Connecting to Others

Hi everybody. Welcome to today's Boost. Do you like your friends? That might sound like an odd question, but our friendships directly impact our health and well being. Think of your friends as co authors of your life story. So do your friends lift you? Do they elevate you? Do they fill your heart with joy? Or do your friends drag you down, pull you down and drain you? If it's the latter, it might be time to do a friendship inventory, which means you look at your friends and decide who stays and who goes. Research tells us that we have room for 11 people at a time in our lives. After kids and spouses and parents. That doesn't leave very much real estate for a large number of friends, so choose wisely. Another reason to be selective is that a different research study tells us that we are the aggregate of the five people we're closest to or that we spend the most time with. So ideally, those people care about their health, take care of themselves, go to the gym and eat well and then more than likely you will as well. Let's say you've done that friendship inventory and you now have space for more friends. Where do you find them? My recommendation is to get active and get involved. Go to meetup.com to find a community, to find any community. They have groups of all types, so check that out. And now let's get back to your current base of friends. My recommendation to you is to write a thank you note to the one person who has made the most valuable contribution to your identity. Remember, these people are the co authors of our story. And so who do you owe a thank you to? Write them that thank you.