COMMUNICATION Expert: Do THIS To Connect DEEPLY With ANYONE! (Become MAGNETIC) | Charles Duhigg EP 544

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11I saw this quote about the current loneliness epidemic that's happening in the world, but specifically in the U.S. This was from the, I believe, the general surgeon who said the lack of social connection poses a significant risk for individual health and longevity. Loneliness and social isolation increase the risk for premature death by 26 % and 29 % respectively. More broadly, lacking social connection can increase the risk for premature death as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Poor or insufficient social connection is associated with increased risk of disease, including 29 % increased risk of heart disease and 32 % increased risk of stroke.

0:57furthermore is associated with increased risk for anxiety, depression, and dementia. And I wanted to start by asking you to reflect on that. And I'm curious, how can the principals and super communicators really help put an end to the loneliness epidemic that we are seeing in the U.S., but also in the world? It is a fantastic question and probably the most important question to be thinking about right now, right? So there was this study that was done. They now call it the Harvard Adult Happiness Study. You're probably familiar with it. The longest longitudinal study that's ever been done. And it started over 100 years ago.

1:32It was actually called the Grant Study at first because this guy named Grant gave money to start it. And they started following all these people, originally just students at Harvard, but then people who lived in tenements in Boston. And as everyone got married and had kids, they started following them. What they wanted to figure out is, what is the correlate with future success and happiness and, most importantly, longevity, health? They had these hypotheses. Again, this is like the 1910s, 1920s. They were like, if you have a two-parent family, you're probably going to live longer than if you have a one-parent family.

2:00If you go to Harvard, you're probably going to live longer than if you didn't go to Harvard. And they studied all this stuff, what careers people have, what they eat. And they found ultimately there was only one overwhelming thing that determined whether people were happy and whether they lived a long time, longer than average. How many connections they had to other people, particularly when they're 45. So there's nothing magical about 45, except that they would look at people at 45, and they found if you had twice as many friends, like people that you're actually engaged in a relationship with.

2:34Like meaningful relationships. A meaningful relationship, right. If you have twice as many of those people in your life, on average, you will live up to 20 years longer. Wow. And by the way, you'll end up being more financially successful. So then the question becomes, Okay, so if we know that loneliness is a killer, it's equal to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and we know that we need to have connections with people, how do we form connections? As you know, we were talking about sports. You're an athlete. Like, part of it is you can go and do things with people. You can be on a team together. But the number one way that we create relationships, that we create connections, is through conversation.

3:12Yes. And what's interesting is you don't have to have a conversation every day. one of my closest friends is a guy I talk to every six to seven weeks. But every time we talk, we have a real discussion. And I feel as close to this person as anyone on earth. And so then the question becomes, okay, so what is it? We're living through this golden age of understanding communication because of advances in neuroimaging and data analytics. And so now we know what has to happen in a conversation for people to feel close to each other. And that's the answer to the lowliness epidemic. But why do people struggle so much with building relationships?

3:51Is it they don't have the skills of communication? Is it they don't have the courage to communicate? Is it they're afraid of rejection or embarrassment or not being liked or loved by someone? Why are so many people isolating, you think, more than ever? I think there's two things. First of all, just the internet has made it easy. Like, you can stay in your house now, right? Whereas before, it was more boring. Yeah, yeah. So that's part of it. But I think the other thing is exactly what you just said, which is people don't know what the first step is. It used to be that you were in public school in America and they taught you how to have conversations.

4:27There was classes. Debate club. Debate club. Home ec. Right? They would send young women off to finishing schools where basically you learn to be a conversationalist. I'm not saying we should return to those days, but it was something that people saw as a virtue. It was teaching social skills. That's exactly right. We don't really teach social skills unless as parents, like you were talking about before, we started creating those environments and exercises and experimental games for your children to put themselves out in public at a restaurant or ask someone for a favor or, you know, just put themselves out there.

5:01Yeah. And so the thing is that I think most of the people, they are scared and they are anxious and they aren't certain. So nobody's born a super communicator, right? What is a super communicator? super communicator is the easiest way to say it is it's the person you call when you're having a bad day who you know will make you feel better and for me it's a guy named greg like i give him a phone call and like i just know he's gonna make me feel better he's gonna like make me feel listened to he's gonna make me feel happy another guy named donnan uh-huh and you do you have someone like that like when i sure matt okay matt right exactly and like so so for you matt is a super communicator and matt is probably a super communicator for other people and you're a super communicator for other people.

5:40That is not an inborn trait. It's not like Matt was born under a different star or he has some special charisma. It's probably that Matt has learned how to communicate oftentimes by failing to communicate or oftentimes by feeling like he's left out and paying attention to how other people behave and sort of just noticing a little bit more what's going on. What we know is that anyone can become a super communicator because it's just a set of skills that any of us can learn, the same way we can learn to read. But as a society, we have not said that's an important set of skills for a little while.

6:14And I think that with the Surgeon General and others coming out, we're beginning to say, actually, this is critical.

6:29Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description that will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

7:19Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.