, not what you've been invited
to or haven't been invited to, because sometimes we get
upset by things we're not invited to, even if we
didn't want to go, Right, how many of you have
(12:23):
ever felt, I'd be honest with me, how many of
you have known you don't want to go out? But
now you're offended that you're not invited. And that's why
we need to check in with ourselves. We need to
take a moment to ask ourselves, am I charged or
am I drained? If I'm charged, who would I like
to spend that energy with? It's almost like asking yourself,
I just won the lottery, who am I going to
(12:45):
spend this money on? Right? That's how you have to
think about it. If you're charged, and if you're drained,
you have to just be like, well, I just lost
this time and lost this money and lost this energy.
How am I going to get charged up again? Who's
going to help me charge? If I'm going to charge
with other people? Or do I need to charge alone? Right?
That's how you want to think about checking in with yourself.
(13:05):
And this self awareness is really where it starts, because
if you don't make yourself feel seen, yourself feel heard,
yourself feel understood and valued you will constantly expect it
from someone else. And I think that's what we do.
We walk around wanting other people to make us feel seen, heard,
(13:26):
and understood and valued as a substitute for doing it
for ourselves. So because we don't take a moment to
check in with ourselves, to see ourselves or hear ourselves,
or understand ourselves or value ourselves, we're constantly trying to
fill that gap. Right If you've just drank water yourself
and someone's offers you water, you'd say no, no, no, I
just did that myself and you wouldn't overthink it. But
(13:49):
if you hadn't got water and someone said, hey, do
you want a bottle of water, you'd say, yeah, yeah,
sure I want that because I haven't had any. So
you're looking for someone else, you'll ask them, hey, do
you have some water? We do the same thing emotionally.
We emotionally ask for other people to check in with
us and quench our thirst, as opposed to checking in
(14:10):
with ourselves. So I want you to start there now.
The second habit is expanding your emotional vocabulary. If you
want to see here, understand and value yourself better. And
by the way, if you want to see here and
understand and value other people better. You need to expand
(14:30):
your emotional vocabulary. And I want to point this out.
Connecting isn't just about do I feel connected? Do I
feel a part of the group. The questions also do
you make other people feel part of the group? Do
you reach out to other people? I promise you, for
every party you feel you're not invited to, there's someone
you're not inviting out somewhere and you may say, well,
I don't want to spend time with them, and that's
(14:50):
totally fine, But I promise you that feeling connected is
as much something you have to do proactively as you
have to be involved in someone else. When you're making
an effort to make other people feel included, to make
other people feel seen and heard and understood, I promise
you that's going to make you feel connected as well.
(15:10):
I think we think of feeling connected as being embraced,
but not embracing someone else, And I promise you it
does feel incredible when you take an opportunity to actually extend, embrace,
enhance someone else's experience. Now, as I was talking about
emotional vocabulary, this goes back to the Harvard Business Review
(15:33):
and a source from Susan David and it's called a
list of emotions. And the Harvard Business Review talks about
how we use some very basic emotions to define how
we feel. So we may sound angry, we may say
I'm sad, we may sound anxious, we may say I'm hurt,
we may sound embarrassed, and we may sound happy. Those
(15:55):
are pretty much as far as our emotional vocabulary goes.
But this emotion's list and you can literally google it.
Just type in a Harvard emotional list. I call it
emotional vocabulary. You can break down what type of anger
you're feeling. So the list that I'm reading off right now,
instead of saying you're angry, are you actually grumpy? Are
(16:16):
you frustrated? Are you annoyed? Are you defensive? Maybe you're impatient?
Are you disgusted? Are you offended or irritated? Notice how
they are all these different types of anger. And when
we don't diagnose ourselves effectively, we don't feel understood by ourselves,
(16:36):
and therefore when we communicate to other people, they don't
fully understand us either. So we'll be like, oh, I'm upset,
but it's like, what does that mean? How are you
feeling right now? How can I help you? How can
I help you feel better? And we do a bad
job of communicating what we're actually experiencing. They also do
this for the word hurt. Are you feeling jealous? Are
(16:59):
you feeling betrayed? Are you feeling isolated or shocked, deprived, victimized,
tormented or abandoned? There are so many ways. Now, I'm
not saying you're gonna go to your next conversation and
be like, I feel really tormented today, right, That's not
my point. But I want you to expand your emotional
vocabulary so that you can really see your emotions for
what they are. You can communicate your emotions for what
(17:21):
they are. And why does this help you become more connected?
Because you're becoming more connected to what's actually going on.
Rather than having a shallow, surface level relationship with yourself,
you now have a deep relationship. Rather than expressing yourself
in a limited way, you're now allowing someone to understand
(17:45):
the layers of what you're experiencing. Notice how the first
two things are very much about you and connecting with
yourself in order to do the others. Now, the third
one is probably one of my favorite ones, and it's
one that I've tried a lot recently and I love it.
It's called old new and new old. Now, the way
(18:06):
this works is when I meet an old friend, I
try and connect on something new. A lot of us
in our long term relationships we live in nostalgia. Oh
do you remember when we went on that trip, Oh
my gosh, do you remember the last day of school?
Oh do you remember when you were dating so and so?
And we use nostalgia as a way to build connection.
(18:27):
Nothing wrong with that, Absolutely nothing wrong with that. But
what's really important and special is making new memories with
people that have been in your life for a long time.
So if someone's an old friend, make a new memory
with them. Stop making your relationship about nostalgia and the
good old days and the past, and think about how
(18:50):
can I go and build a new memory with this
person that we can talk about for the next few weeks,
maybe the next couple of years. But let's build new memories.
Or what's something new I can discover about an old friend.
It may be a new skill. I remember being with
a family member that I hadn't spent time with since
I was like sixteen years old. So it's like twenty
(19:11):
years ago, and they kept saying to me. They said, Jay,
you've changed so much, like you're so different. I'm like,
of course I have. It's been twenty years and it's
really fascinating to me that they were more interested in
the change as opposed to who I am today and
the newness. Right, And so I want you to think
about who do you have who's an old friend, and
how can you make new memories with them? How can
(19:32):
you learn something new about who they are, what they do,
what they love, what they value, what they believe in.
Taking an interest in something new with someone old, building
a new memory with someone old in your life can
be really truly spectacular. And then it's the other way around,
new old. So now with the new old, it's like,
(19:52):
who's a new person in your life that you can
connect over something old. Maybe you grew up in the
same area. I was just doing a zoom keynote and
the person who was talking to me was from near
where I grew up in London as well and went
to school, and we started talking about it. It was a
new relationship, but we found an old connection. It was
a new person that I didn't know, but we found
(20:14):
an old common point to bond over to start a
new relationship right, so old new, new old. It's one
of my favorite things. When I meet someone new, I think, hey,
what do we have in common? What's in our past
that may correlate or intersect? And when I have someone
that has been in my life for a long time,
I think, oh, well, what's a new memory we can make, right,
what's something new that I can learn about them. It's
(20:35):
a really subtle art, but it's really really profound in
how it can impact a conversation. Have it Number four
kind of links to number three. But we have to
ask interesting questions otherwise everyone will appear uninteresting. I really
believe this. If you ask even the most interesting person
(20:56):
in the world uninteresting conversations and questions, they will appear
uninteresting and you will appear uninterested. And that's why we struggle.
Because we've been taught to ask questions like, so, what
do you do? How is your week? What did you
do this week? What did you do today? We even
do that with our partners. And by the way, every
time you ask your partner what did you do today,
(21:18):
it kind of creates an almost false pressure in them
of them having to have done something or achieved something.
So this doesn't even apply to new connections. It applies
to the friends you see every week and you go,
what did you do this week? And that question is
something they've been asked for so many years that they
have either a rehearsed, unconscious response or it puts pressure
(21:41):
on them to have to think about what they did
rather than a question that's more open and fascinating. I
always like my final five from the podcast of like
what's the best advice you've ever received? Or what's the
worst advice you've ever received? I love asking someone like,
what's the best conversation you had this week? Or what's
the most interesting thing that happened to you this week?
(22:03):
And it allows for them to reflect and think, or
were you bored at all this week? The opposite, and
if you could learn anything, what would it be? Or
what did you learn? Did you come across anything new
this week? And it may take them a moment, give
them some time, but this is especially valuable for the
people who've been in your life consistently and people you
(22:24):
see regularly, and we need to disrupt the pattern of
the conversation. I think what happens is when you know
someone well and they know you, you fall into the
patterns of the same questions, the same conversations, the same chores,
the same activities, and the question being how do we
create a method to actually shift the conversations so you
(22:46):
actually catch the other person off guard, You surprise them.
They hear something that they haven't heard before from you,
and all of a sudden, they start diving into a
new topic. Maybe they even get to reflect, and you
give them the gift of introspection because they've not even
had the time to do that, and now you've given
them that opportunity. Number five, this habit deep versus shallow time.
(23:08):
This is a big, big wig one for me, maybe
counterintuitive to what you think of me, but I generally
don't like spending time with people in large groups because
it means I have to spend little time with everyone.
It almost reminds me of my wedding reception where we
had so many guests. Indian weddings are notoriously large, and
(23:30):
OS was on the smaller side. Yet we still had
like three four hundred people at our reception. Yes, that
is on the smaller side, and I remember that evening
having to go around table to table to thank everyone
who came. Now, I was very grateful to everyone who came,
but at the same time, I felt like I was torn.
I felt like I couldn't be with the present, with
the people that I wanted to be. I wanted to
(23:52):
extend myself to everyone, but I wanted to make them
feel valued. And all of a sudden, you start spending
shallow time with everyone, and then you feel guilty for
not giving time to the people who you've known a
long time, and you feel guilty because you feel not
like you didn't honor the people who turned up, and
then you just kind of feel upset, right like shallow
(24:13):
time doesn't help build a healthy sense of connection. And
I'm not saying don't go to parties or don't go
to events, but if all of our social life, if
all of our connecting with others is done in big
groups where we get three minute conversations with everyone, and
all of a sudden, you're getting pulled in another direction,
You're getting torn in another direction to talk to this
(24:34):
person or that person, or someone else comes in late
and leaves early, and all of a sudden, you realize,
wait a minute, what did I even talk about today.
I basically had the same conversation seven times this evening. Right, Hey,
how's your week been, what have you been up to,
how's it all going? Oh? Sorry, I've got to run
off here. Okay, right, taking the time to say, you
know what, I'm just going to do groups of eight,
(24:55):
We're just going to do groups of five. You know what,
I'm just going to do a one on one. How
do you feel up? How do you feel connected? Some
of us feel connected in bigger groups, some of us
feel connected in smaller groups. Create the group. Don't just
wait to be invited to everything else. Create the evening,
create the invite, Create the moment that you need in
(25:17):
your life. Think about whether all of your social life
has become so shallow. And by the way, when I
say shallow, I don't mean shallow people. I mean it's
so shallow in surface level conversation because you haven't created
an environment to have a deep connection. I had a
friend that came over a couple of weeks ago. She's awesome,
I love her, and she came over to hang out
(25:38):
with me and Radian. Before she came over, i'd asked her,
I'd said, Hey, do you want me to invite anyone else,
and she said, you know what, I'd just like to
sit with both of you, being so nice to have that,
And I said great, because I was hoping for the
same thing. I just didn't want you to feel bored.
And even checking in in that way with a friend
is so important, where I was like, oh gosh, I
don't want it to be bored if it's just her,
and asked, and maybe she'll want to hang out and
see other people. And I realized that that's all she wanted,
(26:01):
and actually that was all we wanted, and it turned
out to be a great evening to connect. Habit number six.
Look for patterns and connections where others don't see them.
Don't look at things as disconnected. I think a lot
of us look at our life as disconnected. So we
look at our life as like, God, I've got to
(26:21):
spend time at work and at home. I've got life
and I've got my career. And what that starts to
do is it actually starts to create distance between how
your mind views things, rather than the understanding that if
I'm healthier at work, I'll be healthier at home, and
if I'm healthier at home, I'll be healthier at work.
So often what we try and do is say, gosh,
I need to spend less time at work and more
(26:41):
time at home. But what we're doing is we're letting
our absence at work bleed into being absent at home. Right.
What's really interesting about the mind is we're constantly training
it in the moment as to how we want it
to be. So for training the mind to not be
at work when we're at work, then the mind won't
be able to switch into being where it is when
(27:03):
it's at home. That way, we end up pushing away
our work family and our home family, and both tend
to become a bit disenfranchised with the lack of our presence.
And so look for patterns and connections where others don't
see them. Don't look at things as disconnected. Number seven.
Smile it strangers say hello. I do a hike pretty
(27:25):
much five times a week, different hikes, but sometimes the
same one. And one thing I love is seeing people
walk their dogs, smile, say hello, everyone wishes each other
good morning. It just creates an entryway for connection for
the rest of the day. If I walk around with
my head down, ignore people, avoid people, guess what I'm
(27:46):
disconnecting myself. Whereas when I smile at people, when I
say hello, when I greet them, when I greet their
dogs like it creates an energy of connection in your life.
It opens you up to start and spark conversations in
random places. I think we forget as to how we
still go to grocery stores, we still go to coffee shops,
but we've got our head down on our phone. We
(28:07):
don't take it as an opportunity to say hello, to
sparkle conversation with the barista, to have a moment of
small connection, but authentic connection. It doesn't need to be
this huge moment of deep connection. It can be these
small moments that are add up and make us feel
a part of a community. You can feel a part
(28:28):
of a coffee shop. You can feel a part of
a grocery store community. You can feel a part of
these places you go through and walk through every day.
If that's how you see it. Habit Number eight is
how technologies helped me a lot. One of the things
I still do a lot is play code names through
horsepace dot com. And I love the idea of using
(28:51):
tech to play games with people because it's a great
way of reconnecting this week. I have a friend who's
in Europe at the moment, and we hadn't talked for
a while. We keep saying we want to see each other,
and it's really interesting, isn't it. How like you keep saying, oh, yeah,
I can't wait to see you, I can't wait to
do this, I can't wait to do this, and you
keep putting it off because you know, everyone has busy schedules,
everyone has a lot going on. And for me, the
(29:12):
easiest thing was like, let's just schedule a call, right,
let's FaceTime. Yes, you may think it won't be good enough.
For guess what. It was more than good enough. I
felt reconnected. We spoke for an hour, and I do
the same with other friends. I remember. I often like
to just organize a games night with my friends back
in London, or I have a WhatsApp group with some
of my mates and I'll say, hey, let's just do
(29:33):
a zoom and let's all just get on it together
because I'm so far away, and it's so easy to
keep postponing connection, right, we all have that ability to
always postpone connection. We're like, all right, yeah, we'll meet
up next week, Okay, yeah, we'll meet up next month.
Oh yeah, we'll meet up next year. And it's like,
just get on the cour just do it, and it's
so much better than messaging. I think that's one of
(29:54):
the things that messaging is great to get a connection started,
but shifting it to a call or a video conference
or whatever it may be makes such a big difference.
Having Number nine, giving giving creates connection. Now, giving doesn't
just include gifts. It includes food, and it also includes vulnerability.
(30:17):
When you give someone a part of you, a piece
of you, a truth about you, it allows you to
connect with them. And of course this has to be
done with a trusted person, in confidence, in a safe space,
with a person you feel safe around. It's very important
to do that. But that is also giving. I think
we think of giving as gifts, which is a beautiful
(30:38):
way to connect. I think the art of gift giving
has been so powerful in my life. And I receive
a meaningful gift from someone, or when I give a
meaningful gift from someone, it redefines the authenticity of that connection.
Number ten one of my favorite ones invite people for
ordinary tasks. My wife does this the best and it
has inspired me. She'll invite someone on her grocery run.
(31:00):
She'll invite someone obviously for one of her workouts. She'll
invite someone for something random that she wants to check out.
Invite people for ordinary tasks. I think we've made connection
feel so high pressured, where it has to be like
this big event or this you know, this moment of
doing something, or maybe it's too boring. But it's okay
to spend time with people in boring ways and find
(31:22):
joy in it. Sometimes I've invited people to do ordinary
things with me, and it actually leads to the best conversations.
So please invite people for ordinary tasks because it's a
great way of being connected. And Number eleven connecting with
people of all ages. I think as time's gone on,
we spend more and more time with people our age,
which is important and useful because we may be going
(31:43):
through similar things. But I was with a couple of
my friends a couple of weekends ago, and they're in
their sixties, and I don't consider them. Some people say, oh, yeah,
that's like my parents' friends, or that's like a family friend,
But I really consider them my friends, and they love
hanging out with us, and we love hanging out with them,
and I think when you're with people of all ages.
I also have a lot of my close friends from
(32:05):
back in London are in their twenties and to me,
hanging out with them is brilliant. I think hanging out
with people of all different generations makes us feel connected
in different ways. From our elders we can learn from.
To the younger people we get an opportunity to give
and serve and share. To the people in our peer
group we get to support. I think trying to build
(32:28):
friendships of different ages and different generations is actually a
vital part of feeling complete as a human. I feel
so much healthier in my connectedness when I'm connected with
people from different backgrounds, different walks of life, and different ages.
I really hope that these habits serve you and you
try and practice them. Remember, just try and practice one.
(32:48):
I want you to feel more connected, I want you
to feel less lonely, and I want you to have
the opportunity to build authentic community. Know that it is
within your grasp. I'm sending you all the love. Just
try one of these things and watch how your life changes.
Thank you so much for trusting on purpose and trusting
me Jay, Sheddy and I'll see you again on the
next one. Thanks everyone,
Of course, there are benefits to solitude, but according to
the National Institute on Aging, the health risks of prolonged
isolation are equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Social
isolation and loneliness have even been estimated to shorten a
person's lifespan by as many as fifteen years. All the
(00:20):
studies show that the quality of our relationships makes a
huge difference in our life. Hey, everyone, welcome back to
on Purpose. I am so genuinely grateful that you chose
to spend some time with me today, whether you're walking,
(00:42):
whether you're driving, whether you're cooking, whatever you're up to.
Thank you for choosing on purpose always. I love the
connection we're developing, and whenever I bump into any of
you and you tell me you listen it on purpose,
all I want to do is give you a big
ug and say thank you, because it truly, truly means
the world to me. I bumped into a few of
you who even came to my shows recently at some
(01:04):
restaurants when I was in LA and it just warms
my heart to know that we're building this community without
even knowing how deeply it's impacting all of us, including me.
So your feedback, your love, your support, your reviews, your
subscribing to the podcast means so much to me. Now,
(01:25):
I want to talk today about something that I know
a lot of us are struggling with in different ways.
Let's just start with a quick poll. How many of
you have ever felt lonely? I'm guessing there's quite a
few of us. How many of you have ever felt
(01:46):
disconnected from the people around you. I'm guessing there's quite
a few of us as well. And how many of
you felt that you don't feel authentically connected to your community,
that you find yourself having potentially negative judgments, or even
if it isn't going down that way, you may just
(02:08):
feel a bit distant from the people around you. I
want to take a moment to point out that it's
so natural and normal to want to feel connected. It's
so normal, so natural, so real to want to feel connected,
but we don't often know what that means. Right. We
(02:29):
say things like I don't feel connected to you, I
don't feel connected to the people around me, I don't
feel supported. But really, what it means to be connected
is that you feel seen, you feel heard, you feel understood,
and you feel valued. Plus you make other people feel seen,
(02:53):
You make other people feel heard, you try your best
to understand others, and you intend to make people valued
for real. This isn't just a technique or a hack
or an activity. Wanting to be connected requires it to
be sincere and genuine and real. Now, I want to
(03:17):
start off by just pointing out how normal it is
to feel disconnected. Only fifty nine percent of Americans say
they have a best friend, and twelve percent say they
feel they have no close friends at all. I'm taking
this from the rootsof loneliness dot com ridden by doctor
Christy Hartman, a pH d in psychology, who shared this
(03:39):
incredible research that she found through the National Library of Medicine,
the Centers for Disease Control, YUGOV, Health Resources and Services Administration,
SAGE Journals, Taylor and Francis Online, and others. Fifty two
percent of Americans report feeling lonely, while forty one percent
(04:00):
report their relationship with others are not meaningful. So you
can see those two things there. One is us feeling
disconnected and removed, and the other one is saying, actually,
I'm around a lot of people, but I don't feel
like it's meaningful. How many of You go to a
lot of parties or a lot of events, you come
across a lot of people, but you don't really get
that depth of connection. Right, We've got so lost in
(04:24):
this breadth and scale of connecting that we've often lost
the gift and depth of connecting single or not. Fifty
seven percent of Americans report eating all meals alone. Now
we've gone from doing an activity that we used to
do potentially even with your parents. So just like ten,
fifteen years ago, or maybe just five years ago, you
(04:46):
were eating every meal surrounded by your family, your siblings,
your parents, and all of a sudden, now you're eating
all of your meals alone, whether you're single or not.
That takes a while to get used to. And as
we look at the trail across the world, of course
we're living more separately now we travel across the world.
Like me and my wife when we moved to New
York and then we moved to la we now have
(05:08):
lived without family around us for seven years. If we
lived in London, we would have been able to visit
our family every weekend or even in the evenings, whereas
now we're seeing them after so much more time. So
there's a lot of shifts also in the way we
live and the way we conduct our lives that impacts
how we feel. Fifty two percent of Americans have felt
(05:31):
left out at some point in their lives. Now, it's
really interesting, how I think if you thought about the
first time you felt left out, it might be on
the field at school, or it might be in the playground.
And it's interesting how when we get left out as
an adult, we're triggered back into that mindset of a kid,
and instead of using our rational, logical brain to make
(05:54):
sense of it now, we often go back to using
that child brain to adapt or react or respond to
what we're experiencing. And we're going to talk about that
a little bit today. Fifty three percent of Americans cite
shyness as the reason why it's difficult to make friends.
How many of you feel shy? I can relate to
this one. And I know you think you Jay, you're
not shy at all. Trust me. If I'm in a
(06:15):
new environment where I don't know anyone, I give you
one of the shyest people in the world. And at
the same time, if I'm in an environment where I'm
flourishing or thriving, I can be the most confident person
in the room. But I realize that shyness blocks so
many of us. We've never been taught how to approach someone.
And what's really interesting is that shyness often gets seen
(06:36):
as ego or coldness, and often social anxiety gets seen
in the same way. And so we're looking at other
people going, oh, they don't seem to care about me
or find me interesting. They're thinking the same about us.
Fifty eight percent of Americans reported that they sometimes are
always feels like no one knows them. Well, maybe you're
(06:59):
someone who's traveled country. Maybe you've traveled, you know, across
the world, and no one speaks your language where you live,
no one really knows your heritage, no one really knows
your background. It's so fascinating for people to recognize the
reasons why it's natural for us to feel this way. Now.
(07:22):
Of course, there are benefits to solitude, but according to
the National Institute on Aging, the health risks of prolonged
isolation are equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Social
isolation and loneliness have even been estimated to shorten a
person's lifespan by as many as fifteen years. All the
(07:44):
studies show that the quality of our relationships makes a
huge difference in our life, and this episode is all
about the habit needed that we need to reconnect with
to create connection. So this segment about connectivity is brought
to you by AT and T. AT and T believes
(08:04):
connecting changes everything. I recently went on tour for my
second book, Eight Rules of Love, and brought so many
people together from all over the world. Part of the
show was inviting people from the crowd up on a
stage to reconnect with a loved one they haven't spoken
to in a long time. We had parents reconnect with
their children, fathers reconnect with their sons, siblings reconnect with
(08:26):
each other, and so many more. Deep human connections are
vital for mental and physical health because they fulfill and
innate human need to belong. Connected relationships allow you to
open up, be authentic, and feel truly supported by those
around you. If your relationships seem to be lacking depth,
improving your capacity for connectedness can make you feel closer
(08:48):
to friends or loved ones. Build your emotional support system,
increase your social charisma, help you approach conversations in a
more meaningful way, expand your social group improve your profet
sesational success, increase professional productivity, improve your financial success, Provide
a feeling of belonging in safety, reduce your risk for
(09:09):
mental health issues, and reduce your risk for mental health challenges.
If you're feeling isolated from your loved ones, family, or friends,
I encourage you to reach out to them today. It
will inspire you to grow and ultimately improve your connection
with them and others. Take advantage of having access to
Wi Fi calling and texting. There are so many ways
(09:30):
you can use a phone to stay connected, even when
you're traveling or living in a place that is far
from your friends and loved ones. Here are four common
methods you can use today besides apps for staying connected
with others. Number one video conferencing when you're away from
your significant other, friends, your family. This is a great
way to celebrate birthdays and adversaries in special moments by
(09:52):
sharing a moment over video and seeing their face. I
know it's not the same, but I love having the
opportunity to face down my family and friends who still
live in the UK. Number two emailing. Sending an email
is a great way to stay connected to old colleagues, professors,
or even bosses. It may not sound like the most
intimate way, but I found it can be a great
surprise for a professor or teacher when you also use
(10:15):
it as a way to explain the impact they had
on you. Now, texting, we all text. It's simple and easy,
but if you use text to send a thirty second
to sixty second message of gratitude to one person personally
and one person professionally a day, it can change the game.
And of course calling, I mean we don't do enough
of it anymore. When someone calls you just for a moment,
(10:36):
even if it's just to check in, hearing someone's voice
can make you feel like you're at home, and it
can be so grounding. This has been brought to you
by AT and T. AT and T believes connecting inspires, unites, heals,
and helps us grow. Connecting changes how we live our
lives for the better. So the first thing I'm going
to ask you to do when we think about becoming connected,
(10:58):
a habit that really makes it difference is checking in
with yourself. Number one. Check in with yourself. Is your
social brad tree drained or is your social battery charged?
Are you ready to spend time with people or is
that going to tie you out right now? And this
is someone something you have to check in with yourself.
(11:20):
I think a lot of us go through bouts of
like overextending ourselves and then under extending ourselves. And usually
when we're under extending, we feel lonely, and when we're overextending,
we feel overworked. Right it's when social when your social
life starts to feel like work, or when your social
life feels like it's non existent. We don't really live
in this balance state. And the balance state is not
(11:41):
about how much time you spend with people. It's about
how you feel energetically. For example, you could just go
out for one night a week and feel completely socially
battery charged, so you're really happy with that and you're
okay with that, or you could go out for one
night and feel completely drained based on what you do,
And so I want you to check in with yourself
(12:02):
right now and go this weekend, do you feel charged
to spend time with people or do you feel drained
and you need time alone? And I want you to
base on how you feel, not what's going on, not
how many events are happening, not what you've been invited
to or haven't been invited to, because sometimes we get
upset by things we're not invited to, even if we
didn't want to go, Right, how many of you have
(12:23):
ever felt, I'd be honest with me, how many of
you have known you don't want to go out? But
now you're offended that you're not invited. And that's why
we need to check in with ourselves. We need to
take a moment to ask ourselves, am I charged or
am I drained? If I'm charged, who would I like
to spend that energy with? It's almost like asking yourself,
I just won the lottery, who am I going to
(12:45):
spend this money on? Right? That's how you have to
think about it. If you're charged, and if you're drained,
you have to just be like, well, I just lost
this time and lost this money and lost this energy.
How am I going to get charged up again? Who's
going to help me charge? If I'm going to charge
with other people? Or do I need to charge alone? Right?
That's how you want to think about checking in with yourself.
(13:05):
And this self awareness is really where it starts, because
if you don't make yourself feel seen, yourself feel heard,
yourself feel understood and valued you will constantly expect it
from someone else. And I think that's what we do.
We walk around wanting other people to make us feel seen, heard,
(13:26):
and understood and valued as a substitute for doing it
for ourselves. So because we don't take a moment to
check in with ourselves, to see ourselves or hear ourselves,
or understand ourselves or value ourselves, we're constantly trying to
fill that gap. Right If you've just drank water yourself
and someone's offers you water, you'd say no, no, no, I
just did that myself and you wouldn't overthink it. But
(13:49):
if you hadn't got water and someone said, hey, do
you want a bottle of water, you'd say, yeah, yeah,
sure I want that because I haven't had any. So
you're looking for someone else, you'll ask them, hey, do
you have some water? We do the same thing emotionally.
We emotionally ask for other people to check in with
us and quench our thirst, as opposed to checking in
(14:10):
with ourselves. So I want you to start there now.
The second habit is expanding your emotional vocabulary. If you
want to see here, understand and value yourself better. And
by the way, if you want to see here and
understand and value other people better. You need to expand
(14:30):
your emotional vocabulary. And I want to point this out.
Connecting isn't just about do I feel connected? Do I
feel a part of the group. The questions also do
you make other people feel part of the group? Do
you reach out to other people? I promise you, for
every party you feel you're not invited to, there's someone
you're not inviting out somewhere and you may say, well,
I don't want to spend time with them, and that's
(14:50):
totally fine, But I promise you that feeling connected is
as much something you have to do proactively as you
have to be involved in someone else. When you're making
an effort to make other people feel included, to make
other people feel seen and heard and understood, I promise
you that's going to make you feel connected as well.
(15:10):
I think we think of feeling connected as being embraced,
but not embracing someone else, And I promise you it
does feel incredible when you take an opportunity to actually extend, embrace,
enhance someone else's experience. Now, as I was talking about
emotional vocabulary, this goes back to the Harvard Business Review
(15:33):
and a source from Susan David and it's called a
list of emotions. And the Harvard Business Review talks about
how we use some very basic emotions to define how
we feel. So we may sound angry, we may say
I'm sad, we may sound anxious, we may say I'm hurt,
we may sound embarrassed, and we may sound happy. Those
(15:55):
are pretty much as far as our emotional vocabulary goes.
But this emotion's list and you can literally google it.
Just type in a Harvard emotional list. I call it
emotional vocabulary. You can break down what type of anger
you're feeling. So the list that I'm reading off right now,
instead of saying you're angry, are you actually grumpy? Are
(16:16):
you frustrated? Are you annoyed? Are you defensive? Maybe you're impatient?
Are you disgusted? Are you offended or irritated? Notice how
they are all these different types of anger. And when
we don't diagnose ourselves effectively, we don't feel understood by ourselves,
(16:36):
and therefore when we communicate to other people, they don't
fully understand us either. So we'll be like, oh, I'm upset,
but it's like, what does that mean? How are you
feeling right now? How can I help you? How can
I help you feel better? And we do a bad
job of communicating what we're actually experiencing. They also do
this for the word hurt. Are you feeling jealous? Are
(16:59):
you feeling betrayed? Are you feeling isolated or shocked, deprived, victimized,
tormented or abandoned? There are so many ways. Now, I'm
not saying you're gonna go to your next conversation and
be like, I feel really tormented today, right, That's not
my point. But I want you to expand your emotional
vocabulary so that you can really see your emotions for
what they are. You can communicate your emotions for what
(17:21):
they are. And why does this help you become more connected?
Because you're becoming more connected to what's actually going on.
Rather than having a shallow, surface level relationship with yourself,
you now have a deep relationship. Rather than expressing yourself
in a limited way, you're now allowing someone to understand
(17:45):
the layers of what you're experiencing. Notice how the first
two things are very much about you and connecting with
yourself in order to do the others. Now, the third
one is probably one of my favorite ones, and it's
one that I've tried a lot recently and I love it.
It's called old new and new old. Now, the way
(18:06):
this works is when I meet an old friend, I
try and connect on something new. A lot of us
in our long term relationships we live in nostalgia. Oh
do you remember when we went on that trip, Oh
my gosh, do you remember the last day of school?
Oh do you remember when you were dating so and so?
And we use nostalgia as a way to build connection.
(18:27):
Nothing wrong with that, Absolutely nothing wrong with that. But
what's really important and special is making new memories with
people that have been in your life for a long time.
So if someone's an old friend, make a new memory
with them. Stop making your relationship about nostalgia and the
good old days and the past, and think about how
(18:50):
can I go and build a new memory with this
person that we can talk about for the next few weeks,
maybe the next couple of years. But let's build new memories.
Or what's something new I can discover about an old friend.
It may be a new skill. I remember being with
a family member that I hadn't spent time with since
I was like sixteen years old. So it's like twenty
(19:11):
years ago, and they kept saying to me. They said, Jay,
you've changed so much, like you're so different. I'm like,
of course I have. It's been twenty years and it's
really fascinating to me that they were more interested in
the change as opposed to who I am today and
the newness. Right, And so I want you to think
about who do you have who's an old friend, and
how can you make new memories with them? How can
(19:32):
you learn something new about who they are, what they do,
what they love, what they value, what they believe in.
Taking an interest in something new with someone old, building
a new memory with someone old in your life can
be really truly spectacular. And then it's the other way around,
new old. So now with the new old, it's like,
(19:52):
who's a new person in your life that you can
connect over something old. Maybe you grew up in the
same area. I was just doing a zoom keynote and
the person who was talking to me was from near
where I grew up in London as well and went
to school, and we started talking about it. It was a
new relationship, but we found an old connection. It was
a new person that I didn't know, but we found
(20:14):
an old common point to bond over to start a
new relationship right, so old new, new old. It's one
of my favorite things. When I meet someone new, I think, hey,
what do we have in common? What's in our past
that may correlate or intersect? And when I have someone
that has been in my life for a long time,
I think, oh, well, what's a new memory we can make, right,
what's something new that I can learn about them. It's
(20:35):
a really subtle art, but it's really really profound in
how it can impact a conversation. Have it Number four
kind of links to number three. But we have to
ask interesting questions otherwise everyone will appear uninteresting. I really
believe this. If you ask even the most interesting person
(20:56):
in the world uninteresting conversations and questions, they will appear
uninteresting and you will appear uninterested. And that's why we struggle.
Because we've been taught to ask questions like, so, what
do you do? How is your week? What did you
do this week? What did you do today? We even
do that with our partners. And by the way, every
time you ask your partner what did you do today,
(21:18):
it kind of creates an almost false pressure in them
of them having to have done something or achieved something.
So this doesn't even apply to new connections. It applies
to the friends you see every week and you go,
what did you do this week? And that question is
something they've been asked for so many years that they
have either a rehearsed, unconscious response or it puts pressure
(21:41):
on them to have to think about what they did
rather than a question that's more open and fascinating. I
always like my final five from the podcast of like
what's the best advice you've ever received? Or what's the
worst advice you've ever received? I love asking someone like,
what's the best conversation you had this week? Or what's
the most interesting thing that happened to you this week?
(22:03):
And it allows for them to reflect and think, or
were you bored at all this week? The opposite, and
if you could learn anything, what would it be? Or
what did you learn? Did you come across anything new
this week? And it may take them a moment, give
them some time, but this is especially valuable for the
people who've been in your life consistently and people you
(22:24):
see regularly, and we need to disrupt the pattern of
the conversation. I think what happens is when you know
someone well and they know you, you fall into the
patterns of the same questions, the same conversations, the same chores,
the same activities, and the question being how do we
create a method to actually shift the conversations so you
(22:46):
actually catch the other person off guard, You surprise them.
They hear something that they haven't heard before from you,
and all of a sudden, they start diving into a
new topic. Maybe they even get to reflect, and you
give them the gift of introspection because they've not even
had the time to do that, and now you've given
them that opportunity. Number five, this habit deep versus shallow time.
(23:08):
This is a big, big wig one for me, maybe
counterintuitive to what you think of me, but I generally
don't like spending time with people in large groups because
it means I have to spend little time with everyone.
It almost reminds me of my wedding reception where we
had so many guests. Indian weddings are notoriously large, and
(23:30):
OS was on the smaller side. Yet we still had
like three four hundred people at our reception. Yes, that
is on the smaller side, and I remember that evening
having to go around table to table to thank everyone
who came. Now, I was very grateful to everyone who came,
but at the same time, I felt like I was torn.
I felt like I couldn't be with the present, with
the people that I wanted to be. I wanted to
(23:52):
extend myself to everyone, but I wanted to make them
feel valued. And all of a sudden, you start spending
shallow time with everyone, and then you feel guilty for
not giving time to the people who you've known a
long time, and you feel guilty because you feel not
like you didn't honor the people who turned up, and
then you just kind of feel upset, right like shallow
(24:13):
time doesn't help build a healthy sense of connection. And
I'm not saying don't go to parties or don't go
to events, but if all of our social life, if
all of our connecting with others is done in big
groups where we get three minute conversations with everyone, and
all of a sudden, you're getting pulled in another direction,
You're getting torn in another direction to talk to this
(24:34):
person or that person, or someone else comes in late
and leaves early, and all of a sudden, you realize,
wait a minute, what did I even talk about today.
I basically had the same conversation seven times this evening. Right, Hey,
how's your week been, what have you been up to,
how's it all going? Oh? Sorry, I've got to run
off here. Okay, right, taking the time to say, you
know what, I'm just going to do groups of eight,
(24:55):
We're just going to do groups of five. You know what,
I'm just going to do a one on one. How
do you feel up? How do you feel connected? Some
of us feel connected in bigger groups, some of us
feel connected in smaller groups. Create the group. Don't just
wait to be invited to everything else. Create the evening,
create the invite, Create the moment that you need in
(25:17):
your life. Think about whether all of your social life
has become so shallow. And by the way, when I
say shallow, I don't mean shallow people. I mean it's
so shallow in surface level conversation because you haven't created
an environment to have a deep connection. I had a
friend that came over a couple of weeks ago. She's awesome,
I love her, and she came over to hang out
(25:38):
with me and Radian. Before she came over, i'd asked her,
I'd said, Hey, do you want me to invite anyone else,
and she said, you know what, I'd just like to
sit with both of you, being so nice to have that,
And I said great, because I was hoping for the
same thing. I just didn't want you to feel bored.
And even checking in in that way with a friend
is so important, where I was like, oh gosh, I
don't want it to be bored if it's just her,
and asked, and maybe she'll want to hang out and
see other people. And I realized that that's all she wanted,
(26:01):
and actually that was all we wanted, and it turned
out to be a great evening to connect. Habit number six.
Look for patterns and connections where others don't see them.
Don't look at things as disconnected. I think a lot
of us look at our life as disconnected. So we
look at our life as like, God, I've got to
(26:21):
spend time at work and at home. I've got life
and I've got my career. And what that starts to
do is it actually starts to create distance between how
your mind views things, rather than the understanding that if
I'm healthier at work, I'll be healthier at home, and
if I'm healthier at home, I'll be healthier at work.
So often what we try and do is say, gosh,
I need to spend less time at work and more
(26:41):
time at home. But what we're doing is we're letting
our absence at work bleed into being absent at home. Right.
What's really interesting about the mind is we're constantly training
it in the moment as to how we want it
to be. So for training the mind to not be
at work when we're at work, then the mind won't
be able to switch into being where it is when
(27:03):
it's at home. That way, we end up pushing away
our work family and our home family, and both tend
to become a bit disenfranchised with the lack of our presence.
And so look for patterns and connections where others don't
see them. Don't look at things as disconnected. Number seven.
Smile it strangers say hello. I do a hike pretty
(27:25):
much five times a week, different hikes, but sometimes the
same one. And one thing I love is seeing people
walk their dogs, smile, say hello, everyone wishes each other
good morning. It just creates an entryway for connection for
the rest of the day. If I walk around with
my head down, ignore people, avoid people, guess what I'm
(27:46):
disconnecting myself. Whereas when I smile at people, when I
say hello, when I greet them, when I greet their
dogs like it creates an energy of connection in your life.
It opens you up to start and spark conversations in
random places. I think we forget as to how we
still go to grocery stores, we still go to coffee shops,
but we've got our head down on our phone. We
(28:07):
don't take it as an opportunity to say hello, to
sparkle conversation with the barista, to have a moment of
small connection, but authentic connection. It doesn't need to be
this huge moment of deep connection. It can be these
small moments that are add up and make us feel
a part of a community. You can feel a part
(28:28):
of a coffee shop. You can feel a part of
a grocery store community. You can feel a part of
these places you go through and walk through every day.
If that's how you see it. Habit Number eight is
how technologies helped me a lot. One of the things
I still do a lot is play code names through
horsepace dot com. And I love the idea of using
(28:51):
tech to play games with people because it's a great
way of reconnecting this week. I have a friend who's
in Europe at the moment, and we hadn't talked for
a while. We keep saying we want to see each other,
and it's really interesting, isn't it. How like you keep saying, oh, yeah,
I can't wait to see you, I can't wait to
do this, I can't wait to do this, and you
keep putting it off because you know, everyone has busy schedules,
everyone has a lot going on. And for me, the
(29:12):
easiest thing was like, let's just schedule a call, right,
let's FaceTime. Yes, you may think it won't be good enough.
For guess what. It was more than good enough. I
felt reconnected. We spoke for an hour, and I do
the same with other friends. I remember. I often like
to just organize a games night with my friends back
in London, or I have a WhatsApp group with some
of my mates and I'll say, hey, let's just do
(29:33):
a zoom and let's all just get on it together
because I'm so far away, and it's so easy to
keep postponing connection, right, we all have that ability to
always postpone connection. We're like, all right, yeah, we'll meet
up next week, Okay, yeah, we'll meet up next month.
Oh yeah, we'll meet up next year. And it's like,
just get on the cour just do it, and it's
so much better than messaging. I think that's one of
(29:54):
the things that messaging is great to get a connection started,
but shifting it to a call or a video conference
or whatever it may be makes such a big difference.
Having Number nine, giving giving creates connection. Now, giving doesn't
just include gifts. It includes food, and it also includes vulnerability.
(30:17):
When you give someone a part of you, a piece
of you, a truth about you, it allows you to
connect with them. And of course this has to be
done with a trusted person, in confidence, in a safe space,
with a person you feel safe around. It's very important
to do that. But that is also giving. I think
we think of giving as gifts, which is a beautiful
(30:38):
way to connect. I think the art of gift giving
has been so powerful in my life. And I receive
a meaningful gift from someone, or when I give a
meaningful gift from someone, it redefines the authenticity of that connection.
Number ten one of my favorite ones invite people for
ordinary tasks. My wife does this the best and it
has inspired me. She'll invite someone on her grocery run.
(31:00):
She'll invite someone obviously for one of her workouts. She'll
invite someone for something random that she wants to check out.
Invite people for ordinary tasks. I think we've made connection
feel so high pressured, where it has to be like
this big event or this you know, this moment of
doing something, or maybe it's too boring. But it's okay
to spend time with people in boring ways and find
(31:22):
joy in it. Sometimes I've invited people to do ordinary
things with me, and it actually leads to the best conversations.
So please invite people for ordinary tasks because it's a
great way of being connected. And Number eleven connecting with
people of all ages. I think as time's gone on,
we spend more and more time with people our age,
which is important and useful because we may be going
(31:43):
through similar things. But I was with a couple of
my friends a couple of weekends ago, and they're in
their sixties, and I don't consider them. Some people say, oh, yeah,
that's like my parents' friends, or that's like a family friend,
But I really consider them my friends, and they love
hanging out with us, and we love hanging out with them,
and I think when you're with people of all ages.
I also have a lot of my close friends from
(32:05):
back in London are in their twenties and to me,
hanging out with them is brilliant. I think hanging out
with people of all different generations makes us feel connected
in different ways. From our elders we can learn from.
To the younger people we get an opportunity to give
and serve and share. To the people in our peer
group we get to support. I think trying to build
(32:28):
friendships of different ages and different generations is actually a
vital part of feeling complete as a human. I feel
so much healthier in my connectedness when I'm connected with
people from different backgrounds, different walks of life, and different ages.
I really hope that these habits serve you and you
try and practice them. Remember, just try and practice one.
(32:48):
I want you to feel more connected, I want you
to feel less lonely, and I want you to have
the opportunity to build authentic community. Know that it is
within your grasp. I'm sending you all the love. Just
try one of these things and watch how your life changes.
Thank you so much for trusting on purpose and trusting
me Jay, Sheddy and I'll see you again on the
next one. Thanks everyone,
Host
Jay Shetty
Popular Podcasts
True Crime Tonight
If you eat, sleep, and breathe true crime, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT is serving up your nightly fix. Five nights a week, KT STUDIOS & iHEART RADIO invite listeners to pull up a seat for an unfiltered look at the biggest cases making headlines, celebrity scandals, and the trials everyone is watching. With a mix of expert analysis, hot takes, and listener call-ins, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT goes beyond the headlines to uncover the twists, turns, and unanswered questions that keep us all obsessed—because, at TRUE CRIME TONIGHT, there’s a seat for everyone. Whether breaking down crime scene forensics, scrutinizing serial killers, or debating the most binge-worthy true crime docs, True Crime Tonight is the fresh, fast-paced, and slightly addictive home for true crime lovers.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.