CM 273: Kasley Killam on the Art and Science of Connection
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We spend so much time working that it's an opportunity for social health. And if we think about being socially healthy as as you know having good one on one relationships, but also having a sense of community, the workplace can be a source of both of those.

What would be curious mize at work? I'm your host to gale Allen. It's become common knowledge that we need to prioritize our physical and mental health. In fact, we are encouraged to commit to regular exercise and good nutrition and to engage with mental health professionals as part of a healthy lifestyle. And if public health experts like cathley killum have their way, social health will become just as important.

It's why he wrote the book, the art and science of connection, why social health is the missing key to living longer, healthier and happier, casey spoke, is the proactive solution to today's lonely ss epidemic. It's also a research baked argument for why social health needs to be on equal footing with mental and physical health. Before we start one quick ask, if you like the podcast, please take a moment to leave rating on itunes or wherever you subscribe your feedback and sends a strong signal to people looking for their next podcast.

And now here's my interview with casey kilmer casule killum. Welcome to the podcast. It's great to heavy on.

Thank you so much. Gale, excited to be here.

What is social health? Why is IT just as important as mental and physical health?

So social health is the dimension of your overall health and well being that comes from your relationships and your sense of community. So at the most basic level, if you think about physical health as being about the body and mental health as being about the mind, social health is really about relationships.

And so decades of research at this point have shown time and time again that the quality and quantity of friends and family members and coworkers and communities that we feel connected to actually does so much more than just put us in a good mood, right? It's actually determining how long we live at the very extremement and how healthy we are while alive. So if you are more connected, you have a lower risk of things like heart disease, dementia, a diabetes, depression and actually a fifty percent increased likelihood of survival.

So there's a huge health benefit to be connected. And the reason that social health is as important as physical and mental health is because of that data. Um but also it's really important to recognize that it's tinct yet interconnected.

So again, the actions that we take to fuel our physical health may differ from our mental health, which may differ from our social health. So to be physically healthy, you do things like exercise and eat healthy foods and get a good nigh sleep to take care of your mental heal. You might do things like meditate or um go to therapy or do other practices for self care and then not for social health.

It's hopeful to think of IT as distinct because the steps we take to be socially healthy might be different. So things like interacting with our loved ones, spending quality time with people, volunteering in our community, things like that influence our social health, and then in turn also strengthen our physical and mental health. So these dimensions are truly interconnected, but it's really helpful to think of IT in a distinct way so that we put effort and intention into IT.

Well, then is about more than just being social.

absolutely. I'm glad you mention this. I myself an introvert, which means that I really love connecting, of course, with people in my life. But also I need to baLance that with a certain amount of solitude to recharge my battery strait introversion ons, really about energy. And sometimes that can be draining for me to be around people all the time.

And this is a really important point, because even if you are an extrovert, not all good connection is good connection, right? There are certain people who maybe, I don't treat you with respect or kindness, and that can cause issues, or maybe there is conflict in a certain relationship and that can be chAllenging. So we really need to think about the fact that not all connection is good connection.

And being socially healthy doesn't just mean socializing all the time or being around people all the time. One of the principles that I write about in my book is this idea that quality is more important than quantity. So if you are connecting with people in meaningful ways or nurturing the relationships that matter most to you, that's generally more beneficial than just being around people for the sake of IT.

At the same time, you want to call out the fact that this is so important that it's is bigger than a fight against loneliness. Tell us about that and why it's so important that you want us to view IT that way.

So I have, for many years now, been one of many people around the world who have focused on loneliness as a public health issue. This is really, really important data, just as recent as late in twenty twenty three, found that one in four people around the world to feel lonely on a regular basis. And so many people are experiencing this.

And we know from the research that lineup can have very severe health outcomes. This is why last year, the surgeon general here in the U. S, uh, issued an advisory declaring loney ss and social isolation of public health priority.

It's also why in twenty nineteen, I did a masters at the harvard school public health focused on solutions for loneliness. This is a very, very important issue. At the same time, loneliness is just one marker of poor social health in the same way that obesity, for example, is just one marker of poor physical health, right?

You might not be obese, you might be a healthy weight, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're physically healthy in an optimal way. That could be that your malnutrition or that you don't get enough sleep or um you know that you need to exercise to strength in your muscles more even if you're slender, right? So there's nuance to physical health and in that same way, there's nuance to social health.

So what I found in my work and in my research is that someone might not feel lonely, but they can still benefit strength then in their social health proactively in other ways, right? So even if you don't feel lonely, maybe you don't have a good sense of come rotary at the workplace um and for example, a recent survey found that sixty four percent of americans don't feel like they belong in their workplace, right? They might not necessarily feel lonely in general because they feel connected to friends and family, but there is an opportunity where they can strengthen their social health further.

Or another example is feeling connected to your local community, right? Having ties with neighbors. Three and four americans feel like they don't p along in their local community. They might not say that they're lonely because, again, they connect with friends and family and yet they're still an opportunity there to be more socially healthy. Um so that's that's one part of why I think it's important to badd in the conversation.

Another is that most people underestimate the health importance of connection, right? And actually there are studies show that people really do underestimate and and don't necessarily recognize that connection isn't just about feeling good, it's actually determining your longevity and your life span. It's about more than just mental health is about physical health and longevity as well.

And so I think there's tremendous value in. And what I see in my work on social health with communities around the world, is that brought in in the conversation and shifting from reactive to proactive, and in some ways, from from negative to really empower ing, can be a helpful way to frame the conversation. And so what I see time and time again is that when we talk to people about social health, it's inviting a conversation and an imagination about how to be healthy. That's different than if we just focus on loneliness cauley.

If social health is so important, then IT makes sense. We need a way to measure IT. How can we assess the strength of our social health so we get a sense of where we are in relation to where we want to be, where we need to be.

Yes, this is a great question. So similar to your physical health, for example, there's no one score that can tell you exactly how physically healthy you are, right? There are different kind of factors and matrix that you can look at or that your doctor can look at, for example.

So thinking about your height and your weight and how those go together, um the foods that you're eating, your blood pressure um you know running test to see if there are any signs of cancer, things like this. We look at a variety of fact s to consider how physically healthy you are. And in that same way we can look at a variety of things to go into your social health. And what's distinct CT here is that there's an element of subjectivity, right? So I can't look at you.

And no for sure, if you're socially healthy, you might be really extrovert and around people all the time and throwing parties for a lots of people and yet feel really alone, not feel like you have someone who you can go deeper with and can find in um about the things that are truly going on in your internal life um or you might, for example, be yearning to spend more time with people, right? And maybe you have some close relationship but you don't spend enough time with people and so you end up feeling a little bit isolated even if you do have those strong reports. So there is an element here of really noticing that is subjective and IT really comes down to you and how you're feeling, do you have enough social interaction? Do you have, uh, close confidence? Do you have people who you get to, uh, engage with in casual ways to belong to a community that gives you a sense of connecting with a group who you share something in common with? These are the kinds of questions we can look at to understand social health. And in the book I offer kind of a three step process for going deep into this and really analyzing in your current social health. But really IT just comes down to reflecting on whether the quantity and quality of connection that you have in your life right now feels fulfilling.

I really like what you did in the book as well, in addition to your three step method of talking about things we can take from building our physical health. You know, you talk about ways to think about our social health that allow us to stretch or to rest or to tune or flex. Talk about these components. How do we, how could we put those to work for us?

So because the research has shown that connection is truly as important as exercise for a long term, health and long judy, I like this analogy of thinking about connection like exercise. So just like you take steps to strengthen your physical muscles, you can take steps s to actually strengthen your muscles. So I outline, like you said, these four strategies for how to go about that.

The first is to stretch your social muscles. So just like you struck your physical muscles to get more flexible and loosen up, you can struct your social muscles by making new friends, by seeking out new. Communities that you can belong to and generally by expanding your social network. So the strategy around stretching is really if you feel like the quantity of connection in your life is lower than you want IT to be, the second strategy is to rest.

So just like in physical exercise, it's actually really important to rest in between rebs or in between workout days to give your body the chance to recover and to um internalize the exercise that you've you've done similarly, it's valuable to rest your social muscles as well and this might sound a little bit surprising um but it's equally as important to give yourself some alone time or um to double down on the relationships that are most important to you rather than continually seeking new ones if you feel like the quantity of connection in your life is high and in a place where you are happy with, the third strategy is to tone your social muscles. So just like we tone our physical muscles to release, strengthen them, make a stronger, we can tone our social muscles by going deeper in our relationships, by actually getting closer to our loved ones and having deeper conversations and really prioritising quality time with people. So this is, uh, the strategy that's right for you if you feel like the quality of connection in your life might be lucky or could be Better.

And then the fourth and final strategy is to flex your social muscles. So just like you flex your your physical muscles to kind of show off the streng that you've built up, you conflux your social muscles by enjoy the relationships and communities that you are connecting with and by sustaining those in the long term. So this is really about if the quality of connection in your life feels good, then keep doing what you're doing.

I really like what you said as well about as life changes and as we change, just as with our physical and mental health, our social health is also going to change. It's natural. Same, more about that.

So another core principle to social health that I write about is this idea that what goes down will come up. What I mean by that is that social health is going to eban flow over time, just like your physical and mental health due, as you said, right? So there are times in our life when we feel really physically healthy and you know, we go for an annual check up and the doctor gives us the Green light all as well.

And we feel strong. And we're taking care of our health in ways like sleeping regularly and eating nutritious foods, things like that. And then there are other times when maybe we let those habits slip or we get a surprising diagnosis of an illness um and things like that.

And similarly with our mental health, you know sometimes we feel really resilient and present, and then other times we go through chAllenges that can leave us feeling anxious or depressed. So in that same way, social health is going to up and flow. They're going to be times in our life when we feel really meaningfully connected and embedded in the community and other times when we don't.

And this is a very natural urban flow. And so I invite everyone to have compassion with yourself and and Grace and little patients during those times where IT feels harder to contact because that will change with with effort and circumstance. So a few examples of times in our life when social health might feel harder are times of transition.

For example, moving, uh, away from home as a high school student and going away to college rate to study and to make new friends all from scratch or becoming a parent right and suddenly um been immersed in raising your children and keeping them alive and keeping them a good childhood um or another major one that I hear about a lot and seeing the research is retirement, right. So suddenly when someone retires are no longer have that day to day interaction co workers as they age more, you know, friends and family might start to pass away. Um there are physical limitations that can come up. And so there again, there's another kind of transition and chAllenge. So throughout our lives, depending on the circumstances, in the habits that we are cultivating, our social health will change.

I like this, are pointing those things out because I think there are times where we could maybe judge ourselves harshly, blame ourselves in the reality is that circumstances change and and it's okay to be in a drought. And to recognize that is a practice like so many things you have to practice that. You have to take steps to make IT Better. And as you said, strength than IT. I just think that's a really incredible mindset for us to .

gain yeah and what I see a lot of the times is that mindset can be one of the limiting factors in being socially healthy so often times our own thinking and the the thoughts and interpretations that we get caught up and can actually limit us from connecting in meanwhile ways.

So for example, studies have shown that people who are lonely are more likely to enter into social situations feeling guarded, feeling kind of hypersensitive to the social cues around them, perhaps interpreting things through a more negative light, perhaps not feeling lovable. So there are these sort of negative thought patterns that can emerge and then actually end up inhibiting us from connecting and kind of reinforcing the the fears that we have. And so shifting that instead to recognizing that there's not something wrong with you if you feel lonely, for example.

right? This is an emotion that everyone experiences at certain times in life. And in fact, it's a hopeful queue from your body. It's just like hunger or third slone's ss is a signal telling you that there's something you need to survive and to thrive that you're not currently getting enough of.

And in fact, in neuroscience studies, where they compared the brain scans of people who've been alone for a certain amount of time with people who haven't eaten for a certain amount of time, the same brain regions are activated. So being alone and being hungry actually show up in the same way in our brains as a cute telling us you need food and you need connection. So these are action, helpful.

And a different way of thinking about loneliness is to say, thank you. Thank you for bringing to my attention that I need to prioritize this. And then almost having a mindset of curiosity and experimental and play with the right connection when IT goes well can be the most fulfilling thing in our lives. And so there's truly an opportunity there um to have fun and to expLoring the relationships and to chAllenge yourself um to connect with community in a new way in this interview.

cassi killum talks about the health benefits we gain from social connection and how they can counteract health risks associated with our work cohl lic culture. If you like to learn more about the health risks, work cohl sm and how to counter them, check out episode two sixty with millions. Clark, although of the book never not working in IT SHE, talks about how our work habits haven't caught up with our tech.

I firmly believe that we don't need to be working forty, sixty hours a week. We have so much technology at our hands to help us to be more productive. We we simply can get so much done in a much shorter amount of time. Why arent we doing that?

Now let's get back to my interview with Cathy, killing cassi. If we want to be more socially healthy, it's also going to very person to person. And you've been great about pointing that out in this interview.

And you do a lot of that in your people need different quantities if you were different types of connections. And so talk to a little bit about that, how to think about that, how to maybe figure out where we fit into that. Maybe there's there's a way to think about a type of connection and you've got some great types and you walk us through those. How do we think about that? And and maybe tell us a little bit about which type you tend to be.

Well, I mentioned earlier that i'm an introvert and that is very true. But what I found over the years in working with people and organizations is that introverted and extra version don't fully capture all the nuance of our different preferences and habits for connection and in fact, being social is healthy, means having the right amount and type of connection for you personally, for your preferences.

An introversion or extroversion is one part of that, but that doesn't capture the type of connection that just captures the amount. So in the book I outlined these four social health styles, and there's a helpful kind of graphic to show on to axis how these capture both the amount of connection that you prefer and the type of connection. So the first style is called a butterfly.

And so we're all kind of familiar with this idea of a social butterfly, right? So this is someone who thrives on frequent casual connection um so someone who you know loves being around people all the time is energized in social situations and is really adapt at talking with people in in making chitchat and and helping people to feel at ease. The second style is a wall far.

So again, this is a term we hear in our culture this idea of someone who prefers selective casual connection so less often um and still light hard at right someone who's really most comfortable kind of you know not being the center of attention um and take some time to warm up and and get closer. And there are many perks to be in wilfers, so I don't want anyone to think that this is a bad thing. None of these styles are Better or worse than the other.

They're just different, right? We each just show up in our social worlds in different ways, and that's okay. The third style is the one that I identify with, which is a firefly. So this is someone who craves against selective interaction, but deep connection. So someone who's an inter vert, yes, but really loves to go deep in those interactions.

So for example, when I connect with friends and family, I skip right past the small talk, and we go straight into the heart of the matter, which again, has proven cos, right? So again, none of these are Better or worse or just different. And then the fourth and final social health yle is called an either Green.

So if you think about an everGreen plant in nature, right, this is a tree or a bush that's always in in bloom, right? It's Green all year around. So this is someone who loves frequent deep connection.

So for example, someone who is in constant communication with their close loved ones, right, talks to their best friend every day, seize their family members every week, and and really goes deep in in a hard to hard way with them. And so I was fortunate to collaborate within new york times on a ten question quiz that people can take to actually figure out which of these. Four styles is most true for them. And then, of course, the book goes into a lot more detail on what that means for you and what kind of strategies you can do to optimization social health based on your style.

You also have a guideline is for the highest amount of well being and it's five, three, one. What is that?

What I found in conversations about social health over the years is that people really want guidance on what? How do? Where do I even begin, right? What does the right amount of connection that I should be getting? We're all used to hearing guidance like walked ten thousand steps a day or get eight hours of sleep at night or drink eight classes of water.

And these guidelines are helpful even if it's a little higher or a little lower than what you personally need. It's a nice reference point and a rule of them based on the research that we can use to guide our actions. So based on the research of looking at what is kind of the minimum threshold of connection and and relationships that we need, and then also what are the habits of people who do seem to be thriving through connection, I developed what's called the five three one guideline.

So the idea is to aim to connect with five different people each week, to maintain at least three close relationships in general, and to spend one hour a day connection. So five different people each week, three close relationships and one hour a day connecting. So again, similar to ten thousand steps or eight hours of sleep, those numbers might be a little bit higher or a little bit lower than what you personally need based on whether you're a butterfly willpower, firefly or ever Green. But it's a helpful starting point, especially if you just feel like you want to start prioritising social health and making you a priority in your life. That can be a starting point to guide your actions.

Why is being plugged in? So in other words, plugged in to attack. Why is that such a mixed bag? Because I think we hear both sides of IT.

We sure deal and the research shows both sides of IT, right? It's actually very mix. And so what we see in the data is that technology and in particular social media, can be beneficial for our social health in certain ways and also can be harmful in others. And at this point, with where the literature is, the conclusion that I draw is that it's really about how you use these tools, right? So how frequently are you relying on social media or other forms of digital connection to stay in touch with your loved ones um and also are you using them in ways that actually help your social health vers just go passively through headlines or through social media feeds which let's face IT, we all do right.

I'm guilty of this too um but the data shows that, that can certainly leave us feeling more lonely in some cases leave us feeling more anxious and so on um and so what I write about in the book is, is really that we need to pay attention to the habits that we have and almost like the digital social health that were cultivated um but also that there's a responsibility to these companies to design them in ways that are optimal for social health because you know making them so enticing and addictive that we want to just continually score forever isn't actually what's healthier for us and so it's this combination of, you know how can we design these tools in positive ways and then how can we as users have the agency um to use them in in positive ways and um I spent some time for the book research team, for example, A I and social health and the way in which artificially intelligent chat botts uh are being used as companions in people's lives. So people who are using A I um as a friend or as a romantic partner um as someone who's a vital source of their social health, sometimes in addition to their friends and family and and neighbors and coworkers in the real world, but other times and unfortunately often they're using them instead of those in person connections and really perhaps over relying on A I as a source of social health. And so this brings up all kinds of questions about, you know, is this good? Is this bad? Do we want this in our future? And what is our relationship going to be going forward with these tools? And I am actually very optimistic because there's so much incredible innovation and entrepreneurs were being very thought ful but about designing new tools, new pop forms um that are designed specifically with social health in mind. So i'm i'm cautious ously optimistic, I will say about the future of how logy and in being online all the time will influence our social health as well as our physical and mental health.

Casey, i'd love to do a call out to something concrete to give focus, a specific example of what a life well lived around social health can look like. And in your book, you talk about your husband's grandmother, Nancy, as as that model, that role model, that example, are, talk to a little bit about her and the kinds of choices SHE made, the kind of behavior SHE exhibited to showcase what I can look like to lead a socialist, healthy life.

Yeah, Nancy is someone who I feel so fortunate to have in my life. SHE is truly a someone I I love, but also at an impressive model of social health. I think for people of any age. She's now in her the eighties, and he has lived a long and full life.

And SHE has really made social health a priority and it's in that context that I write about this about her story in the bucketts in the chapter on making social health a priority in your life. Anc overcame many obstacles, um many instances of heartbreak and chAllenge in her life. For example, when SHE was Younger, he was raising five kids and moving every couple of years for her husband's job, which meant that IT was really hard to form lasting friendships.

Right when you up and leave every couple of years um it's hard to get rooted in any given community um that relationship that marriage uh they unfortunately divorced and moved on and so he had to restart and reoriented her life um after that and then SHE remarried only to unfortunately tragically lose her second has been um completely out of the blue so SHE went through that her break and and trauma and throughout her life throughout these chAllenges, SHE has made connection a priority. For example, during or after her first of force, SHE was very intentional about bringing her family together and renting out a camp each summer where they could all come together to spend time together to take time out of their busy lives, so that they were prioritising connection with one another. And even now, in her late eighties, SHE centres her life around connection.

She's very active in her local church, so that brings her a sense of community and purpose. SHE has maintained friendships for decades. It's incredible. SHE h is part of groups that meet every single week and other every single month consistently for decades now.

Um so he has that sense of community because social health comes from our one of one relationships, but also from the groups that were part of. And SHE really prioritises both of those. And in these and many other ways that I write about, SHE has really made social health priority.

One of the things that I found especially inspiring about her story is that he was very passionate about her work. SHE was an educator. SHE ran a school. SHE worked with students who had learning disabilities, and he was very passionate and dedicated to that work.

At the same time, he told me that if you're going to be socially healthier, E, D, A, you need to care about more than just your job, right? You need to be prioritizing connection alongside that. And that resonated a lot with me as someone who's very passionate about my work and sometimes prioritises IT over friends and family and definitely guilty of that myself.

And I think IT resonates with a lot of people because we have a kind of culture around business ness and and a lot of emphasis on our work as our identity. And so I I loved her kind of cautionary note of you can be passionate about about what you do. And yet it's still essential that you carve out time and a really intentional about investing in your relationships.

I think sometimes we do. We have this terrible push pull, right? It's like we need to be so focused on achieving and we need to be so focused on our jobs.

And when we have those moments, mentally or emotionally, maybe it's simultaneously where we're like of can I give up that time? I don't know. If I can give up that time, I would. Baby will cost me too much. Do you advice for how to think about that so that were not thinking short term but longer term, that, yes, making time for that social connection .

is worth that? I love that question. I mean, inspired by Nancy. I think what I would post to myself in that situation is think about being on my death.

Bt, am I going to remember, you know, a certain job promotion or some meeting that I needed to go to, or whatever work accomplishment? No, i'm gonna be thinking about my friends and family who around me and the quality time that I ve been able to spend with them, and hopefully you know, memories with my children or my sibling ans um and things like that right? When we come to the end of our lives know at our funeral, people don't list out all of your, you know day to day work accomplishments.

They talk about the impression that you left on them and how they made you feel and what you meant to them as a left one. And so as hard as IT is, you know, because I I am guilty of this too. I get caught up in work as well.

But I think continually reflecting on at the end of our lives, you know what's most important? I for one, want to have lived a life that's full of love and full of connection and friendship. And so continually coming back to that north star, I think, can be powerful.

I want to ask you about this experiment, iran, an experiment in college. You did an active kindness every day for a hundred days. And i'm curious about this on multiple levels. First, i'd love for you to tell us about this experience and its impact on you, especially things maybe that you that surprised you are you did not expect.

And then equally important, why did you choose to do IT? What made you do IT? Especially at a time of your life where you could be making so many other choices socially?

Yes, this was so much fun. So I was in my final semester of my undergraduate degree at queensland university in canada, from canada originally. And IT was the start of the new year final semester. And I was thinking about my future. No, I was gonna graduate soon.

And also just thinking about what kind of person do I want to be? What are the values that are important to me? And how do I make sure that i'm actually in boding those on a regular basis? And so I came up with this idea to do a hundred eight days of acts of kindness.

I call them one hundred eight days of compassion. Um actually don't write about this in the book, but I also simultaneously did one hundred and eight days of learning and meditation. So I was learning meditation and compassion every single day because those were kind of the values that I really wanted to make sure I was embodying.

That's why I wanted to, to be someone who present, someone who was continually learning and someone who was connecting. And I focus solely on the connection piece in the book, because IT was by far the most transformative experience of the whole thing. I chose one hundred eight days because that number has all kinds of symbolism, which I write about in the book.

But specific, it's a hundred neat beats that are on a buddh smaller. And I had not too long prior, spent a month in a butio esty in nepal learning to meditate. And I loved that practice of one one prayer for each beat one hundred eight times.

And I thought each day my act of compassion will be my beat, right, going through that formula. And so I embarked on this. I didn't really know what to expect.

I, you know, I was a little money, but I made the commitment. And IT completely transformed my life, my health, my well being. The first thing I noticed was that I was prior to that, IT had been so easy to go a whole day without really doing anything for anyone else.

And I was a caring person. I think I was a good friend, do you know, like I was a good family member. And yet what I IT became very quickly, very clear to me was that is so easy to just be caught up in our thoughts.

And what we have to do that day and you know worrying about graduating and finding a job and and just getting caught up in our lives that were not actually consistently reaching out or doing kind things, other people. So each day I I did things that worry a lot. I could have read simple things like striking out conversation with a neighbor to compliment them, writing thank you cards to people um volunteering at a local retirement community, volunteering at a soup kitchen.

Some were big, some were small. You know some seem trivial, some felt really profound um you know being there for a friend who was struggling, seeing someone collapse and waiting for the, you know comforting them while they waited for the ambuLance, a very simple things, you know leaving toys on a playground with a note so that a kid would come across IT and find IT and feel joy, all kinds of different things. And what I found over time to was that going out each day need to do this, right, like I couldn't go to bed at night unless I had connected with someone else in a meaningful way.

And so IT completely changed the way I saw the world. IT was like I put on these glasses and suddenly solve the people around me with so much more clarity, and my relationship to them with so much more clarity. And I realized there were opportunities for connection everywhere.

There were just walking down the road on on the side walk. There were people around me who I could reach out to in in different ways, you know, offering a compliment, just smiling at someone, you know, saying, thank you when someone holds the door open for me. All these micro moments as well as a larger kind of orientation to making connection a priority and a value that I truly and bodied day to day.

So I could talk about this for hours. But I was I was so much fun um and by the end of IT, I was healthy. I was happier. I was healthier because I made me motivated to take care of myself in other ways too, like I had less time. And so I was really focused on studying when I needed to.

I actually actually achieve the highest GPA of my entire college degree that semester, even though I had less time to study, and even though I was, you know, prioritising conversations with people rather than studying, I was more efficient. I was cooking healthier meals. IT just energized my entire life in a beautiful way. So I highly recommend. I mean, even if you don't do something that dramatic thinking, having kind of that intention each day, is there some small thing I can do to send a friendly text message to someone which research shows actually can help your relationship, or you know, just been present with the people around you when you are with them, things like that, one thing each day can actually be completely .

transformative. It's really intriguing because one of the guest I had on a previous podcast, he was talking about fact that our defauts mode network works for us in some ways, but IT works against us and others because it's very self referential and that default into self reference all the time can actually be um very negative for us.

We're so in our heads and when you described this in your book, I thought this was such a great example of how IT takes you out of yourself because as soon as you're focused on someone else, you can't be focusing on yourself. It's hard to do the two things at once. And it's so clear to me that that's the experience you had. And then the spilled effects were so powerful. And I think sometimes when I hear people say they are getting caught up in doom scaling and things like that, I think, oh, if you could just find one little thing you know that you could do for someone else so they can step away and realized, like there's a whole world out there.

I love the way you put that. And one of the recommendations I offer in the book, and that I I talk about often if someone is feeling lonely, is to volunteer for precisely that. That reason, right? Loneliness can be a very self focused emotional state and volunteering in contrast, shifts that attention to someone else into their needs and their wants and how you can support them and IT might sound counter intuitive and yet a lot of the data shows that volunteering um even in simple ways, can help people feel less lonely in the long run um and also is a great opportunity to make new friends to feel connected to your community to have a sense of purpose which is often missing when people are feeling lonely um so for precisely that reason you know finding simple ways to give back and and like you sad to turn your attention toward other people can be really powerful.

You have so many things in your book that can be helpful in terms of exercises or activities people can do. You know, i'm thinking about something called talk for ten. I'm thinking about asking Better questions. Could you take one of those and and kind of walk us through IT and how that would work?

So i'll take your talk for ten example because I think this is also relevant for some other themes we've talked about, which is you know been busy getting caught up in our lives and how easier can be to suddenly realize months have gone by and you haven't connected with a certain friend or you know, you haven't seen a family member who lives nearby.

So talk for ten is this idea of literally just having a ten minute phone conversation with someone one saw a few times a week. And this was inspired by a randomised controlled study that was done a few years ago where people received short so under ten minute phone calls a few times a week. And I believe IT was after a month of doing that, that their levels of loney ss were measurably and significantly decreased. So that's not a lot of type like a ten minute conversation. We definitely all spend more than ten minutes scoring through headlines or social media feeds.

And so I invite us all to think about, are there ten minutes that you can carve out in a given week or in a given day to catch up with someone? Something that I have found is that sometimes when time goes by, we feel overwhelmed by the idea of reconnecting with someone or catching up like, o gosh, this is gonna take two hours, but just calling someone in saying here five minutes, I was thinking about, you hazard they going, you know, just something as simple as that can actually help feel, help you feel more connected. And it's a simple way to weave connection into your day to day and busy life, right?

Instead of um you know putting on a podcast when you're driving somewhere, instead of scaling on your phone when you're waiting in line, you know calling a friend or sending a text message and i'm thinking of you, these are simple gestures that hopefully we can all find time for again, we get busy and sometimes that's just how life goes. But the more that we can rich lize these things and wave them into our patterns, just like we leave in regular exercise or you know prioritizing sleep at night, then we're going to a benefit and social other people. That's what I love about social health.

Inside, when you take care of your physical and mental health, sure IT indirectly benefits other people. But when you take care of your social health, that directly benefits other people, because by definition, that means you're connecting in meaning ways. So think of IT as a gift, right? Even these simple things, like talking for ten minutes, can can help you and helps the other person.

So the workplace, this can be an important source of connection that can make a big difference in our social health and an organization. Bottom line, what are some tips to give us around thinking about this?

First, I would say that we spend so much time working that it's an opportunity for social health. And if we think about being social and healthier as as you know, having good one on one relationships, but also having a sense of community, the workplace can be a source of both of those people who have a best friend at work or seven times more likely to be engaged to produce high quality work, to report that they're satisfied in their jobs um and in contrast, um you know lonely employees are less productive, more likely to quit and IT makes sense, right?

If you look forward to going into your office or workplace each day to because you have good relationships there, you feel supported or you know, if you work from home and you find yourself isolated way too often, of course, those are going to affect your long term social health and your decision to to stay in a given role. 嗯， so I think IT becomes important to kind of reframe and and actually see the workplace as an opportunity for social health and as a source of community, right? You're coming together to work around a shared admission.

And the more that we can emphasize connection is going to be Better for the bottom line. And I go into a lot of the research on that in the book, but also it's it's gonna make us happier and what are we living for, right? It's like Nancy said, if if all you're doing is just focused on the work worker and not actually connecting with the people around you. Then then that's truly a missed opportunity because .

you there are two questions I always asked the folks I interview. The first one has to do with the theme of the podcast, which is curiosity. What are you most curious about today?

Who I love that question. I most curious about how social health differs in different cultures.

So one of the things that I am excited to look into going forward is actually traveling to different places that aren't necessarily represented in the research to understand how different cultural norms and how different you know, environments can Foster social health and what we can learn from places around the world that we can bring back here and into our own neighborhoods and lives to be more socially healthy. And certainly, I I outline some in the book. For example, I talk about this group of neighbors in paris. I talk about a variety of different examples, but I think there are even more remote cultures, and in different places, different countries that i've haven't yet gone to, that I would love to learn more about their norms and and what we can learn from people of all different backgrounds for, for how to be more social and healthy.

Is there places at the top of your list when you think about the places you'd .

like to do that in? There are so many. I would, I mean, i'll put the dream out there. I would love to partner with some kind of film crew and go to at least one place on each continent and really explore diverse perspectives on this and and kind of immerse in different models of social health around the world. So i'll put that out there and we'll see if anyone listening wants a partner on that.

And I I want to make sure I say, as you mentioned, there's a lot of that in a really fascinating way in your book. You mentioned paris, you talked about his salona and denmark, and we couldn't even get to those things. We don't have that, but I can't recommend those sections enough because IT is really interesting to think about how other cultures do or do not prioritize this.

In fact, how they think about IT in relation to their cities and their governments. It's really fascinating the differences. So I just won.

I put that out there and hopefully that reinforces the dream. The last question, we couldn't cover everything. What one thing I haven't asked that you'd like to leave us with?

嗯， well, you asked great questions. So I wouldn't say there there's anything missing, but I would say that the kind of final take home message that I want people to leave with is, first of all, that social health is as important as physical and mental health. And the more that we prioritize and invest in IT, the Better off will all be.

But second, ly, that you really have agency and I hope everyone feels empower knowing that there are steps you can take no matter how busy you are, no matter how introverted you are, no matter your life circumstances, to start strengthen in your social health. And and we've in IT into your data day that actually have true results. And so my hope with the book and with all my work is for people to recognize the power of connection and to know that there are many tools available to you um and step that you can take each day to be more socially healthy.

Such a great note to leave us on. Thank you so much. IT has been such a pleasure to speak with you and it's such a terrific book.

Thank you so much. Gale, I really, really appreciated.

Curious minds at work is made possible through a partnership with the innovator circle, an executive coaching firm for innovative leaders. A special thank you to producer in editor romana belly for leading the amazing behind the scenes team that makes IT all happen. Each episode we give a shout tout to something that feeling our curiosity. This week it's an exhibited the national museum of american history called recording with remembrance history. Injustice in the murder of edit till at IT center is a bullet riddled marker recently taken from the historic site is a visual reminder of how racism is still with us.