Building More Than Muscle: Exercises for Your Social Well-being

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Hi there,

Whether you’re lonely or not, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that incorporating physical exercise into your daily routine keeps your body strong.

More and more research shows that our sense of well-being is tied not only to our state of physical fitness but also to our social fitness, which is measured by the quality and quantity of our connections to others.

Truthfully, though, how many of us are staying active in a sustainable way? A show of hands, please? (Mine’s half-raised… more on that later)

If you’ve already found a good physical exercise routine (hey, good for you!), what have you done to take a similar approach to maintain your sense of social well-being? (I’m a bit better in this regard)

In today’s newsletter, I’d like to address both physical and social fitness since they each play a critical role in insulating us from isolation.

We hear the advice to walk 10,000 steps a day, lift weights multiple days a week, or simply take the stairs instead of an elevator when given a chance because physical activity is good for us and will keep our bodies fit as we age.

It only makes sense: if we don’t exercise, our muscles will waste away, leaving us weaker and weaker until our dying day.

Scientists refer to this process as entropy.

Let’s call it what it really is: physical decay.

One of my deepest fears is that when I grow old, my body will give out while my mind continues to function well.

When I was first confronted by this fear in my forties, I over-reacted by declaring I was going to become a triathlete and dedicate the time, energy, and money to push myself to go farther and faster than my peers.

I felt I could out-race entropy if I just pushed myself hard enough.

After five years of training six days a week and filling my race calendar with more and more races at longer and longer distances, I ultimately crossed the finish line as an Ironman after propelling/willing myself in a forward direction for 13 hours straight to cover the full 140.6 miles of swimming, biking and running.

But in the afterglow of the achievement, talking with my therapist about my next conquest, she helped me see my approach was incompatible with my other roles as a dad, and a husband, and a busy consultant.

So I stopped racing, but I still have my box of finisher medals and race bibs to remind me of that time.

I needed to find something that would keep me off the couch, so I asked around and learned from fitness writer Chris Davidson about the minimum effective dose (MED) of activity.

MED is doing just enough to move the needle and improve your health, fitness, and body shape as you get older. And then not trying to do any more than this because it’s unsustainable.

See, it’s better to do MED week-in week-out than to only manage to do something high maintenance for six weeks while hating life, wishing the discomfort would stop, and eventually giving up and doing nothing for months thereafter.

Need proof of this? We’re six weeks into the new year next week. Take a look at the number of cars in the parking lot of the local gym and tell me folks are sticking with their resolutions to go all-in and get in great shape. I’ll wait.

Now, a decade on from my Ironman, I’ve found my MED is doing a 30-minute training session on my bicycle twice a week. If I feel up for it, I’ll add in strength training, too, but the two bike sessions are my MED.

Could I do more than two a week? Sure, and I often do, but I don’t push myself to do anything more than two because that’s my consistent effort that ensures I stay in shape.

Do I sometimes do less than two a week. Of course. (I’m human, too).

My fear of body decay still motivates me to ride my bike, lift weights, and be physically active. But I’ve learned to coexist with that fear and keep my activity at MED levels so I can focus on all the other things I’m trying to live longer to enjoy.

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Researchers who followed 1,500 older people for ten years found that those people with an extensive network of friends outlived those with fewer friends by more than 20 percent.

(Interesting side note: that study showed close relationships with family had almost no effect on longevity.)

As I researched loneliness and isolation more deeply, I was confronted by an uncomfortable truth about my social well-being: I’ve let my social well-being slide as I’ve entered midlife. 

Here I am: the one who’s always talking about networking and social graphs and reaching out to old and cold connections, and I’ve still let my social well-being degrade.

Just as our physical health continues to decline, our social health experiences attrition thanks to our moving through any number of life transitions, either planned (having kids, all-consuming job, empty-nesting) or unplanned (breakups, divorces, even death).

My own network of friends has shrunk over the years through events both within and outside of my control: I’ve been through two divorces. My oldest kids are now young adults living away from home (yay!?). COVID happened. And I’ve unfortunately started to experience the sad but inevitable ritual of seeing more notices posted about people in my network passing away.

Thanks to this attrition rate, if I had stopped making friends in my thirties, I’d have even fewer friends than I do now at the age of fifty-five. And I’m planning to live another 50 years.

Luckily, we can (and mostly naturally do!) change the trajectory of the friendship decline, the descent into isolation, because we, as human beings, are predisposed to being social.

We are not naturally solitary. We are prosocial beings. Witness the eons of progression in living in families, then tribes, then towns, and then cities. We care about others and what others think about us.

The irony of middle age, however, is that we become much more comfortable in our own skins, and we begin to care less and less about what others think of us.

That, in turn, means we prefer our own eccentric company over tolerating the eccentricities of others, which leads to further isolation if this behavior is unchecked.

So, how do we fight the effects of entropy on our social well-being?

I’m not talking about exercising with friends. I’m talking about exercising our ability to make and keep friends.

I’m talking about the many ways we can feel connected to others. Even in small ways, feeling connected helps combat the emotional toll that loneliness can take on our mental well-being.

Did you do last week’s newsletter challenge to spend a day without earbuds and count the micro connections? How’d you do?

If your daily routine was anything like mine, your micro connections were more than likely variations on overhearing people discussing the new administration. And because there’s so much uncertainty and fear in the air, we all have to fight our lizard brain’s drive to feed off that energy and go into fight, flight, or freeze mode.

I know where my current network of friends and acquaintances stands in reaction to what’s happening in DC.

I need to find new people to connect with—to grow my network—to create a buffer against the decay of my social well-being.

So to build up this buffer, I’m taking a page out of the good network hygiene manual and looking to connect with people in ways that are not based on political affiliation.

Doing so will help increase my circle of inputs and insulate me from political messaging and misinformation (food for the lizard brain), which means I can keep myself calm.

And I know I need to find ways to connect with people off-line more than online so I can avoid the constant bombardment of headlines and breaking news.

I need to find my Minimum Effective Dose of socializing, which is something I can commit to and sustain over the long haul.

I think my MED for socializing is putting myself out there once per week in physical spaces where I can volunteer or play sports or worship.

I’m confident this MED will create the opportunities for micro connections to blossom into bigger connections, which can grow into acquaintances and then become friendships.

From experience, I know that just by being active in the presence of others, I am beginning to create the building blocks of community.

And community is the buffer for our collective well-being.

We’re all in this together.

Maybe our MED for our community is doing our part to ensure others know their well-being is as important as ours.

Follow Your Curiosity

• Technique: Dive deep into the Wim Hof Method

• Essay: Doing Nothing Is Something by Anna Quindlen

• Podcast: Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships (Huberman Lab)

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What’s been your experience with MEDs? With Wim Hof? Do you have something you think could help others? Just hit reply — your email goes straight to my inbox. 🙏