How to Cure Stress, Burnout, and Loneliness Without Medication with Julia Hotz

Today's special guest is Julia Hotz and we're going to talk about the science of belonging. Enjoy the show. The Lead On Purpose podcast is sponsored by NZ Mortgages. Learn more at nzmortgages.co nz. Julia, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thank you so much, James. So great to be here.

I'm so excited because you have researched and written a book around topics that I'm really fascinated by. And they're probably topics that I was a little, I'm not going to say skeptical because once, but I was a little resistant to some of these things that you've researched and shown the data behind how they can help us. And the reason I've started kind of looking at these things that you're deeply knowledgeable about is because I feel like as life has went on, I've got busier, I've got more responsibilities. Things seem to have sped up somewhat in my mind and in my life and I experience stress. Many of the people listening and watching feel the same. You know, 30, 40, 50 year olds who are in the thick of it. We're just going at a million miles a minute. But what I discovered for myself was that if I don't make time for health, I'd better make time for sickness. And what you do is beautiful. You're like, you can make time for this in a natural, organic, healthy way. So the Connection Cures your amazing book. And why did you write that? What, what inspired you? Because I know writing a book is a mission. What inspired you to write the book?

Well, first of all, I'll just say thank you for saying that out loud. And I'll be honest, I was a skeptic too. I mean, the things that the Connection Cure covers, you know, the power of movement and nature, art, service, belonging. I said to myself, okay, sure, these things are nice. We're told that these things are good for us, but is it actually right to think of them as medicine? Can doctors actually prescribe this stuff? And why do they need to? Can't we just go out for a walk in nature? Anyway, so these were the questions I had too. And I wanted to write the book because I was skeptical and as I wanted to take as a journalist sort of a healthy skepticism about it and go see for myself, does it actually work when someone is prescribed swimming lessons for depression or art classes to deal with anxiety? And I was really pleasantly surprised. I mean, this was also during the pandemic and I think that was a time where so many of us felt firsthand that, wow, Actually, when you are isolated in your apartment and you're doing the scrolly scroll all day, like, your health does take a toll. You feel so of blah and purposeless, and that translates to some very physical and mental symptoms. But then social prescribing emerged as a sort of antidote to this. The idea of doctors prescribing you communities and activities the same way they prescribe pills and therapies, it emerged as an antidote first to the loneliness, I think, that a lot of us felt, but then following the data, all kinds of afflictions from, you know, ADHD and insomnia to anxiety and depression. So that's the nerdy answer. I was curious, but I think when you write a book, I'm sure, as you know, also when you start a podcast, you sort of discover your reason for doing it as you go further along. And I think for me, it was that I really needed a lot of this stuff, and I wasn't willing to accept that. Like, I live in a city, I have a good amount of friends. I. In many ways, my life looks like very good on paper, and yet I didn't realize how much my stress was impacting me. I kind of learned to separate the physical symptoms in my body from what was happening in my environment. And this book really taught me to rethink what health is really all about.

Thank you for, for explaining that, but also thank you for taking the time, the years it requires to research like this. And there's two people that I think of who are real leaders in this field, who are both journalists who are changing the face of the world. So that's yourself, and it's Johann Hari who wrote the Stolen Focus. I feel these two books are like iconic, perennial sellers that will just need to be amongst humanity for many decades to come. So I'm really glad that you've taken your journalistic skill set and went deep on something you were challenged with yourself, stress, anxiety, and then you've actually gone, okay, I can help millions of people by researching this. So thank you.

Thank you. That's such an honor. I'm the biggest Johann Hari fan, and actually it was. I love Stolen Focus. But his book before that, Lost Connections, which mentions social prescribing. He wrote that book when it was still sort of in its baby stages. But that was one of the first places that I'd actually heard about social prescribing other than just talking about it with people myself. So big honor to be grouped with him.

I love it now. You two are amazing. Now let's Chat about some of the things people might be experiencing. So we're obviously when you look at who you're seeing, massive increases in anxiety, depression, suicide, loneliness. You know, loneliness is one of the biggest killers, particularly in the elderly. So what are some of these modalities that you have researched that are actually antidotes to these issues?

Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for pointing that out as a starting point. And I actually think it's really important that we talk about all of those things together because they are in fact really related. Right. You notice how nobody's talking about epidemics of structure, strep throat or epidemics of typhus. You know, these are very much biomedical diseases that we've figured out how to treat with modern medicine. But when we see the skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, adhd, loneliness, we have to wonder about that. I mean, how is it that modern medicine is so advanced and yet these rates keep increasing and they are kind of increasing at the same rate at the same time. And I think it's because these things called disorders, right, anxiety disorder, depression disorder, are actually very much related to each other and they come from the loss of connections in our environment. Up to 80% of our environment, this is a well cited public health statistic, is determined by factors such as, you know, where we work, do we have friends, do we feel a sense of purpose when we wake up in the morning and yet the medicines don't correspond with that. You would think if 80% of our health is socially determined, 80% of our medicine should respond to that, right? But it doesn't. And yet at the same time, even before there was this word social prescribing to sort of encompass the non medical supports that can address our health and well being. So that's everything from like I said earlier, art classes and swim lessons to nature excursions, volunteering.

Independently. There's a lot of research suggesting that these things are good for us, right? Exercise, I mean, you know, with, with rugby and everything, we know that playing sports and moving our bodies, being part of a team that is so good for us on such so many levels. 7 of 10 leading causes of death are related to physical inactivity. So, you know, the corollary is also true. Physical activity, very good for us. Can one study finds that playing sports can add up to 10 years to your life.

Wow, that's mind blowing.

Mind blowing. And what's mind blowing within that? This is the a study they did in Copenhagen looking at some longitudinal data between, you know, playing sports and longevity. That study also Found that the sports that are more social. Right. When there's a teamwork element, that increases the longevity as opposed to the more solo sports. Right. So it's not just about the, the physical activity, it's also about the social connection, maybe that's happening along the way.

I love that. And it's so interesting you mentioned about the disorder. So I've got a friend, Mastin Kipp, who's deeply studied in trauma and trauma responses. And he presented this new idea to me that it could be seen as a disorder or it could be seen as a response. And I love that idea of like post traumatic stress response or attention deficit response because it seems like our bodies are responding to an environmental or a social deficit. Would that be fair?

Oh my gosh, absolutely. I'm so glad you said that. I always forget to mention this because it's kind of this cool historical fun fact. And I mean, sometimes when I push back on the disorder language, there's pushback to that thinking. You know, of course, these should be known as disorders. They're real and they're painful and we need to take them seriously. And that I totally agree with. I think the symptoms of these things feel very real and should be treated seriously. They are affecting your body, they are affecting your psychological functioning. But what happens, I think, when we call it a disorder is we leave it in the body and we ignore all the other factors that might be contributing to the disorder. And what's interesting is that in the earlier editions of the dsm, the Diagnostic, you know, Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, we use this in the United States to sort of look up the criteria for depression and anxiety. Adhd, the earliest version of that, actually used language not quite as responses, but as reactions. So in other words, a hundred years ago, we didn't talk about having an attention disorder. ADHD used to be called a hyperkinetic reaction in childhood.

Yeah.

And when you look at the history of adhd, that's really interesting because actually this sort of emerged as a quote, unquote reaction or disorder. When kids were put in school, they found that some kids had a really hard time sitting still. What was going on? Well, first they called it a reaction to childhood, and then later in the 1980s, the, the language switched around. This same thing with depression. You were having a depressive reaction, you were having an anxious reaction. And when we hear that, we automatically think, well, a reaction to what? Right. These things didn't just emerge spontaneously. Something happened and you are reacting or responding in the way that you evolved to respond. And in that way, I actually think it almost destigmatizes this a little bit more. It's not saying that Johann Hari likes to say this too. You know, that you are a machine with broken parts, saying that you're a human who reacts to deeply distressing events like any human would.

And what I'm hearing is that these social prescribing modalities are a way to kind of recenter us, reground us, bring us back to almost neutral. So what are they? So when we think about some of the key specifics, what are the things that you know around meaning and purpose, connection? What are the things that are really crucial for. For us to thrive?

Totally. Well, I think you'll love this. Given your podcast and your focus. The sort of tagline of social prescribing is about shifting from asking, what's the matter with you? Tell me about your symptoms to what matters to you. Tell me about what brings you joy. Tell me about what wakes you up in the morning. Tell me about a hobby you loved as a kid but haven't had a chance to do since. The beauty of this is that it looks very different for every person, right? You or I, we might say something related to sports and physical activity. I have people for whom that's never been an interest of theirs, might say something more related to the arts. But no matter who you ask, what's interesting is that people tend to give a response around these five core ingredients. Movement, nature, art, service, and belonging. And what is interesting about these five ingredients that my book sort of digs deep into is that actually we as humans evolved to to make these ingredients part of our lives. Right? In other words, if we wanted to survive back in hunter gatherer days, we had to move our bodies. If we wanted to get food, we had to be able to pay attention to nature. If we wanted to survive with a group, we had to sort of learn the mechanics of cooperation and service and belonging. And art is the really interesting one. At first you think you know, what's the evolutionary utility of art, but actually storytelling, whether that's orally or through pictures, or even using costume and jewelry or painting to express oneself, that is also as art, old as time, no matter which civilization you look at.

I love that I'm getting so fired up by all this. It excites me because it all makes sense. In fact, I want to get your copy of your book and give it to a friend of mine, Robin, and he's an author like you, and he wrote an amazing one called the Wealth Money can't buy his most well known one's 5:00am Club.

Yeah, yeah.

I want to gift him a copy of your book because he recently has started being an artist and sharing his art and just indulging in it. I can see that what you're talking about truly makes sense. Like, it's giving him joy, it's giving him satisfaction, it's giving him meaning outside of his work. And I'm really guilty of this, Julia. Like, I love my work, but I could literally do it 20 hours a day, no problem, and just sit there and work, work, work, and it wouldn't feel like a chore. But I know there's a danger to that and I've had in my previous career, I burnt out and went too hard, too much, and it all just ended. I needed to walk away. So I'm now looking at, okay, I don't want that to happen. I love this career so much now I want to do the opposite. So if you were to take me as a case study and go like, okay, you love your work, it gives you meaning. However, kind of like taken up a lot of your life, what would you prescribe me?

Great question. Well, first of all, I think it's great you love your work. I think that is actually really important. There's a whole chapter in the book about a woman who loved her work, worked in healthcare, developed a back injury, was no longer able to do that work, and it was so soul crushing for her and everyone. I experienced this recently. I had a back injury. They tell you, just rest, just rest and recover. But for this woman who work was her life, she loved it. That was actually such painful advice because it, it made her think that she was going to be resting forever. She was staring at the same four walls every day, and she felt really purposeless. And the woman who eventually helped her offered her a social prescription to work, but in a position where she wasn't taxing her back. She said that actually work can be medicinal. If you love it, if it gives you purpose, if it is something that you can do 20 hours a day and feel just so enwrapped in. I mean, what a beautiful gift.

Okay, now in your case, 20 hours a day, I mean, I also think it's true that you can love something and that's really important, but it is important to have balance. I'm really similar. I also love my work. I could talk about social prescribing all day. I don't know if you're guilty of this. I'm guilty of this. When sometimes I used to have roommates. We'd watch a movie. I would just, like, take my laptop on the couch and try to sneak some work in. And they'd say, why? You just watch the movie? So I do think, as with everything in life, balance is important. And it might be hard for people like us who love our work and feel like there's always more work to do to pull ourselves away from it. But I would also maybe ask you to break that down and say, what is it about your work that you love? And are there other things that currently do or could give you that same sort of sense of. Sense of flow and purpose? This is where I love going back to people's childhoods. I'm guessing that the work you do now is not something necessarily that you had a lot of experience doing in childhood, but maybe there was something that little James used to love doing with that same sort of attention and fervor that you might want to revisit.

Yeah, great advice. Like biking comes to mind. Like, that's something I loved doing as a kid, but I don't do a lot of as an adult.

Yeah, beautiful example. Love biking, especially because it's outside. And, you know, here's some advice I would give maybe to fellow listeners who feel like they love their work and the thought of pulling away from work feels like a cost. Right.

There's a lot of interesting data suggesting that, you know, we think when we work, we're giving 100% of our effort, 100% of the time. We can't tell. Right. But of course, that's not true. We're not wired to work 20 hours a day. We're not wired to find all of our tasks super interesting, and our attention is naturally going to falter at some point. One of my favorite chapters in this book talks about the way that nature can actually uniquely restore our attention.

And if I can, there's a really interesting case study around this with these Japanese businessmen for whom in the 1980s, you know, Japan, as we know, was a tremendous success story. Their GDP shot up to, like, second in the world very, very quickly. They had all these new industries, and they had all this new business.

And with that came really, really long working hours. People were working, you know, super long days. The government tried to mandate weekends that didn't work. Employers dodged it. They tried to mandate vacations that didn't work either.

And this was a problem for the government because more and more people, with all this increased work were getting more and more stressed and more and more sick people's you know, rates of heart disease shot up, stress related disorders like insomnia, um, and for some, there was also a real psychological load there. There was actually a new term that cropped up to describe this called karujitsu, meaning death by overwork.

So what did the government do? They said, okay, just asking people to work less is not cutting it. What if we, instead of doing that, we give people an opportunity to connect with something that's not work. And it was really timely because I think I mentioned a lot of people to sustain Japan's new economy moved from the countryside into the cities. So what the government did was invested in a campaign to get these city people back out into the countryside and into the forest, specifically through something called forest bathing. Now that might sound like everybody takes their clothes off and rolls around in the forest. What they mean by bathing is really more metaphorically. It was a guide to sort of engage with the forest with all five senses. And when researchers tested what happened when these stressed out Japanese businessmen went forest bathing for just three days, not only, you know, did they self report feeling more calm, less stressed, increase their well being. This showed up on a physiological level too. When they took blood samples and urine samples, they found that people produced less of the stress hormone cortisol. They found that people's blood pressure and heart rate decreased. They even found that after this is wild, just three days in the forest, people increased their production of natural killer cells which are associated with fighting cancer.

That's mind blowing.

Like, mind blowing. Just three days.

It's a short time. And if you think about yesterday, here's an example. Yesterday I'd worked, started pretty early in the morning and about 4pm I work from home. A lot of the time if I'm not in the studio in the city and my partner Caroline comes in and goes, see that big hill that you're looking at out there? I'm going to walk it. Do you want to join me? I'm like, yes, I do. And reason being Julia, I felt kind of like low. I felt a little bit of like sadness. And I've never experienced depression, but I just felt like low and sad and a bit just like anxious and angsty. And I said, yeah, I'll go for a walk. So I turned the laptop off, went for a walk, went up that hill. It nearly killed me. Looked at a beautiful view, walked through a forest. By the time I came back, I was like, Caroline, I feel like a different human. I'm so much more relaxed. I feel happier. It was just that for an hour One hour.

Absolutely. Bless Caroline. Social prescribing without even knowing it. I mean, it's so true though, right? And like, there's a reason everyone talks about how powerful walking is. If you go back thousands of years, people are talking about walking as medicinal, specifically walking up a hill. That's great. You're sort of getting that dopamine release from, from, you know, the reward of having climbed to the top. You're getting the fresh air, you're getting the beautiful view. You also did it with your partner, so there's the social connection. What a beautiful way to break up your day. And I am sure that when you returned after you gave up just that one hour, the work you did after that was much more focused and enjoyable, right?

Definitely, 100%. And it actually took me a lot less time to complete the work than I thought it would. And you know, it's really interesting. I don't work 20 hour days every day, I'll tell you that. Some days it just happens because I'm traveling. But you know, a 12 hour day wouldn't be unusual in terms of work. And like, to me, going back to when I was a kid working a six or seven hour shift felt like eternity. But I think you can get caught up with like your passion for what you do. And I can see that in what you do. It takes me to a term which you may be familiar with is ikigai.

Yeah, yeah.

The Japanese have that. It's amazing. And I came across it in Dan Buettner's work, the Blue Zones of Happiness. And this idea that we've got this strong concentration of centenarians, people over the age of 100 living in this one region, Okinawa, in Japan, there's a few other regions in the world, not many, but what is it? Why is it? And this idea of ikigai came up, they have a purpose, they are connected socially, they have meaning in what they do. So in your research, did you come across similar things around meaning, purpose? Ikigai?

Absolutely. I love that term. I love Dan Buettner's work as well. And yeah, I think we share a similar hypothesis that when you have a sense of purpose, when you have a sense of connection, when you feel really belonging in your neighborhood and there's a routine that naturally affords itself some of the ingredients of health, like movement and nature and service, you are literally healthier, you live longer. So absolutely. I mean, yeah, there's a whole chapter on service and really purpose within that. The example I shared earlier about the woman with the back pain is a great example. You know, she had tried so many other kinds of therapies, painkillers. They talked about back surgery. Nothing worked for her until she sat down with her social prescriber. And the social prescriber said, you know, what matters to you? Tell me about what does give you a sense of purpose. What would get you out of the bed? And she said, it was my job working at the hospital. And so what did this social prescriber do? She prescribed her a job working at a children's health care charity, Like a charity for kids with complex needs, but it was over the phone. So she's able to, you know, first of all, like, go into an office and be surrounded by people and in an environment that makes her feel purposeful as opposed to sitting at home. And every day she's talking to parents of kids with complicated health needs, and she's feeling like she can help them. We think of that as being a purely psychological thing to have a sense of purpose. But I'll tell you that Akilah's back felt better after that.

Incredible.

And it reminds me of the work. There's a great pain psychologist. I think you'd really like her. Her name's Dr. Rachel Zofnus, and she talks about when she deals with patients dealing with chronic pain, that there's nobody who's in chronic pain 100% of the time. Yes, it's super painful, but in the course of a day or a week or month, there are certain times when your pain is more painful and certain times when your pain is less painful. And she asks people to reflect on when your pain is less painful. What is happening? Are there activities? Are there things that put you in a state of flow, that in that moment, you're not thinking about your back pain?

And so, yes. And I think that's just one manifestation of this idea that having a sense of purpose, getting lost in an activity, feeling like the work we do is important, can have all these tremendous psychological and physical benefits.

Definitely. I can really see it. And I know multiple people who've went down this social prescribing route, and it's literally transformed their lives. They went from highly stressed, burnt out autoimmune diseases to essentially the reverse of that, and curing some of these diseases through connecting with nature, grinding practices, you know, hot therapy, cold therapy. It's quite amazing.

It is. You know, and I. I'm so grateful. I do think that more and more people are talking about this. And the way I see it is let's keep all the options we have. Now, as much as I talk about social prescribing, I'm also a big fan of modern medicine. You know, for my dad who had cancer, I'm so grateful he was able to get the best medical treatment there was. If I have strep throat or, you know, some kind of clearly biomedical thing, give me the medicine and even some psychiatric drugs. You know, I know people for whom it's been really, really helpful for them. So this is not an anti medicine book, it's just a book suggesting, why don't we have other options on the menu? When we have so many case studies of people who have found genuine medicine in nature and volunteering and art and movement and belonging, why does it have to be either or? And you know, I get super frustrated when people try to paint these things as fringe or alternative, when actually we would not be here as a species if we didn't have movement, nature, art, service and belonging. These are just pillars of human existence. So I'm glad we're talking about it more and I'm glad that health care is taking it more seriously and it's not just left, you know, for people to discover themselves. The power of these medicines.

100, that's interesting. I had a doctor here in New Zealand about, I don't know, 14, 15 years ago. I was chatting in my mid-20s. I had competing at the world championships regularly. I had started a retail business. I was writing a book. It was full noise. And I went to her and I said, look, I can hardly breathe at times and I feel like this anxious thing. And so I thought she might give me medicine. She went, james, it's going to be a very short visit today. I want you to leave here and I want you to go and buy this book. She wrote the name of the book down. I want you to read it, I want you to reflect on it and then give it a month. If you're still feeling those things, come back and see me. And she wrote down this book I'd never heard of and it was called the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.

Oh, okay.

So I read it and I was like, wow, it was a game changer for me. And I just, I was really blown away that she didn't just give me some medication at the time. And some people might need a medication, but clearly she didn't think I. I did at that point. And it was really helpful to have this other prescription which was, you know, learning and understanding different things about how I work and the world around me. And I Feel like your work is now explaining that. I find the power of now difficult. When I first read it, to connect with the language was challenging for me. But I feel the way you put it together, you distilled this complex world and the challenges that we've got into some very tangible, pragmatic tools that we can all engage with. So like, good job on that.

Oh well, thank you so much. I have to read the Power of Gal. You're the second person who's recommended it to me, but I appreciate that. And I mean I say this as someone who is not a healthcare expert, is not a health expert. I was just the skeptical journalist. And so it was important for me to like keep it honest and keep it plain language and sort of, you know, be as honest as possible as I'm learning these things and to also be honest about the things I still don't understand and I'm not totally on board with. But I do think as a general principle like all of us can use this. And I love that your doctor did that and I love that what I everything I know about you at that point in your life, you know, you are so incredibly accomplished and maybe it can feel like a bit of a cognitive dissonance to be doing so well by so many sort of on paper accolades, but to still feel this crushing anxiety or stress or lowness, whatever it might be. And what I think is the most exciting thing about this book is that it's a tool for all of us. We don't have to have a diagnosable disorder to be able to use the power of these social prescriptions. The example of you and Caroline just now with the walk is a great example of that.

Yeah, thank you. It's interesting. Post Covid during COVID and then post Covid. I work with a lot of corporates and medium sized businesses and working from home has been a real plus. And in terms of during COVID keeping people working and keeping the thing moving. But it's now starting to turn into a real negative in terms of connection, culture, productivity, you know, well being, we're starting to see people that are opting to work from home 60, 70 plus percent of the time, we're starting to see negative impact. So with the connection cure, with that filter in mind, what would you say to someone who is running a business around the importance of creating in person, shoulder to shoulder connection?

Great question. This has come up a lot. I'm guilty of it. I work for an organization that made the office days first optional then required and honestly it didn't work and now we just all work from home. But what we do do is once a month we get together, everyone's in the office that day. We know it's going to be a day for in person connection. We usually go out to a meal after and it's actually something we look forward to. So that's just one anecdote. But drawing on lessons from the Connection Cure, I think that what I've learned is people really have to have agency. Whether it's their healthcare or their work schedule, they really need to feel like this is something that they want to do. We know this about motivation, right? Because for years doctors have been telling people, you should exercise more or you should really get out in your community and make friends. But until it's really tailored to what matters to the person and until there's that accountability, right, of other people, maybe in this group you're being socially prescribed to that are then going to encourage you to come back, you're not going to take it as seriously. So I think maybe the analogy with trying to get employees back to work is really discover. I mean, it's sort of that same question of the pain dial. Like, I think nobody likes when, you know, they're sort of going through the motions of going back to work and you think the whole team's going to be there, but it's actually just a few of you in and you're thinking to yourself, why did I get out of my bed to come in here and, you know, waste an hour both ways, commuting, when I could have just done this at home. But if there are moments in the office together, whether it's, you know, collaborating on some big project together or.

Even doing something fun like, I don't know, giving people an opportunity to like, give a TED talk on something they're passionate about, whatever it might be, but finding ways that are going to naturally motivate people to come back and to make them say afterwards, wow, I'm really glad I went into the office today. That is so much better than a day I would have had at home. That might be the trick, right? Really starting with what matters to them.

I'd say, yeah, really powerful. I love that. And it's interesting when I think of the title, the Connection Cure, then I would go. The inverse of that would be, you know, disconnection. And you know, I guess there's anything in your research that you came across that was really quite startling, alarming around, you know, humans being disconnected with each other, with the planet, with, with people.

Mm. Oh, absolutely, I will. I think it's interesting for all of, you know, some of the more like top of mind mental health issues, when we talk about mental health, anxiety, depression, almost all the time, they're correlated with loneliness. Right. It's very rare that you're just lonely, that you're just disconnected. More often than not, that is showing up in other places in your body. So if you have, you're 40% more likely to get dementia, for example, if you're lonely.

Same with chronic pain. I mean, again, rarely are these things just isolated. So that should tell us then that the opposite of that feeling a strong sense of connection to your fellow humans is really good for your health. And sure enough, there's been a ton of sort of large scale epidemiological data that shows if you are lonely, you are 50% more likely to die prematurely. But you take the opposite of that. If you're socially connected, you're more likely to live longer. And one of my favorite studies demonstrating this comes from the Harvard Study of Adult Development. This was the longest running longitudinal study ever. These researchers have been looking at the same group of people since 1938.

Wow.

And what they wanted to find was what are the factors in these people that account for a long, healthy life life. And so every five or so years, they measured, they did, you know, a full health test on people, their blood pressure, their depression scores, all that kind of stuff. But they also asked them unconventional questions about their hobbies and their social connections and how engaged they were in their neighborhoods. How much did they like their jobs? They did this for 80 years. They found that the number one predictor of a long, healthy life life was the strength of the social connections. More than your income, more than your genetics, more than these things that our culture sort of really builds itself around. Social connections were the number one predictor of longevity.

That's amazing. And do you think it's about the number, like the quantity, or is it the depth, like the quality of those?

It's a good question. I think it's the depth. I mean, I think it's subjective. I think there are some people for whom, you know, just one really strong social connection is good. Others maybe require more of a diversity in terms of number and the type. But I think as a whole, you know, what this, the studies uniformly find is that any kind of social connection, subjectively defined by the person is good. I mean, that's the thing. Loneliness is subjective, right? It's not saying that you need to have 10 friends or else you're lonely. It's the gap between the kind of connection that you want and the kind of connection you have. And my book talks about this because, let's be honest, especially for older adults who maybe can't leave their home as easily, who don't have, you know, easily accessible transportation, it's not really realistic for them to think that they're gonna get 10 friends and that they're gonna get 10 friends in real life, in person. But what I love about this one program in the US is it starts with that as an assumption. Like older adults maybe have a hard time leaving their home. What can we do? Well, we can prescribe them phone volunteers to call them and not just go through the small talk, how are you? How's the weather? But really dig deep on their life and their interests. That was also found to improve their health and their social connections. Right. These virtual phone calls, there's a lot of talk about, you know, in person versus virtual. And I think here again, it's not so much about the medium or the quantity, but it's really about the quality.

Yeah, I love that Caroline comes to mind again when you share this. So this is an example of this working for both parties. So Caroline is in her early 30s, and she each week spends an hour to two hours with a lady called Noeline. Noeline is just 91, 92 years of age. And it's a company called Age Concern that runs this. It's a voluntary organization where someone who's got an hour or two a week who wants to give back and connect with elderly can go and do that. And so Caroline gets so much out of it. I can see it, like after and even before she's getting excited to go and see Nolene afterwards, she comes home really fizzing. And she had that connection. But then Nolene is not living this lonely life which a lot of these elderly people are at home by themselves. And so I think that what you've described, I can see that in reality unfolding. Everyone wins.

Oh, I love that. Gosh, Caroline's really good at this. She's intuitive with social prescribing right into it. I love that too, because it goes both ways. You know, the book talks about being prescribed a volunteer position is medicinal. So. So Caroline's getting the benefit from that feeling like she's serving her community. But then also for Nolene, a sense of belonging is medicinal. So she's receiving the social prescription of social connection. As you said, it's great for all parties. And what's really exciting in the States, I Mean, we in New York City, where I live, for example, there are these similar sort of voluntary programs. But what's starting to happen in the States, and particularly in the uk, where social prescribing started, is that's being connected to health care. So in other words, I don't know Nolene's story. Maybe she was lucky enough to learn about this program. Maybe someone enrolled in it for her. But imagine if her health care provider could see, say, hey, I'm sensing that there might be some loneliness in your life. I'm going to actually prescribe you to this program. Right.

Powerful.

It's going. Yeah. One step up to say that this is not just a nice to have thing in the community. This is actually medicinal.

That's lovely. And I guess I don't know what it's like for you, New York, but when I grew up in Northern Ireland, it's a small town, and we lived in a cul de sac, and I knew all of my neighbors, all 30 people. I knew who they were, their kids, their uncles. I knew who visited their houses, and we all, like, hung out and we just knew each other. Now, nowadays, it's weird. Like, I kind of could see my neighbors. I know one set of them really well, but the rest I wouldn't know. And we all kind of keep ourselves to ourselves. And I don't think this is unnormal in society. So are you seeing that globally and do you think that's something that we should try and remedy?

Yeah, great point. Totally. It's. I think it's happening globally. My parents grew up where I live now in Brooklyn, and they talk about the days where they all used to hang out on each other's stoops. You never knew who was in which house because everybody was sort of always together. There's a great political scientist here, Robert Putnam, who says that in his generation, he's, I think, in his 70s. When you use the phrase our kids growing up, when people mentioned our kids, the. The implication was it's about, like, the community's kids. Right. Our kids need a pool, Our kids need a park. Our kids need better schools. Today, when you use the word our kids, it's about the nuclear family's kids. Right. I think the same thing is true with, with our neighbors. Right. We may live close together, but we don't really think about them as being a unit necessarily in most places, I think, and I think we think we want this. Like, I live, for example, here in New York in a small apartment building with eight people, and I have to whisper this. There's some people in this building who love to talk. And gosh, I love it. I feel actually so good when I talk to them. But me being my little, you know, busy, workaholic self, I think I don't have time for that. And so when I see them, like outside, I kind of go, oh, no, I have to. I have to, you know, wait till they go away or something, or else I'm going to be caught up for an hour. I don't know what that's about because I feel so good after I talk to these people. But I think we've just become so accustomed to living these atomized lives where we can have everything delivered to us when we need, when our work is omnipresent that we forget. There's actually a lot of beauty in the spontaneity that happens when we bump into our neighbors or, you know, to our earlier discussion about work when we go into the office and have a water cooler conversation with someone we might not have met before. There's some. I don't talk about this too much in my book, but there's some research on the importance of these sort of weak ties and these micro social interactions that are really important. I don't talk about it explicitly, but I think that that's sort of like the subtext of social prescribing. That, yes, it's great to have friends that you pick and sort of choose your own social engagements with them. But what happens when you're given a social prescription, whether it's for. I think I'm going to prescribe you some cycling lessons because I heard you say that that's something you loved as a kid.

But what happens is you're probably going to meet people there that you wouldn't normally bump into. And that was certainly the story for people I met in my book. You know, they said I never would have run into these people in any other walk of life, but now they're actually some of my closest friends and they give me perspective on things that I wouldn't have otherwise had.

It's so beautiful. I love it. And I'm just going to. For the person that's listening or watching right now, I'm going to say in the show notes, you can go and get a copy of the book right now. And I'll also put your socials in there, Julia, so that people can come in and follow your journey, because your socials are incredible. And if people struggle to read, I think it's a great place to start to get Some kind of micro chunks of what you talk about. And I think if they're like me, they'll be so impressed and inspired, they'll just want to go and run and get the book. So I'll put both links in below.

Oh, thank you so much, James. I appreciate that.

No, it's a pleasure. Now, I want to be mindful of your time, but also want to ask you one very important question before we wrap up. So I want you to pretend for a moment that this, you and I are going to go into the future, the very, very distant future, and you're highly aware that it's your last day here on Earth and someone very young that you love dearly comes into the room and they say, julia, how do I go about living my life on purpose? What would you say?

Oh, great question.

I would say.

Lead with what matters to you. I would, I would steal the catchphrase of this movement. I think so many of us, not only our health care, not only our health, is ruled by what's the matter with us, but I think when we think about organizing our day, we tend to let a lot of stuff live in our head.

When we are forced to zoom out and say, what matters to you? Does this email that's stressing you out, does it matter to you? Does this, you know, person who gave you a dirty look on the subway or this drama with your friend, does it matter to you? And why does it matter to you? Is it threatening something that you love? And I think when we can be more acutely aware that our, our life, our days are numbered, we should maximize it on what matters to us. Then we'll be more present, we'll be more joyful, and we can die happy. We could die happy on our deathbed saying, I lived with purpose and did the best I could.

Such great advice. I love it. I love that prescription, that leading on purpose prescription that you've just given us. I want to say a massive thank you. Your work is incredible. Your book is going to be a game changer for those that engage with it and read it. And as I say, I'm going to put that in the show notes. So if you're listening right now and you want less stress, more joy, more connection, you've got to read the book. So, Julia, thank you so much.

Thank you so much, James. So honored, so grateful.

Thank you. The Lead on Purpose podcast is sponsored by NZ Mortgages. Learn more at NZMortgages Co NZ.