1. Take time to learn from the year before

What were the key learning’s from last year? What do you wish to change, evolve or keep the same? Without reflection you are likely to repeat the same year you had last year. Use the power of hindsight to learn, pivot and feed into plans, intentions and your desired way of being.

2. Take time out – rejuvenate, be fresh

Fatigue, stress, and burnout impair cognitive function, contribute to disease and diminish creativity and life force. Take real breaks – unplug from the phone, computer, and social media. Breathe in life, nature, loved ones. Prioritise sleep, nature’s most potent elixir. Start the year refreshed; plan ahead, and actually take breaks daily, weekly, and extended quarterly.

3. Create mindful platforms to live your life the way you want

The question of “what do I want to do this year?” is an erroneous first question. First ask – “how do I wish to experience or be, this year?” Notice the difference in your answers to these two important questions. With your new awareness, now explore “what structures, personal practices, and routines, will I need physically, emotionally, mentally, relationally and spiritually to experience A, B C while also achieving X, Y, Z?” Commit to these, as it these rituals, not RedBull® that will give you wings!

4. Set realistic expectations for yourself and others

Unexpressed, assumed and unrealistic expectations are most often at the core of conflict, disappointment and low motivation. Increase your sense of play and energy by dreaming big and stopping to also articulate clear, realistic expectations to yourself and others, grounded in actual realities of time, resources, capacity, and where each of you are in your project or personal journey. Successfully meet these expectations and then with the confidence and experience you have gained, up the ante and expand beyond.

5. Practice ‘continuum thinking and experiencing’

Stop trying to tackle projects and goals in one single bound! While superman and you can do this in a crisis, people who sustain success without a cape, actually attend to multiple facets of their life (including work or business) progressing projects incrementally, focused on the successful achievement of small steps and stages. They also minimise artificial dichotomies, so they experience less inner turmoil or conflict, more creativity and a sense of freedom and flow.

6. Take ownership of your personal power – strengthen resilience

While you cannot control what happens to you in life, you can control how you respond. Harness and take full ownership of your four super powers; your thinking, feeling, speaking and behaviour. Find out where you let yourself down, and where you are living at the effect of ‘life’ and others. Make it your priority to take charge of these powers. Live your life from a position of choice, use your abilities to ride the natural ups and downs of a passionate life, well lived.

7. Objectives / Goals / Vision

Decide, are you a goal setter, or not? At different stages in your personal evolution there is value in setting and striving towards audacious goals, times for allowing life to organically unfold and other times for the synthesis. No matter what your choice, stay true and relaxed to the way in which you wish to move towards your future. Your way, the way that works for you, is simply the best approach. While there is always opportunity for experimentation, and learning from others, once you know what works for you, wholeheartedly commit to and navigate your own path. Stop comparing, exhale, embrace and enjoy your unique journey.

8. Recognition of progress = momentum

As our client case studies have demonstrated and science now proves, the fastest path to sustainable change is to recognise the smallest incremental steps and stages of change, development, progress and achievement. Similar to what parents recognise in the first few words, steps, and other milestones of their child, as we do this, for ourselves, it sends messages to our neural pathways and starts to solidify what we did and allows our nervous system to focus on our next step or level of complexity. Counting your progress accelerates your change, and gives you momentum.

9. Give and receive support

Life is much easier and enjoyable with support! Surround yourself with a vibrant posse of people who are on your team, who value your unique expression and want for you to be the greatest version of you. Ask for ruthless and compassionate feedback, ask for help and be the first to give the same back. Seek experts when you need them and learn the art of allowing the world to conspire for your deep fulfilment and success.

10. Be open hearted – love generously

There is a reason that most of the music we listen to, the stories we read and the films we watch have love at the heart of them. Allow yourself to be loved, and learn how to live + love open heartedly; giving generously your passion, gratitude, affection and appreciation to those you love and to the adventure of life. Embrace the full spectrum of your emotions; learn how to ‘accept’ that which you cannot change, and in equal abundance allow yourself to be moved by beauty, nature, art, and the pure magic of life!

What are your top tips for cultivating the best year of your life?

May this next year be your best one yet!

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Much of the stress parents feel results from trying to stick to routines for normal days during the topsy-turvy holidays. The comfort of those patterns of daily life draw parents into a spider web of false hope: If we can fit life’s demands into the “normal” way of life, then all will be calm. So many parents try to place the round peg of the irregularity of the holidays into the square hole of regularity. Each year parents experience try again to make the holidays work based on non-holiday patterns.

To paraphrase Einstein, “The definition of insane is doing the same thing, over and over, and expecting different outcomes.” Based on that idea, parents become insane over the holidays. And, they drive their children crazy too-trying to make their children act as if no holiday uproar exists. Parents do this to try and reduce stress, but in the end increase tension without realizing. Our goal is worthwhile, but the methods are ineffective.

Here are four tips to help moms and dads find joy in the holidays:

1. Leave the rule book at home:  When parents travel to spend the holidays, they sometimes try to use “home” rules for parenting. But, children and parents both experience very different demands than when at home. Grandparents want to stay up and talk to the little ones. Aunts and uncles spoil children with candy and attention. What parents find inappropriate at home becomes “cute” to others. Parents can find joy by leaving the rule book at home. Relax and allow the laughter and smiles from your children become more important than keeping order.

2. Be flexible with schedules: The holidays push parents to be in two places at once.  Schools hold holiday events, churches encourage families to attend special services, and offices hold parties for grown-ups only. These time demands place parents in a position where they must pick and choose.  If we are flexible about how we prioritize our time during the holidays, we can release our expectations to please everyone. Instead, joy comes when we go with the flow, and adopt a “do our best” attitude. Parents find happiness, at the end of the day, in the smiling faces of their families.

3. Pay Close Attention Once per Day:  Parents find themselves scattered over the holidays. Sometimes we forget that children need our time more than ever when things become hectic. We can give the gift of attention every day, without paying a penny to a toy store. Parents will find joy in the way a child’s eyes light-up during the 15 to 30 minutes set aside to read together or play a simple board game. Those few minutes lay the foundation of connection to children, and show love more than any Lego set or teddy bear.

4. Give the gift of acceptance: So many parents become overwhelmed in the chaos of the holidays, often asking their children “What do you think you’re doing?” Children stutter to answer a question for which no real answer exists. As a psychologist, I often recommend thee strategies to manage the confusion of “holiday cheer.”

• Change the way you think about the busyness of holidays- “chaos” becomes “unstructured,” or “out of control” becomes “child-like fun.” Parents win the stress war when their thoughts use neutral or happier words to describe holidays.
• Accept the reality of holiday cheer-functioning (rather than stressing) during the holidays means accepting the variability of every moment. Part of the definition of holidays includes replacing routines with the joy of the unexpected. Try saying “If I accept that holidays are not predictable, then I can live in the joy of each moment as it unfolds.” Parents find holiday joy by staying in the present.
• Acceptance of childhood excitement-parenting during holidays requires embracing childhood enthusiasm. Parents sometimes must reign in their children when excitement becomes uncontrolled behavior. Parents manage these moments best when they accept the inevitability of such moments, so that we see our job to help children regain their self-control. Parents find joy in sending accepting messages that validate children as overly-excited (rather than being “bad”), and empathize with a child’s feeling of raw energy. Parents help calm children through validation, so that limit setting becomes a lesson not a punishment.

Holidays combine remembrance of landmark events with good cheer. Whether children are playing with spinning wooden tops or other holiday toys, the joy of the holidays bursts forth from a child playing. Parents can find that same joy by throwing off the mundane routines of everyday life, and instead live inside the smiles and laughter of each moment.

The best gift is found in each present moment.

First published at psychologytoday.com

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With his singular blend of physical prowess and metaphysical wisdom, coupled with his tragic untimely death, legendary Chinese-American martial artist, philosopher, and filmmaker Bruce Lee (1940-1973) is one of those rare cultural icons whose ethos and appeal remain timeless, attracting generation after generation of devotees. Inspired by the core principles of Wing Chun, the ancient Chinese conceptual martial art, which he learned from his only formal martial arts teacher, Yip Man, between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. When he left Hong Kong in 1959, Lee adapted Wing Chun into his own version, Jun Fan Gung Fu — literal translation: Bruce Lee’s Kung Fu — and popularized it in America.

In 1971, at the peak of his career, Lee starred in four episodes of the short-lived TV series Longstreet. In one of them, he delivered his most oft-cited metaphor for the philosophy of Gung Fu, based on the Chinese concept of wu wei:

But the famed snippet belies the full dimensionality of the metaphor and says nothing about how Lee arrived at it. Luckily, in Bruce Lee: Artist of Life (public library) — a compendium of his never-before-published private letters, notes, and poems, offering unprecedented insight into his philosophy on life and his convictions about martial arts, love, and parenthood — Lee traces the thinking that originated his famous metaphor, which came after a period of frustration with his inability to master “the art of detachment” that Yip Man was trying to impart on him. Lee writes:

When my acute self-consciousness grew to what the psychologists refer to as the “double-bind” type, my instructor would again approach me and say, “Loong, preserve yourself by following the natural bends of things and don’t interfere. Remember never to assert yourself against nature; never be in frontal opposition to any problems, but control it by swinging with it. Don’t practice this week: Go home and think about it.”

And so he did, spending the following week at home:

After spending many hours meditating and practicing, I gave up and went sailing alone in a junk. On the sea I thought of all my past training and got mad at myself and punched the water! Right then — at that moment — a thought suddenly struck me; was not this water the very essence of gung fu? Hadn’t this water just now illustrated to me the principle of gung fu? I struck it but it did not suffer hurt. Again I struck it with all of my might — yet it was not wounded! I then tried to grasp a handful of it but this proved impossible. This water, the softest substance in the world, which could be contained in the smallest jar, only seemed weak. In reality, it could penetrate the hardest substance in the world. That was it! I wanted to be like the nature of water.

Suddenly a bird flew by and cast its reflection on the water. Right then I was absorbing myself with the lesson of the water, another mystic sense of hidden meaning revealed itself to me; should not the thoughts and emotions I had when in front of an opponent pass like the reflection of the birds flying over the water? This was exactly what Professor Yip meant by being detached — not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling was not sticky or blocked. Therefore in order to control myself I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature.

Quoting from Lao Tzu’s famous teachings, Lee writes:

The natural phenomenon which the gung fu man sees as being the closest resemblance to wu wei is water:

Nothing is weaker than water,
But when it attacks something hard
Or resistant, then nothing withstands it,
And nothing will alter its way.

The above passages from the Tao Te Ching illustrate to us the nature of water: Water is so fine that it is impossible to grasp a handful of it; strike it, yet it does not suffer hurt; stab it, and it is not wounded; sever it, yet it is not divided. It has no shape of its own but molds itself to the receptacle that contains it. When heated to the state of steam it is invisible but has enough power to split the earth itself. When frozen it crystallizes into a mighty rock. First it is turbulent like Niagara Falls, and then calm like a still pond, fearful like a torrent, and refreshing like a spring on a hot summer’s day. So is the principle of wu wei:

The rivers and seas are lords of a hundred valleys. This is because their strength is in lowliness; they are kings of them all. So it is that the perfect master wishing to lead them, he follows. Thus, though he is above them, he follows. Thus, though he is above them, men do not feel him to be an injury. And since he will not strive, none strive with him.

Bruce Lee: Artist of Life is fantastic in its entirety.

First published at brainpickings.org

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I asked her, what she was thinking and feeling at that time. “I was very afraid” she said. “But I thought I would be good, because I was invited to be part of a big project.”

Then, what was she afraid of? “Of meeting people better than me”, she said.

Does this resonate? Do you compare yourself with others, and give them more credibility than you give yourself?

I asked Victoria (not her real name) what she thought she brought to the job, what strengths she had that would enable her to be good.

“I am very focussed and understand the complexity of projects, I can work with different people from different cultures and build trust.”

I asked her, “How many people in the world can do what you do, the way you do it?” And her answer was, “Not very many”. So I asked why she should be afraid that others would be better than her.

“I’m shy and sometimes I have an idea but I can’t speak up in meetings.”

Victoria was suffering from a lack of ‘Executive Presence’, the ability to portray confidence and poise under pressure. This is what brought her to me 2 years ago for coaching. She was referred by a colleague who had been having the same problem and had transformed his career after just a few sessions.

When I met her, I was immediately impressed by this woman’s courage and commitment. As if working in a foreign country, in a challenging environment, and bringing up her teenage children was not enough, she got hit by a huge health challenge. She lost all the feeling in her arms and legs. Eventually her Doctors found a spinal tumour.

I asked her how she felt when she got the diagnosis, “It felt like the end of the world”.

Victoria underwent surgery, and had chemotherapy, but was back at work just 3-weeks after the surgery! This was extremely courageous as she was in pain, and had difficulty in walking and speaking.

You might be curious, as was I, why she should return to work so soon?

“I said to myself, this is not going to stop me. Before the operation, I would run 10km and do marathons, I was a very active person, and my life stopped.”

Victoria changed her narrative, she changed the story she was telling herself, from “This is the end of the world” to “this is not going to stop me” and she chose to go back to work to prove this.

Choosing your personal narrative is foundational to Self-leadership.

I reflected back to Victoria that she had had to ‘re-frame’ her personal narrative a few times; firstly when coming to Singapore, then when she discovered she was as smart, if not smarter than the people she was afraid of, and now with her overcoming a challenge that would be too much for most people.

Victoria and I met, about 18 months after the spinal surgery. She was still in pain but had learned to manage it. When I asked her what she wanted to achieve through coaching, she said, “To improve my public speaking and be a better person.”

What impressed me was Victoria’s self-awareness about her need to develop her confidence, and her humility to recognize both her strengths as well as her weaknesses.

Through coaching, Victoria realized that she is someone of value, that she has been through so many challenges and overcame them. She became aware that she had been negatively comparing herself with other people, and that this was not only not helpful, often the reverse was true. Victoria has now stopped comparing and has been very successful as a leader on some very complex projects.

But life can keep on piling on the challenges, or should I say growth opportunities?

Victoria’s project ended, her work-pass was cancelled and she had to return to her native South America. But, using her new found self-confidence and communication skills, she was able to set up a business which connected trade between South American and Singapore. With a new business visa, she was quickly able to re-enter Singapore and has been offered so many jobs and opportunities that she has re-engaged me to help her choose which is best, for her future.

There are many take-aways from Victoria’s story:

• Extraordinary people are ordinary people doing something extra
• When often make incorrect comparisons about our abilities compared to others
• We need to recognize our strengths and believe it when others see our value
• Confidence and clarity is key in getting your message across
• Change your story and you change your results
• Self-awareness is the start of the change you seek
• When you change yourself, new opportunities arise

I am grateful to have been able to assist Victoria to be more confident in herself; she is is a great example of Self-leadership. I hope in reading this story that you find some inspiration to value yourself more and to step forward knowing you are better than you thought you were.

First published at linkedin.com

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Apps are a pretty good way to automate a bit of your habit-forming. Some people have taken the idea to unkind extremes: one app threatens to upload an embarrassing photo to Facebook if you don’t achieve your goal, while another makes your mates and family bet money that you won’t do it. Successful? Maybe. Positive? Erm, no. Fortunately, there are a lot of more positive apps out there that you can tailor to your needs.

Like ticking boxes? Getting rewards for incremental achievements? Getting reminders? It’s all out there. Here are eight of the best goal-tracking apps to help you create new habits and stick to them.

1. Best App For The Visually-Motivated: Strides

This is the one for the design freaks. It’s just super pretty: it sorts what you want to achieve and what you’ve actually done into graphs and displays you could frame. It’s also easy to personalize, with sections devoted to weight loss, controlling your work, education, money, basically everything. It’s more about tracking than reminders, relying on those glowing diagrams to give you a sense of achievement.

2. Best App For People Who Prefer Help IRL: CoachMe

CoachMe, formerly known as Lift, is the one that serious goal-trackers tend to talk about: it’s got 10 million users. It’s focussed on helping you achieve your goals, and has a whole structure of stuff to help out, from daily reminders to advice to motivation from actual “coaches” in the app’s office. It’s most popular for health and fitness, but is also used for learning new skills, and you can join groups with people trying to do the same stuff.

3. Best App For Meditation: Equanimity

This one’s specifically for people who want to meditate more. It’s both a meditation timer and a tracker, noting your meditation practice every day and graphing it throughout the year. It also gently reminds you to meditate through an optional calendar that puts up the amount of days since you last meditated. Easy, elegant and pretty cool.

4. Best App For Organizing Self-Starters: Any.do

Like a more hands-off way of achieving what you want? Any.do is your answer. It’s the ultimate to-do list on your phone with a whole heap of fancy features, including multimedia, sharing lists across devices, voice entry, and reminders that you can customise by time or location. It’s a serious planner for people who know what they need to do, and just need some help organizing themselves to do it.

5. Best App For Meeting Creative Goals: Optimize Me

Optimize Me is for people who like to track the up-and-down progress of every part of their life, from their emotional life to their creativity. It’s designed as a broader tool than simply a goal-achiever; it’s meant to make you more aware of your moods, encourages you to log how you spend your time during the day (it calls it “lifelogging”), and is generally a bit like a journal in graph form. It also goes through the data and pushes you to focus on what you’d like to change, with “life coach” Ari.

6. Best App For Purists: HabitSeed

This is a reward in app form. It’s pretty simple: tell it what you want to change, and if you stick to it for 21 days, the app will show the “seed” of your habit blooming into a full-blown tree to symbolize your achievement. While the whole idea that it only takes 21 days to create a new habit is actually a myth, HabitSeed is a lovely idea for motivation.

7. Best App For Reminders: Way Of Life

Way Of Life combines a whole heap of motivation app features, from graphing your progress in pie and bar charts to putting things on a scoreboard to give you an instant boost, and is also apparently one of the best “reminder” apps around, because the apps are able to be customized with your own little motivational messages to yourself.

8. Best App For Forming New Habits: Habit List

Habit List is based around the idea of “streaks” — an uninterrupted stretch in which you strive towards your goal. It does reminders too, plus badges to celebrate reaching a certain goal level (incremental successes matter too!), and has a very flexible scheduling section to allow you to vary when you’re going to do that thing (or not).

It also flags up if a certain method you’ve been trying, like jogging in the evenings, isn’t working and keeps being missed.

First published at bustle.com

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Definition of Loneliness

Described in the scientific literature more than 30 years ago, the feeling of being lonely is characterized as feeling socially isolated or on the social perimeter . It is noteworthy that feeling lonely does not necessarily mean being physically alone. Loneliness corresponds to a discrepancy between the relationships one wants and the relationships one has, so one can feel socially isolated even when they are among “friends.” As the celebrity, George Clooney, said: “Anyone would be lying if they said they did not get lonely at times. The loneliest you will get is in the most public of arenas: you will go to a place and end up in the smallest compartment possible, because it is a distraction to everybody, and you end up not getting to enjoy it like everyone else.” Although loneliness makes people feel sad, it has another, less obvious effect on our brain and biology: it triggers a sense in which the world is unsafe, and the brain tilts toward a self-preservation mode.

Consequences of Loneliness

Early in our evolutionary history as a species, we survived and prospered by banding together to provide mutual protection and assistance . These deep evolutionary roots of tilting our brains and biology toward self-preservation also mean that we are unaware of much of what is triggered when we feel socially isolated. For instance, when a school of sardines is confronted by a predator, each sardine tries to swim to the middle to evade the predator – that is, each sardine engages in self-preservation. When rodents who have been socially isolated are placed in an open field, they walk around the outside walls of the field rather than in the middle to better escape if a flying predator were to appear – that is, they engage in self-preservation. These animals do not contemplate their circumstance, their brains have evolved to act in a way that makes it more likely they will survive.

When human feel socially isolated, their brains, too, switch automatically into a self-preservation mode of information processing. As a result, when a person feels lonely, they tend to become more defensive and focused on their own welfare and self-preservation. Research suggests that this is not a conscious decision on their part. Rather studies suggest that when a person feels lonely, their brain is tuned to detect automatically negative social information more than positive social information. Consequently, a lonely person may become more hostile and defensive when talking with people (as they may hear more criticisms than compliments), and because they are focused on their own welfare they appear to be less socially skilled.

Studies recording brain activity from lonely people are consistent with this self-preservation hypothesis. The scans show that when individuals feel lonely, their brains show more activation in the visual cortex (the part of the brain, at the very back, that processes information coming specifically from the eyes) to images of another person in distress, and their brains show less activation in another visual area involved in understanding and sharing others’ emotions (empathy) and in understanding others’ viewpoint from their perspective (perspective taking), as would be expected if the stimulus prompted their brain to automatically focus on their own self-preservation rather than the welfare of the person in the image they viewed (Figure 2).

Figure 1

Results Obtained from the Survey Done from April 2008 to March 2009 by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) in the UK. This figure shows that most of the phone calls made to the help line during this period and reporting loneliness came from 16-year-old children.

Figure 2

A. Example of negative social and non-social pictures used in brain imaging experiments. B. Functional neuroimaging results illustrating the differences in the comparison between the brain activity obtained from lonely versus non-lonely participants while they were looking at negative social pictures compared to the brain activity from the same participants while they were looking at negative non-social pictures. Results are shown on an average human brain. The visual cortex (in orange) shows more activation for negative social pictures than for negative non-social pictures in lonely people, in contrast to non-lonely, they show more activation in the visual cortex. The temporoparietal junction (which is involved in empathy and perspective taking, shown in blue) shows less activation to negative social pictures compared to negative non-social pictures in lonely people. C. The scatter plot depicts the significant positive relationship between loneliness scores and activation of the right visual cortex in response to negative social pictures compared to negative non-social pictures, suggesting that the more participants reported feeling lonely, the more the right visual cortex was activated. D. The scatter plot depicts the significant negative relationship between loneliness scores and activation of the right temporoparietal junction in response to negative social pictures compared to negative non-social pictures, indicating that the more participants reported feeling lonely, the less the right temporoparietal junction was activated .

That said you do not often hear people complaining or talking about feeling lonely because loneliness is stigmatized – the psychological equivalent of being incorrectly labeled a weak person or even worse, a loser in life (neither of which is actually correct). People, including children, can be really good at hiding what they feel, and at putting their public smiling faces on to get through the days at school or while with family. No one wants to feel different or rejected. But the denial of loneliness is counterproductive. Like thirst or hunger, loneliness should be considered as a biological warning signal sent out by our brains. Ignoring this signal can lead to mental and physical damage and make loneliness harder to escape.

Social Neuroscience of Loneliness

Developed 20 years ago , the field of social neuroscience brings together a broad range of scientists, disciplines, and methodologies dedicated to investigate the biological mechanisms of social interaction across species . Social neuroscience is dedicated to investigate the hard problem of the mutual influence of biology and social mechanisms in various topics. Social neuroscience can, thus, shed light on the study of loneliness, its mechanisms, and treatments . Over the past 20 years, results in this particular branch of social neuroscience have been striking. For instance, humans are a social species, but we are not the only social species. When members of non-human social species are socially isolated, they fare poorly, as well. In addition, research has shown that loneliness in humans, when not treated, can be a strong risk factor for mortality. Consider what we know about your changes of dying prematurely as a result of various conditions: Air pollution, for instance, represents about 5% increase in odds that a person will die early. Obesity represents about a 20% increase in odds that a person will die early. Excessive alcohol consumption represents about a 30% increase in odds for mortality. A recent scientific analysis indicates that loneliness represents a 45% increase in odds for dying early. In addition, loneliness can have a broad range of negative effects on both physical and mental health. Among the most common physical health issues that are associated with social isolation are increased cardiovascular risks (risks of having heart diseases and/or high blood pressure), increased stress hormone levels, increased response of one’s body to an injurious agent (such as viruses, microbes), less restorative sleep, and altered gene expression that then lead to a weaker immune system, and also to a broad variety of behavioral disorders, such as impulsive behaviors (acting as an impulse, without consideration of the consequences), alcoholism, depressive symptomatology (including depressed and irritable mood, lost of interest in activities that you are used to doing in your everyday life, sadness, lost of energy), and suicidal ideation . For instance, Caspi et al. found that perceived social isolation in adolescence and young adulthood predicted how many cardiovascular risk factors (e.g., body mass index, waist circumference, blood pressure, cholesterol) were elevated in young adulthood, and that the number of developmental occasions (i.e., childhood, adolescence, young adulthood) at which participants were lonely predicted the number of elevated risk factors in young adulthood . Among the most common mental health issues associated with social isolation in adults are a cognitive decline, memory difficulties, early onset dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease .

Interestingly, similar negative effects of social isolation on physical and mental health have been described across species, from fruit flies to apes. For instance, social isolation has been shown to decrease the lifespan of fruit flies, promote the development of obesity in mice, alter brain regions that are important to control impulsivity in mice, decrease the size of some brain regions that are not being used due to a lack of social interactions in locusts, honeybees, grasshoppers, canaries, rodents and non-human primates, increase the stress response in rats, alter gene expression regulating stress response in piglets and immune function in mice rats, and increase morning rise of stress hormone, which is known to suppress the immune system in squirrel monkeys (e.g., Ott and Rogers ; for reviews see Cacioppo and Patrick and Cacioppo and Hawkley ). Together, these experimental studies from epidemiological, genetic, preclinical studies in social neuroscience show that the way individuals live in (or even perceive) their social environment has profound consequences on their physical and mental health.

If Loneliness Can be Dangerous, What Can We Do about it?

When we are hungry, we can go to the refrigerator and get a snack. When we are thirsty, we can go to our faucet and draw a glass of water. But when we feel lonely, we have no pantry full of friends with whom to connect. And no on-line social networking does replace the comforting touch or face-to-face meeting with a confidant. It all depends on how you use on-line social networking. Knowing how to use social networking can be viewed like knowing how to use a car. For instance, you can drive a car to pick up your friends and then meet them face-to-face to share good times with them. Or you can drive alone and watch your friends having fun on the side of the road. How we use technologies can lead to more integration, rather than more social isolation. For instance, people who seek to meet others tend to be more authentic in their computer-mediated communications than in face-to-face interactions, and marriages that begin on-line are slightly more enduring and satisfying than marriages that begin offline.

There are three main steps to break loneliness (see video). First, do not ignore loneliness. Instead, recognize what it is signaling. When you are thirsty, you recognize that you need water. When you are hungry, you recognize that you need food. When you feel lonely, recognize that you need a confidant. Second, understand what loneliness does to your brain, body, and behavior. Being socially isolated is dangerous for all social species, and our brain has evolved to focus on our own self-preservation. This brings with it some unwanted effects on your thoughts, and behaviors toward others, including increased egocentrism, impulsivity, and hostility. Such reactions may or may not be justified when interacting with others, so be sure that what you “see” in another person is coming from them and not a projection from you. Third, respond to the signal, understanding that it is not the quantity of friends, but the quality of friends that counts. It is not about becoming the most popular; it is about developing one high-quality relationship in which both enjoy the company of the other.

If the obstacles to connection seem overwhelming, consider volunteering for an activity that you enjoy at school, in family and/or in your neighborhood, serving food to the needy; volunteering at a museum, at the library, or at the zoo; or taking time to visit elders in a retirement home. Sharing good times with others is one of the keys to connection. Do not put it off. The next time if you feel socially isolated or rejected, treat this alerting signal in the same way you would hunger or thirst, and get connected!

First published at kids.frontiersin.org

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Join Jason Silva as he freestyles complex systems of society, technology and human existence and discusses the truth and beauty of science in a form of existential jazz.

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