7+ Powerful Habits To Avoid Loneliness, Feel Connected And Build Authentic Community

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Of course, there are benefits to solitude, but according to the National Institute on Aging, the health risks of prolonged isolation are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Social isolation and loneliness have even been estimated to shorten a person's lifespan by as many as 15 years. All the studies show that the quality of our relationships makes a huge difference in our life. Hey everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose. I am so genuinely grateful that you chose to spend spend some time with me today. Whether you're walking, whether you're driving, whether you're cooking, whatever you're up to. Thank you for choosing On Purpose. Always. I love the connection we're developing and whenever I bump into any of you and you tell me you listen to On Purpose, all I want to do is give you a big hug and say thank you because it truly, truly means the world to me. I bumped into a few of you who even came to my shows recently at some restaurants when I was in la and it just warms my heart to know that we're building this community without even knowing how deeply it's impacting all of us, including me. So your feedback, your love, your support, your reviews Your subscribing to the podcast means so, so much to me. Now, I want to talk today about something that I know a lot of us are struggling with in different ways. Let's just start with a quick poll. How many of you have ever felt lonely? I'm guessing there's quite a few of us. How many of you have ever felt disconnected from the people around you? I'm guessing there's quite a few of us as well. And how many of you felt that you don't feel authentically connected to your community? That you find yourself having potentially negative judgments? Or even if it isn't going down that way, you may just feel a bit distant from the people around you? I want to take a moment to point out that it's so natural and normal to want to feel connected. It's so normal, so natural, so real to want to feel connected. But we don't often know what that means, right? We say things like, I don't feel connected to you, I don't feel connected to the people around me. I don't feel supported. But really what it means to be connected is that you feel seen, you feel heard, you feel understood, and you feel valued. Plus, you make other people feel seen, you make other people feel heard. You try your best to understand others, and you intend to make people valued for real.

This isn't just a technique or a.

Hack or an activity. Wanting to be connected requires it to be sincere and genuine and real. Now, I want to start off by just pointing out how normal it is to feel disconnected. Only 59% of Americans say they have a best friend, and 12% say they feel they have no close friends at all. I'm taking this from the roots of loneliness.com written by Dr. Christy Hartman, a PhD in psychology, who shared this incredible research that she found through the National Library of Medicine that the Centers for Disease Control, YouGov, Health Resources and Services Administration, Sage Journals, Taylor and Francis Online and others. 52% of Americans report feeling lonely, while 47% report their relationship with others are not meaningful. So you can see those two things there. One is us feeling disconnected and removed, and the other one is saying, actually, I'm around a lot of people, but I don't feel like it's meaningful. How many of you go to a lot of parties or a lot of events? You come across a lot of people, but you don't really get that depth of connection, right? We've got so lost in this breadth and scale of connecting that we've often lost the gift and Depth of connecting single or not. 57% of Americans report eating all meals alone. Now, we've gone from doing an activity that we used to do, potentially even with your parents. So. So just like 10, 15 years ago, or maybe just five years ago, you were eating every meal surrounded by your family, your siblings, your parents, and all of a sudden now you're eating all of your meals alone, whether you're single or not. That takes a while to get used to. And as we look at the trends across the world, of course we're living more separately now. We travel across the world like me and my wife when we moved to New York and then we moved to la. We now have lived without family around us for seven years. If we lived in London, we. We would have been able to visit our family every weekend or even in the evenings. Whereas now we're seeing them after so much more time. So there's a lot of shifts also in the way we live and the way we conduct our lives that impact how we feel. 52% of Americans have felt left out at some point in their lives. Now, it's really interesting how I think if you thought about the first time you felt left out, it might be on the field at school or it might be in the playground. And it's interesting how when we get left out as an adult, we're triggered back into that mindset of a kid. And instead of using our rational, logical brain to make sense of it now, we often go back to using that child brain to adapt or react or respond to what we're experiencing. And we're going to talk about that a little bit. Today, 53% of Americans cite shyness as the reason why it's difficult to make friends. How many of you feel shy? I can relate to this one. And I know you're thinking, jay, you're not shy at all. Trust me, if I'm in a new environment where I don't know anyone, I can be one of the shyest people in the world. And at the same time, if I'm in an environment where I'm flourishing or thriving, I can be the most confident person in the room. But I realize that shyness blocks so many of us. We've never been taught how to approach someone. And what's really interesting is that shyness often gets seen as ego or coldness, and often social anxiety gets seen in the same way. And so we're looking at other people going, oh, they don't seem to care about me or find me interesting. They're thinking the same about us. 58% of Americans reported that they sometimes are always feels like no one knows them well. Maybe you're someone who's traveled across country. Maybe you've traveled, you know, across the world and no one speaks your language where you live, no one really knows your heritage, no one really knows your background. It's so fascinating for people to recognize the reasons why it's natural for us to feel this way now. Of course, there are benefits to solitude, but according to the National Institute on Aging, the health risks of prolonged isolation are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Social isolation and loneliness have even been estimated to shorten a person's lifespan by as many as 15 years. All the studies show that the quality of our relationships makes a huge difference in our life, and this episode is all about the habits needed that we need to reconnect with to create connection. So this segment about connectivity is brought.

To you by AT&T. AT&T believes connecting Changes everything I recently.

Went on tour for my second book.

Eight Rules of Love, and brought so many people together from all over the world. Part of the show was inviting people from the crowd up on a stage to reconnect with a loved one they haven't spoken to in a long time. We had parents reconnect with their children, fathers reconnect with their sons, siblings reconnect with each other, and so many more. Deep human connections are vital for mental and physical health because they fulfill an innate human need to belong to. Connected relationships allow you to open up, be authentic, and feel truly supported by those around you. If your relationships seem to be lacking depth, improving your capacity for connectedness can make you feel closer to friends or loved ones, build your emotional support system, increase your social charisma, help you approach conversations in a more meaningful way, expand your social group improve your professional success, increase professional productivity, improve your financial success, provide a feeling of belonging and safety, reduce your risk for mental health issues and reduce your risk for mental health challenges. If you're feeling isolated from your loved ones, family or friends, I encourage you to reach out to them today. It will inspire you to grow and.

Ultimately improve your connection with them and others.

Take advantage of having access to Wi fi, calling and texting. There are so many ways you can use a phone to stay connected even when you're traveling or living in a place that is far from your friends and loved ones. Here are four common methods you can use today besides apps for staying connected with others. Number one Video conferencing When you're away from your significant other, friends or family. This is a great way to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and special moments by sharing a moment over video and seeing their face. I know it's not the same, but I love having the opportunity to facetime my family and friends who who still live in the uk. Number two, emailing. Sending an email is a great way to stay connected to old colleagues, professors, or even bosses. It may not sound like the most intimate way, but I found it can be a great surprise for a professor or teacher when you also use it as a way to explain the impact they had on you. Now texting, we all text.

It's simple and easy.

But if you use text to send a 32nd to 62nd message of gratitude.

To one person personally and one person.

Professionally a day, it can change the game. And of course calling. I mean, we don't do enough of it anymore. When someone calls you just for a moment, even if it's just to check in, hearing someone's voice can make you.

Feel like you're at home.

And it can be so grounding. This has been brought to you by AT&T. AT&T believes connecting inspires, unites, heals and helps us grow. Connecting changes how we live our lives for the better.

So the first thing I'm going to ask you to do. When we think about becoming connected, a habit that really makes a difference is checking in with yourself. Number one, check in with yourself. Is your social battery drained or is your social battery charged? Are you ready to spend time with people or is that going to tire you out right now? And this is someone, something you have to check in with with yourself? I think a lot of us go through bouts of like overextending ourselves and then underextending ourselves. And usually when we're under extending we feel lone and when we're overextending we feel overworked. Right. It's when social, when your social life starts to feel like work or when your social life feels like it's non existent. We don't really live in this balanced state. And the balanced state is not about how much time you spend with people, it's about how you feel energetically. For example, you could just go out for one night a week and feel completely socially battery charged. So you're really happy with that and you're okay with that. Or you could go up for one night and feel completely drained based on what you do. And so I want you to check in with yourself right now and go this weekend. Do you feel charged to spend time with people? Or do you feel drained and you need time alone? And I want you to base it on how you feel, not what's going on, not how many events are happening, not what you've been invited to or haven't been invited to. Because sometimes we get upset by things we're not invited to, even if we didn't want to go, right? How many of you have ever felt that? Be honest with me. How many of you have known you don't want to go out, but now you're offended that you're not invited? And that's why we need to check in with ourselves. We need to take a moment to ask ourselves, am I charged or am I drained? If I'm charged, who would I like to spend that energy with? It's almost like asking yourself, I just won the lottery, who am I going to spend this money on? Right? That's how you have to think about it if you're charged. And if you're drained, you have to just be like, well, I just lost this time and lost this money and lost this energy. How am I going to get charged up again? Who's going to help me charge if I'm going to charge with other people or do I need to charge alone? Right? That's how you want to think about checking in with yourself. And this self awareness is really where it starts. Because if you don't make yourself feel seen, yourself feel heard, yourself feel understood and valued, you will constantly expect it from someone else. And I think that's what we do. We walk around wanting other people to make us feel seen, heard and understood and valued as a substitute for doing it for ourselves. So because we don't take a moment to check in with ourselves, to see ourselves or hear ourselves or understand ourselves or value ourselves, we're constantly trying to fill that gap, right? If you've just drank water yourself and someone offers you water, you'd say, no, no, no, I just did that myself. And you wouldn't overthink it. But if you hadn't got water and someone said to you, hey, do you want a bottle of water? You'd say, yeah, yeah, sure, I want that because I haven't had any. So you're looking for someone else, you'll ask them, hey, do you. We do the same thing emotionally. We emotionally ask for other people to check in with us and quench our thirst as opposed to checking in with ourselves. So I want you to start there. Now, the second habit is expanding your emotional vocabulary. If you want to see, hear, understand and value yourself better, and by the way, if you want to see, hear, and understand and value other people better, you need to expand your emotional vocabulary. And I want to point this out. Connecting isn't just about, do I feel connected?

Do I feel a part of the group?

The question is also, do you make.

Other people feel part of the group? Do you reach out to other people? I promise you, for every party you.

Feel you're not invited to, there's someone you're not inviting out somewhere. And you may say, well, I don't want to spend time with them, and that's totally fine. But I promise you that feeling connected is as much something you have to do proactively as you have to be involved in by someone else. When you're making an effort to make other people feel included, to make other people feel seen and heard and understood, I promise you, that's going to make you feel connected as well. I think we think of feeling connected as being embraced, but not embracing someone else. And I promise you, it does feel incredible when you take an opportunity to actually extend, embrace, enhance someone else's experience. Now, as I was talking about emotional vocabulary, this goes back to the Harvard Business Review and a source from Susan David, and it's called a List of Emotions. And the Harvard Business Review talks about how we use some very basic emotions to define how we feel. So we may say I'm angry, we may say I'm sad, we may say I'm anxious, we may say I'm hurt, we may say I'm embarrassed, and we may say I'm happy. Those are pretty much as far as our emotional vocabulary goes. But this emotions list, and you can literally Google it, just type in Harvard Emotional List. I call it emotional Vocabulary. You can break down what type of anger you're feeling. So the list that I'm reading off right now, instead of saying you're angry, are you actually grumpy? Are you frustrated? Are you annoyed? Are you defensive? Maybe you're impatient? Are you disgusted? Are you offended or irritated? Notice how there are all these different types of anger, and when we don't diagnose ourselves effectively, we don't feel understood by ourselves. And therefore, when we communicate to other people, they don't fully understand us either. So we'll be like, oh, I'm upset. But it's like, what does that mean? How are you feeling right now? How can I help you? How can I help you feel better? And we do a bad job of communicating what we're actually experiencing. They also do this for the word hurt. Are you Feeling jealous? Are you feeling betrayed? Are you feeling isolated or shocked, deprived, victimized, tormented or abandoned? There are so many ways. Now, I'm not saying you're going to go to your next conversation and be like, I feel really tormented today. Right? Like, that's not my point. But I want you to expand your emotional vocabulary so that you can really see your emotions for what they are. You can communicate your emotions for what they are. And why does this help you become more connected? Because you're becoming more connected to what's actually going on. Rather than having a shallow, surface level relationship with yourself, you now have a deep relationship. Rather than expressing yourself in a limited way, you're now allowing someone to understand the layers of what you're experiencing. Notice how the first two things are very much about you and connecting with yourself in order to do the others. Now, the third one is probably one of my favorite ones, and it's one that I've tried a lot recently and I love it. It's called Old New and New Old. Now, the way this works is when I meet an old friend, I try and connect on something new. A lot of us in our long term relationships, we live in nostalgia. Oh, do you remember when we went on that trip? Oh, my gosh. Do you remember the last day of school? Oh, do you remember when you were dating so and so? And we use nostalgia as a way to build connection. Nothing wrong with that. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. But what's really important and special is making new memories with people that have been in your life for a long time. So if someone's an old friend, make a new memory with them. Stop making your relationship about nostalgia and the good old days and the past and think about, how can I go and build a new memory with this person that we can talk about for the next few weeks, maybe the next couple of years, but let's build new memories or what? Something new I can discover about an old friend. It may be a new skill. I remember being with a family member that I hadn't spent time with since I was like 16 years old. So it's like 20 years ago. And they kept saying to me, they said, jay, you've changed so much. Like, you're so different. I'm like, of course I have. It's been 20 years. And it's really fascinating to me that they were more interested in the change as opposed to who I am today and the newness. Right. And so I want you to think about, who do you have who's an old friend and how can you make new memories with them? How can you learn something new about who they are, what they do, what they love, what they value, what they believe in? Taking an interest in something new with someone old. Building a new memory with someone old in your life can be really, truly spectacular. And then it's the other way around. New, old. So now with the new old, it's like, who's a new person in your life that you can connect over something old? Maybe you grew up in the same area. I was just doing a Zoom keynote, and the person who was talking to me was from near where I grew up in London as well and went to school. And we started talking about it. It was a new relationship, but we found an old connection. It was a new person that I didn't know, but we found an old common point to bond over, to start a new relationship, Right? So old, new, new, old. It's one of my favorite things when I meet someone new. I think, hey, what do we have in common? What's in our past that may correlate or intersect? And when I have someone that has been in my life for a long time, I think, oh, well, what's a new memory we can make? Right? What's something new that I can learn about them? It's a really subtle art, but it's really, really profound in how it can impact a conversation. Habit number four kind of links to number three. But we have to ask interesting questions, otherwise everyone will appear uninteresting. I really believe this. If you ask even the most interesting person in the world uninteresting conversations and questions, they will appear uninteresting and you will appear uninterested. And that's why we struggle, because we've been taught to ask questions like, so.

What do you do?

How was your week? What did you do this week? What did you do today? We even do that with our partners. And by the way, every time you ask your partner, what did you do today? It kind of creates an almost false pressure in them of them having to have done something or achieved something. So this doesn't even apply to new connections. It applies to the friends you see every week. And you go, what did you do this week? And that question is something they've been asked for so many years that they have either a rehearsed, unconscious response or it puts pressure on them to have to think about what they did rather than a question that's more open and fascinating. I always like my final five from the podcast of, like, what's the best advice you've ever received? Or what's the worst advice you've ever received? I love asking someone like what's the best conversation you had this week? Or what's the most interesting thing that happened to you this week? And it allows for them to reflect and think. Or were you bored at all this week? The opposite. And if you could learn anything, what would it be?

Or what did you learn?

Did you come across anything new this week? And it may take them a moment. Give them some time.

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But this is especially valuable for the people who've been in your life consistently and people you see regularly. And we need to disrupt the pattern of the conversation. I think what happens is when you know someone well and they know you, you fall into the patterns of the same questions, the same conversations, the same chores, the same activities. And the question being, how do we create a method to actually shift the conversation so you actually catch the other person off guard. You, you surprise them, they hear something that they haven't heard before from you, and all of a sudden they start diving into a new topic. Maybe they even get to reflect. And you give them the gift of introspection because they've not even had the time to do that. And now you've given them that opportunity. Number five, this habit, deep versus shallow time. This is a big, big one for me. Maybe counterintuitive to what you think of me, but I generally don't like spending time with people in large groups. And because it means I have to spend little time with everyone, it almost reminds me of my wedding reception where we had so many guests. Indian weddings are notoriously large, and ours was on the smaller side, yet we still had like 3, 400 people at our reception. Yes, that is on the smaller side. And I remember that evening having to go around table to table to thank everyone who came. Now, I was very grateful to everyone who came, but at the same time, I felt like I was torn. I felt like I couldn't be with the present, with the people that I wanted to be. I wanted to extend myself to everyone, but I wanted to make them feel valued. And all of a sudden you start spending shallow time with everyone, and then you feel guilty for not giving time to the people who you've known a long time. And you feel guilty because you feel not like you didn't honor the people who turned up. And then you just kind of feel upset.

Right?

Like, shallow time doesn't help build a healthy sense of connection. And I'm not saying don't go to parties or don't go to events, but if all of our social life, if all of our connecting with others is done in big groups where we get three minute conversations with everyone, and all of a sudden you're getting pulled in another direction, you're getting torn in another direction to talk to this person or that person or someone else comes in late and leaves early, and all of a sudden you realize, wait a minute, what did I even talk about today? I basically had the same conversation Seven times this evening. Right. Hey, how's your week been? What have you been up to? How's it all going? Oh, sorry, I've got to run off here. Okay, right. Taking the time to say, you know what, I'm just going to do groups of eight. We're just going to do groups of five. You know what, I'm just going to do a one on one. How do you fuel up? How do you feel connected? Some of us feel connected in bigger groups, some of us feel connected in smaller groups.

Create the group.

Don't just wait to be invited to everything else. Create the evening, create the invite, create the moment that you need in your life. Think about whether all of your social life has become so shallow. And by the way, when I say.

Shallow, I don't mean shallow people.

I mean it's so shallow in surface level conversation because you haven't created an environment to have a deep connection. I had a friend that came over a couple of weeks ago. She's awesome, I love her. And she came over to hang out with me in Radhi. And before she came over, I'd asked her, I'd said, hey, do you want me to invite anyone else? And she said, you know what, I'd just like to sit with both of you. It'd been so nice to have that. And I said, great, because I was hoping for the same thing. I just didn't want you to feel bored. And even checking in in that way with a friend is so important. Where I was like, oh gosh, I don't want it to be bored if it's just her and us and maybe she'll want to hang out and see other people. And I realized actually that's all she wanted. And actually that was all we wanted. And it turned out to be a great evening to connect. Habit number six. Look for patterns and connections where others don't see them. Don't look at things as disconnected. I think a lot of us look at our life as disconnected. So we look at our life as like, God, I got to spend time at work and at home. I've got life and I've got my career. And what that starts to do is it actually starts to create distance between how your mind views things rather than the understanding that if I'm healthier at work, I'll be healthier at home, and if I'm healthier at home, I'll be healthier at work. So often what we try and do is say, gosh, I need to spend less time at work and more time at home. But what we're doing is we're letting our absence at work bleed into being absent at home. Right. What's really interesting about the mind is we're constantly training it in the moment as to how we want it to be. So if we're training the mind to not be at work when we're at work, then the mind won't be able to switch into being where it is when it's at home. That way, we end up pushing away our work family and our home family, and both tend to become a bit disenfranchised with the lack of our presence. And so look for patterns and connections where others don't see them. Don't look at things as disconnected. Number seven, smile at strangers, say hello. I do a hike pretty much five times a week. Different hikes, but sometimes the same one. And one thing I love is seeing people walk, their dogs, smile, say hello, everyone wishes each other good morning. It just creates an entryway for connection for the rest of the day. If I walk around with my head down, ignore people, avoid people. Guess what? I'm disconnecting myself. Whereas when I smile at people, when I say hello, when I greet them, when I greet their dogs, like, it creates an energy of connection in your life. It opens you up to start and spark conversations in random places. I think we forget as to how we still go to grocery stores, we still go to coffee shops, but we've got our head down on our phone. We don't take it as an opportunity to say hello, to spark a conversation with the barista, to have a moment of small connection, but authentic connection. It doesn't need to be this huge moment of deep connection. It can be these small moments that add up and make us feel a part of a community. You can feel a part of a coffee shop, you can feel a part of a grocery store community. You can feel a part of these places you go through and walk through every day. If that's how you see it. Habit number eight is how technology's helped me a lot. One of the things I still do a lot is play code names through horsepace.com and I love the idea of using tech to play games with people because it's a great way of reconnecting. This week, I have a friend who's in Europe at the moment and we hadn't talked for a while. We keep saying we want to see each other. And it's really interesting, isn't it, how, like, you keep saying, oh, yeah, I can't wait to see you. I Can't wait to do this. I can't wait to do this. And you keep putting it off because, you know, everyone has busy schedules. Everyone has a lot going on. And for me, the easiest thing was like, let's just schedule a call, right? Let's FaceTime. Yes. You may think it won't be good enough, but guess what? It was more than good enough. I felt reconnected. We spoke for an hour. And I do the same with other friends. I remember I often like to just organize a games night with my friends back in London or I have a WhatsApp group with some of my mates and I'll say, hey, let's just do a zoom and let's all just get on it together. Because I'm so far away and it's so easy to keep postponing connection, right? We all have that ability to always postpone connection. We're like, all right, yeah, we'll meet up next week. Okay, yeah, we'll meet up next month. Oh, yeah, we'll meet up next year. And it's like, just get on the call, just do it. And it's so much better than messaging. I think that's one of the things that messaging is great to get a connection started, but shifting it to a call or a video conference, whatever it may be, makes such a big difference. Habit number nine, giving. Giving creates connection. Now, giving doesn't just include gifts. It includes food. And it also includes vulnerability. When you give someone, a part of you, a piece of you, a truth about you, it allows you to connect with them. And of course, this has to be done with a trusted person in confidence, in a safe space, with a person you feel safe around. It's very important to do that. But that is also giving. I think we think of giving as gifts, which is a beautiful way to connect. I think the art of gift giving has been so powerful in my life. When I receive a meaningful gift from someone or when I give a meaningful gift from someone, it redefines the authenticity of that connection. Number 10, one of my favorite ones.

Invite people for ordinary tasks.

My wife does this the best, and it has inspired me. She'll invite someone on a grocery run. She'll invite someone, obviously for one of her workouts. She'll invite someone for something random that she wants to check out. Invite people for ordinary tasks. I think we've made connection feel so high pressured where it has to be like this big event or this, you know, this moment of doing something or maybe it's too boring, but it's okay. To spend time with people in boring ways and find joy in it. Sometimes I've invited people to do ordinary things with me and it actually leads to the best conversation. So please invite people for ordinary tasks. It's a great way of being connected. And number 11, connecting with people of all ages. I think as time's gone on, we spend more and more time with people our age, which is important and useful because we may be going through similar things. But I was with a couple of my friends a couple of weekends ago and they're in their 60s and I don't consider them. Some people say, oh, yeah, that's like my parents friends or that's like a family friend. But I really consider them my friends and they love hanging out with us and we love hanging out with them. And I think when you're with people of all ages, I also have a lot of my close friends from back in London are in their 20s and to me, hanging out with them is brilliant. I think hanging out with people of all different generations makes us feel connected in different ways. From our elders we can learn from, to the younger people, we get an opportunity to give and serve and share. To the people in our peer group we get to support. I think trying to build friendships of different ages and different generations is actually a vital part of feeling complete as a human. I feel so much healthier in my connectedness when I'm connected with people from different backgrounds, different walks of life and different ages. I really hope that these habits serve you when you try and practice them. Remember, just try and practice one. I want you to feel more connected. I want you to feel less lonely, and I want you to have the opportunity to build authentic community. Know that it is within your grasp. I'm sending you all the love. Just try one of these things and watch how your life changes. Thank you so much for trusting on purpose and trusting me, Jay Shetty. And I'll see you again on the next one. Thanks, everyone.

Hey, it's Joel and Matt from how to Money. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right, yeah. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to how to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Walley.

And I'm Hari Kundabolu.

It's a new year and on the podcast Health Stuff we're resetting the way we talk about our health, which means.

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