The Most Important Medicine for your Health and Longevity with Radha Agrawal

How do we find our people? And why is it important to find our people? My guest on this week's episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy is a community force. Rada Agarwal is the co-founder, CEO, and chief community architect of Daybreaker, the early morning dance and wellness movement that currently holds events in 25 cities and more than a dozen college campuses around the world and has a community of almost half a million people who wake up at dawn to go dancing, which is impressive. She is also the author of a new book called Belong find your people, create community, and live a more connected life. Radda believes that without community we can't survive or thrive. In this episode, we're going to talk about how social isolation can manifest into illness. We also discuss the contagiousness of positive and also negative behavior. We know that our social networks matter more than our genetic networks. So community is important for our mental and our physical health. Radda shows us step by step how we can create a thriving and supportive community starting with going inward and acknowledging our own values and gifts, and then taking those gifts out in the world to make friendships that matter. You don't want to miss this episode. Welcome to the Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and that's Pharmacy FAR MAC Y, a place for conversations that matter. And we're gonna have a great conversation today with Raghda Agoura about things that really matter, which is loneliness and belonging. Raghda is quite a lady. She's a powerful force in the universe. She's the co-founder and CEO and Chief Community Architect of Daybreaker, which you may have heard of, but it's a big early morning dance and wellness movement that's global in 25 cities, different countries, a dozen colleges, and has a community of half a million people who wake up at dawn to go have a dance party, which is pretty awesome. She's also an amazing entrepreneur, co-founder of Thinx and Live It Up. She's an author, speaker. She's a DJ and I have partied to her music. It's awesome. She's an inventor, she's an investor, and was named one of the eight women who will change the world by MTV. She's also the recipient of the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award, which is something I'd like to win. And also spoken about social and entrepreneurship and community building to audiences around the world. Her new book, Belong, Find youd People, Create Community, and Live a More Connected Life, answers the questions How the heck do I find my people? That's almost as important as what the heck do I eat? Or maybe more important actually. And how do I create a large and meaningful community in the real world? Radda lives in Brooklyn, New York with her love Eli, a baby's on the way and her twin sister Miki who's also been on this podcast and has lots of family and friends within a few blocks and has built an extraordinary community which I've been in and seen. You can most often find her tinkering with community and experience design projects or on the dance floor at Daybreaker at dawn in New York City. And if she's not dancing at sunrise in New York, she's in some other part of the world dancing her butt off. So we're here at Wellspring and we just talked, you actually danced your butt off this morning in the pool with music and piano sounded amazing. So you are a unique human. You have done some things which are pretty unusual, creating Super Sprouts, which was making vegetables and the superheroes dancing on the lawn of the White House, which is pretty awesome. You have helped your sister co-found Thinx, which is a disruptive underwear company that helps women not have to deal with all the bleeding of periods. And when you were the inspiration for it, because you were doing a three-legged race and got your period and made a mess and were like, why do we have to do this? And isn't there a better solution? And you have built an amazing community yourself in New York City with a group of very powerful, creative and loving humans. And you have been sort of an activist in the space of creating love and community, which is something we all long for and thrive. We all have this longing to belong, connect, and many of us feel isolated and lonely. I think 40% of Americans feel lonely. I was sort of striking. I was at a conference recently, a Future of Health Conference, and there was a whole session on loneliness as an epidemic and as a driver of so much mental illness and suffering and really loss in the and we all are connected on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, and yet we're really not connected. So talk about what the inspiration was for your book and how you came to be this human who has created this extraordinary community in real life, not just a bunch of Facebook friends.

Well, first of all, thank you for having me on the Doctor's Pharmacy. This is so wonderful to be here with my dear friend and compadre of mischief. Yes, it's true. This book, it really came as an answer to sort of many years of building community around the world, right? So with Daybreaker, we grew the community to half a million people, like you just said, in 25 cities around the world and four continents. And in that time, I learned so much and we saw so much around sort of the topic of isolation and loneliness. And I mean, that is the number one epidemic that we're facing in this country right now.

Yeah, people have to be lonely to get Six in the morning, go dance, right?

It's an adventure. It definitely is an adventure.

It's pretty awesome.

But, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, you know, one in four Americans have zero friends to confide in. This number has tripled in the last 30 years, right? There's a direct correlation between cell phone penetration and social media penetration and our isolation and loneliness. Like, the graph is almost identical. So it really is interesting to sort of realize that we have these sort of slot machines in our pockets, right? These cell phones in our pockets that are dinging away and taking us away from our connection points and making us more isolated when the goal of them from the very beginning was to actually connect with social media, right? So what's happening is we've given keys to a Ferrari, to a five-year-old, without teaching them how to drive. That's what's happening. So there's all this beautiful knowledge and beautiful technology in our pockets, you just haven't sort of harnessed it correctly. So I wrote the book Belong because, you know, the last five years I've been getting emails and phone calls and messages from community members all around the world asking me how to build community. You know, I want to build my own version of Daybreaker or I want to, I moved to a new city, I don't have any friends, I don't know what to do. And so I began sort of buying up every book I can find on community building. And I realized, wow, every single book is quite theoretical nature, sort of led mostly by academics. And, and I just think that, that I wanted to offer a practical guide. I wanted to sort of from boots on the ground. We've done it for five years. We've, we've, we've, you know, been in the ring, Blood, Sweat and Tears. And when I want to give people a very sort of simple step-by-step guide for just how to do that, let me hold you by the hand and, and walk with you on this path of community building. And so if, you know, we go through these 10 inflection points in our lives, like when we move to new city, when we go to college for the first time, when we start a new job, when we get married, we have a baby, when we get divorced when we retire. There's so many moments in life where we're starting all over again. And at each point, we sometimes tell ourselves it's harder and harder to make friends. As I go on this 20 City Book Tour, I'm on City number 14 right now. Most people who come to my book events are sort of in their 50s plus and are sharing how much more of a struggle it is now for them to find community members than it was before. And I think we begin to put these social barriers on ourselves because society really favors the youth in tabloids and magazines. And so it's on us, on all of us to begin recognizing actually the beauty and wisdom of sort of our experience as well.

Yeah, it's so important. You know, today we're seeing so much otherness in the world.

That's right.

Basically vilify the other, we disconnect from other human beings, and you see things like the Pittsburgh shooting and synagogues, you see pipe bombs being sent. This doesn't only happen for people who are isolated and disconnected.

That's exactly right.

And it's easy to demonize someone you don't know. I remember when I was in medical school, I went to Russia, was the Soviet Union at the time. That's because I'm really old and I'm still Soviet. Please. And it was stunning because we were there on a mission that was called citizens diplomacy. And the idea was, you know, the other, the Russians were demonized. The Soviets were demonized and they were bad and evil, the evil empire, and we were like, no, no, these are human beings and let's connect with them as human beings. And so we spent, you know, three weeks around the Soviet Union meeting with medical students and connecting with them and building relationships and building the community. And it was really profound. It impacted me because I realized that, you know, if we're isolated, it's easy to kind of make somebody the enemy and to disconnect. And what you're offering is sort of the antidote to this isolation, disconnection that keeps us from authentic connections with each other and with building a real community. We all have this longing to belong. We all came out of an evolutionary history that was tribal. We are all in community.

We are born in community. We are literally born inside of a mother's womb. So we are born in community and without it we cannot survive or thrive, right? And it's so clear that our lack of belonging or isolation is the actual essential issue that ladders down to every other societal problem that we are facing today. So gun violence.

Unpack that for us, because it's a big statement that loneliness is the cause of so many of societal ills.

Of every societal illness. So obesity epidemic, our lack of... Tell.

Us how each one of these, because...

Because so... being socially isolated is as harmful to your physical health as being an alcoholic and twice as harmful as obesity. Because, cellularly, right, we end up storing more. And again, you're the doctor here, but is there so much sort of knowledge around and studies around when you don't belong, all of a sudden your cellular reactions become slower, you're metabolizing food less fast. And there's actually a lot of studies that I've read around around that.

Maybe you're depressed and anxious and using food as your source of comfort.

Well, that too, of course, that too. But it actually sets off a cellular chain reaction. Our lack of belonging and isolation sets off this sort of cellular chain reaction that sort of slows down our metabolism as well. But also, every anxiety and depression, one in three college students are anxious or depressed today. One of the reasons we launched Daybreak on college campuses is because My fiance's little brother, three of his best friends commit suicide in college and turns out it's, it's, it's, what's the word? It's, it's contagious. And, and, and so he, it's true.

Both positive and negative behaviors are contagious.

Absolutely. Exactly. And so we looked into it and we realized, oh my gosh, there's such a huge issue on college campuses around drinking and binge drinking and, So we want to create Daybreak College campuses to inspire connection without substances as well.

We're now on 15 campuses.

Because we're getting up at six o'clock to go dancing. Well, we start a little bit later because they're definitely not going to come and we have to lure them with.

Burritos, but it's cool.

Dancing with burritos. Yeah. No, but, you know, and so, like, unpacking some more, like our political strife right now, you know, the political polarization that we're facing today. you know, I think the make America great again hats, you know, the red hats that people are wearing in the, on the Republican side, it's, it's a statement of connection and community. I'm a part of something. And these are disenfranchised Community members often who are being recruited, who are saying, hey, join our barbecue. We're cooking for everybody. Here's some hats for you guys. And all of a sudden, I went from feeling like I don't belong to here's a community that really is welcoming me with open arms. The pipe bombers All of the gun violence that we're facing today, many of whom are mentally have mental illnesses, well 85% of people experiencing mental illness are isolated or alone. And so because we ostracize them from society, they're not welcome because they're not mentally sort of abled, right? So that piece of it only sort of creates that sense of anger. And so it's on each and every one of us to out there who's listening on this podcast right now to Really make friends with everybody, whether it's someone who's older than you, younger than you, someone who's mentally experiencing mental illness. How can we actually bridge those divides so that every single human on this planet can belong? And so the COVID of my book has a doorway on it, right? Because the concept of neighborhood neighborliness is also lost. I live in New York City. We live in New York City. Do you know your neighbor's names? Do you know the neighbor across the street?

Yeah, we just moved in.

I don't know my neighbors. I've been there for three years. And I've tried to make friends with them and there's sort of this kind of don't talk to me type thing. And so we're making a big effort. We have a welcome committee, like little figurines outside our door that says, Welcome to our home. If you need salt, come and borrow it. And we're trying, but it's on all of us. Society needs to embrace the concept of neighborhood again.

I think if you're not sugar, but if you need salt.

Yes, salt. Yeah, exactly.

You're not gonna get a bag of white sugar at Bada's house.

Definitely. Yeah, so, but I think community, the most generous act we can do as human beings is to create community. The most generous thing we can do for ourselves and for each other is to sort of extend our hand and say, Hey, will you be my friend? So that's true for me. When I turned 30 years old, I looked myself in the mirror and I realized I didn't belong. And that was the beginning of my journey to community.

And that's the first-- I have to imagine that.

Page of my book. Yeah, in my 20s I spent sort of sleepwalking. I was in sports bars. as watching football, drinking beer that I didn't want to drink and trying to be cool and relevant and hanging out with what I thought society sort of deemed as cool, like going to clubs and getting drunk and blacking out all the time because I'm Asian and I can't handle my liquor. And then at 30 years old, I woke up and I had this like, whoa, aha moment where I was just like, what have I been doing? Like, who am I? And the light in my eyes was dim and I just could see-- It's hard to imagine. I mean, right, but in this last 10 years, you and your sister are.

Like, headlight high beams shining in the world.

Well, this is the last nine years, right? We totally, and you're such a dear friend now, and our community is what gives us that life. And so from 30 to 35, Mickey and I spent all of our effort and time focusing on community. And I create all these exercises for myself. And in my book, I talk about going in. You have to go in first to belong to yourself. So often with community building, grasping outside of ourselves to find those friends. But it really starts with this journey of self-exploration first to get to know who we are, what we value, what we can bring to a community, and how we're showing up. How are we at listening? How are we at connecting with everyone around us?

It's almost like focusing on not only how to find a friend, but how to be a friend.

Yes, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. So the first half of my book really challenges the reader in a gentle and loving way to go inside and ask themselves, How are we showing up and how can we sort of shine a light on ourselves first in a beautiful way, in a glorious way, before we go out? I think so much of self-help today also, it traps us. We get trapped in self-help. We get trapped in personal development that we forget that the whole point of personal development is to do what? Is to better relate to the outside world. Right? We go inside. -Self-care, but it really should be-- -KRISTIN: yeah, right.

Exactly.

It's like, I'm going to get a massage. I'm going to take care. I'm going to eat healthy. so that I can take care of my children better, so I can serve my community better, so that I can show up for the world better. And yet we forget that we just get trapped in the look at me selfie moments without realizing that that's actually the sort of the ladder down to isolation, loneliness and sadness. Yeah.

So, in Okinawa, which is one of the longest lived people in the world, they form a community at birth of babies that are kind of connected by their parents that go through life together and go through all the ups and downs and trials and tribulations from birth to like 100 years old. And it builds this sense of, and it's not like a hundred people, it's like five people or four people. And it's, you know, most people can't even say there's one friend they have that they can call up when they feel bad or sad or they can have a honest, transparent conversation to. That's really heartbreaking. And it's so much of a driver of somebody the ills of our society. It's something people don't talk about. And it's but when we were with Rick Warren in Saddleback Church, I had the insight of using the power of community to help people create health. So suicide is contagious, but health is contagious. That's right. And obesity is contagious, but so is, you know, Good health. Good health. Right. And I think that's such an important thing you're creating in the world is this call to belong and not only to belong, but actually you've created a very specific roadmap. So I want to get into that now. You've talked about going in to go out. so let's talk about going in and what that means and how do you do that?

Right. So, you know, I have about 20 exercises in my book that really take you by the hand. The whole point is to get dirty in this journey of self-exploration and have fun. But going in starts with first an audit of who are you spending your time with. Right. Just take a moment to write down who are the people I'm spending my time with today at work, at home. around me, family, friends, relatives, who are all the people you're spending your time with. And just write that down on a piece of paper and take a look at this map. And this map will begin to, and what I like to do is color code it. So work friends, I'll color code in green, and family, I'll color code in red, and friends that I choose, I'll color code in orange. So different colors to sort of see, ah, okay, cool. And then I have this kind of axis of energy that I created in my book in chapter one, or in part one of the book, where you sort of assess, okay, who are the community members who are bringing me up? And who are the community members in my life who are bringing me down? So looking around, you begin to see, ah, cool. So all the green quadrant sort of is up and to the right. So therefore, I realize that my work life is very positive. I have very positive community. at work. But then maybe there's more red dots around family and friends in the negative quadrants. So you're like, ah, okay, I need to really understand and assess what's happening in my family life so I can really heal that or support that or ask myself, you know, how do I connect and handle family members? And we've all, you know, we all, we've all, we're all, we all go through that. And so, so really looking, although I.

Know your family, they're all pretty awesome.

Well, you know, we're all, your mom's Japanese. My dad's, yeah.

My sister's a doctor.

And then the other sister's, you know. Well, you know, it's, and culturally it's interesting, right? Like, you know, my father, my mother, some of the most loving community builders, I know. In fact, they modeled what community looks like for us. And yet it's interesting because culturally talking about love and sex and definitely, you know, you just don't talk about those things. Yeah. With your, you know, with your kind of Asian parents. And so on one hand, they're the best community builders I've seen. On the other hand, I do long for a little bit more kind of emotional-- Honesty. Honesty, yeah. But I think, again, we all have those sort of issues. I'm going through the motherhood process right now. I'm seven months pregnant. I keep asking myself every day.

What.

Kind of parent do I want to be? And anyway, so plotting this graph, you begin to sort of see a pattern of, ah, okay, cool. So here is my entire a life map and it begins to give you sort of the beginning of that story. And then from there, you ask yourself, okay, why am I spending my time with these people? Are they grandfathered in? Are we making excuses? Am I being lazy? Is it just easier to keep them around? What is it?

Are they energy givers or energy suckers?

That's right, exactly. And can I sort of be honest and vulnerable with that person and share, Hey, listen, this is how I'm feeling right now in this relationship, and it's not working for me. Or I'm really, you know, sort of wanting to spend time with, you know, sort of more positive forces. I'm going through pregnancy right now, and I don't necessarily. I just want to spend just some more time connecting with. With the joy in my life, you know, and. And things like that. Right. Being more honest and vulnerable. And I've had those conversations, and it's. And it's wonderful either. It becomes a mirror for that person to say, oh, wow. I realize I'm not showing up the way you, you want me to. Or there, or they say, okay, I totally understand. And, and let's, you know, reconnect after you give birth, you know? So, so I think that there's, there's that honesty piece there that we forget. We end up just ghosting our, our, you know, our people in our lives. Yeah. You know, we end up running away or we end up talking and, and it ends up being a very negative experience. But, you know, saying, saying sort of, this isn't the time to spend time with somebody right now because I want level up with my community members is the best thing you can do for yourself and for your friend too, because they will begin to see how they're showing up. And hopefully they'll go on the journey of self-exploration too.

So rather than just cut them off, just have a real honest conversation with them.

That's right. That takes courage and vulnerability on all of our ends, but it doesn't create resentment on the other side that leads to negative storytelling and hurt and all other sort of of larger issues.

So that's the first step in going.

The first step in going.

Instead of taking inventory.

Yeah, taking inventory, exactly. Auditing community who you spend time with. The second thing that I did when I turned 30, and this is exactly what I outlined in my book, is my own journey that's taken me from feeling like I don't belong to this incredible, connected, joyful community that gives me wings and lets me fly. The second thing I did was I wrote down a three column list, which we'll get into it. And just as a column one was all the qualities I was looking for in a friend. Right? So I just wanted to write down and actually manifest and call in what were the qualities I was looking for in a friend. Right? We do this type of audit again for our romantic relationships. We do this for our professional careers. Right? I want a job that pays this much. I want a job that has this type of vacation. I want a job that you, right?

Like in terms of life planning, It's not a category.

It's like, why not?

Love, work, money, exactly. Friend is not a category.

And it is the most important, when I say the most important category in life to focus on, and everyone says, focus on money, power, fame, and building your business, but really none of it will happen or will result in joy or a joyful life experience if you don't have a community being like, oh my gosh, Mark, high five. Whoa, we get to celebrate your major win, New York Times bestseller list again. Holy shit, let's go and throw a giant party for you. You know what I mean? If you're just kind of like writing by yourself in your room and have no one to celebrate, then at the end of it, you're empty again, you know? So it's so critical that we continue to put our laptops down and keep our word and go to those dinners with our friends and say yes to the dance floor and say yes to adventure. Because at the end of the day, no matter, no amount of success will mean anything if there's no one to celebrate it with, right? That's true. So column one was all the qualities I was looking for in a friend. Right? So I wanted friends to talk about ideas and not each other. I wanted friends who said, fuck yeah, you bleed that out to life. I wanted friends who, you know, really took care of themselves and took care of each other. I wanted friends who were interesting and interested, right, who are good listeners. I wanted friends. Yeah, I just, I just, so, so I wrote down everything I was looking for in a friend, It was kind of vulnerable because there's so much shame around saying I don't belong or there's so much shame around writing down the qualities. It just feels desperate for some reason in today's society, right? But if we just removed-- Not really. Right, that's what I'm saying. But if we removed all of that stigma, because there is stigma around FOMO, right? Fear of missing out and fear of being left out. You don't tell people like, yeah, I was left out from the party and it really hurt. Like, we're so proud. We don't really talk about that, right? But faux blow is a concept talked about in my book quite a bit, which is fear of being left out, right? Which is a more subversive negative version of FOMO, right? And then Jomo is joy is missing out, which is the joy of missing out and having the confidence to know there's other things to do. But so column two is all the quizz. I don't want a friend, right? So I don't want friends who are negative Nellies, lazies, shoulder shruggers, Debbie Downers, Netflix and you know, watchers all the time and homebodies. Like, I wanted friends who were just like, you know, really, say yes to life. Say yes. Like, and I call it FYF in my book.

It's a very good book. And somebody else might want a friend.

Who they can sit around and do knitting with. That's right. That's what I'm saying. So everyone's different. So your qualities are going to be very different from my qualities. Whoever's listening out there, right? And that's exactly what you want to do right now is ask yourself, where do I feel the most energized? And then column three, perhaps the most important column, was all the qualities that I need to embody in order to attract the friends that I want. All the qualities that I need to embody. So I need to be less of a workaholic. I love my work. You know, I need to put my laptop down. I need to be less judgmental and nitpicky and perfectionist. And, you know, I'm a CEO, right? I run companies for a living. And so my job is to focus on what's going wrong, right? My job is to focus on how to improve what's going wrong. So if I bring that, I used to bring that into my relationships, into my friendships, I'd be nitpicking what's going wrong in those relationships instead of being grateful for what's going right. So that sort of shifting your frame. Yes, that compartmentalization of in my work, I'm going to be focused on really kind of wanting to improve service and product and whatever, but in my personal life to really compartmentalize and say, Hey, wait, let me really focus on what's going right. Especially as an Asian woman, you grew up in a household where it's like you're only loved if you get an A.

A plus.

A plus. So it's-- and you did all right.

You went to Cornell and you were on the varsity soccer team.

But yeah, so I think it's so important to take that audit and look in the mirror and ask yourself, how are you showing up for your friends, too? So that was a really important-- so.

That going in is doing an intimate tour of your life. what matters, looking at yourself. Where you're not the best friend and what you want. So what else is part of going in?

So going in, there's also another exercise I do and there's so many more, but I'll share one more.

By the way, the book is full of these amazing practical exercises. It's not like, oh, you should be in a community and you should go have friends. And it's like a roadmap step by step to take you through the process of how do you create community capacity in yourself and how do you build and find community and it's really, really awesome.

Thank you. And I illustrated the book, too. So every page is fun to read. Like, I, you know, it's not a bunch of words. It's very, it's like, I really like pictures and colors, and, and it just makes the whole journey of, of community building a lot more playful and, and colorful. So what are the other going in? So, yeah. So one more going in exercise I'll share before we, we know, move on to going out is I have you also assess what I call your Via chart. So, so it's a Imagine a three sort of Venn diagram, three circles that you draw. So circle one is your values, the V and Via as your values. The I in value in the Via chart is your interests, and the A is your abilities. So just write down your values, your interests, and your abilities in three concentric circles. And sit down with yourself and ask yourself, Today, Mark Hyman, What do I value today? Because what you value today is gonna be different than what you valued maybe 10 years ago. Maybe 10 years ago you're a big party animal. And then now, you still are. I mean, you know, you still have to change. I still see it Burning Man. Fist pumping on the dance floor. But today, maybe you just got married to a beautiful wife, you're nesting, you have a house in New York now. And so maybe your values today is more family driven. whereas 10 years ago it might have been different. So I'm, you know, I'm seven months pregnant today as well. So my values are different and values are sort of kind of the guardrails through which you live your life. You know, what are the, what are things that matter to you? And you can Google values and see sort of what values come up. And there's all kinds of lists that come up. In my book, I list out about a hundred values that you can choose from, but it's also something you can find on the internet and you can begin to sort of map out what do I care about today and really sit with yourself and connect to that essence. So write that down in one circle and that will give you again the beginning of a roadmap for the type of other people that you want to connect with. So shared values are so critical, right? And then the I is-- Because if.

You name it, then you can identify others, right?

That's right. Exactly. And then the I in your VIA chart is your interests. So, what am I interested in today? So, you know, it's different from your values and your values is more sort of kind of intrinsic qualities, family, you know, community, work, life balance, you know, that sort of thing, right? Whereas your interests might be things like hiking and yoga and mindful meditation and music festivals and, you know, Daybreaker. And Daybreaker. Yeah, thank you. And all kinds of, right? So it's, what are you interested in tangibly doing today? And some people I do this workshop with will say, well, I don't know. We all have interests, right? So dig deep. If you don't have an interest right now, then start cultivating them. And that's what's so fun about this going in journey is that life is-- we have 100 years to live on this planet. Let's really begin cultivating our interests that are outside of just work.

Only 100 years if you eat right, follow my advice, and connect in the community and follow Rada's advice. Then you get to 100.

Exactly. If you read all of Mark's books, yeah, for sure. And then your abilities are, and I really think about abilities through the lens of what can you bring to your community? So what are your abilities? Not just like, I'm a good public speaker, but what can you bring to your community? So is one of your abilities to ask amazing questions? Is one of your abilities to cook? Are you a good cook and chef? Can you cook for your friends? Was one of your abilities to gather people in your home. Is your home a really wonderful place to gather? Is, you know, one of my-- Julia.

You'Re a great DJ.

Exactly, exactly. So, like, two of my friends, I love giving this example. You know, one of them, she always has a purse full of, like, electric candles. So that when, you know, she really, she, like, doesn't like neon lighting. So she'll walk into any room and she'll just be like, oh, no, no, no. This is, like, too harsh lighting. She'll turn off all the lights and break out all these, like, electric candles and, vibes out the place instantly. And it's incredible.

--And you have these other friends who are great sort of artists, musicians, and --Exactly.

--They bring instruments.

Exactly.

--They play great things and do skits. --That's exactly right. --It's just so fun. --Yeah. So they bring instruments like Eli and I bring gold stars often to gatherings. And we'll say, Mark, you did great. You know, it was a wonderful thing you just said. Here's a gold star for you. You know, we went to the hospital when Eli's father was sick. We gave all the doctors and nurses gold stars and said, thank you for what you're doing. Great job, you know, checking his pulse.

We looked at you like, what?

And they all started competing with each other for how many-- the doctors, like serious doctor, competing with each other for how many kids they had. It's like kindergarten. Yeah, for how many gold stars they got and they put in their badges and it was this like hysterical experience and we turned this sort of otherwise scary place into a playground. And, you know, it's whatever we can bring that feels good for us, it feels natural to us. bring that to your community and your experience and write that in your abilities chart.

All right, so we've got the inventory, we've got your BIA chart, you've got the three column list. Three column list of where they fit in terms of whether they're bringing you life and energy or taking it away. So what about going out then? You've done this inventory, you've done all these things. What's the process of actually going out.

With this and finding your community and building it? So step one, and there's some people who are like, I'm shy or like, this doesn't come naturally to me, You know, it's so much easier for you, Rada, because you're naturally more extroverted, which I, by the way, break those labels in my book, too, in part one. We talk about the fact that we have begun to sort of label ourselves into corners. So, I'm an introvert. I'm an extrovert. That's a good example with Carl Jung, who kind of named those terms, and people are really banding around those terms. I've seen friends who are definitely extroverted start dating introverts and then begin identifying as introverts. and disappear from the face of the planet. And so I think we've taken these terms too literally, where Carl Jung himself, who defined these terms, said that if you are only introverted, you'd be in an insane asylum. If you're only extroverted, you'd end up in an insane asylum. So we are on a spectrum of introvert and extrovert, which I call metavert in my book, right? We are all metaverts. So let's just stop. Some days I'm social. Some days I want to be at home by myself. filling up on energy. And so I think if we stop putting these social limitations on ourselves, we'll begin to allow so much more exploration in the communities that we're a part of. And so exploration, so going out begins with first like removing all of these labeling and then getting sort of a deep understanding of who we are, like going in experience. And then it's just putting your shoes on. I would say put your shoes on. write down five communities in and around you that align with your values, interests, and abilities, and then begin exploring them. So it's a light touch, right? So for me, the first year was, okay, when I went on this journey, when I started at 30 years old, I realized I didn't belong. And I was going to sports bars and doing kind of like the everyday thing. I asked myself, okay, what are the things that I really care about? What do I, what am I interested in? So I realized I'm interested in entrepreneurship. I'm interested in music festivals, which I'd never really explored in my 20s. I just was kind of doing the city life thing. So I began looking up all the cool music festivals around and I stumbled upon Burning Man, Lightning in a Bottle, and different music festivals I started going to. And I started going to entrepreneurship summits, like Summit Series, and various communities in New York and across Nexus Summit community. It's sort of a young global leader summit. So I began sort of charting this on a little map as well.

So you go to pre-existing gatherings of people who had similar interests.

Exactly, interests, values. And all of a sudden, I started meeting people and I started realizing, oh wow, wait a minute, you're in some same things I'm interested in, we want to solve problems for the world, And I began to sort of find my people for the first time. And one by one, I said, Hey, let's hang out. And whereas before I used to have siloed relationships, right? Like I had my friends I work out with. I had my friends that I go travel with. I have my party friends. I have my intellectual friends. But this was the first time in my life also that I wanted to remove all the compartmentalization and just bring everybody together fearlessly. because I think so often, for some reason, we can get territorial. Yeah. With our friendships as well. I call that the oxytocin overload, which is, you know, which is actually a term around when you become so close to somebody as a friend one-on-one there's a sort of animal instinct. Yeah, exactly. Animal instinct that you don't want to share that person with somebody else, whether it's your kids or or your family and friends, that overload is there. And it's on us to just recognize that it's happening, to know, wait, I'm feeling irrationally jealous. I'm feeling irrationally territorial over this friendship. And to name it and just say, hey, I just want to let you know that I'm feeling irrationally territorial. And then I know that's Oculus over because I care about you so much. But so that going out piece is so critical. and first, like, tearing down all the needs for those siloed friendships and just bringing everybody together, which is what I did. And again, it could work differently for everybody, but for me, just breaking down the barriers and sort of fearlessly introducing my friends and watching them develop friendships without me, feeling jealous of their friendship was actually something new that I didn't have in my 20s.

Yeah. Right.

So in my 30s, I was like, wow, that's so cool. I did.

More is more.

More is more. I connected them. They're now friends without me. That's so cool. And they thank me when they see me every once in a while. They're like, oh my gosh, thank you so much. This person is such a meaningful person in my life now. And more is more. So everyone listening out there, connect your friends fearlessly. Recognize that the rising tide truly lifts all boats. And when we actually courageously and fearlessly connect one another, life becomes far more rich. So, yeah, going to, so then going out and exploring all these communities, I began finding these people, bringing them to my house, hosting dinner parties, not that weren't just wine and cheeses. Everyone listening, let's stop doing wine and cheeses. I think we're past that. I think it's time that we really think about gathering as a more meaningful connection point.

It's kombucha and kale chips now, right?

Exactly. Kombucha and kale. Exactly. But there's just, you know, I talk about entry rituals, like when someone comes into your home, how are they coming into your home? Is it just like, hey, I'm here with wine, or are you greeting them with, you know, a little wishing well to say, hey, today when you're coming to my, to my home, I want.

You to share a little wish that you have for this Gathering. I mean, tribes always had rituals.

That's right.

Always had, that's right. Ceremony. And that's right. You're saying, let's bring that back into our lives.

Exactly. Because it creates meaning and context and connection and love. And not just from a macro perspective. Right. So Daybreaker, we have the method. So So let me just kind of start with everyone listening, sort of with this idea of when you go out for the first time, you're now aligned with your inner values, interests, and abilities. Start exploring the communities around you fearlessly, start connecting people around you fearlessly, and then start gathering people into your home.

So don't wait to get invited to a party.

That's right. That's exactly it.

It's actually one of my favorite things to do is to actually invite people to my house. cook for them and just hang out. That's just my favorite thing.

And that's exactly it. So don't wait for the invitation, create the invitation. And then secondly is, you know, once you've kind of, so it's sort of like if I were to take 10,000 foot view of this whole experience of community building, it's self. You have to belong to yourself, right? Then you create a community, a personal community for yourself. But once you've built that personal community, Then you build community at large. So it's inside, right? And then small community for self and then larger community for society.

And how do you do that?

So that's what I call the crawl method for community building. I talk about this in my book. So once you've built a community for yourself, and you realize, okay, I have three to five friends that give me wings with whom I can call. I've done the exploration of my communities. I've gone in, I've participated in those communities to get my hands dirty. connected with them now, I really, you know, the most generous act we can do, like I keep saying, is to create community for others. You know, so once we have that sense of safety and knowing that we have our own people, now it's a matter of creating community for others, right? So I really believe that if every single human being created community for others, not just for themselves, the world would no longer have any of our issues that we have today. So sometimes you're like, wow, how do I begin creating a community at large? How do I do this? And so I distilled it into a very simple community building rubric that I call the crawl method for community building. So that's why I built the Daybreaker movement around the world. We can sort of dissect that for how you built your community of two million people or millions of people who listen to your work. Follow your incredible teachings, but there's, you know, while community building sounds like a very squishy concept and sort of gray area, there are sort of defined rules that I've identified that can help anybody on their community building journey.

What if they live in an area where they just don't have the connection with people? I just, a woman came up to me the other day and she said, you know, I live in Baltimore as an African American woman and I'm into yoga and mindfulness and healthy eating and, you know, my family isn't, my friends aren't, my community isn't. I'm not sure what to do. I really want to, you know, find those people who are my community, but they're just not around me.

Right.

Because I live in, you know, the inner city in Baltimore, which is poor.

And disenfranchised and disconnected.

Totally.

You know, so I've never heard of kale. So, so there are plenty of yoga communities in Baltimore, and I think that it's, it again takes so much courage. to be the first to try something, right? And so I think it's one thing. And then the second most courageous person is the second person to join the community, right? So if she can find one person to create that centrifuge, and then the two people will create another centrifuge, right?

That's why you and Mickey are so powerful. You're like a double trouble.

Well, you know, it's, I mean, so it really requires, you know, that level, it's courage. Yes, it's discouraging. It took me two years, by the way, to find my people. And so, so often, you know, we live in a society that is so transactional and so instant and automatic. I push a button and 24 hours later I have the box in my mail from Amazon, right? I can order takeout any moment. So everything is incredibly rapid today that we have forgotten that patience actually takes 80 hours to call somebody a friend. It takes one second for someone to push a like button on their, on your social media, but it takes 80 hours to call somebody a friend, right? Which is why it's so potent to go to a festival because you're spending 80 hours in a weekend. with somebody, right? And you go deep with them very quickly. Or if you're doing an upstate New York, you know, weekend with friends with fireplace around you, you know, and you sleep over with each other that in that one weekend you can call some, you can go from strangers to best friends. Yeah. So, so, but that time is so, so crucial. So, and it takes patience. Again, it takes patience. And so all I can, I would tell the woman in Baltimore is have patience, continue reaching out. My mother moved to Baltimore recently. Here's a wild story for you. This is three weeks ago. This is brand new story. My mother, I cried when she told me the story. She moved to Baltimore with my dad to be close to my sister and her grandkids. And she didn't know a single person. And she courageously, she's seven-year-old woman. Japanese is her first language. English. So she has, you know, broken English. And she writes a letter, a handwritten letter, says, hello, my name is Mire. I just moved to Bartimo. more. I want to make Japanese lady friends and not male friends, but lady friends, because I have a husband who I love, and she puts in parentheses anyway. And she's. She's like, I would like to speak Japanese with women and. And, you know, Revitalize, you know, that part of my life. Here's my phone number. Please call me if you want to spend some time. Signed Mire. And then she drove it to the closest Japanese restaurant. in the neighborhood. I you not. Yeah. And gives the general manager of the Japanese restaurant and says, excuse me, can you please show this to Japanese ladies if they come in? And the following week, Mark, her phone did not stop ringing off the hook. Oh, my God.

So she's everybody has this long, you ticket act, right?

It well, exactly. But she's a Japanese woman. She could have been, like, seven years old. I it's my life. I moved to New City. Like, I don't know anybody. How might she's now has had three play dates. already with. She called me the other day. She was like, this woman, she's 55, and she's a lawyer. She has three kids. She's very powerful Japanese lady. And she was, like, so proud and excited of her new friend. And. And that's. That's what I want everyone out there listening to. To understand.

Never too late.

It's never too late. It's never too late. And if you're rejected the first time, try again. It's try again and again and again. You know, my best friend, one of my best friends today. he texted me over and over again because I was just busy and doing my own thing to hang out. And I just was, I just wasn't, I just, you know, he wasn't top priority, but he just kept texting. And finally, you know, six weeks later, he texted, like, again for the 10th time, was like, hey, I'm the neighborhood. You want to spend time together? Not in a creepy way, not an annoying way, but just like, you know, kind of just like, hey, I'm in the neighborhood. And I was like, look, I'm having a party at my house. Do you want to, you want to come over? and he came and he added so much value. He was so fun and so interesting, so charismatic. Max Dossel, my friend who's still good. Oh, yeah. And now he's one of my dearest friends. So have the perseverance to when you know somebody might be a good friend and good fit, and they might be also maintaining their own community. I had a big community by then, so he just was patiently saying, hey, and instead of just being like, hey, I want to hang out, he was.

Like, how can I contribute? Well, that's what I was going to say. I think most of us are saying, what can we get from our friends? How can they fill our hole, our need, instead of saying, how can I serve them? How can I be a contribution in their life? What can I do to bring light and love to them? And I think that's a very different way of being. And I think that's also critical for relationships. And the more you give, the more you get. It's just the way it works. That's it.

And I think it's just shifting that frame reference. That's right. Yeah. And none of it is, you know, rocket science. You know, it's like I am one of the cornerstones of belonging. And I talk about my book as being an FYF, a friend. It's very technical. And that's it. Like, if you just say F yes to life, if you lean in, and whether you're shy or not, you can still be sort of a lean in friend that says, I would love to exclamation point, you know? Yeah. So I think if we can, if we can sort remove all of our cool factor barriers. And like, I'm an adult, I need to be serious, take me seriously, or I was bullied as a kid, or, you know, I used to dance, but people used to make fun of me. My mom and dad made fun of me. My sisters made fun of me. We begin to lose that light, you know? And so let's just start over and.

Hit the refresh button, reset button. Unbelievable.

So how do you then sustain the community? Yes. So this is actually so, so important. important in life is community is sustained at the intersection of mystery and safety. Right. Community is built at the intersection of mystery and safety. And this goes for your personal relationships and for your, your relationships, sort of as a community at large. So what I mean by that, let me start with your relationship, Community at large for daybreaker. You know, we're a morning dance party. There's the safety in knowing that it's going to be a well-produced event, that we've curated great food and beverage, that it's going to be good people. Yeah. There's no alcohol in the morning. That it's, that's a, that it's a, you know, a, we have wonderful wow moments and performance and, and great DJs. Maybe the whole experience is going to be well produced for the safety of knowing that. But the mystery of not knowing where the next event's going to be, what the theme is going to be, who's going to be DJing, what are all of our performative wow moments? What are, you know, we, we Had this element of mystery, right?

So your mom says, right?

Exactly. You gotta keep some mystery. Yeah, that's right. And Mickey tell you that. Yeah, exactly. That's the key to a successful marriage, is keeping a little mystery. As soon as your partner knows everything about you, it's game over. But same thing with friendships.

So separate bathrooms.

Oh my gosh. Well, there's mystery in number twos also. But, But yeah, no, the miss in friendships as well, you know. So Daybreaker grew because people always kept asking, oh my gosh, where's the next event gonna be? But it's the same applies for your personal relationships, right? In your personal relationships, instead of doing the same thing over and over again, like we used to go to the same sports bar every Sunday in my 20s and watch the same football. And just after a while, it was stale and boring and like, what am I doing? I'm wasting my life. life. So, you know, continuing to push each other as friendship, as friends, to say, hey, Mark, this is your turn. Surprise me. Right. You. It's your turn to plan the weekend or the event, host a dinner party at your house. Next time it's my turn. Next time. So we rotate turns and creating surprises for each other. Or when you walk into event. One of my dear friends, David Yaris, you know, David, you know, he would bring, and this is one of my favorite stories in my book that I write about. We were having breakfast one morning just at a restaurant and he pulls out a miniature pumpkin from his jacket pocket and just puts it on the table. And I'm like, David, what's the pumpkin about? And he was like, no, it's just table garnish.

Table garnish.

And I just was like, you were ridiculous and so silly. And then the next time he hung out, he brought pine cones and put them around my office table and brought pine cones for my team members and just like, just like it's things that he found in the forest. It's just like, whatever. He didn't even go buy it. Yeah, he just like found it and just like level of creativity, like whenever I see him now, my tail wags. I'm like, what's he gonna do now? What silliness is he gonna have up his sleeve today? And it takes nothing. It just like, it doesn't take any money. It just takes a little effort, you know? So that mystery piece is so critical and having your friends continue to wag their tail for you. If you're the same negative Nelly, every time they hang out with you, you're like, Woe is me, I'm Eeyore. Life is terrible. you know, like they're not gonna wanna hang out with you after a while. Or if you're sort of doing the same thing over and over again, you're constantly wanting to go to the same club over and over. It's just keep life interesting and mysterious. But the safety is that knowing that you're loyal friend, that you're always an ear to listen to, you're gonna be there if, you know, I'll be there.

For you, Mark, if you need me. It's true. I call you up, I need something, you're always there, you're always yes, I'll.

Help you, I'll do this. You know, it's really-- and that's important to me that you feel that sense of safety in our friendship, but that you know that when we hang out, you're gonna be like, oh, God, like, what. What rod am I gonna get today? Right? I hope that.

That's true.

I don't be feel that. So, yeah. So I think that's. That's the. That's the beauty of. Of the opportunity that we get to bring to our friendships. And if we just brought more intention to it, life is so much more fun on both sides. It's like, I love surprising my friends. I love bringing fun, you know, things to our Community. gatherings. And, and, and our friends are always like, oh, God, what are the twins gonna do now?

You know, that's fun. It's so great. Yeah, I, I definitely experienced that. I also see the way you have, you know, created this amazing community. And in, in some ways, I, I find it surprising that you describe your 20s as this isolated, disconnected time, because I don't know you from that time. I know you from after that time for the last seven years or so.

And I, well, I wasn't isolated. I was definitely social, but I was social and sleepwalking.

Yeah, you were connected.

Yeah, we're all social. We can be, but we can be sleepwalking and social, right? We can be hanging out with our co-workers whose cubicles are next to ours and just be talking about the weather and not actually be intentionally going deep, you know? So, so many of us don't realize that we are sleepwalking.

Yeah, I think the thing is most of us feel like we're the only ones experiencing what we're experiencing. Being in that connected community is so powerful and we see that in medicine. I mean, we at Cleveland Clinic are running these small groups to help people change their lives. And they actually work better than one-on-one visits with a doctor for the same condition.

Exactly.

It's just striking.

I want to do stuff with you on that. I really think that there's so much in community and health that go hand in hand.

Yeah, it's so striking and it's like wow, we didn't do anything different. We didn't tell them anything different. we didn't do any different kinds of tests. We didn't do any different kinds of interventions. But the results, because people are sharing their stories, are like relating to each other. They're helping each other. The doctor is irrelevant in the picture.

Well, here's a wild stat, right? Like, like, why do you think women don't smoke cigarettes when they're pregnant? Because no other women do. And it's not because our doctor said not to. It's because societally, the other women will say, hey, shame on you. You should not be smoking cigarettes while you're pregnant. So women, when they're showing, they stop smoking because of societal pressure, not because of doctor's orders. So that's very interesting.

Yeah, and the peer pressure works for creating health or creates disease. If your friends are all drinking beer and having pizza and watching sports or whatever TV, or you'll be like, Lee, to be overweight and unhealthy. If your friends are all drinking green juice Going to yoga class, well guess what? You're probably going to be also...

I think I have one more thing to share about my 20s, why I was sleepwalking in my 20s. Because in college, think about when you were in college, what was your college experience like?

Great.

Right.

Connect with community, friends.

Great. But there was, but so... I was a weirdo. Okay, so you had that. So for me, I had that too in some sense, but it was also sororities and fraternities and keg stands.

I was more of a hippie.

We had like, I could see that. So you did it right.

We were living in community houses. We all shared dinner together. We all cooked one night a week together.

Ah, that's so great.

We actually had a community group where we created an intentional community where we had, you know, probably 30 or 40 people. We gather and bring food and potlucks and share and connect and have fun and go swimming and do everything.

And you know, I had that too. We had that too in many ways, but I think I also had a very Classic American college experience, which is just like everyone binge drinking, you know, fraternity parties, sorority parties, and like, you know, being cool and caring what everyone else thought and, you know, that type of experience. And then so when you graduate, because in college we're not taught, and this is one a big focus for me too now is belonging starting when you go to college, when you leave your home, right? When you leave the comforts of your parents house and you move to college, you have all this imprinted behavior that happens in those four years you're in college that you carry through your 20s. So for me, it started freshman year of college, right? And then you carry through your 20s until you realize, wait a minute, this isn't who I am. So I really believe that we have to imprint starting freshman year of college and teach people how to belong from the moment they step into school to ask themselves, how am I showing up? What do I want to bring to this community? What do I not want out of my college experience and really give them that framework.

Yeah, and that just automatically defaults the typical behaviors. Yeah, so great, Rada. It is an amazing story. So one last question. If you were queen for a day and you had a magic wand or a magician, you could actually change something in our society, what would it be?

It is so easy. I would want every single human to feel that exhale if I am home. I want every single human to feel like they belong and that they feel like they have community and friends that they can count on. I think if we can all feel.

That... Well, if anybody's feeling disconnected or isolated or lonely or that they don't have a community, the first thing I would do is grab Rada's book, Belong. It's a powerful roadmap to getting into a beautiful community and rediscovering the joy of friends and connection. And I just can't recommend it enough. So if you want to learn more about Rada, go to radaagrawal.com, that's A-G-R-A-W-A-L and learn about her. She's spoken at many amazing places like Facebook and has done very cool stuff. And she's a force to be reckoned with and someone to watch going forward. And I'm excited to be your friend and to be part of this. And I definitely feel more connected in the community being around you and your crew, which now has become my crew. And even at, you know, the ripe old age of 58, it's never too late to actually start to just build more and more connected community. So thank you, Rodden. If you've liked this podcast, the Doctor's Pharmacy, I suggest you write a review and tell us what you think. If you enjoyed it, please share with your friends and family on Facebook, social media, and please sign up if you haven't already, wherever you get your podcasts. You've been listening to Doctor's Pharmacy with Dr. Mark Hyman, Rod A. Groall, and.

We'Ll see you next time on the Doctor's Pharmacy.

Hey everybody, I just wanted to remind you all that the information in this episode is not intended to be used as medical advice. Always work with your doctor, and if you can, find a functional medicine doctor. My staff, including physicians and nutritionists at the Ultra Wellness Center in Massachusetts, is trained in functional medicine to find the root cause of disease and create health for you every step of the way. For more information about the Ultra Wellness Center, visit com. Don't forget, there's a way to listen completely ad free. With Hyman Plus on Apple Podcasts, you can enjoy every episode without any breaks. Just open Apple Podcasts and tap Try Free to start your seven-day free trial.