Mel Robbins compares adult friendship to physical exercise: stretch your social muscles with new interactions, rest when drained, tone existing relationships, and flex to sustain bonds. She frames loneliness as a health crisis requiring the same attention you give your body and mind.
If connection and social health is so important, how do you create it?
So think about connection like you think about exercise. Okay. The first strategy is to stretch your social muscles. So just like you stretch your physical muscles to get more nimble and flexible, you stretch your social muscles by seeking opportunities to make new friends, to join new groups, and to interact more often. The second strategy is to rest your social muscles. So when everything feels draining, right, you can actually rest your social muscles. It's also important to take time to connect with yourself or to scale back the amount of interaction. Loneliness isn't the only problem. It's also feeling overconnected or connected in ways that aren't fulfilling. So just like we rest our physical muscles in between reps or in between workouts to let our body heal, we also need to rest our social muscles. The third strategy is to tone our social muscles. So this means getting deeper, right? Deepening the connections that we already have, becoming closer to them. Just like we tone our physical muscles by lifting heavier weights or working out harder, we can deepen our connections to tone. And then the final strategy is to flex our social muscles. So just like we flex our physical muscles when we are feeling really strong and looking good, we can flex our social muscles to enjoy the relationships that we have and actually sustain them in the long term.
Well, you know what I'm hearing in every one of those is it's on us, that we have to make an effort. And do you think that we've gotten to a point where we've forgotten how important it is and now we're in this like epidemic of loneliness and disconnection? And a lot of what you're teaching right now is how social health, meaning your relationships, connection, community, family, friendship is a core pillar. And just like you're responsible for taking better care of your physical and mental health, you got to get serious about this.
