Together: Why Social Connection Holds the Key to Better Health, Higher Performance, and Greater Happiness

...this is the reality of being human, that we have the capacity to love people--family, friends, and strangers--even if we profoundly disagree with them.

Solitude allows us to get comfortable being with ourselves, which makes it easier to be ourselves in interactions with others. That authenticity helps build strong connections.

Intimate, or emotional, loneliness is the longing for a close confidante or intimate partner—someone with whom you share a deep mutual bond of affection and trust. Relational, or social, loneliness is the yearning for quality friendships and social companionship and support. Collective loneliness is the hunger for a network or community of people who share your sense of purpose and interests. These three dimensions together reflect the full range of high-quality social connections that humans need in order to thrive. The lack of relationships in any of these dimensions can make us lonely, which helps to explain why we may have a supportive marriage yet still feel lonely for friends and community.

Right now, the world you are inheriting is locked in a struggle between love and fear. Fear manifests as anger, insecurity, and loneliness. Fear eats away at our society, leaving all of us less whole, so we teach you that every healthy relationship inspires love, not fear. Love shows up as kindness, generosity, and compassion. It is healing. It makes us more whole. The greatest gift to ever receive will come through these relationships. The most meaningful connections may last for a few moments, or for a lifetime, but each will be a reminder that we were meant to be a part of one another's lives, to lift one another up, to reach heights together, greater than any of us could reach on our own. Our hope is that you will always have friends in your lives who love and remind you of your innate beauty, strength, and compassion. Equally as important, we hope you will do the same for others. It pains us that we won't always be there for you when you feel lonely and sad, but we offer this simple prescription to remind you, you are loved. When those moments of loneliness and suffering arise, take both your hands and place them on your heart and close your eyes. Think about the friends and family who have been there for you throughout your life, in moments of joy, and also in the depths of disappointment, the people who have listened to you when you were sad, the people who believed in you, even when you lost faith in yourself, the people who have held you up, lifted you, and seeing you for who you really are. Feel their warmth and their kindness washing over you, filling you with happiness. Now, open your eyes.

Being connected to others gives us a stake in more than our own interests. It expands those interests to include our whole community and thus increases our motivation to work together.

When we become chronically lonely, most of us are inclined to withdraw, whether we mean to or not.

What is humanity, really, but a family of families?

To be real is to be vulnerable, and this takes courage, especially if we believe that others will like us more if we hide or distort who we truly are. Technology can promote this belief by making it easy to pose online as someone braver, happier, better looking, and more successful than we really feel. These poses, in fact, are a form of social withdrawal. They may let us pretend that we’re more accepted, but the pretense only intensifies our loneliness.

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?

What often matters is not the quantity or frequency of social contact but the quality of our connections and how we feel about them.

To be at home is to be known. It is to be loved for who you are.

The way to get people to find common ground on reproductive rights, climate change, and criminal justice is not necessarily to talk first and hear everyone’s arguments. Instead, it’s to establish relationships between those who disagree—relationships where people meet first as fellow human beings, not as political positions.

Today it's widely understood that one of the most important factors in preventing and addressing toxic stress in children is healthy social connection.

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. You need one because you are human. —Jane Howard, Families

2016, Dr. Naomi Eisenberger and fellow researchers reported that the experience of helping others lowers activity in the brain’s stress and threat centers, including the amygdala, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and anterior insula. At the same time, increased activity is seen in the parts of our brain associated with caregiving and rewards (our ventral striatum and septal area).10 This indicates that helping others reduces our stress even as it increases our sense of well-being, making

To be real is to be vulnerable,

The endorphin effect is just one of many biochemical phenomena that explain why people all over the world have traditional folk songs and dances; why children recite the Pledge of Allegiance together in school; why most religions involve congregational singing or chanting as a regular part of services; and why millions around the globe engage in sports. These chemical responses reward us for bringing friends together, secure our sense of belonging, and make social activities good for us, both physically and emotionally.

The power of personal stories, [Parker Palmer] emphasized, should not be underestimated. They humanize large complex issues and bring seemingly overwhelming problems—and solutions—down to scale. They bring people together as partners in solving problems that they might not otherwise realize they have in common. 'The big story of a social issue is too chilly for human habitation. Connecting to the little story of an individual life warms the big story up—and allows it to shed light on the big story, which helps people understand the significance of their own experience.

While loneliness engenders despair and ever more isolation, togetherness raises optimism and creativity. When people feel they belong to one another, their lives are stronger, richer, and more joyful

John Cacioppo helped us understand an additional way loneliness causes mental and physical exhaustion: it takes a toll on the quality of sleep. When we’re profoundly lonely, we tend to sleep lightly and rouse often, just as our ancestors did to prevent being overtaken by wolves or enemies.

We all need to know that we matter and that we are loved.

we need to more deeply appreciate the relationship between loneliness, social connection, and physical and emotional health.

Loneliness is the subjective feeling that you’re lacking the social connections you need. It can feel like being stranded, abandoned, or cut off from the people with whom you belong—even if you’re surrounded by other people. What’s missing when you’re lonely is the feeling of closeness, trust, and the affection of genuine friends, loved ones, and community.

Many people described what they were feeling as a lack of belonging.

but my parents understood that to truly listen, you have to meet people where they are, emotionally and physically, however long that takes.

Most of us are interacting with lonely people all the time, even if we don’t realize it.

the power of gratitude can be delivered in the smallest of moments