Braden Hall

She really didn't think much about you, but she really liked your wallet a little more.

Yes.

And you're not the only one who's lonely.

I think we live in a society where increasingly we're recognizing that we're living through a crisis in loneliness and social isolation.

So you're not alone in that regard.

Well, it's really similar to physical fitness, except for applied to social relationships.

It's the idea that we should take a proactive and intentional approach to our social relationships and build those relationships intentionally.

Well, I will say a good start is to actually commit to your relationships.

And by relationships, I mean all types of relationships.

So that can include intimate others.

It can include your neighbors and coworkers.

It can include strangers.

So the idea here is goals are good.

You can always decide that you're going to say hello to so many people on the street, that you're going to get together with your best friend, you know, so many times a month.

These things will definitely help you along this pathway.

It's not great.

And in fact, the best thing that we can possibly do for our health and well-being that we're increasingly realizing through an enormous body of research is to cultivate warm relationships of all kinds.

If we do not, if we fail to do so, then what we find is that people have increased relationships.

risk of mortality, of greater morbidity, these sorts of negative things that we all want to avoid in our lives.

So as much as we pursue things even like solitude, which we may view as time to ourselves, healthy with respect to just giving that time to ourselves, I think that we need to push ourselves to connect with others