Give it Just Ten Minutes

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Hi there,

We are all born with a sense of adventure, a desire to explore the unknown. This is a good thing because, at birth, everything is unknown.

Our first years as little people are consumed by learning everything we can about our environment and everything within it. We’re voraciously curious and inquisitive, relentless experimenters unafraid to try new things.

Our very survival depends on it.

We are also born with an innate drive to connect with others, so we don’t venture into this world of unknown things by ourselves. This quest for connectedness starts within our family and then broadens to friends as we begin to piece together our pictures of the world and find our places within it.

And then something happens as we approach our teenage years where the focus becomes less on connecting with others and turns instead to focus on our own growth and achievements.

We turn inward instead of outward, making choices based on what’s going to help me, not we.

And some of our friendships become transactional as we learn to compartmentalize reasons to like someone more than we dislike them:

• I’m friends with Jimmy because his mom gives us rides to basketball practice.

• I stay friends with Amy because they’ve got the pool membership.

• I’m friends with Steve because he’s always got unused hockey tickets he needs to dump at the last minute.

The more we focus on what we gain from a friendship or relationship, the more transactional that connection becomes, and consequently, the more fragile it is. When the transactions cease, the connections may become dormant or even break apart.

On the other hand, the more we focus on what we give to our connections, the stronger and more resilient they become. The recipient feels the feels. We bask in the glow of gift-giving, and we seek out each other’s company again and again for the dopamine hit of connection.

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Like is rational. Love is a feeling.

Growing up, we learn most of our connecting behaviors through the emulation of others. We see acts of kindness, bids for connection, the joys of companionship, and the stings of rejection.

Bonds form through prosocial behaviors: helping, sharing, donating, cooperating, and volunteering. These behaviors help connect us on a grand scale. While a person may or may not intend to benefit others, the behavior's prosocial benefits are often only calculable after the fact.

All this comes naturally to us because we humans are prosocial beings.

And life without connection is dangerous to our well-being.

We need each other.

We are not meant to live alone.

Because being alone is stressful. Stress does all kinds of nasty things to our bodies, including shortening our lives.

So what can we do about it?

The short answer: be better friends.

Friendship is the greatest biohack available to us.

While we’re searching for something else to improve our lives that is more quantifiable: more vitamins, more steps, more sleeps; it’s friendship that is the magic pill.

Friendship reduces stress.

We feel safe, and loved, and cared for when we’re around our friends.

Yet, what’s the first thing to go when we’re under the gun of pressures from work, from kids, from bills?

We cut back on time with friends.

• It’s too hard to find time on the calendars.

• It takes too much energy necessary to make sure it’s a “fun time” together.

• It’s too hard to quantify the outcome of the time together.

Yet we know that time with friends feels good and it’s good for us.

Feeling full of good intentions to reach out? Good.

But how many times have you intended to reconnect with an old friend but couldn’t find the hour or half hour on your calendar to do so?

So you put it off to the next week, and then the next, and then it just doesn’t happen.

And so you don’t reconnect, and in addition to missing them, you now feel ashamed of not having made it happen.

Well, shit. That didn’t work out the way you wanted it to.

Know this: time with friends doesn’t need to be some big, planned event.

There’s no rule that “a connection must last a minimum of one hour to make the connection worth it.” That’s BS.

You can get the benefits of reconnecting by making a phone call as brief as ten minutes.

And who doesn’t have a ten-minute window open in the day? (you’re on a news diet anyway, aren’t you?)

Your Homework

This weekend, set aside a half hour to do the State of Connection exercise. Who on your list are you missing most? Reach out to them, if only to say you’re thinking about them.

I’ve been on the receiving end of many such texts, and they never cease to put a smile on my face as the dopamine of our fond connection floods my system.

You’ve got the power to do that for someone at your fingertips.

Why the hell wouldn’t you use this superpower to help those you care about?

Send the text!

What do you do when you’re trying to respark a friendship? Do you have something you think could help others? Just hit reply — your email goes straight to my inbox. 🙏