Fit Soul Chapter 6 - The Hidden Epidemic

Welcome to Chapter six of Fitzoul. This is Ben Greenfield and every week I'm giving you a new chapter from my new book@fitsoulbook.com you can get the book for free, actually as a download, or you can order the physical version straight to your house. But I'm also giving you chapters each week right here on my podcast, Chapter six the Hidden Epidemic. Perhaps it's genetics, or perhaps it's because I was homeschooled K12 in rural Idaho, but I'm an introvert through and through. Yes, I'm that guy at busy conferences who ducks away to my room to go recharge my batteries every few hours, something I can only accomplish by escaping the crowds and being entirely by myself. I thrive on long walks, multi hour hikes and extended bike rides, usually alone. I become exhausted at networking events and cocktail parties and often slip away early to sleep, to curl up with a good book, or just to meditate and breathe. Even at family events, I can often be found off in some quiet corner reading or strumming on my guitar ukulele. As a matter of fact, when I was a child, my parents had to coax me, persuade me, and yes, even threaten me with punishment to actually get my nose out of a book and be gracious enough to ever so briefly emerge from my bedroom to say a quick hello to any guests we had at the house, after which I would subsequently rush back to my room and curl up once again with my book, usually reading until 3 or 4am and consuming several books each day and night. That's the kind of kid I was. A multitude of personality tests that I've taken, including the Quiet Revolution test and the Myers Briggs Analysis, both of which I'll link to if you go to fitsoulbook.com chapter6 that's fitsoulbook.com chapter the number six have backed this up. I'm an introvert through and through, but at the same time, even though I'm completely happy being a loner, I now go out of my way to ensure that, as uncomfortable or unnatural as it was initially for me, I spend plenty of time carving out a couple hours each night for a family dinner and nighttime family rituals, for connecting with old and new friends, for attending networking events, for scheduling plenty of book signings and meet and greets, for traveling to crowded conferences, and for actively engaging in local church, community and charity events. One could even say that I've about halfway transformed myself into a bit of a social butterfly. So why have I begun to incorporate such a strong emphasis in my life on optimizing friends, charity, community, relationships and love. Aside from my desire to not be an arrogant, hard to approach, uncommunicative, a hole. Well, it turns out there is a fascinating link between love, family, social connectedness and relationships and a longer lifespan. This chapter will supply you with a host of practical love tips to include in your own life for a longer lifespan and better health. After all, owning an amazing body and a sharp mind can all be for naught if loneliness, sadness, inflammation, high blood pressure and accelerated aging are all occurring due to lack of friendships, social relationships, community, charity and love. And in this chapter I'm going to teach you exactly why and how to include these important components into your own body, mind and spirit routine. The Problem with Loneliness Imagine a condition that makes a person irritable, depressed and self centered and also increases the risk of dying early by over 25%. Imagine that in industrialized countries over 30% of folks, a percentage that is increasing at a rapid pace, are afflicted with this condition. Your income doesn't protect you, nor does your education, your sex, your ethnicity. Worse yet, this condition is considered to be contagious, damages heart muscle, causes premature death, and can affect any ordinary person walking down the street. This condition exists and you may already have it. It's called Drumroll Please Loneliness. Also known as social isolation, loneliness is often stigmatized, trivialized and flat out ignored, but is fast emerging as a worldwide public health problem, oddly enough, growing hand in hand with so called social media. Worse yet, zero physicians are trained in medical school about how to deal with this problem. Often we tend to associate loneliness with being homeless, being depressed, being severely introverted, or having poor social skills or social anxiety, but none of this is true. Both human and animal longitudinal studies have shown that the deleterious effects of loneliness are not attributable to some fringe subset of isolated individuals, but instead can affect anyone, anywhere. In addition to the serious emotional toll you'd expect loneliness to be able to pile upon a human, research has shown that physical manifestations are also rather grim. Studies have linked loneliness to cancer, cardiovascular disease, inflammation, immune system issues, pain, fatigue, depression, excessive reactivity to stress, rampant elevated cortisol levels and high blood pressure, making the effects of loneliness on par with smoking in terms of mortality risk. Unlike other chronic diseases that tend to wreak havoc more often in aging individual, it's actually young adults who are at higher risk of social isolation. For example, one recent study found that people who are more lonely show signs of elevated latent herpes virus reactivation and produce more inflammation related proteins in response to acute stress than people who feel more socially connected. This suggests that loneliness functions as a chronic stressor that triggers a poorly controlled immune response. During the recent coronavirus pandemic, another series of studies found that participants experiencing interpersonal stressors, including social isolation, had a greater chance of developing up respiratory illnesses when exposed to cold viruses. Psychological and social stress associated with loneliness were correlated with an overproduction of pro inflammatory cytokines in response to cold and influenza viruses. This excess of inflammation caused an increased risk of becoming ill. Meanwhile, social integration and social support seemed to offer a protective shield against respiratory infection and illness. When you think about it, there's a bit of an ancestral context to this whole loneliness problem. Looking at human history from an ancestral standpoint, we see that extended isolation could mean death since your tribe wasn't physically around to nurture or protect you. Hence, humans develop social constructs to keep themselves bound together in bands, communities and tribes, including extended families and social connections that seem to land at around 150 people. That number is actually known today as Dunbar's number. The frequency and growing epidemic of loneliness is actually a bit ironic though, isn't it? I mean, today we live in a hyper connected society and yet one of the biggest uphill battles we face of our long term health is disconnectedness and social isolation. It is far less common than it used to be to know your neighbors by face and name, to engage in face to face meetups and conversations in connected communities not separated by an electronic barrier, and to be a child raised by an entire tribal community surrounding you, rather than say, a parent or two schoolmates you see for a limited amount of time each day, Netflix and a smartphone. But wait, we walk around with tiny computers in our pockets that can instantly connect us with like minded peers and people all over the globe. We should be more connected than ever to people, right? Well, not quite. Even when you're on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, some fringe new platform that's all the rage in Asia and any other social media outlets, you're not actually experiencing relationships the way you that you're programmed to and the way that you're hardwired to. From an ancestral standpoint, you're not looking into people's eyes, you're not touching them, you're not feeling them, and you're not experiencing the invisible chemical signals that human beings create and ooze from our pores when we're around other humans. Not to mention the fact you're missing out on the strong electromagnetic heart and brain signals humans around you constantly emit. As a matter of fact, the direct relationship between smartphone prevalence and loneliness has started to amass a significant, significant amount of research. For example, a 2015 study showed a correlation between smartphone usage and loneliness in college students. A 2017 study found a significant correlation between attachment anxiety, loneliness, depression, and smartphone addictions. The link between technology and loneliness is even more obvious when you look at smartphone use in teenagers. One article I recently read in the Atlantic noted that as smartphone usage has become more ubiquitous, a rapid and disturbing change in teenage behavior has occurred. These changes began sometime around 2012, when about 50% of Americans own smartphones. Come to think of it, I got my very first iPhone in 2013. The group born between 95 and 2012, a group the article dubs Igen, experienced a significant increase in the use of smartphones and social media. You probably don't fall into that category if you, like me, can't actually remember a time when you actually never even had a smartphone or really even cared about any form of social media at all. In the Igen group, the rates of depression and suicide have significantly increased since 2011. As a matter of fact, teenagers who spend three or more hours per day on electronics have a 35% higher chance of a suicide risk factor and a 27% higher risk of depression. The author of the article notes that it's not an exaggeration to describe Igen as being on the brink of the worst mental health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their bones. Each of the social media outlets you use each day make an implicit claim about the structure and organization of human interaction. Instead of direct interaction with others, we are interacting through something metal, something electronic and something impersonal. So the question we should be asking is this. Can we actually form meaningful personal relationships through an impersonal medium? Turns out that others have asked and answered this same question. Author Sherry Turkle has been studying children's development in,020 technological culture since the 70s. The 1970s that is. In her book Reclaiming the Power of Talk in a Digital Age, she explains how children use technology, specifically programming as a form of self expression. One 13 year old interviewed in her book Comments when you program a computer, you put a little piece of your mind into the computer's mind and you come to see yourself differently. And you could say that in a way this self exploration is personal. It's all about you. But this kind of personal experience is lacking two things, a relationship and a prefix. When a significant amount of your time is focused on an impersonal social medium, you miss out on the interpersonal relationships that you can really only get by talking to someone face to face. Virtual space has become this place of self exploration and dealing with real people who have a knack for being unpredictable. And that becomes difficult after spending time in that predictable simulation. Take email for example. In the workplace, it's used to deliberately avoid social interaction and results in a significant amount of depersonalization. Heck, as I talked about in chapter four, I'm personally guilty of talking to people more like robots and less like humans when I interact with them virtually. What's worse, when you don't get much interpersonal interaction, you your emotional intelligence or your ei, the ability to be able to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others begins to suffer. People who spend a lot of time on the Internet are lonelier. They have more so called deviant values, meaning, for example, a willingness to break social norms and a lack of the robust emotional and social skills characteristic of a high ei. Here's a news flash. When it comes to social isolation and loneliness, it really isn't about getting more friends on Facebook. It's not about extending your Snapchat streak of chats by yet another week. It isn't about that pop up you have set in your computer to reach out via email to some influencer on your digital Rolodex. It isn't about developing the independent lone wolf I plus my smartphone can survive on my own thank you very much mentality I personally maintained for so much of my life before I came face to face with my own growing loneliness and social isolation. It's instead about going out of your way to build up actual flesh and blood relationships and a robust community of people who will come to your rescue when your basement floods, who will show up at your doorstep when you're moving into a new house, and who will cry at your funeral. Cry at your funeral? Where'd that come from? Well, it's actually a phrase I first discovered in the writings of Pastor John Ortberg. Here's what he has to say in his book I'd like you more if you are more like me, which I think is an essential handbook for developing deep, meaningful and intimate relationships. So who will not be crying at my funeral? He says. My critics. People who write to me to ask for favors, but who I never hear from otherwise. People whose approval I'm constantly trying to gain but who always withhold it. Rich people who I think might give me something if I get to know them better, but so far it hasn't happened. Successful people whose success I think might rub off on me if I hang out with them more often. People who see me frequently but don't remember my name. People who I think could make me feel important if I could just get them to notice me. People who are cooler than I am. Famous people I've never actually met. Beautiful women whose pictures are on the Internet but who don't actually know I'm alive. People I'm afraid of. People who are afraid of me. All the people in the little jewelry box of my mind whose opinion of me matters so much but who aren't thinking about me at all because they're wondering what other people are thinking about them who is likely to cry at my funeral? My children and their families. My wife, my brother and sister. My good friends. My parents. If I should go before them. People I have generally and personally helped. In other words, the people with whom I have true intimacy. The question is, am I giving the best of my time in my life to people who will cry at my funeral? I find it interesting that the people who make Ortberg's cry at my funeral list aren't really the same people you tend to interact with every day on social media and via email, but rather those people in your life with which you tend to build true, meaningful relationships that keep you from dropping into the dark hole of loneliness. And remember, this is coming from a guy, me, who has like 5,000 Facebook friends and tens of thousands of Twitter followers and I think half a million Instagram fans at this point, and what seems like 8 billion Snapchat messages a day, and I still have had to deal with intense loneliness. Anyways, you should grab Ortberg's book and read it along with the other books that I'll be recommending@fitsoulbook.com Chapter 6 But if you want to cut through all the hustle, the hurry, the business, and the I'm too busy to hang out with real flesh and blood people and to instead develop more meaningful intimacy and relationships in your life, then the good news is you're about to discover how to eliminate loneliness from your life, how to defy social isolation, and how to tap into one of the most powerful emotions that exists. The opposite of loneliness. Love. In his book Blue Zones, longevity expert and author Dan Buettner identified five geographic areas where people live the longest. Statistically speaking Okinawa, Japan, Sardinia, Italy, Nicoya, Costa Rica, Ikaria, Greece, and the Seventh Day Adventists in Loma Linda, California. Buettner offers an explanation based on Empirical data and first hand observations as to why these populations seem to live longer and healthier lives. It turns out the people inhabiting these Blue zones share common lifestyle characteristics that contribute to their longevity from life purpose to stress reduction to moderating alcohol intake and beyond. But there are six shared characteristics that are inherent among each and every Blue zone population. They are less smoking, a plant rich diet, consistent moderate physical activity, consumption of legumes, family engagement and finally. Drumroll please. Social interaction. In his book, Buettner illustrates just how important love is as the unifying factor between family relationship, social engagement and community. And even points out the fact that research shows strong, strong social relationships predict a 50% increased chance of a long and healthy life. So what is love exactly? Well, love actually encompasses a wide variety of emotional and mental states, including the deepest interpersonal affection seen in the intense love between a husband and wife or a mother and child, to the simplest pleasure you might experience as you take a delicious bite of cheesecake. The range of definitions of the word love means that the love of a mother differs from the the love of a spouse differs from the love of food. Most commonly, love simply refers to a strong feeling of attraction and attachment. Greek philosophers categorize four forms of love. Familial love called Storge, friendly love called philia, romantic love called Eros, and divine love called Agape. But love is an all encompassing virtue that incorporates kindness, compassion and affection, and perhaps most importantly, an unselfish, loyal and benevolent feeling of goodwill towards an another. That's right, having love in your life is not just about the number of your relationships, the strength of your relationships or how many people love you. Rather, it's the attitude with which you engage in those relationships that predicts a longer and healthier life. While many think that they need to find someone to love them, research shows that the greatest benefits for health, longevity and well being come not from receiving affection, but from instead giving it to others. So perhaps the additional question Ortberg should have posed is whose funeral will I cry at? As a matter of fact, I tell my children that if they desire true happiness in life, the very greatest thing they can accomplish towards that end is to identify their purpose in life, then to use that purpose to love God and to love other people. Of course, if meaningful love for others and social relationships increases your lifespan, the opposite must also be true, right? Well. Drawing on data from four nationally representative longitudinal samples of the US population, one recent study assessed the association of social relationships like social integration, social support and social strain with measured biomarkers of health like C reactive protein, which is an inflammatory marker, blood pressure, waist circumference and body mass index within the life stages of adolescent, young, middle and late adulthood, the researchers discovered that a higher degree of social integration was associated with a lower risk of physiological dysregulation in a dose response manner in both early and late life. At the same time, lack of social connections was associated with vastly elevated health risks. Social isolation increased the risk of inflammation by the same magnitude as physical inactivity in adolescents, and the effects of social isolation on hypertension exceeded that of clinical risk factors like diabetes and old age. This is because the same genes impacted by social connection also code for things like immune function and inflammation, while people with low social connection have higher levels of inflammation. People who live a so called eudaimonic lifestyle, defined as a life rich in compassion, altruism, selfless care for others, and a sense of purpose have surprisingly lower levels of inflammation. And that altruism piece is pretty important too. You can take for example, a study done by Stephanie Brown at the Stony Brook University Medical Center. Those in the study who engaged in helping others and supporting others ended up living longer lives. This wasn't the case for people who were just recipients of of care and support. Another study supports and extends those findings, demonstrating that volunteerism predicts a longer life. Interestingly, that second study found that volunteerism lengthened lifespan only when it was performed for purely selfless reasons. When you sincerely wish to help others, you will reap the benefits thereof. So it turns out you can't deceive your body about your true intentions for helping others. This means that while it's important that you're aware that loving others and having lots of of love in your life is one of the most potent ways to enhance your wellness and longevity, you shouldn't be going out of your way to experience love so that you can, say, decrease inflammatory cytokines or extend the length of your telomeres. Instead, you should go out of your way to experience love because you actually genuinely care for your fellow man and fellow woman, because you relish the idea of hanging out with your family, and because being with other human beings makes you happy. If you're anything like me, that may take a of lot a lot of time, patience and learning to bring yourself to the point where you can shove at the back of your mind the idea that you're attending a family reunion because you care about family and not because you heard it could be good for your physiology. But the more you love others, the more it seems to create a positive cycle in which you love others just because that's what you do, not because that's what you should do. Make sense? Of course, it's tough to love others if you're not actually around others. I would know I used to be the guy at conferences who would stand at the back of the lunchroom with a blank stare on my face, completely paralyzed by the prospect of approaching a table of gabbing attendees to ask for a seat. The student who sat alone in the corner of the university cafeteria with my nose buried in a newspaper, and the fellow who, upon first settling into my airplane seat, would don my noise blocking headphones and avoid all eye contact with anyone who seemed to threaten me with an impending conversation. And then I read a book by author Keith Ferrazzi called Never Eat Alone and Other Secrets to Success One Relationship at a Time Farozzi has a circle of contacts that numbers in the thousands, a circle he's cultivated for years and admittedly this seems to rub against the concept of Dunbar's number. But it's a circle he's built based on what he says is an incredibly important aspect of any relationship generosity. His approach to Never Eating Alone integrates networking, behavior, intuition and power, but also emotion, reciprocity and trust, all integral parts of workplace and personal relationships. Ultimately, I'd sum up his book by saying it encourages a full find people, sit down a table with them and smother them with love by doing truly and genuinely interested in them, not striving to get anything out of getting to know them, and offering up as much helpful advice as you can give them based on your specific areas of knowledge and expertise. When I walk into a group of people, whether it's a cocktail party, a bar or a conference lunch, this is now my modus operandi. Of course, his book goes into far more detail about how to never eat alone, and I highly recommend you add it to your recommended reading list for this chapter. Now, it shouldn't be ignored that Farazzi's approach actually capitalizes on the connectivity provided by social media and the Internet. He describes that LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and beyond are all powerful tools when used correctly and in the right dose. In his words, today's kids, their social media driven upbringing will make them savants in some areas of relationship building and idiots in others. In a nutshell, social media outlets shouldn't be your primary sources of interaction, but but should instead be places where you sync up with the global hive and points from which you maintain your connections, friendships and relationships, which are based on personal and reciprocal interaction and trust and ideally, actual flesh and blood meetups, dinner parties, social events, and other inherently human activities that allow for everything from eye contact to smelling someone's unique bacterial scent to sensing the invisible yet detectable pheromones they release. Now don't get me wrong. You do not need to be an extroverted social butterfly who spends every evening hour of each weekday hopping from a baseball game to a charity event to a plant foraging meetup to a bridge club to a dinner party. To reap those benefits, a number of studies have actually shown your internal, subjective sense of connection, compassion or love suffice to protect your health, happiness and well being. This means that rather than dropping everything to go attend every cocktail party and golf game you're invited to, it's okay to simply have a few close friends. You can confess a daily gratitude practice in which you identify one person you could pray for or help or serve that day, and a weekly hobby or event in which you're around just a few people who you love and who love you. Of course, I'm not just going to leave you with that. Instead, I have a few practical tips up my sleeve that have really enhanced my own ability to be able to surround myself with more love and to build more social engagement and a sense of community in my own life. Six ways to enhance your life and longevity with love Number one Volunteer Volunteering is a win win for all parties involved. Those who receive your help will be grateful and you'll fill your own life with more empathy, sympathy and love. Consider the following as ways you could start volunteering Care for your parents we live in a culture in which our parents and the elderly are often relegated to nursing homes and hospice. But in an ideal community, you'd sacrifice your time, space and money to bring your parents into your own home the same as they did for you when you were a baby. Even if they're not living with you, but they instead live close by you. You can drop by for coffee on a Saturday morning, mow their lawn, or accompany them on a shopping trip. Help a local school Educators are overworked and stressed, while the children at many institutions need role models and people who care about their lives and behavior. You can volunteer to read stories to elementary school students, monitor outdoor activities, chaperone field trips, or even work with a local church or other charitable organization to ensure that poor children are able to get food on the weekends in our community. This this program is called Bite2Go, and each week a volunteer from my church drops off boxes of food at the local school. You can visit a nursing home to sing or to visit. As I alluded to earlier, many nursing homes are turned into dumping grounds for older people whose families are gone or unavailable, and many residents are desperate for conversation and connection with outside individuals. You can pick up the phone and call a local home. Ask if you can come by and play guitar or piano, sing, help cook, take folks on walks, or just visit. I often visit local nursing homes with my twin boys to sing and play guitar. When I was growing up, Holmes would often allow myself and my siblings, along with our parents, to take nursing home residents to local venues like the fair or the symphony. Similarly, hospitals also have many volunteer opportunities that include everything from sitting with patients to working with children to food service to pushing wheelchairs. Next, you could coach a sport. Many kids don't get the opportunity to participate in sports because there aren't enough coaches or assistants. Even if you're not a pro in the sports for which you choose to help, you can volunteer to coach for your own child's team or any local youth sports team. I've personally done this for the Valley Boys and Girls Club basketball, my local university sports camps programs, and my twin boys sports teams. You can tutor from children to adults. There are robust opportunities in most communities to tutor students. Teaching literacy, cooking, sewing or home repairs to adults, teach English and even help with classes on computers and other skills, and the latter is especially needed and appreciated in the senior community. You can deliver meals. I grew up in a family that delivered Meals on Wheels to the homeless, the unemployed, the elderly, and the poor each week. Many communities have programs like this, and some even allow you to help with the meal prep. Next, you could become a docent. What? A docent? I don't even know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. A trained guide who leads visitors through facilities like museums or art galleries or presidential libraries, aquariums, zoos and universities. Your docent training is usually provided for free by these institutions. You can serve your own neighborhood. In our modern era of digital connections, it's now all too common for neighbors not to know one another. Can you name all your neighbors? Since you can easily join a Facebook group that contains avatars with far more similar interests than the person who lives next door to you. But neighborhood box barbecues and beautification projects, helping your neighbor mow or shovel snow and participation in a neighborhood organization actually builds a strong sense of local community. So that's volunteering. Number two is dinner parties. My friend Jason Gaynord, author of the book Mastermind Build lifelong relationships by connecting experts, influencers and Linchpins has built his entire career around connecting people and networks via hosting we he calls Mastermind Dinners. Of course, Keith Farazzi's classic networking book I mentioned earlier, Never Eat Alone, which you've already discovered that highlights the importance of convening people over food. But Jason has really perfected the process. He organizes dinners of eight to 16 people in various major cities across the US and Canada, although he recommends six people for the most intimate sweet spot. If you really want people to get to know one another and encourages that if we do the same, we should think carefully about who we invite to these meals and look for uncommon commonalities that make it far more likely the guests will resonate with one another. The book goes into far more detail and I highly recommend you give it a read, but ultimately a huge amount of community building power lies in the simple act of throwing a dinner about once a month for the purpose of reconnecting old ties, connecting people who should know each other, and connecting with people who you've meant to connect with for a long time. Number three is Meetups. One way to meet new people, to make friends or to practice your social skills is through meetups which are typically organized over the Internet but result in flesh and blood people being brought together for everything from hiking to tennis to business networking and beyond. At the moment, the most popular and well known site this is meetup.com, which is a website in which you can create a group which costs a small amount of money or join a group which is free. It's free to join and go to events, but costs money. If you want to form a group yourself, Reddit.com is another decent place to find meetups for people located in your city. As our growing number of apps that include things like scout spells of k excuses to meet hey Vena and with I'm currently a member of a plant foraging meetup and if we all die of mushroom poisoning, at least we get to die together and a singer songwriter meetup. Even if you go to a meetup just one time, you're still likely to connect with at least one similarly interested person who winds up becoming a friend. Number four Church when it comes to forming deep, personal, meaningful relationships with like minded people who share a belief in the important importance of characteristics like peace, love, joy, purpose and belief in a higher power, there's not a more likely place than a church to fit that need and also to provide you with an avenue to further explore the benefits of caring for your spirit. Granted, I'll admit that the modern church has a scarred and sometimes sordid past of extreme judgmentalism and abuse. But I think you'll find at your local neighborhood place of worship you're more likely to find a great deal of love and care from others than you are at a dogmatic or socially intolerable situation. Scenario Even though I'm a Christian, as an introvert, I have personally struggled in the past with attending church. Frankly, I'd rather be wandering through the forest on an awe inspiring hike while listening to a sermon or speaking with God. But I've also discovered I can't just navigate through life as a spiritual lone wolf without the encouragement, collective worship, volunteer opportunities, and church community that's actually defined by the Greek word koinonia, which literally translated means communion, joint participation, and the state of uplifting, fellowship and unity that can and should exist within a church. There's even a growing body of evidence that demonstrates both physical and psychological benefits of singing in a choir. Admittedly, there are many choirs and singing groups you can join outside of a church, but having a large organized group of people to sing with is just one more benefit of being in a church. Number five Renewing Forsaken Family Relationships A recent research project at the UK's University of Cambridge called Stand Alone showed that family estrangements that arise from partner choices, addiction, illness, inheritance arguments and divorce are incredibly common, with estrangement from fathers being the most common, intending to last an average of almost eight years. Estrangements between brothers last 7.7 years, sisters around 7.4 years, and mothers at 5.5 years. That's a big chunk of time to, as the Bible verse says, allow the sun to go down on your anger. And the stress, tension and emotional pain that accompanies these estrangements are definitely not a state of healthy vibrational energy at which to exist. I've certainly had my own share of family conflicts. Bitterness against my father for not being more present or for divorcing my mother, resent against my mother for being overprotective during my childhood, judgment against my sister for marrying somebody who I initially thought was the wrong guy, frustration towards my brothers for not being more responsible with their lives and and families. The list goes on and on. And I'll admit that it even feels therapeutic to tell you about these personal issues of mine. And I'll admit this also, I'm not perfect. I'm still working on mending each of those relationships, and I'm also very much responsible for creating many of these family rifts in my life. Interestingly, there's this Australian documentary called Look Me in the Eye that actually explored what happens when real families who are estranged make attempts to reconnect with each other and restore broken relationships. It shows that estranged families, family members, often have an uneasy relationship with change. They find change to be difficult and therefore find that resolving estrangement feels out of their control. And that's the case with me. I'm a creature of habit who often becomes frustrated about things I perceive to be outside my control. So I just give up on what seems to be outside my control. So how can you re establish and mend broken family relationships? Well, here's a few tips. Reach out to the family member and note that these same strategies can be applied to any broken relationship in your life, not just a family member. Nothing is likely to happen unless you make that initial contact. And chances are high that multiple attempts will be necessary. And chances are also high that you'll be more successful picking up the phone or traveling to resolve issues face to face versus communicating via often impersonal emails and emoticons. Interestingly, and related to that last tip, the method of reconnection they used in the documentary Look Me in the Eye was direct eye contact, which was based on neuroscience research showing that direct eye contact contact significantly helps people to communicate in difficult circumstances. So there's yet another reason to be present personally when resolving conflicts. Next, communicate clearly. Acknowledge the issues that are unresolved by naming them. Like, I've been angry with you for the past four years since you married Gwyneth, who I really felt wasn't the right person for you and messed up your life just like that. Just like lay out all the cards on the table. Consider family counseling with a pastor, counselor, psychiatry, professional sports. Especially if complex, thorny and unresolved issues threaten to remain, or if trying to solve the issue yourself doesn't seem to be producing any progress. And finally, understand it may take significant time, effort, sacrifice and, well, love to rebuild trust and respect. Number six is to reclaim real conversation during this one late night TV interview with Conan O'. Brien. Louis C.K. as controversial as that comedian is, said this about children communicating via the Internet and smartphones and they don't look at people when they talk to them and they don't build empathy. You know, kids are mean and it's because they're trying it out. They look at a kid and they go, you're fat. And then they see the kid's face scrunch up and they go, oh, that doesn't feel good to make a person do that, but they got to start with doing the mean thing. But when they write you're fat, then they just go, hmm, that was fun. I like that. Louis makes a good point. Not only are digital conversations less empathetic, most likely due in large part to the loss of eye contact and other important physical elements of human interaction, but it's also easier to hide your true emotions behind the invisibility of Internet interaction, feel less guilty or less hesitant about anonymously trolling or making offensive remarks, and to engage in fake, inauthentic conversation. The opposite of this would be what author Sherry Turkle, in her book Reclaiming Conversation, would refer to as real, authentic personal conversation. In her book, Sherry notes that it's all too common for the dinner table to fall silent as children compete with phones for their parents attention, for you to not say a peep to the person sitting next to you on the airplane because both of you are sucked into the screen, and for two phones to be slapped on the center of the table in between spouses or lovers on a date. Heck, I've personally developed the skill to be able to text one person while conversing with and looking to the eyes of another person, an extreme example of being disconnected and halfway connected all at once. Sherry points out that this case for conversation begins with conversations of solitude and self reflection. They're endangered these days, always connected. We see loneliness as a priority problem that technology should solve. Afraid of being alone, we rely on other people to give us a sense of ourselves and our capacity for empathy and relationships suffers. So sometimes it helps to just be by ourselves, get to know ourselves so we can go out and get to know others. And we just can't do that when we're connected to the phone. Well, back to Louis C.K. s interview with Conan O' Brien and I'll link to that full interview at fitsoulbook.com Chapter 6 Louis notes our propensity to grab our phones at any given time when we begin to feel loneliness creep in on us, including while in our vehicles. Just that knowledge that it's all for nothing and that you're alone. You know it's down there. And sometimes when things clear away, you're not watching it, you're in your car and you start going, oh no, here comes that I'm alone. Like it starts to visit you, you know, just the sadness. Life is tremendously sad just by being in it. And so you're driving and then you go ah ah ah. That's why we text and drive. I look around pretty much 100% people driving are texting and they're killing everybody's murdering each other with their cars. Well, as you've already discovered, this quest to be constantly connected is increasing, not decreasing, loneliness and also making the average highway a very dangerous place to be because technology interaction just can't replace flesh and blood. Face to face interaction, this form of real conversation builds empathy, friendship, love, learning and productivity. And the book Reclaiming Conversation argues that the most human and humanizing thing we can do is to engage in person to person conversation. How? Well, here are a few tips particularly focused around meal times, which I consider to be one of the best ways to engage meaningfully and the best times to reclaim conversation, much to the chagrin of frequent five day water fasting enthusiasts. First, reconfigure your phone. If your emails, text messages and social media apps ping you every time a notification rolls in, you've lost control of your day and the ability to be able to engage in real conversation without being distracted. Your routine and conversations now depend not on your schedule, but on whatever's happening on your phone. As you no doubt know, Android, iOS and individual apps all have the settings to stem this flow of alerts, buzzes and rings. Every notification on my phone is off, my phone's in silent mode, and if I'm on a date or having dinner with the family, the phone is in airplane mode or do not disturb mode. There's no need for you to be ripped away from deep, meaningful conversation every time a Facebook friend tags you in to post. In extreme cases of smartphone addiction and lack of self control, you can even install addiction breaking apps like App Detox, which lets you set limits on the time you spend inside individual apps Flipped, which focuses on blocking access to certain apps for set periods of time onward, which allows you to track how often you use your phone in individual apps, set up rules for limiting phone use, and even have an expert give you personalized coaching to help break your tech addiction. And Forest, my favorite, which takes a slightly different approach by gamifying the process of easing you away from phone distractions. In Forest, you plant a seed and the seed eventually grows into a tree as long as you don't navigate away from the app. If you ditch Forest during the growth period to check Facebook or surf Safari, your tree dies. Admittedly, that sounds gimmicky, but it's actually a pretty effective and dare I say, slightly meditative way of avoiding the temptations rife within your phone. Next, play TABLE Topics When I'm on a date with my wife or at home with my family. A potent and fun way to completely forget the existence of my phone is to play a game of table topics, also known as dinner conversations, in which each person at the table asks the questions from an official table topics card game, a table topics app, which is ironic, but you could use it with the phone in airplane mode, or a printed list of table topics that include questions like if you could have any superhero sitting here at dinner with us, who would you choose and why? Or what the was scariest decision you made in the past year? Or if your house were on fire and you could put three objects in a backpack before you rushed out, what would you choose and why? You get the idea. It might seem silly that you need your conversation topics chosen for you to have real conversation, but I and my family have spent many valuable minutes and hours at dinner laughing and learning more about one another with this approach. And often the questions rabbit hole into really deep conversations. Next, you can share gratitude journals. In chapter 10, you'll discover the power of gratitude and the three most important questions you can journal. Each morning at our house, we bring our journals to the dinner table and discuss what we wrote. When a family of four, or even a group of two embark upon a conversation about what they're grateful for, what they discovered in a morning reading, or who they can help or pray for or serve that day, it can lead to really deep and meaningful conversations that often last for the entire dinner. Next Taste the Food Allow me to point out a painfully obvious fact. When you're at a meal you're eating, you're often filling your face with wonderful and interesting molecules that are actually conducive to conversation. So why not share your opinions with others of a meal's taste, texture, presentation? Why not discuss the culinary expertise put into the food, which can work when at a fancy restaurant but you know may not be so handy when eating Aunt Edna's macaroni and cheese, but you get the idea. Why not sip the wine flavor, taste the salt, or try a set of new spices and discuss what your brain experiences? Just last night at our house, my wife, twin boys and I spent nearly 20 minutes to tasting and trying three different bottles of olive oil and similar to a wine tasting, commenting on the notes, the flavors, the aromas and the subtle details of each oil and what we like best about it. The bonus of this strategy? You tend to eat less and become fuller faster because you're actually savoring your food. And by the way, I talk a lot more about this concept in my cookbook, which you can find by doing a search for Boundless Cookbook, Shameless Plug, and finally, should all else fail, you can rely upon Jason Gaynord's trick that he reveals at just about every one of his Mastermind Dinners I've attended. All phones get piled up onto the middle of the table in airplane mode or off, and the first person to reach for their device gets to pay for dinner. Summary Ultimately, having a great job, being fit, living in a nice home, or any other creature comfort can all be for naught if loneliness, sadness, inflammation, high blood pressure, and accelerated aging are all occurring due to lack of friendship, social relationships, community, charity, and love in your life. But now you're equipped to include these important components into your own life. Finally, be sure to consider reading the following books within the next few months or within the next year. Never Eat Alone, Reclaiming Conversations, Mastermind Dinners I'd like you more if you're more like Me and the Power of Introverts, that last one. Especially if you indeed are an introvert or you suspect you are, and I'll link to all those@fitsoulbook.com that's fitsoulbook.com chapter the number six in addition, this week, take a loved one or friend on a date, an adventure, a walk, or just a quick meal or chat. But leave your phone behind. Not like off in your pocket, but truly forsaken back at your home or office. Notice how this changes the conversation or experience. Well, at this point in Fit Soul, you've probably become accustomed to a bit of spiritual weight training. In the next several chapters, we're going to put a bit more weight on the bar, so to speak, and tackle some incredibly meaningful and life changing topics. So the next chapter, though it may seem oriented towards the male population, which is kind of true, is a chapter I still encourage you to listen to. If you're a mother, a sister, a woman, or any member of the female population with a man in her life, I guarantee you'll benefit. In the meantime, all the resources, references, links and additional reading and listening material for this chapter is at fit so soulbook. Com. Chapter six.