 Now, Johnny, in the previous episode, we talked about what happiness is and, of course, what it's not, dispelling a few myths for some of our listeners. Then we talked about one of the key components of a happy life, living with a purpose. And I know that's pretty scary for some of us. We hopefully, in the last episode, aligned you on a way to start finding that purpose. In this episode, we're going to start talking about the power of relationships in all of that. And how, when we are connected as humans, well, we are well on our way to living a happy life. If you did not get a chance to check out last week's episode, Defining Happiness, please do, we're going to delve even deeper into this concept. Now, in this episode, we're going to be explaining why it's so challenging for us to figure out what actually makes us happy. And there are a lot of cognitive biases in this. As well as, we're going to introduce another important component of happy life and how science could not be more conclusive about this. You know how much we love science over here at The Everton Charm. So let's roll. We want to kick things off first, talking about why is it so difficult for us as humans to actually determine what makes us happy? Well, we're fighting millions of, billions of years of evolution. And all those components need their own thing in order for those components to survive. And so those messages get completely mixed up. And by the time they reach us consciously, they're so garbled that we can't make heads or tails out of what we need. And the first thing that actually gets through is our crock brain. It's going to be we need to eat something. We need to sleep and we need to duplicate, replicate. And here's what ends up happening. We set our sights on that one thing, that new shiny object. It could be a new apartment, a new job, a new car. And we think if we just get that one thing, oh, we're going to unlock this new level of happiness. And when it comes to that newest phone, that promotion, or even getting into a relationship, well, the novelty wears off, right? That iPhone X isn't so sexy after month two or three and you're used to the face ID and the bigger screen. Well, the other thing that goes along with that is everything around you, right? Advertising is telling you what you need. And so any time it's not what you already have, right? Yeah. And so those, you know, the there's the crock brain needs and you're fighting that, right? And you're like, you know, OK, I need to be a gentleman. I can't say that or I can't do this. And I need to I need to be this and work on myself. And but then you're being bombarded with grab the new iPhone, as you were saying, or or this new car. Drink this beer and you're going to feel good. And you're going to have all these friends and and we're inundated with it. We can't get a we can't get away from it. And it's funny. I can't remember it might have been in the book. Sapiens, it's a positive read so much anymore. But there was a study done of just how a child's brain works when it's inundated with advertising and how it it changes from the there was an experiment being done where I believe it was a child was able to have a toy. And he and he was told that if the other child that had the toy was was was bad, but he had the toy or or he leave the child alone. And the advertisement was about that toy. And because the advertising hit that child, he negated that the child was bad in order to have that toy. So it just shows how easily we are influenced by advertising. And we talk about all the time how easily human beings are influenced unconscious subconsciously if we're not aware of it. And by bringing yourself aware of it, then you're actually able to make choices and what you'll be influenced by. But if you do not do that, you're influenced by everything that's hitting you all the time. And you know, I've done so much work just on Facebook alone in trying to get advertising and things out of my way that is going to take me off of my game or take me in a direction that I don't want to go. Like it's and it's ridiculous. And just the maintenance of that becomes a job. And if you think about advertising in general, the whole purpose is, oh, you have this new problem. If we solve this one problem, you're going to be happy. That's the message you're getting from everything and everyone. So, of course, we think that happiness is just around the corner. It's just this next thing. It's this next job. It's this next move. It's this next relationship and an actuality. All of a sudden, that becomes the new normal. So happiness is fleeting when we're constantly on this hamster wheel chasing that next thing. I think that comes into you mentioned hamster. Well, some people call it the rat race, right? Climbing the corporate ladder. And if you are around a bunch of people who are doing that same thing, that's the normal. It's difficult to find your way out of that and see the what you're what you're reaching for isn't going to do that. When everyone around you is going is talking about the new car, the new promotion, the new apartment, the new the new iPhone. And it's it's funny. This time of year, obviously, we just came out of the new year. Everyone's had a moment to think about 2018, what they got out of it. Did they meet their goals? Did they reach their hopes and dreams? And one of the interesting things that always comes up for me when I think about the years previously is you set these goals for yourself. You're all excited if I could just get this one thing, if we could just get to this one level of revenue, if we could just get this one promotion. And what happens is all of a sudden, you know, you're in it, the emotions of the moment, you're frustrated, you're not getting what you want. We don't take enough time to look back and go, well, geez, I checked all these other boxes this year. All these other boxes that at the start of the year, January one, if I had said, I'm going to hit all these goals, I'm going to be happy at the end of 2018. A lot of us don't realize that we checked the box and move on to the next one. And we knew this next thing, you know, but if I just get this one thing. So taking some time and practicing gratitude, being thankful for what you have and looking back on all of your accomplishments, all of those goals that you did reach instead of being frustrated with yourself because of the other goals that you've set for yourself. And I think happiness, when we think about it as, oh, just this next thing, it's just around the corner. Well, it's a very, very frustrating experience for us. And no one wants their relationship to be the new normal. And now we're not happy. So we don't want to think about these things. We don't want to confront these things. You know, there's another aspect about it is once you get caught in the hamster well and you you start working on these things and you get to a certain to a certain level, then it becomes all you know, right? You've built these habits that we just talked about last month where now this is this is what normal is. This is how you'll be moving. And now you're set in this thing that's very difficult to get you out because you've you've created your whole environment to support this idea. Right. And let's let's unpack that, right? Because this is the second point. Another reason that we don't feel happy when these big events happen in our lives is because most of your life isn't going to change. Even if you get a new job, you're still driving the same car, you're still living in the same apartment, you're still dating the same person. So even these massive changes, getting that new promotion, moving into that new apartment, so many other facets of our life don't really change. So it can't make that big of an impact. It can't swing you from unhappy to happy. And when we think about it, right? When we move out of that tiny apartment, we get that really nice place. We're like, wow, this is a massive change. Look at the view, look at how amazing it is. And then as we said in point one, all of a sudden it becomes the new normal. The new normal. And that view is not as nice as, well, your buddy's view. He's got a better view. He's got a taller apartment, right? So it's very easy when we're now in this comparative space where we just go on our phone, we go on our device, and we see, oh yeah, my life's great, but look at this other life that's even better than mine. It's, you know, I think, you know, when I was young, you know, I was one of the, at least in my block, I was probably the better athlete, the fastest kid. And so it was easy to think, oh, I'm the guy, I'm Superman. I rule this block. And then you roll to the next block, right? And there's like three, four kids who are dusting you. You're not, all of a sudden now, you're not the first one picked at football. You're now maybe in the middle and you're like, hey, what happened here? And maybe a little bit later, you've branched out, and now you're in a couple blocks away. And now all of a sudden you're the last one being picked. And you find, if it happens early in life, where you can see that there's always going to be somebody bigger, better, faster, smarter, then you can start applying that to other areas to hopefully not get sucked into that. Hamster will of the next thing. The next thing will get me there. The next thing will get me there. Because it's the same game theory. Right, you're still the same person. If you change your apartment, you're the same person. You have the same friends. You change your job, you're still the same person. So when we try to articulate happiness as this one thing that's around the corner, if we just get this one accomplishment, we find that to leave us wanting. It's very fleeting. It's not lasting happiness. It's not happiness in your life. Now, there are many of these cognitive biases. And I know, Johnny, we talk about them in our boot camp. We dig into them on Friday. And there are hundreds of cognitive biases out there. We just pointed out too, when it comes to happiness, there's a third that we do want to talk about, which is our mind will often play some tricks on us, substituting one question for another. We might be asking ourselves, how happy does this make me? But the question we're subconsciously answering is how happy does it make me if I think about it? So it's not actually how happy I am. We're actually, our mind is playing a trick on us right here. And I know you love the concept of cognitive biases. Yeah, well, it goes along with cognitive distortions, which are flawed thought patterns that allow you to maintain a belief that would be contradicted by other evidence. So here, a cognitive bias is a belief that is set up, a leaning in one direction, where you feel this is, you've subscribed to it. This is correct. And because this is what you're subscribing to, other evidence cannot get through. Right, even when confronted with overwhelming evidence. So if you're in this hamster world, you have to convince yourself that the iPhone did make you happy, and it was well worth it. All the overtime you worked, all the saving, flipping your old iPhone 8, it was all worth it to get the 10. Absolutely, now, what happens, right? If you allow evidence to come in and say, well, actually, well, I'm not happy. That didn't do anything for me. Yeah, that two megapixels on the camera, the slightly more RAM, wow, it's the same OS. That's it, that's it. That's what I worked all this time. And so once that happens, you open yourself up to being wrong about other things. And if you're not careful, then a lot of the reality that you've constructed for yourself begins to start looking fractured and starts to fall apart. And some of your safety and your comfort starts to be challenged. And that's the main point. When you don't feel safe, then there's a whole lot of other problems that come first. And we were just talking about this and the hierarchy of needs. Your safety is first and foremost before you can do anything else. Right, before any of this higher level thinking we're talking about pursuit of happiness, I gotta be safe. Pursuit of happiness, yeah, let's be alive. I gotta be alive. That's the last thing in my head. And so that information gets in. So this is why, and nobody wants to feel unsafe. I mean, look at everything that we do. It is constructed to keep our world view together. This is the same for somebody. We just did a whole episode on habits and we're gonna go tell somebody to, hey, it's time to start getting up early and hitting the gym. Oh no, I actually had a neighbor tell me that going to the gym works the opposite way for him. Yeah. And I was just talking about challenging some biases. Now, when we think about it, right, how happy does thinking about my new iPhone or my new car make me? Well, it makes me very happy, but that's because I'm thinking about it right now. I'm thinking about my phone, of course, is making me happy. But how happy does that new car, new phone actually make you? Well, a lot, but I use my phone a few hours a day. I take my car on short trips to the golf course. Like I'm not living in my car. I'm not constantly on my phone so it can't make my entire life happy. In moments, there's some happiness tied to it and then it normalizes. There's some moments there that it normalizes. And here's another one for you. Have you ever just worked so hard for something that you wanted so bad, then when you got it? There was, because there was no immediate gratification, it was just, no, that's taken care of, on to the next. Like it was like, it was this thing that you needed. And once again, I think it plays into that safety idea where now that I've achieved this and I got that, I'm good there, now it's done. Right, now I'm gonna shift my focus on the next hamster wheel. And now I'm spinning again. Now what we just talked about and described here is a term called miswanting, or Daniel Kamen calls it errors of effective forecasting. And what happens is we are very terrible judges of what truly makes us happy. That happiness that we're talking about tends to be fleeting, it tends to be misguided and it's riddled with a bunch of cognitive biases. Now, when we think about all of this, let's add a little insult to injury. That modern advertising machine, well, it's spinning a whole heap of problems with solutions that are right around the corner. And we know that as humans, we are very unable to clearly articulate what makes us happy. And by the way, now we're surrounded inundated by Facebook advertising, advertising everywhere that's telling us, oh, by the way, there's this one thing that will make you happy and we're gonna solve it for you. Let's be honest about this. Let's just say that you really enjoy this podcast because you enjoy the science element of it and the conversations that AJ and I have here. These conversations that we're having of human behavior are nothing new to what the advertising agencies have paid for and they have worked out ways to drill and find any crack in your self-esteem in any place and manage to throw in the tire iron and start leveraging. And all of a sudden, now all of our brain power is being used against us, right? With this miswanting, identifying things that don't truly make us happy, well, it can easily set us off course. I think for me, why I was so excited to dive into this and we've all been there where the hamster wheel's beating you down. I go back to Michigan and I talk to my friends in Michigan and some of them have beautiful houses already. Some of them, when they think about me living in LA and the cost of living and just how crazy it is out here to buy your first home, it's easy for me to beat myself up but if I take a step back and think about it like, yeah, my friends who have purchased homes in a different location, well, they're in a different market entirely. It's not even the same. So it's easy for all of us to get caught up on this hamster wheel. I know I've fallen victim to it. Guilty as well. And one of the main things that we try to do with this show is raise our own awareness around these things so that we're not going on these misadventures chasing happiness that doesn't ultimately make us happy. Well, at the end of the day, that's self development and that's our cause. We want not only for you all listening to this but for ourselves to be able to bring these things to a conscious level so we can be conscious of them, work through them and rise above even those things so that we're able to maintain semblance of who we are and what we want and have enjoyable, happy lives. Yeah, and the tools necessary for that because you're always gonna be confronted with advertising. You're always gonna be confronted with what your neighbor has or the next big problem that can be solved with this fancy new gadget but ultimately the tools that we talk about on the show are what we're gonna be using over the course of our lives to develop out a happy, healthy life for all of us. Now, when it comes to scientific research around happiness, there is one study to outlast them all and this is the Harvard study of adult development and in 1938, researchers at Harvard recruited over 700 men for a study that would become the longest of studies ever conducted and in this study, it wasn't at all designed to find the main factor of a happy life but that's what its biggest finding was and that's what made this study so famous. The study found one very clear predictor of happiness and to be honest, it's one of the main reasons that we've been doing what we do here at the Art of Charm for as long as we have. It's not money, it's not education, it's not health and it's not looks. The quality of the connections in your life has the biggest impact on your happiness. Yes. Let me repeat that because I know that it was difficult to digest and you think about, okay, this is a study at Harvard, right? Talk about having wealth, talk about having education, talk about having health. They have it all. They are in the tops. When we think about it, it's very easy for us to go, oh yeah, money, education, health, yeah, those are all things that'll make me happy. Comes down to the quality of the relationships in your life and it's not quantity. Quality of relationships are what matter here. So a lot of us, I know, again, going to social media, we get dejected, we look at the number of followers we have, we look at the number of Facebook friends we have. We compare, right? We're quantifying and we're comparing. This study says that is not at all important. The ones who are most satisfied in their lives with their relationships at 50 were happiest at 80. So it's about building quality relationships that leads to long lasting happiness and fulfillment in your life. You know, and I, there was a lot of studies about depression and anxiety and a lot of countries that it doesn't have the wealth of, of course, of the United States. A lot of third world countries. And obviously their quality of life is not as luxurious as what we deal with on a day-to-day basis. It's probably foreign to alien to, to a day in their shoes. However, the rates of anxiety and depression or they don't even know what depression is. Well, if you think about it, right? In those scenarios, they rely so heavily on community and connection and the support of others to survive. Their survival is dependent on it. Whether it's a tribal setting, a small city, in those situations where you don't have all of the luxuries of a first world country, well, your ability to survive is gonna be dependent on the quality of those relationships. Right now, we can substitute a lot of that, right? If I'm sick, I can go on Instacart. I can go and dial up some food from Postmates. I don't need these quality relationships to survive. It's become fractured because technology will deliver a lot of these things to me. But when you look at third world countries, anxiety, depression, they disappear because they're connected with one another. They foster and survive based on community. And here's the thing, in this study, not only were their participants more happy, at the end, they were also healthier. They had a better memory and they lived longer. Loneliness kills. You know, there's, and how many studies have we brought up about when you're lonely, or I don't have anyone around you, or when your spouse dies, and all of a sudden, the rest of your life starts ticking away rapidly because there is no, your body basically knows that there's no more use for you in community. And I know, you know, we've been doing this 12 years now. When we started, and obviously we go to events, we go to dinner parties, we get introduced to people, and always ask, what do you guys do? What is the art of charm? And it's funny how in the beginning, obviously we were focused on dating and relating with the opposite sex so that we could have a very strong relationship. As it's grown, the understanding of building out these social skills, building out connections, friendships, multiple relationships in your life leads to not only our happiness, but ultimately we're seeing the science show we're losing these connections. There's a study on social isolation in America. Miller McPherson and his team found that between 1985 and 2004, the number of people saying there was no one with whom they can discuss important matters nearly tripled. The science is showing that we are becoming more lonely, more disconnected. We've railed on a number of reasons why this is happening, but one of the core values of the art of charm is that these skills are learnable and we deserve to be connected. That is how we find happiness, that is how we find health. So when we're feeling lonely and listen, even if you're sitting there in your car on the subway, wherever you're listening to the show, feeling a little lonely right now, you're not alone. Science is showing that we are becoming more disconnected. We all feel this loneliness. Now we've all seen the studies, heard the studies, the clickbait. Being lonely is just as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, being lonely is unhealthy as being obese, being lonely is just as detrimental to your health as being an alcoholic. What they're all saying is, hey, when you're disconnected, it has serious impacts on your mental and physical well-being. And I think we're paying for now. And one of the things that I wanted to bring up when we're talking about this was, well, I wanted to go back to the development of children in today's world. I mean, it's easily observable. You go to any suburb Saturday afternoon and you don't see any kids outside playing. You don't see pick-up hockey games, pick-up baseball. In fact, like, you know, when I went to, as a kid, my dad would take me to Little League, right? But not only did I have to play Little League once a week and he took me to Boy Scouts once a week. We did those things at my house in the neighborhood, regardless we played pick-up. So pick-up baseball or do camping trips or what there was, we were, if my dad was summer vacation and he came home and I was anywhere in that house, it was out the door you go. What are you doing here? It's not like he was following me around. It was out the door so he could take a nap and I... Even playing video games. It's all the other kids in the neighborhood. We were all shunned and pushed outside. You ended up socializing. You had to. Even if you weren't doing athletics, you were socially hanging out playing video games together, playing Euker together. Whatever the case may be, there was a social component and they've shown that the workload of students from your generation and my generation to now, they come home and they have hours and hours and hours and hours of homework because they want to get into Harvard. They want to be a part of this study. And what's so fascinating is all this work piling up leads to no opportunity for socialization, no opportunity to build these skills to foster these relationships that lead to our health and happiness. Now, we want to make a distinction here. There is a difference between loneliness and being alone. Having some alone time, well, that could be quite enjoyable. Who doesn't like unplugging and being able to read a book and focus and write, get your thoughts down. The older I get, the more I want them. Right, there's tons of benefit to being alone, but loneliness is different. It means being alone when you actually want to have someone around. When you want that physical, emotional connection and someone isn't there, that's a very painful state to be in, especially over a prolonged period of time. Well, and this is the trouble we get into the holidays because we go back to advertising and the advertising is all about focus on family and community because they want you to buy gifts for everybody and so you're in it. How many of our listeners hit us up over the holidays just dreading going home and having to explain to their parents. They're not in a relationship. They're not where they want to be career-wise, right? That's another check-in that happens around the holidays that everyone is anxious about. Yeah, are you moving forward with your life? Do you have anybody who you're involved with? And another thing, I can understand when you were a child, maybe let's say early teens and maybe you feel like an outcast, maybe it is difficult for you to make friends. Maybe you were born in an only child. Maybe your parents put you on Adderall early. Like Adderall, it forces you to focus in on something. When you're a young kid, you should be all over the place so you're gathering everything like a young puppy where he's just all over the place. He's taking in his environment. He's meeting all these sniffing all these people. As a child, you should be doing that same thing, well, not sniffing all these people. Now they're saying sniffing is a new one. But you should be all over the place. You should be meeting all these people and playing with all these kids and doing all these great things. And the ADHD thing is like, oh, he can't focus. He's all over the place. Oh, well, we gotta fix that. Straighten it out. And so that's bringing all this focus in and that development of all those social skills becomes, well, now at the older you get, the more difficult it is. But of course, as we know, you can learn those things. It does take time and it does take practice and that's what we do here. And we've all felt lonely, right? I think either the guests on the show, myself included, I know, Johnny, you, we've all felt outcast. We've all felt lonely at times in our life. I think that's part of the human condition. It's normal, right? However, there's a lot of us that, no matter those times that we may feel that way, we know that there's family and there's people who do love us and we long to be with those people. And I think, however, I think for some children now, because of technology, they're not forced outside and maybe it has been difficult for them to meet people, they feel like an outcast when they go to school because those skills weren't built, they are shunned or pushed aside and it may seem like this is going to last forever. However, you said it in the study, it's not about quantity, it's about quality. And if you can meet that one good friend, well, everything begins to start to change. And the other thing that I want to state in here is, it may, if you're in high school and it seems that way and you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, it's there because when you're that young, it's difficult to have any contacts with a complexity of time. We can't forecast the future as we talked about the start of the show. It's very difficult for us to see clearly in the future and make judgments. And this is planning for retirement, you look across the board saving for something, we're very poor judges of the future and planning for it. So a lot of times when you're feeling outcast and whether it's a period in high school or a period in college or even after college, maybe you move to a new city and you're struggling to make friends, you feel outcasted. It's a different culture. It's a little bit different than you're used to, right? I know when we first moved here to LA, dude, we were fish out of water. Absolutely. And now 10 years in, I go back to Michigan, I feel like a fish out of water. So it's interesting, every single one of us will feel outcast at some point in our life. We are focused on building the skills so that you can make that one quality relationship happen. And when you have these quality relationships, happiness springs from it. Yeah, they blossom and your whole world changes. And so what I wanted to end with on that rant was certainly that if you do feel that way, no matter where you are, it's not the end of the world. And it's easy, it takes some time and it takes some effort, but you can make these changes and you can bring people in your life and you can connect. So why are relationships so beneficial to our health? And this was one of the things in researching the show we really wanted to nail down because this is where the science is extremely strong. And the first thing overall, which makes a lot of sense is it really lessens our stress. It completely reduces stress levels when you know that if the worst thing happens, well, you got a couch to crash on. You got a buddy who will come over and bring you some food if you're sick, if you're ill. When we have quality relationships, the stress in our lives are reduced. It goes back to your hierarchy of needs, feeling safe. You feel safe, you feel listened to, you feel heard, right? How often when you're freaking out about something, can you have a conversation with your best friend and they calm you down, they lower that stress, they hear you, they listen to you, they validate you as we talked about in an earlier episode. And they validate and show that empathy, they're there with you. So when you have quality relationships, you have a support network in good times and in bad times, you can celebrate together and when things fall off the tracks, they can help pick you back up. So obviously that's gonna lower your stress, that's gonna make you healthier and happier. Now, it is one of those things that we can even take a look back at our evolutionary perspective of this, right? When you are in a situation of scarcity, well, the tribe really matters, right? You're not gonna survive hunting and gathering alone. You gotta team up with people to catch that deer. You gotta team up with people to grow those grains. So being a part of a team, being connected, led to your survival. So of course, in the worst scenarios, you were protected, you were not left for dead. So of course, when we are connected, we're gonna start to feel healthier, we're gonna start to feel happiness. And that happiness that we're talking about is not the fleeting, I got the new iPhone X, it's the I feel part of something. Another reason that we feel more connected to a group is we feel responsible for people in that group, right? Much like my buddy will send me some chicken pho if I'm not feeling good. Well, if he loses his job, he's gonna be sleeping on my couch. So when we are part of a community, part of a group, we not only feel a level of self-responsibility, we wanna be healthy, happy and show up for people, but we also feel some purpose. We feel connected to everyone else's well-being. And there's a double-edged sword to that, though, as well, because if you have an in-group, then there's an out-group. Yeah, always, and that's just how humans orient themselves, unfortunately. And once again, by being aware of that, you can rise above that. And though it's those people over there, you can realize that those people over there still have the same struggles, the same wants, the same needs, and they're only going about what they need to do to survive. And perhaps if you go outside of your in-group and connect with that group. Have a conversation with them, listen to them, be present. Okay, now all of a sudden we got more to the party. Now, as we talked about a little bit earlier, there's strong science here that we are feeling more isolated than ever. And having no best friends is actually something we're more commonly hearing. I know in the boot camp when we ask our participants how connected they feel, there are a number of them who don't have that best friend to share something with, who don't feel that connected to someone and certainly don't feel supported in those situations of need. And you're not alone. As I said earlier, in 1985, the most common answer was that people had three confidence. By 2004, the most common answer was zero confidence. And here we are, 2019, 15 years later. You know, there's an old saying, especially in the music world, that if you wanted people to get along and to chill out, you can give any society some rock and roll and some booze and they'll have a merry time and they'll bring it all together. You want to wreck that society? Give them Facebook, I'll come support. Give them tech, I'll give them social media. So your solution is booze and rock and roll. Yeah, that'll work. Okay, so let's turn off Facebook. And go to a show and get hammered, yeah. Johnny's fitting in in that society. I feel like I'm in the out group in that scenario. I might be feeling a little lonely. So how do we create these quality connections? I know it's the impetus for the show. It's why we have the boot camps here in Los Angeles. It's why we have the online coaching courses and core confidence. When we feel disconnected, when we feel lonely, it can be difficult to find the resources to actually start connecting with people. And as you said, Johnny, we might start to view everyone as the out group, right? Screw these people. They just don't get me. You write off everyone. Well, that's the bias. That's an easy thing to say. Well, they don't get me. They don't understand me. That's an easy cop out. And it's easy to feel that way. Go to any social engagement that, where you're not the center of attention, where people don't know you're just invited. And I know that you love this scenario. And we designed it as such. So there's a bar slash club here in LA when we first moved that. It was a Wednesday night pretty lively. But the decor and the patrons of this venue, they are full blown Hollywood. They are not people that most of our clients would assess in a natural conversation as, oh, this is someone that I can connect to it. This is someone that is not going to judge me. This is someone that I hang out with back home. It was for that time and day. It was very scene-like. So it was very, a lot of young kids. And they were very tattooed, crazy hair. Yeah, just full blown Hollywood. How would fun. And the decor was set up to look a little bit dungeon-esque. Yeah. And it still, that place still looks done. Yeah, we don't go there any longer. But we used to take our boot camp participants here to practice these social skills, everything that we're talking about on the show. And without fail, every single week we'd show up. And everyone would be a little sketched. A little like, how am I going to do this? These people are not like me. I'm not from here. This is not where I would normally go hang out and socialize. So talk about fish out of water. And every Thursday, this is Wednesday night we go out. Every Thursday we sit down and go through how the previous night went. Give you your feedback, all that good stuff. And every single week we would hear the same refrain. I never thought that I could get in a conversation with that person. I didn't think that they would want to talk to me. I thought they were judging me. I thought they were in the out group. And without fail, you start to realize, you get in a conversation or two, wow, you misread the whole situation. You misread the whole interaction. And we're constantly assessing people by this. They fit in the in group. They fit in the out group. I can't possibly connect to them. I totally could connect with them. Well, here's a thought experiment for our audience. I mean, think about every one of your friends, your closest friends. How did you meet them? What did you think about them before you met them? That's an easy one to go to. And how many of your friends did you think, well, I thought that guy was an asshole till I talked to him. Yeah, till he was nice to me. Till he hooked me up and I realized, oh, he's a cool guy. But the other side of that is, let's say that you do, you're at this social engagement. There are people there you don't know. You'd like to know them. And then because they don't come your way, you write them off. You cast some sort of, they're jerks. They're stuck up their loof, whatever you say. And how would that have changed if you could have said hi? If you go through this thought experiment, you realize, well, every time that I have met somebody, there was that tension and anxiety up front. And now that's the person that I call if anything goes wrong. If I'm feeling any anxiety, that's the person I call. So we've come full circle. Yes. When it comes to building lasting quality relationships, and really the core of what we teach is this idea of value, giving people value. And we break down value into three things. Attention, appreciation, and acceptance. So attention, how can I give someone value if I want to build a quality relationship? Well, listen to them. Yes. Listen to what they're saying. Not what you're thinking about, what you're gonna have for dinner, or what you're gonna go home and cook. Actually listen to them. Be present. Listen to their struggles. Listen to their celebrations, their wins, what they're excited about, when their big life events are happening. All of those things, when we start to pay attention to the other person, we start deepening that relationship. Now let's talk about appreciation. Complimenting people, being positive around people, celebrating those wins, letting them know why you dig them, why you like having them in your life. When we show people appreciation, we start to strengthen those relationships. And that last part, acceptance. How do you welcome them into your group, into your tribe? Invite them places. Invite them over for dinner. Invite them to hang out. Invite them to go see that show. You know what you've just said in those three points, right? None of that is difficult. I didn't have to pull out my wallet. I didn't have to become someone I'm not. I didn't have to pretend I'm Johnny, right? Those three things are basic human needs. And when we fulfill them in the people around us, we start building and fostering relationships. But what made those three things difficult? Why is it difficult for all of us to do that? Because in order to do those three very simple things, you have to step outside your comfort zone. You have to be vulnerable. And there is a chance that you will get rejected in those three things. Uh-oh. You will get rejected. Yep. And because of that, we're weighing this. Looking at this, assessing this constantly and going, well, you know, I don't have time for that person or no, they're in the out group or they couldn't possibly be friends with me. Yeah, that's the easy thing to do. That way you don't have to put yourself out there. And we could play that game all we want. We could wrap ourselves in bubble wrap and never leave our house and hope that pray that nothing terrible ever happens and we never have to talk to anyone ever, right? Well, according to this Harvard study, that's not gonna work for us. We're not gonna live very long. You're not gonna be very happy. It's gonna lead to a lot of mental and physical health issues. Okay, so then what is the opposite of that? Well, then it is, what are you going to do to strengthen yourself so that if you do get rejected or things don't go the way that you want them to, that it's no big deal. It just becomes part of the game of socialization. Now, the science of connection was a theme for a month. So if you're just new to the show and you're trying to sort these things out, you understand and definitely agree with us that the quality of relationships is important to your happiness, well, we covered this exact thing. So October was our science of connection month. We talked about how do we form these connections with others and what are the best ways to make those connections strong? You can check those out, episode 723 to 726. We even interviewed some experts on listening and empathy, very powerful month. September, we did a deep dive into emotional bids, which are the genesis of that connection. Episode 719 to 722. And without fail, I'm excited because in February, we are gonna be tackling this exact subject. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. Deepening relationships. We all sitting here have some loose ties. We have some acquaintances. We have some coworkers. We have some potential relationships. How do we cultivate and strengthen those relationships so that we have the quality of relationships that lead to happiness? We're gonna be hitting that hard next month. The last thing we wanna do, we got a question here for you as listeners. We wanna hear what are you planning to do to strengthen and change the relationships in your life in 2019? Maybe there's a friendship that's gone cold and you wanna turn it around or maybe there's even a toxic relationship that you need to cut bait and move on from. Let us know, we're excited to hear from you. You can always send us your thoughts and questions by going to theartofcharm.com slash questions. You can find us on social media as well and DM us there, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. We are at The Art of Charm. We're gonna leave things with a study that a recent gas brought to our attention and she came through last month, Lisa Wimberger and this was a fascinating study for us to dive into. This study called Lending a Hand made us chuckle because it's dark but cute with a happy ending, right? So listen to this, James Cohn, a neuroscientist at the University of Virginia conducted experiments in 2006 in which he gave electric shocks to the ankles of women who reported to be in happy committed relationships. Wow, sign me up for this study, right? You're happy, all right, time to get shocked. What they did is they measured the intensity of the participant's anxiety before the shock started and they also measured the amount of pain the participants reported during the shocks. So knowing you're gonna get shocked, obviously that's gonna lead to some anxiety. Oh, this is coming and then the duration and the strength of that pain, well if you're getting shocked we all know that there's some pain associated with it. Then the researchers repeated the experiment but this time instead of being alone the women were with their partner, the person they're in a relationship with. Same level of electricity in the shock, they found that the same level of electricity produced a significantly lower neural response throughout the brain. So that's already interesting, right? You're holding your partner's hand, you're feeling connected, you feel less pain. Here's the kicker, if you are in a troubled relationship this protective effect didn't actually occur. So if your relationship is troubled and you're getting shocked, you're feeling that pain. So if you're a healthy person in a healthy relationship holding your partner's hand is enough to lower your blood pressure, reduce your anxiety, improve your health and ease physical pain. So when it comes to connection, when it comes to quality relationships not only do they fulfill us, do they give us meaning and purpose, create that community that we're looking for as humans but they significantly improve our health. You know, when you hear something like that and you think about the human condition and everything that we had to endure in order to live in a society that has things like Facebook, right? Like think of all the developments that had to come for us to have something like that, right? To be able to turn the lights on and they come on every time that we hit that button. I mean, that's pretty remarkable. And to come from a hunter gathers or living in the trees together in a society like that to have this civilization that we have now, all the pain, all the trauma and just think about in the trauma in the last century that we've had, right? To work through, to go through disease, famine, world wars, world wars, genocides, what will it take? And for us as human beings to be able to hold it all together and persevere through all that, to continue building for our loved ones, our society in order for our society to have something a little bit better than what we did. And this all goes to how remarkable human beings are and how important those bonds are to work through all of that. Now, we've covered a lot of ground here. We explained some cognitive biases and the idea of miswanting, how difficult it is for us to label what truly makes us happy. And then lastly, we looked at the Harvard study which found an amazing result in terms of happiness and the impact of the quality of relationships on your life, not only in your long-term longevity, your life, happiness and ultimately feeling connection with one another is how we move through the pain that is life, the ups and downs when we feel connected, part of a tribe, we have quality in our relationships, we're happier, we're healthier, we live longer, who doesn't want that? And as we found in the last study we talked about, we don't even feel the pain of shock when we are truly connected. So next month, we're tackling exactly that connection. What I wanna point out is we have an amazing episode coming up next week with a fascinating guest, Russ Harris, fantastic book, The Happiness Trap. Stay tuned for next week's episode.