The People Around You Are Aging You | Social Intelligence Briefing

0:00AJ Jacobs:We're leaving today and entering a world of Mickey Mouse waving, princess meeting and greeting,

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1:00Johnny:So I sent Johnny a study last week and his response was basically, we've been saying this for 18 years and now there's DNA evidence. Johnny, tell him what I sent you.

1:09AJ Jacobs:You sent me a study showing that when you don't have the right people in your life, it adds a ton of friction.

1:24AJ Jacobs:there is a lot of people that we accept into our lives either who have been friends in the past and had great relationships that we've grown apart from or us being tolerant and being polite has led into our lives that take our time, destroy our morale, make life harder to deal with on a daily basis. We certainly understand the benefits of being more critical of the folks that you've let in and how incredible life can be when you're letting in the right people into your life.

2:02Johnny:Absolutely. And here's the actual finding. Researchers at Indiana University published this in PNAS. They took DNA samples from 2 ,345 people. They mapped every person's closed social network. And they found that the people in your life who chronically stress you out are actually accelerating your biological aging at the cellular level. Not how stressed you feel, your actual DNA. Each additional hassler, their word for someone who often causes problems or makes your life difficult, corresponds to a 1.5 % faster biological aging. About nine extra months of biological age compared to someone the same age without that person in their life.

2:47Johnny:They're being awfully nice with that term hassler.

2:50AJ Jacobs:I could think of some better terms. and some of you guys out there who've been in our live programs have heard me say this one line that i've been saying over and over again which is the price of having low value people in your life is your life and this study proves it it breaks it down at a scientific level yeah yeah we'll use their word. Hasslers create drama, stress, and drain you, not only of your energy, but your life. They make mornings hard to get up for when you have a lot of hasslers in your life. And, you know, I'm now 52 and I get a lot of comments about how I look. Well, when you say this and understand this and have been actively working towards this for 18 years.

3:47AJ Jacobs:Well, it's going to it's going to save those gray hairs for later.

3:53Johnny:So to be clear about what they measure, this is not a survey asking people how lonely they feel. They actually measured your epigenetic clock, biological markers inside your cells that track how fast your body is aging at the molecular level. And the damage from having one hassler in your close network corresponds to about 13 to 70 percent of the biological harm caused by smoking. And I don't think anyone here would pick up a smoking habit currently.

4:19AJ Jacobs:A smoking habit, eating bad food habit, watching the equivalent of junk food, junk entertainment. The folks that listen to this, and I'm sure many of you guys hearing this right now, have went through pain-staking decisions to install discipline in your life to look, feel, and operate at your best. This is just one more component that you may have overlooked that is doing just as much damage, if not more.

5:00Johnny:And here's the part that actually got me the most. One in three people in the study had at least one hassler in their close network. not an acquaintance not a co-worker they see in passing someone they named as an important person

5:14AJ Jacobs:in their life is hassling them to have a social life is to interact with these people there is something that we have to understand about human nature in general and this was one of the hardest things for me to accept, which was projection bias. We think people think like we do. So if, if we're good natured, if we're tolerant, if we're polite, we open our doors up to everybody. I'm that way. And I, and I certainly was more open and tolerant earlier in my life. And of course, there were people who were, who saw that opening and then by their own nature to get what they can to conserve their own energy, took advantage of that.

6:11AJ Jacobs:And I certainly, when you bringing this up, there are certain people who stuck out in my mind, who got away with probably way too much and how I view life now at my age, they certainly wouldn't have that opportunity. But most importantly, you're listening out there now, who's your hassler?

6:35Johnny:And how do you distance yourself? Now, here's a few things that the study flips for me that I wanna walk through because they matter to how you actually think about your social life. The first one is this. Most people, when they think about their social health, they think about isolation. Am I lonely? Do I have enough people around me? That's actually the wrong question. You can have a full calendar, a big family, a packed social life and still be aging faster than someone who lives alone with two or three people who genuinely have their back. Being surrounded by people is not the same as being supported by them.

7:08Johnny:That's certainly true.

7:09AJ Jacobs:This is something that I think alcoholics understand and know very well, because when you're an alcoholic and you go to your local spot, well, everybody's your friend, aren't they? everybody's there and when you come in they make you feel important they make you feel as if you're the the mayor of the town everybody knows your name cheers was a television show in the 90s or late 80s and 90s that was about this very thing but do those people support you when you need to move next weekend how many of those people can you call to give you a hand and not have to pick up their tab that evening.

7:51Johnny:Now, the second one is even harder. Family hasslers age you faster than anyone else in the study. So not a difficult coworker, not an old friend who just drains you family. The researchers explain it this way. Family's ties are structurally inescapable. The conflict is enduring. You've been dealing with it your whole life. You can't exit the relationship the way that you could walk away from a job or a friendship or a partner. And that chronic activation of your stress system year after year accumulates in yourselves. Hiring the right person with the right skills, that's what moves a business forward.

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11:37AJ Jacobs:And this is a hard one because when people begin to recognize that they have a lot of hasslers in their life, that means they have been very tolerant to a lot of behavior that is harming them. So if that's coming from your peer group, Could you imagine how they feel when they awaken to then the same behaviors, if not tolerated more by family members? So that's a difficult moment for anybody. And of course, there are a different set of rules for how you're going to deal with family. Not only do we work on this in our X Factor about setting up the rules and the qualifying moments to make sure that the right people are coming into your life, but also giving you the tools to deal with the harder problem, which is navigating that with your family.

12:36Johnny:And the third shift is for the person who thinks the fix is just about adding more people. The most protective relationships in the study were not the most numerous. They were what researchers call multiplex, meaning the relationship operates across multiple dimensions of your life. This person really knows you. They're present across the different contexts that you behave in and they show up for you. So it's depth that actually protects you, not breath.

13:04AJ Jacobs:Yeah, AJ, I think social media has a lot to do with this. In fact, I was working with one of our younger clients and I was asking him if him and his friends think about how older generations like mine managed without the Internet, you know, and if and if they have come to the realization that maybe they have been robbed of their own growing up due to having it. and it was an incredible conversation and he was telling me that the only thing in high school that they were fixated on were how many followers they had and their influence online and that was just that was mind-blowing to me but not surprising but also as they had gotten a little older now that he's in his early 20s, he's now seeing the damage that that caused.

14:07AJ Jacobs:And again, it goes to the same thing with those thinking, well, you know, I just built up my LinkedIn profile and I'll have all these connections. Well, then I got a lot of people in my corner. I have a lot of people in my network. I'm good to go. But it doesn't work that way.