The Ultimate Biohack Isn’t a Product, It’s People

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Hi there,

In today’s world, we’ve been sold a particular kind of promise by the self-help industry: that the path to feeling better (physically, mentally, and emotionally) is paved by what we can do alone.

The advice is all readily available, often accompanied by an app or device you can purchase to help you achieve it.

Maybe you’ve also seen the ads in your feeds that are selling the one thing you need to do to feel/look/be better?

I can’t be the only one they’re targeting. Just in the last five years, here are but a few of the things I’ve done (and purchased) in quest of feeling better:

• Track my steps (Garmin watch).

• Meditate for ten minutes a day (Headspace app).

• Go low-carb, high-protein, intermittent fasting, and bio-optimize (so many meal planners and supplements).

• Declutter my home (multiple books and webinars).

• Build muscle and lose fat (fitness gear, gym memberships, fitness apps).

• Declutter my closet until it’s just dress shirts and aspiration (books and PDFs).

It’s not that these things didn’t, or don’t, have value.

They did, and they do.

And still they fell short of the mark, leaving me wanting for more.

But if we believe what sociology, psychology, and decades of longitudinal research have to say, the single biggest lever for improving our well-being isn’t in a mirror or a supplement bottle or a mental health app. It’s in our relationships.

Friendship, it turns out, is the ultimate biohack.

More after a word from this week’s sponsor…

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The Proof Is Everywhere

The Harvard Study of Adult Development, an 85+ year longitudinal study, found that the single strongest predictor of happiness and health as we age is the quality of our relationships. Not cholesterol levels. Not career success. Not the number of kale salads consumed. (Though good on you for that: I just can’t like the stuff.)

Sociologist Eric Klinenberg’s research on social isolation makes it plain: living alone or disconnected from meaningful relationships significantly raises our risks of mental and physical illness.

Loneliness has been shown to have the same health risk as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to a 2010 meta-analysis by Holt-Lunstad et al., and it’s far more prevalent. Mind you, this study came out prior to the explosion in social media, so you have to think it’s equivalent to smoking a couple packs by now.

And yet, despite this clear evidence, many of us treat friendship as optional or “nice to have,” something we’ll get to once our to-do lists are done or our inboxes are at zero.

We’ve industrialized self-improvement and individualized wellness to such a degree that we’ve forgotten you can’t out-supplement the power of people who care about you.

Friends are the safety net underneath life’s tightrope. And we all fall off several times in our lives:

• Lose your job? Friends are there to help.

• Go through a breakup? Friends are there to help.

• Face a health scare, a family crisis, a personal reckoning? Friends are there to help.

Friends also celebrate your wins, hold you accountable to your better self, and make life more fun in the spaces in between.

Friendship Takes Effort

These benefits aren’t free.

Just as getting stronger at the gym requires effort, so does building friendships.

It requires discomfort. Vulnerability. Reaching out when you’d rather retreat. Having hard conversations. Showing up when it’s inconvenient.

• If you’re willing to endure the awkwardness of jogging for the first time in a decade, you can strike up a conversation with someone new.

• If you can train yourself to enjoy quinoa and kale, you can also train yourself to initiate check-ins with your friends.

• If you can quit sugar, you can pick up the phone and call someone.

• If you can KonMari your closet, you can have the hard talk that’s been lingering between you and someone you love.

Surrounded by screens, it’s all too easy to avoid putting in the effort to interact with others and instead find a dopamine hit from the infinite scroll.

But it’s totally within your reach to reach out to others instead.

No matter the state of your social well-being today, you can improve upon it by meeting someone new, by converting an acquaintance into a friend, or investing time in those close relationships you already have.

Put down the screens and invest in your people.

This Week’s Challenge:

By the time next week’s newsletter arrives in your inbox, do one thing that improves the quality of a friendship.

Need some ideas?

• Text someone and ask, “What’s one thing you’re looking forward to this month?”

• Schedule a 30-minute catch-up call with an old friend, even if it’s been years.

• Apologize for something left unsaid.

• Show up to support a friend’s event, even if it’s out of your way.

• Ask someone new to join you for coffee, a walk, or an errand.

The muscles you build in friendship matter more than any gains from your wellness tracker.

Invest in them. Your future self is counting on you.

And so are your friends.

I shared with you my struggles to self-improve. What have you tried or bought to make you a better version of you? Did you do something you think could help others? Hit reply and share with me so I can pass it along in a future issue. Thanks! 🙏

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