 If you're a successful professional but have hit a ceiling, feeling overworked, or feel like you've sacrificed your personal life for success, you're going to want to listen to these eye-opening stats that we're about to share. You see, for almost 20 years, we've been coaching successful professionals on how to grow their social capital to succeed in their professional and personal lives. From finance professionals, founders, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and C-suite execs to name a few, we've helped them along the way and if you're listening to this in dealing with the feeling that success is slowly killing you, that self-doubt or blinking red light, that you've got to fix something here and you don't like that feeling of self-doubt, or feelings of isolation and loneliness because you can't get vulnerable with people in your life, maybe you've become an NPC, a non-playable character feeling like Groundhog's Day in your interactions, or you're in search of the right tribe, you're not alone, right, Michael? Oh, yes, definitely. There's a big survey that was done by the Cigna Group. This was post-pandemic, so December 21, and they had nearly 6,000 participants there. So what they found, and I'm just listing a couple of the many findings that they had, but one, for example, was that young adults are twice as likely to be lonely than seniors. Now, it's a little bit ironic to say only 41% because even that is a high number. Also, more than twice as many younger adults as older adults experienced feeling left out. So the younger you are, the more you feel left out. More than two in five adults, so 42% precisely, aged 18 to 34, reported always feeling left out. Nearly half of Americans reported sometimes are always feeling alone, 46%, and these numbers seem to only climb compared to studies that in surveys they were done earlier. So two in five Americans sometimes are always feel that their relationships are not meaningful, 43%. Feel like their relationships are not meaningful and that they are isolated from others, also 43%. And then lastly, only around half of Americans have meaningful in-person social interactions. So for example, an extended conversation with a friend or spending quality time with family on a daily basis, only 53% of Americans report that. Not only are they startling numbers, but it's normalized, right? Like 53% of Americans can say that they have meaningful interactions. That's right, it's slightly over half. That's a lot of people who are feeling left out, feeling isolated and feeling lonely. And what we're going to discuss today is why that may be. And if you do feel that way, listen, you're not alone, you're not abnormal. This is the phenomenon that all of us deal with due to modernity. But we will also go into identifying it and identifying the hurdles that we're going to face. And then we're going to talk about solutions in getting over that today. So I'm very excited to present this because this is very important to all of us. And it's going to be important for you to understand this so that you can see it in your friends and your family and take notice of this. Exactly. If you're not feeling it, someone you know is feeling it. These numbers are so startling that you might be in a great place of not feeling isolated or loneliness. And we're going to talk about the health impacts of that. But if you are in that place, turn to your friends and family and look to them and ask them if they're having the meaningful interactions and support them. If you're lucky enough to be in the minority right now that aren't feeling this way. And there are a lot of factors that go into feeling this way. I mean, we've been doing this for 20 years now and we started this mission. It was secure loneliness in romance. Many young men were struggling to meet romantic partners. And that was the impetus to starting the podcast. And as we've coached clients over the years, we've recognized that even if you find that romantic partner, you can still feel alone. You can still feel a lack of friends and vulnerability in your life and feel isolation from coworkers at work. Then the pandemic hit, then we shifted to work from home. Then the social fabric got pulled away through social media. And it's rise. And we've talked about all of these factors on the show, but overall, we're recognizing now that this is a real problem. In fact, our former surgeon general talked about the loneliness epidemic and how it's causing the rise of drug use. And I think a lot of people, when they hear loneliness, they think of that person who's in complete isolation with no one in their life that they can talk to. But loneliness actually hits us around the holidays. It's one of the reasons we're sharing this in December, because as you travel back home, you reconnect with old friends and maybe you see families. And for many of us, we may have moved away from our families. We start to recognize that we have, through chasing success in our career, chasing accomplishments, we've moved into a place where isolation is more likely to be a part of our lives. AJ, I want to bring this point up as well. So Michael's last stat here of only around half of America is 53%. Have meaningful, in-person, social interactions. Right? Now, out of that portion, how many would consider themselves lonely? Right? So outside of that, you're going to have a bunch of people who are surrounded with friends who wouldn't necessarily think that they are lonely. However, they're unable to connect with them in a meaningful way that serves their overall well-being. And there's a reason for that. And I want to get into those right now, because it's this is just the reality of the situation. And what we talk about here is radical acceptance of those realities so that we can then make the choices to correct that. OK, so here's the reality. And I brought this up many years ago. We did a podcast called The Third Place. And about finding your third place. And I was inspired by a book by a man named Ray Oldenburg called The Great Good Place. Now, what Ray was discussing in that book is we have our office, we have our home, and then we have our third place. This is the place that we go to feel connected, to have those discussions, to meet people, to socialize. And in that episode, AJ and I talked about how our fathers had their place, the VFW or the Fireman's Club, that place that they could go after work from working in a factory and then blow off some steam, talk about what's going on in the community and make some plans and just feel connected to others who were going through the same thing that they were. But here's the issue. That book was released in 1987. So I'm here to tell you that things haven't gotten any better since 1987, and they've continued on the same trajectory that Ray Oldenburg was very concerned about, which is we are losing our great good place, our third places. Ray was talking about the coffee shops in France and Italy, the pubs in Britain, the corner bar here in America. And also church. 100 percent. For many religion was that third place. And you bring up a point, you had home and you had work. Right. Well, look at what's happened. We don't have it. Many of us have now, we don't even have a second place. We're down to one place. And our escape is streaming, video games, the internet and non-in real life interactions. And we can go down a whole rabbit hole of how those impersonal interactions are not fulfilling to your health, to your mental, physical and emotional well-being. But it is important to recognize that due to convenience, we have collapsed our social lives, our work lives and our home lives into one place. And we focused on external outcomes and external accomplishments for success to the detriment of our own health and well-being. And it's perfectly normal growing up, going through the educational system, especially here in the US and into your career. You were praised for being independent and setting ambitious goals and reaching them on your own. And at one point you learned that being fiercely independent and with maxed out self-sufficiency and self-reliance, you were rewarded praise from parents and teachers. And then in your career, that led to success, that led to promotion by you working harder than everyone and choosing isolation as a path to external accomplishment. But over time, by making that choice habitual and making that choice of isolation, your comfort zone, you've actually set yourself up for poor health outcomes. Right, Michael? AJ, you were talking about Vivek Murthy, the former US search in general, just a few minutes ago. And he and his book together, he wrote, he says that loneliness has become a silent epidemic and it has become, get this, one of the top reasons for medical appointments, as well as emergency room visits. Loneliness is one of the main reasons for this, both in the US and the UK, by the way. So approximately, he writes that approximately 20 percent of emergency room visits are related to loneliness. Patients show up with symptoms that include panic attacks, dizziness, severe emotional distress, heightened physical pain and so on, 20 percent of emergency room visits. Nathan Tate and Holt Lundstedt, Baker Harris, Stevenson, a lot more have coined the term loneliness is the new smoking. This is backed up by quite a few researchers and it's the new smoking due to the fact that loneliness is as dangerous to our health as smoking 15 cigarettes per day or daily alcohol abuse, not use, but abuse. So, of course, not loneliness is not going to give you lung cancer or it's not going to kill your liver, but it can shorten your lifespan just the same way as chronic drinking and smoking does. Moving on, Chuck Kiyopo, apologies, dear gentlemen, for not being able to pronounce your name the right way. He and his colleagues, Fowler and Christakis, write that loneliness when it's chronic has been linked to heightened risk of heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, increased mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, and there is also inflammation. There's immune and autoimmune problems. And before I go on, just let me remind you that we're talking about loneliness here. Right? I'm not talking about chronic drug abuse. I'm talking about loneliness, inflammation, immune and autoimmune problems, higher risk of suicide and higher risk of premature mortality. So I'll leave it at that. But trust me, I spend quite some time going through studies. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. And we've seen it in our clients. You don't get to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day by chiefing down all 20. You start with the choice of smoking one and then it's two. And that's exactly how loneliness starts. You put off going out one weekend. You put off hanging out with friends. You put off going out to that third place because work is more important. And I got to get this promotion and I got to save this amount of money to make sure that I can buy that house or buy that fancy watch or that car. And we see this with our clients that you look at a period of time and all of a sudden you've gone three months without actually investing in building and strengthening relationships. You've gone six months without actually going out and meeting new people. And as that world and that sphere of influence closes, you start to feel the heightened stress, the heightened fear, the heightened anxiety that chasing performance trophies achievements creates. We're human beings, right? We're not made to be. We're not wired biologically to be lone wolves or we're pack animals. We're herd animals. We feel best and have the best overwhelming when we have acceptance, approval and attention from those around us. And vice versa, the people around us need that from us in order to feel good and safe in our relationships. This is why loneliness is so dangerous as as the causation, because when we have this strong network of close friends that we can call, that we can ask for support, we have a certain safety net we can lean back on. Yes, life might be difficult right now, but I know my friends have my back. If it becomes worse, if it stays like that, they will rush to my help. Now, take away that safety net and you're suddenly coming home after work, being fully stressed out about the meeting that's happening tomorrow and you have no one to lean on. And that's what's causing the dissonance, the premature mortality and all of that stuff. And sometimes it takes a major life event for you to recognize this. And I know we see this in our clients, a divorce. And you recognize that you didn't maintain those social ties and actually loneliness strikes. Maybe it's a change in your career and you started a completely new company where you don't know anyone and now you don't have those co-worker relationships that were so supportive in that environment. Or maybe your career takes you to a new town and you're starting all over again. And another big, ah-ha, life changing event is when your friends marry and start families and in those moments, they choose their family and their spouse over the relationship that you are comfortable in building. You can feel isolated and lonely that you have lost that connection, that deep tie to that friend, because they've gotten busy with important things in their life. And those life events can be triggering and recognizing that I have isolated myself. Subconsciously, I've made choices to invest in my career, to invest in external validation, achieving great things to the detriment of the social ties and maintaining the connections in my life that actually create the vivacious vitality and fulfilling life that I'm looking for. And then when that life event strikes and things shake up for you, you recognize, I got to make a change here. I got to shift some things in order to actually get that connection back into my life. So this brings up the hurdle that everyone faces once they realize that they have to make some changes in their life to fix the issue. Right. Once you've identified I've been isolated. I have some feelings of loneliness. I'm not surrounded with meaningful relationships. And that is starting to take its toll on you. This is where you start to look for answers. And we call this the elephant in the room because you're now going to have to to do some new things and in doing some new things. You'll be walking into the unknown, which has its own complications. Right. And so the first thing is excuses and rationalizations of why you don't need to do these things or why these things are out of your reach. Well, there is a psychological concept in psychology or more specifically in acceptance and commitment therapy, which we use in our programs extensively. And this is called self as a story. So this means that I, as Michael Harold sitting here, I have a certain story about who I am. Some of those things are just set in stone, right? I was born in Germany. That's that's part of who Michael is. Michael is also a confidence coach. Michael is someone who learns likes to learn new languages. There are a lot of aspects to me. If I were to put everything down on paper, we'd find hundreds of points that I could say, like, this is myself. This is my self story. This is what I tell myself about who I am. Now, the problem becomes like the problem starts like you said earlier, Johnny, when I'm holding on to this story and I'm not able to let go. When I see the story of who I am as something that is very rigid, it's unchangeable. I don't want to change it. Why don't I want to change it? Because just like AJ said earlier, this is my comfort zone. This is who I am. This is who I have been in the last couple of years. And it kind of worked. It kept me safe. Like, this is my safe place. If you ask me who I am, if you ask me how I behave in certain situations, what my habits are, how I behave when I'm out, when I'm by myself, when I'm with friends, here are my 100 points. This is what I'm doing. This is my story. This is the manual of how Michael works. Now, this is also my glass ceiling because I can't grow beyond those points. There's no way for me to get better than that stuff that I've just written down. So for example, maybe it is that I'm holding on to my career, my business as that one thing that really defines me as a person. And more importantly, as a good person because I'm good at what I'm doing. I bring great products to people. I help make their lives better. This is who I am. Like I'm leading a team. If this is all I have in my definition is that I'm good at it. What happens the moment I need to ask for help? I come home and I'm struggling. Because here's one thing I can't do. I can't call my friends and ask them for help and say, Hey, I need to talk because I'm really struggling with this meeting. I'm really struggling with some self doubt, really struggling with the inner critic. Why can't I do it? Because my behavior can't violate the story that I'm telling myself about who I am. So what's better than that self story is the flip side of the coin. It's called self as context. So this is more this is becoming flexible in how you see yourself. This is seeing yourself in the context that you are in right now. So yes, it might be great to have the self story of, you know what? I'm really good at what I'm doing. I'm really helping people when you're pitching to investors, when you're talking with a future client. This is a really good story to hold on to. But the moment you're struggling, maybe you want to leave that story a little bit more flexible and say, Hey, and sometimes I'm struggling. And sometimes I'm the one who opens up to friends, becomes vulnerable. Ask for help. Ask for support. So the question that we need to ask ourselves all the time is, is the story that I'm telling myself helping me right now? Or is it holding me back because it only allows me to bring out a certain set of behaviors? And let's be honest, none of them help me right now. What would be more flexible here? And then we can start the change. And recognizing that that identity that you've built upon self-reliance and being independent to the point of even maybe calling yourself a lone wolf, that actually works against you when you want to connect in a deep way with people in your life, when you want to move acquaintances, co-workers, neighbors into real friendship. There needs to be vulnerability expressed, but your identity will fight with your ability to be vulnerable in those moments that you accept and share with others that maybe you aren't as self-reliant as your identity has projected, and maybe your story that you've told yourself in achieving all of these great things on your own has given you in your life. Yeah, we can look at it as the old story being one dimensional and that one dimensional story that you tell yourself has allowed you to be successful in your career. But now as we're looking to change things up so we can get out there and join a community, build a community, connect with others, that old story doesn't serve us very well. So we want to open up a new dimension. So now it becomes a multiple, a multi-dimensional you, which also serves in making you more charismatic and more interesting to other people and new connections. And one of the things that we've we've recognized with this is because everyone is feeling this pressure around isolation and loneliness. We often work to maintain relationships that might not be the best fit for our core values or the identity shift that we're looking to make in our life. So the thought and the fear of being absolutely alone and absolutely isolated will create a need to hold on to relationships that don't serve you in the moment. So if our friends are married and they're focused on family, they're not ready to go off on a super adventure. I leave that all up, right? Their adventure is is dealing with changing diapers and everything that comes with a healthy, happy family. That's where they are. And so if you are staring at the ceiling and seeing life as getting redundant and absurd as AJ was talking about, what you're looking for is motivational, inspirational and aspirational people that will influence you to reach for more in your life. And if you're not finding that in those old friendships, those friendships aren't serving you to the degree that high value friendships can. Now, before we talk about how to combat loneliness effectively and long term, we need to level with you. We've been there. We've moved to new towns. We've left a career path that our family and friends thought was successful. We've shifted our identities, the three of us, multiple times in our life to fit our core values and create a new North Star direction in our life. It's not to say that we cut every single last person out of our life, but we recognize that in order to achieve what we want in life, we need to surround ourselves with people and community that want us to achieve that in our life. First, recognize, as we said earlier, that none of this is your fault. We've been conditioned to seek the external, to seek independence and self-reliance, and it's been rewarded through school and work for so much of our life. It's become habitual and unconscious in our behavior patterns. And unfortunately, those behavior patterns have worked to push us away from the connection and the relationships that benefit our physical, emotional and mental well-being so that you can go out and meet new people, have charisma and become memorable in these new interactions and the skills to deepen those relationships through understanding the power of vulnerability. But it starts with an identity shift, right, Michael? Yeah, because right now you've been doing the things that you've always done over the last couple of years, at least. These are the values, the goals, the behaviors, the habits, the mindsets that got you to where you are right now. And we need to start getting flexible around them. We need to start replacing them. We need to start becoming honest with ourselves. And what do I really want to stand for with all the success and the, yes, the good and the bad that came with it? How do I actually really authentically want to show up in the world? So we're looking at what's your mission, what's your mission life? What do you want to go out there and do? What's your vision for yourself, for how you're changing the world, how you're changing lives of others? And how are you going to bring your core values into this? If I were to ask you, the listener right now, what are your core values? So these need to be completely reinvented, redone. Let's look at the entire picture of who you are as a person, who you want to become. So here's why I'm emphasizing values so much, because don't get me wrong. Goals are really good. That's something that's important to have clarity and a plan around as well. The thing is that as we've talked about in this episode so far, it's kind of your goals that got you into trouble in the first place, right? Because, again, goals are great. Please have goals, but you have a couple of problems that come with goals as well. And we go into those problems in our training. And one of the problems with goals is that, A, once you achieve them, you're not necessarily happy. You celebrate for a day. And then what you do, you get your journal out and you set the next goal. At 10 years later, you realize you've been spending your life in a hamster wheel, chasing goals and celebrating, you know, an afternoon every once in a while when you've checked one of the other. The other problem with goals is that very often they're given to you subconsciously by other people. The it's the society that tells you that you should become a CEO. You should become a multi-millionaire. You should have like three Ferraris or whatever. Like this is this is the this is what a good person does. This is what a successful person does. And then we listen to that and was like, oh, yeah, you know, I want to be a good person. I'm going to pick that goal that someone else mentioned. And I'm going to make that my goal and spend the next 20 years on achieving that goal, becoming really clear on your values, does two things. It makes sure that regardless of your goals, you're living your best life every moment of every day. Because these are the things you want to stand for. They are not given to you by other people. You decide on your goals. You decide on what kind of person you want to be and what you want to stand for. And then your behaviors become in line with those new values that you decided to pick for yourself. So we're breaking apart that self story that I talked about earlier. This is who I am and this is what I've always done. No, let's look at this behavior now through the lens of your new values. What would that actually look like? And if you're watching this or listening to this, you've probably set very audacious goals for yourself. And some of those goals you've reached and celebrated and some of those goals have just been outside of what you're capable of. And then you've beaten on yourself. Self doubt is crept in and you've judged yourself harshly for not reaching those goals. Core values create the opportunity to show up and win each and every single day in the behaviors and actions you take in your life and the alignment they create a North Star, a compass on this map. And you may have reached this video or this podcast having a blinking red light in the back of your mind, feeling on the edge of burnout that you've thrown so much at it, so much at achieving, so much at your work, so much at getting after it and being self-reliant and being free on your own, that you've spent so much energy that you're teetering. And if you don't reach one more goal, you're on the verge of breaking down, of beating yourself up and that self doubt and fear becoming the driving force in your life. And that burnout, as we know, it does not get solved on your own. If you don't have happy, healthy relationships, high value people in your life surrounding you to recognize that blinking, right, to guide you back on a path to health and prosperity and allow you to feel more comfortable and confident, even in those moments of failure and self doubt, then you are setting yourself up for the ultimate failure. So what we're doing here is we're flipping the concept of confidence around. We're taking confidence away from those around you that give you your confidence, your feeling of self-esteem, your feeling of worth, because you have achieved certain things that make you look good in their eyes and would turn the confidence around and would make it come from the inside. You are confident not because of all the achievements that other people told you you should have, but you are confident because you know who you are, what you want to do in your life, what you want to stand for. And then comes the comfort zone piece because you need to leave your comfort zone in order to achieve those things. Great life isn't achieved by sitting on your couch and eating ice cream, unless that's your idea of a great life. But I doubt that you probably don't listen to this podcast if that is the case. So you need to leave your comfort zone, which is a little bit scary. And that's where the confidence comes in. Like I'm doing this not because it's easy, but because this is a life that I want to have. And if we get you to that point, once we've gotten you to that point where you realize, OK, time to leave my comfort zone. Here is why. Here is what I'm going to do. Let's go. We've got the four steps that you actually need. Like that's it. That's the clarity that you need. And what we've done here is we've cut those ties to all those people around you, telling you how to live your life until one day you're on your deathbed and you realize, maybe I should have lived my own life instead of those of others. We get it. Without those clear core values and without that North Star direction on your compass, the core values create, you can start to feel lost. You can start to feel the redundancy, the absurdity of day in and day out doing the same thing, hanging out with the same people, going through the motions. But with taking the time and effort to go through the core values exercise, you create clarity and clarity is your first step to confidence. Because so many of our clients who are over achievers associate their confidence with the goals that they've achieved in their life. The recognition, the status, the prestige that's come with achieving those goals has created confidence. But that confidence is a mirage because if you don't achieve that next goal, that confidence can diminish and can fall down very quickly. But with core values as your guide, creating the clarity, you start to build confidence from the inside out, meaning your confidence is no longer beholden to your last achievement or your last success. But your confidence is built on the habits and the values that you've aligned with in your life that create the opportunities for adventure, excitement and achievement that we're seeking. Once we've created this new inside out confidence, we can step into the unknown. We can step into the discomfort. We can step outside of our peer group and start to create new community, start to seek new relationships, start to get vulnerable with people that matter in our life. That's the importance of gaining clarity to create that confidence. Now, the other side of this, we have to be honest, oftentimes, if we've chosen or conditioned ourselves for self-reliance and isolation and achievement, we've probably let some of our communication skills diminish along the way. Right, Johnny? So earlier I was mentioning about being a multidimensional person, and part of that is going to be skill-building. And as AJ said, if you have found yourself in isolation due to focusing on your career and working from home, that is going to lead to all of the micro interactions that you're missing out on from going out, being at your third place, going into the office, those micro interactions allow us to be seen and heard, which allows us to feel really good. So getting back out there, some of those old communication skills that perhaps you excelled in to get that job in the first place had atrophied because you haven't been using them. So helping our clients step by step break down their expectations and learning these skills so that they're taking actionable steps every day to not only getting back out there, but talking with people, creating opportunities for interactions that could lead into those meaningful relationships and those expectations. Let's face it, if you are focused on a career and you have high expectations, I'm going to guess a lot of you listening to this have high expectations for yourself, whether they are internal or external. In order to learn these skills at an accelerated pace, you need to be taking small steps every day, building new habits that will compound over time. Basically, it's the karate kid breakdown of these skills so that easily and in a fun way, you are building them and learning them until they become habitual and become part of your dialogue, your communication. And these skills include creating magnetic first impressions in any environment, crafting small talk that actually engages with anyone, whether it's the CEO entering the elevator or it's the peer sitting next to you at dinner, or it's going out and choosing new groups to engage with to understand the secrets behind small talk, rapid report building and recognizing emotional bids. It creates the space for you to get comfortable, to be vulnerable, to foster those deeper real high value connections in your life and unlock social capital. Now, one thing is clear from going into the science, the stats, the data and the negative impacts on everyone's life that the loneliness epidemic is causing is with this feeling of isolation, the easiest thing we can do is check in on the people that matter in our life. A year has gone by, it's the holidays, everyone is open to reconnecting. Check in on that friend, that relative, that high school sweetheart, that person that you may have fallen out with in your life and reaching out to see how they're doing, having a great phone conversation or even better, meeting in person back in your hometown as you visit your family for the holidays is how we can do our part to fight the loneliness epidemic. And if you're lucky enough to not be in that high percentage of people feeling it, then let's spread the holiday cheer and reconnect with the people that we care about.