How Community Shapes Your Mind, Body, and Well-Being

Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman show. It wasn't career achievement, it wasn't exercise, it wasn't a healthy diet that determined the quality and happiness of your life. It was good relationships. Good relationships keeps us healthier and happier. The holidays are supposed to be joyful, but for many of us, they're stressful. Between travel, family, busy schedules, and late nights, our bodies burn through magnesium past. Magnesium is responsible for over 600 processes in the body, including sleep, muscle relaxation, mood, and stress response. Most of us are deficient without even knowing it. That's why I take magnesium breakthrough from bioptimizers. It has all seven essential forms of magnesium in one capsule, so your body can actually absorb and use it. This holiday season, give your body what it needs to feel calm and sleep better. Visit bioptimizers.com slash hyman and use code hyman to say 15%. Before we jump into today's episode, I wanna share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey. While I wish I could work with everyone one-on-one, there just isn't enough time in the day, so I've built several tools to help you take control of your health. If you're looking for guidance, education, and community, check out my private membership, the Hyman Hive, for live Q and A's, exclusive content, and direct connection. For real-time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit Function Health. You can also explore my curated Dr. Trusted Supplements and Health Products at drhyman.com. And if you prefer to listen without any breaks, don't forget you can enjoy every episode of this podcast, ad-free with Hyman Plus. Just open Apple podcasts and tap Try Free to start your seven-day free trial. What do the longest living and most joyous people in the world have in common? Well, they all share one common trait, a sense of belonging, of community, of connection. You know, when we have a tribe to live on, when we are connected to others, when we have a sense of belonging, when we feel it's worth outside of ourselves, we can really tap into an incredible array of our own inner pharmacy, not the doctor's pharmacy, but our own inner biochemistry lab and our brain that regulates so much of our health. So when we're talking about today, it's how the strength of our relationships is one of the key factors, maybe the key factor, in terminating longevity. I'll just say a quick story about a community that I might have mentioned before, but it's a Rosetta, Pennsylvania, and it was read about this years ago. I want to deep pack Chopra's books. And they found that there was this tribe of, not tribe, but community of Italians that came over on mass from Italy, from this little town in Italy. And there were all different levels of society, wealth and achievement and success, at least monetarily. But they all came over, but the thing that was unique about them was that they had a deep sense of community. And no matter what station life you were, who you were, everybody celebrated everything together, all the holidays, all the birthdays, and the weddings, and the funerals, and everything was in community. And then when they came to the States, they adopted the same crappy lifestyle habits as Americans, but they didn't die at the same rate because they had this sense of connection. Now we know a lot about this research because one of the biggest factors in terms of your risk for premature death is loneliness. Being lonely and socially isolated is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. That's really serious. So biological aging is a result of all of our stressors and our psychological stressors and relational stressors, our lack of connection is really important. A lack of physical touch, lack of intimacy plays a huge role, not lack of being understood and seen and witnessed. There's a huge role in so much of the ailments that we're suffering, not just mental illness, but also physical illness and our longevity. So this whole idea of socio-genomics, I actually came up with this term years ago when I was in Haiti and then it became part of medical literature, not because of me, but because other people also started glomming onto it. And it was the idea that our social relationships and our social networks may be more important than our genetic connections in determining our health and our health outcomes. And that our lifestyle certainly influences our genes, but so does our social connections, our relationships influence our gene expression. And it's really not an abstract theory or notion. It literally is biology, our thoughts, our beliefs, our relationships all drive real changes that we can measure in our gene expression that control inflammation, stress hormones. So for example, you're having a conversation with somebody, if it's a loving, connected, intimate conversation, your anti-inflammatory genes will turn on, your healing and repair genes will turn on. Whereas if you're in a conflictual relationship or a conversation with somebody, you're gonna have your stress hormones increase, you're gonna have inflammation increase, you're gonna increase all sorts of bad things in your body that are produced by your body that cause harm. So we have huge, huge, huge motivation, I think, to focus as a key part of our health strategy and just life happiness strategy, a deep sense of community and making sure we build that. So our social connections, our community and relationships, all are associated with long lifespan, with a better mental health, with improved physical health, things like blood pressure, waste, or conference, body mass, inflammation. Now I was in Ikaria and Sardinia, which are two of the blue zones in the peninsula. And one of the things these communities have in common where people live to be longer than anywhere else, and I wrote a lot about this in Young Forever, my new book, was the power of community. They all were part of this fabric, and they all had their place, they all had their role, they all had a meaning and purpose. Even if you're 100 years old, I remember Julia was 103 months, she said, and she basically was still working at 100 years old, making all sorts of wedding accoutrements, like doilies and little lace things, I don't know what they do ornately, but it was kind of cool to see her, she was constantly working and making stuff for all these weddings, and was still involved in the community life. So I want to share a little bit about a study that kind of reflects the power of this, and it was an 80 year study called the Harvard Study of Adult Development, and it had been producing data on so many different things on who lives longer, happier, healthier lives, and they wanted to understand not what makes people sick, but what makes people thrive, what makes them well. So, what were the lessons from this study? It was 84 year study, right, long study. They were tracking the same people, and over generations, asking thousands of questions, hundreds of measurements to find out what really makes people healthy and happy. And they were giving, these people were giving regular updates on their life, their health, their income, their employment, their marital status, they filled out questionnaires, and were part of interviews where they revealed their fears and their hopes, their disappointments, their accomplishments, their regrets, life satisfaction, and lots more. And this had a really incredible impact by providing lots of data. Then researchers used this data to assess how people's lives, their experiences, their attitudes affect their wellbeing. And one of the things that was so powerful from this study was sort of surprising. It wasn't career achievement, it wasn't exercise, it wasn't a healthy diet that determined the quality and happiness of your life. It was good relationships. Good relationships keeps us healthier and happier. That was powerful. And the studies leaders that are, I mean obviously the people who started the study are dead, but the current leader of the study, Robert Waldinger from Harvard and Mark Schultz have a new book, it's called The Good Life, Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. And it's a great book. I actually had Robert Waldinger on the podcast, The Doctors Pharmacy, and you can learn more about the book and things there. But what are the things that we can do? What are the lessons learned from this study? But how do we improve the quality of our relationships? First, we have to look at ourselves, right? Who are we? What is our life like? What are the choices we're making? How are we not prioritizing relationships? So we can get really busy. We can do all sorts of stuff that we think is helping us get ahead. We can spend too much time on social media, but we often don't really think about building and investing in the quality and the number of our relationships. And for me, I know personally that my relationships, my friendships, my community is the most important thing for me. It really is what keeps me grounded, keeps me healthy, keeps me happy. And then more and more as I get older, I focus more on this as opposed to like, when you have kids in a career and you try to just kind of get by. And it's like, sometimes friends can fall by the wayside, but it's really important to find, and it even can be just one or two good friends. It makes a huge difference. Now, when these people in the study actually were interviewed, they really actually benefited from this interview is because it helped them realize where they neglected their relationships and then they considered sort of looking and finding, well, how can we improve that? So maybe look at your own life. What's your social life like? What are the, who are the people in your life that you care most about? That you want to have a relationship, think about how they support you and how often you spend time together and maybe do a little bit of effort to actually focus on what matters to you most and help you make decisions that actually can enhance the quality and number of your relationships. So maybe spend more time with people who make you laugh and who elevate you and less time with people who drain you and are energy saps. So I think it's important to find friends and community members that help bring you up and not take you down. Sometimes you meet with people who only want to do is complain and go on and on about everything. And I think there are other people who when you're around them, you laugh, you have fun, you play and it's just, that's what you want. Prioritize your relationships. We schedule in exercise, we make ourselves maybe time to make a healthy diet, we focus on our career and work, but we don't focus on prioritizing those relationships that matter and being showing up and being present for us, rather than zoning out on social media, rather than like doing a million things at once, focus on your relationships. You don't want to drink COVID, I think we all felt a little isolated. And so I reached out to about six of my close male friends and we all have known each other for 40 often, plus years, maybe 35, the smallest, I think was 25 years. And so we've known each other and we formed this group and every Tuesday at six o'clock, we meet for an hour and a half and spend time together and share about our lives. And it's been one of the most impactful things I've done. And it's something that you can do. It doesn't take any organization, you just need a Zoom link or it's really pretty easy. And you can have these deep connections and relationships that allow you to be seen and known and can really help activate so many healing pathways in your body. Make time to talk to people, right? And it came in sometimes a small relationship as a matter, but a study in the University of Kansas found that the simple act of just reaching out to somebody, a friend for conversation once a day, dramatically increases happiness and lowers their stress hormones. So hanging out with friends lowers your stress hormones, pretty good. And also, it's all about you, right? So take time to ask questions, find out what's exciting for them, find out what they're struggling with, find out what makes them happy, have them share their life with you and value their opinions, be present, focus and don't just kind of be superficial with them, but go deep. So maybe try to have one conversation a day and put that in your calendar and see what the effects will be over time. Super important. Next thing is be kind. My grandmother used to ask my mother when she came home and said, I met this new friend, she says, are they kind? And I think kindness was such an important value in my family and how do we be kind to each other? And the relationship of happiness is determined by how you are in that relationship. And there was a research study in Michigan State that looked on data for our 2,500 married couples. And they found they were, how good they were in five different dimensions. Were they extroverts, were they agreeable, were they conscientious, were they stable emotionally, were they open to doing new things and experiences? And the ones who had higher levels of agreeableness and emotional stability also had higher happiness. So the more kind and positive you were, the more likely you were to be happy. So people invest a lot of time in finding someone who's perfectly compatible, but that might not be the whole story. It's more about being kind to the people you care about and fostering those deep connections. Also, a friend of mine had a word that I really loved which is called cop-to-itiveness, which is where you cop to it. If you screw up, if you make a mistake, you cop to it. And it's really about learning to apologize, learning to repair relationships, learning how to have non-violent communication and owning your stuff. Like I said, also a great way to build relationships is to ask questions. Instead of talking about yourself, ask questions about somebody. Show that you care, show that you're interested in what they care about or thinking about. So once advice, don't just give them your opinion. Ask them questions to guide them to the right answer that they know themselves. Also, don't be shy about expressing your love. There are lots of ways to love and lots of ways to express it. Maybe it's simple things. I had a flight that came in the other night late and I usually take the Uber home. And my partner, she showed up unexpected and picked me up at the airport. It was like, just brought me such joy and delight. It was such a simple thing, you know, in 10, 15 minutes from the airport here. And it wasn't a big deal for her, but it made a huge difference in terms of my own happiness. And it was really powerful. So help your friends with a project. You know, ask them what they need to do, whether it's clean up the garage or work on a project together. You know, call an old friend. Maybe they haven't heard from you in a while. Maybe you just wanna check in on them, ask them how they're doing. Maybe you wanna focus on helping somebody who's trying to do something that, you know, maybe difficult for them, trying to support them and give them some love. Also, when you have a partner or a close friend, do little acts of kindness, give them a little gift, you know, buy them something they like, you know, give them something that makes them smile. It can be super simple. You know, when you often don't do these acts, kind of life just, it's a little bit flatter. And when you do them, it's super fun. Like I said, when my partner picked me up at the airport, it was like, wow, you know, I got that she really cared. Also, tell people how you feel about them. Don't wait until they're eulogy to tell them all the things you like about them. Be specific, give people feedback about what you love about them, what you liked about them, what makes you happy and how you feel in their presence, who would you be without them? You know, who would you be now that you're with them? What do they inspire you to do? And thank them for what they do and how they show up for you. Don't be shy. Like I said, don't wait until someone's dead to write a eulogy about them. It's better to have eulogies when you're alive. And I actually had a group, friend group, where we would get together. And on people's birthdays, we would basically go around and for everybody's birthday, we would share a little bit about what they're like and what we like about them, what we love about them, something that inspires us about them. And it's like getting a living eulogy, it's pretty awesome. The holidays are supposed to be joyful, but for many of us, they're stressful. Between travel, family, busy schedules, and late nights, our bodies burn through magnesium past. Magnesium is responsible for over 600 processes in the body, including sleep, muscle relaxation, mood, and stress response. Most of us are deficient without even knowing it. That's why I take magnesium breakthrough from bioptimizers. It has all seven essential forms of magnesium in one capsule, so your body can actually absorb and use it. This holiday season, give your body what it needs to feel calm and sleep better. Visit bioptimizers.com slash hymen and use code hymen to save 15%. MUSIC We are literally born inside of a mother's womb, so we are born in community and without it, we cannot survive or thrive, right? And it's so clear that our lack of belonging or isolation is the actual essential issue that ladders down to every other societal problem that we are facing today. So, God, violence... Unpack that for us, because it's a big statement that loneliness is a cause of so many of societal illness. It's every societal illness. So, obesity epidemic, our lack of... So, tell us how each one, obesity because... Because, so, being socially isolated is as harmful to your physical health as being an alcoholic, and twice as harmful as obesity, because cellularly, right, we end up storing more... And again, you're the doctor here, but there's so much sort of knowledge around and studies around when you don't belong, all of a sudden, your cellular reactions become slower, you're metabolizing food less fast, and there's actually a lot of studies that I've read around that. Maybe you're depressed and anxious and using food as your source of... Well, that too, of course, that too. But it actually sets off a cellular chain reaction, our lack of belonging and isolation sets off this sort of cellular chain reaction that sort of slows down our metabolism as well. But also, every anxiety and depression, one in three college students are anxious or depressed today. One of the reasons we launched David Carrin College campuses is because my fiance's little brother, three of his best friends commit suicide in college, and turns out it's... Wow. What's the word? It's contagious. And so he... It's true, both positive and negative behaviors are contagious. Absolutely, exactly. And so we looked into it and we realized, oh my gosh, there's such a huge issue on college campuses around drinking, binge drinking, and so we wanted to create David Carrin College campuses to inspire connection without substances, as well as we're now on 15 campuses. Yes, we're getting up at six o'clock to go dance in the night. Well, gosh, we start a little bit later because they're definitely not gonna come and we have to lure them with burritos, but it's cool. Okay, dancing with burritos. Yeah, but I... And so unpacking some more, our political strife right now, the political polarization that we're facing today, I think the Make America Great again, hats, the red hats that people are wearing on the Republican side, it's a statement of connection and community. I'm a part of something. And these are disenfranchised community members often who are being recruited and who are saying, hey, join our barbecue, we're cooking for everybody, here's some hats for you guys. And all of a sudden I went from feeling like I don't belong to here's a community that really is welcoming with open arms, the pipe bombers, all of the gun violence that we're facing today, many of whom are mentally have mental illnesses, well, 85% of people experiencing mental illness are isolated or alone. And so because we ostracize them from society, they're not welcome because they're not mentally sort of abled, right? And so that piece of it only sort of creates that sense of anger. And so it's on each and every one of us to, out there who's listening on this podcast right now to really make friends with everybody, whether it's someone who's older than you, younger than you, someone who's mentally sort of experiencing mental illness, how can we actually bridge those divides that every single human on this planet can belong? And so the cover of my book has a doorway on it, right? Because the concept of neighborhood, neighborliness is also lost. I live in New York City, we live in New York City. We don't, do you know your neighbor's names? Do you know the neighbor across the street? Yeah, we just moved in. I don't know my neighbors, I've been there for three years. And I try to make friends with them and there's sort of this kind of don't talk to me type thing. And so we're making a big effort. We have a welcome committee, like little figurines outside our door that says, welcome to our home, if you need salt, come and borrow it. And we're trying, but it's on all of us, society needs to embrace the concept of neighborhood again. Good thing if you not need sugar, but if you need salt. Yeah, exactly. You're not gonna get a bag of white sugar and buy this house. Definitely. Yeah, so, but I think community, the most generous act we can do as human beings is to create community. The most generous thing we can do for ourselves and for each other is to sort of extend our hand and say, hey, will you be my friend? So that's true for me, when I turned 30 years old, I looked myself in the mirror and I realized I didn't belong. And that was the beginning of my journey to community. And that's the first page of my book. Yeah, in my 20s, I spent sort of sleepwalking. I was in sports bars watching football, drinking beer that I didn't wanna drink and trying to be cool and relevant and hanging out with what I thought society, sort of deemed as cool, like going to clubs and getting drunk and blacking out all the time because I'm Asian and I can't handle my liquor. And then at 30 years old, I woke up and I had this like, whoa, a ha moment where I was just like, what have I been doing? Like, who am I? And that the light in my eyes was dim and I just could. Hard to imagine. I mean, right, but in this last nine years. You mean your sister had like headlight, high beams, shining in the world. Well, this is the last nine years, right? Like we totally, and you're such a dear friend now. And our community is what gives us that life. And so from 30 to 35, Mickey and I spent all of our effort and time focusing on community. And I create all the exercises for myself. And in my book, I talk about going in, right? You have to go in first to belong to yourself. So often with community building, we're grasping outside of ourselves to find those friends, but it really starts with this journey of self-expiration first to get to know who we are, what we value, what we can bring to a community and how we're showing up. How are we at listening? How are we at connecting with everyone around us? And- It's almost like focusing on not only how to find a friend, but how to be a friend. Yes, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. So the first half of my book really challenges the reader in a gentle and loving way to go inside and ask themselves, how are we showing up? And how can we sort of trying to light on ourselves first in a beautiful way, in a glorious way before we go out? I think so much of self-help today also, it traps us. We get trapped in self-help. We get trapped in personal development. That we forget that the whole point of personal development is to do what? It's a better relate to the outside world, right? We go inside- It's called self-care, but it really should be, we care. Yeah, right, exactly. It's like, I'm going to get a massage. I'm going to take care. I'm going to eat healthy so that I can take care of my children better. I can serve my community better so that I can show up for the world better. And yet we forget that. We just get trapped in the look at me selfie moments without realizing that that's actually the ladder down to isolation, loneliness and sadness. So in Okinawa, which is one of the longest of people in the world, they form a community at birth of babies that are kind of connected by their parents that go through life together and go through all the ups and downs and trials and tribulations from birth to like 100 years old. And it builds a sense of, and it's not like 100 people, it's like five people or four people. And it's, you know, most people can't even say there's one friend they have, they can call up when they feel bad or sad, who they can have an honest, transparent conversation to. It's really heartbreaking and it's so much of a driver, of somebody the ills of our side, it's something people don't talk about. And it's what, you know, when we were with Rick Warren and Saddleback Church, I had the insight of using the power of community to help people create health. So suicide is contagious, but health is contagious. That's right. And obesity is contagious, but so is, you know, Good health. Good health. Right. And I think that's such an important thing you're creating in the world. This is called to belong and not only to belong, but actually you've created a very specific roadmap. So I'm going to get into that now. You've talked about going in to go out. So let's talk about going in and what that means and how do you do that? Right. So, you know, I have about 20 exercises in my book that really take you by the hand. The whole point is to get dirty in this journey of self exploration and have fun. But going in starts with first an audit of who are you spending your time with? Right. Just take a moment to write down who are the people I'm spending my time with today at work, at home, around me, family, friends, relatives, who are all the people you're spending your time with. And just write that down on a piece of paper and take a look at this map. Right. And this map will begin to and what I like to do is color code it. So work friends, I'll color code in green, right? And family, I'll color code in red and and friends that I choose. I'll color code in orange, right? So different cultures to sort of see, OK, cool. So, you know, and then I have this kind of access of energy that I created in my book on the in chapter one in part one of the book where where you sort of assess. OK, who are the community members who are bringing me up and who are the community members of my life are bringing me down? So looking around, you begin to see, ah, cool. So all the green quadrant sort of is up into the right. So therefore, I realize that my work life is very positive. I have very positive community at work. But then maybe there's more red dots around family and friends in the negative quadrants. So you're like, ah, OK, I need to really understand and assess what's happening in my family life so I can really heal that or support that or ask myself, you know, how do I connect and handle family members? And we've all, you know, we all we've all we're all we all go through that. And so so really look. Although I know your family, they're all pretty awesome. Well, you know, we all. Your mom's Japanese. My dad's. Yeah. My sister's a doctor. And then the sisters, you know. Well, you know, it's and culturally it's interesting, right? Like, you know, my father and mother, most of the most loving community builders. I know, in fact, they they they modeled what community looks like for us. And yet it's interesting because culturally talking about love and sex and differently, you know, you just don't talk about those things with your with your with your kind of Asian parents. And so on one hand, they're the best community builders I've seen. On the other hand, you know, I do long for a little bit more kind of emotional honesty, honesty. Yeah. But I think, again, like we all have those those sort of issues. I'm going through the motherhood process right now. I'm seven months pregnant. I keep asking myself every day, you know, what kind of, you know, what kind of parent do I want to be? And anyway, so to plotting this graph, you begin to sort of see a pattern of, OK, cool. So, you know, here is my entire life, you know, life map. And and it begins to give you a sort of the beginning of that story. And then from there, you ask yourself, OK, why why am I spending my time with these people? Are they grandfathered in? Are we making excuses? Am I being lazy? Is it just easier to keep them around? You know, what is it? Do I not have the givers or energy suckers? That's right. Exactly. And and and and can I and and can I sort of be honest and vulnerable with that person and share, hey, listen, this is how I'm feeling right now in this relationship. And it's not working for me. Or I'm really, you know, sort of wanting to spend time with, you know, sort of more positive forces. I'm going through pregnancy right now. And I don't necessarily. I just want to spend just some more time connecting with the joy in my life, you know, and things like that, right, being more honest and vulnerable. And I've had those conversations and it's and it's wonderful. Either it becomes a mirror for that person to say, oh, wow, I realize I'm not showing up the way you want me to or there or they say, OK, I totally understand and let's, you know, reconnect after you give birth, you know. So so I think that there's there's that honesty piece there that we forget. We end up just ghosting our people in our lives. You know, we end up running away or we end up shit talking and it ends up being a very negative experience. But, you know, saying saying sort of this isn't the time to spend time with somebody right now because I want to level up with my community members is the best thing you can do for yourself and for your friend, too, because they will begin to see how they're showing up. And hopefully they'll go on the journey of self expiration, too. So rather than just cut them off, just have a real honest conversation with them. That's right. That takes courage and vulnerability on all of our ends, but it doesn't create a resentment on the other side that leads to negative storytelling and hurt and all other sort of, you know, larger issues. So that's the first step. The first step is taking inventory. Yeah, taking inventory. Exactly. Auditing community you spend time with. The second thing that I did when I turned 30, and this is this is exactly what I outlined in my book is my own journey that's taking me from feeling like I don't belong to this incredible, connected, joyful community that gives me wings and and and lets me fly. The second thing I did was I wrote down a three column list and which we'll get into and just as a column one was all the qualities of I was looking for a friend, right? So I just wanted to write down and actually manifest and call in what were the qualities I was looking for in a friend, right? We do this type of audit again for our romantic relationships. We do this for our professional careers, right? I want a job that pays this much. I want a job that has this type of vacation. I want a job that you write like all of the life. Essentially, in terms of life planning, it's not a category. It's like love, work, money. Exactly. Friend is not a category. And it is the most important. When I say the most important category in life to focus on and everyone says, focus on money, power, fame and building a business. And but really none of it will happen and or will result in joy or joyful life experience if you don't have a community being like, oh, my gosh, Mark, high five, like, whoa, we get to celebrate your major win. New York Times bestseller list again. Holy shit. Let's go throw a giant party for you. You know what I mean? If you're just kind of like writing by yourself in your room and if no one is celebrating, then at the end of it, you're empty again, you know? So it's so critical that we continue to put our laptops down and keep our word and go to those dinners with our friends and say yes to the dance floor and say yes to adventure because at the end of the day, no matter no amount of success will mean anything if there's no one to celebrate it with. Right. So. So so so column one was all the qualities of looking for a friend. Right. So I wanted friends talked about ideas and not each other. I wanted friends who said, yeah, bleep that out to life. I wanted friends who, you know, really took care of themselves and and and to care of each other. I wanted friends who were interesting and interested, right? Who are good listeners. I wanted friends. Yeah, I just I just so I just I wrote down everything I was looking for a friend, which was kind of vulnerable, because there's so much shame around saying I don't belong or there's so much shame around writing down the cause. It just feels desperate for some reason in today's society. Right. But if we just removed, right, that's something. But if we removed all of that stigma, because there is stigma around FOMO, right, fear of missing out and fear of being left out. You don't tell people like, yeah, I was left out from the party and it really hurt. Like you're we're so proud. We don't really talk about that, right? But Foublos is a concept talk in my book quite a bit, which is fear of being left out, right, which is a more subversive negative version of FOMO. Yeah. Right. And then Jomo is Joy of Missing Out, which is the joy of of of missing out and having the confidence to know there's other things to do. Yeah. But to calm to calm too is all the cause. I don't want a friend, right? So I don't want friends who are negative Nellie's, Lazy's, shoulder shruggers, Debbie Downer, Debbie Downer's Netflix and, you know, chill, watchers all the time and homebodies. Like I wanted friends who are just like, you know, really say yes to life. Say yes. Like and I call it an F Y F in my book. And then somebody else might want a friend that they can sit around and do meeting with. That's right. That's what I'm saying. So everyone's different. So your qualities are going to be very different from my qualities, whoever's listening out there, right? And that's exactly what you want to do right now is ask yourself, where do I feel the most energized? And then column three, perhaps the most important column was all the qualities that I need to embody in order to attract the friends that I want. All the qualities that I need to embody. So I need to be less of a workaholic. I love my work. You know, I need to put my laptop down. I need to be less judgmental and nitpicking and perfectionist. And, you know, I'm a CEO, right? I run companies for a living. And so my job is to focus on what's going wrong. Right. My job is to focus on how to improve what's going wrong. So if I bring that, I used to bring that into my relationships, into my friendships. I'd be nitpicking what's going wrong in those relationships instead of being grateful for what's going right. Yeah. So that sort of understanding your frame of it. Yes. That compartmentalization of in my work, I'm going to be focused on really kind of wanting to improve service and product and whatever, but in my personal life to really compartmentalize and say, Hey, wait, let me really focus on what's going right. Especially, you know, as an Asian woman, you know, you grow up in a household where it's like you're only loved if you get an A, you know, A plus. You know, so it's, it's. And you did all right. You were into Cornell and you were on a varsity soccer team. And, but yeah. So, so I think, I think it's, it's so important to take that audit, you know, and look in the mirror and ask yourself, you know, how are you showing up for your friends too? So that was a really important. And going in is doing an inner material life and what matters. Looking at yourself, looking at yourself, where you're not the best friend and what you want. That's right. The quality is looking at. So what else is part of going in? So going in, there's also another exercise I do and there's so many more about share one. By the way, the book is full of these amazing practical exercises. It's not like, Oh, you should be in a community and you should go out of friends and it's like a roadmap step by step to take you through the process of how do you create community capacity in yourself and how do you build and find community? And it's really, really awesome. Thank you. And I illustrated the book too. So every page is fun to read. Like, I, you know, I have a bunch of words. It's very, it's like, I really like pictures and colors and it just makes the whole journey of, of community building a lot more playful and, and colorful. So what are the other going in? So yeah. So one more going in exercise I'll share before we, we know, move on to going out is I have you also assess what I call your via chart. So, so it's a, imagine a three sort of Venn diagram, three circles that you draw. So circle one is your values. The V in via is your values. The I in value in the via chart is your interests and the A is your abilities. So just write down your values, your interests and your abilities in three concentric circles and sit down with yourself and ask yourself today, Mark Hyman, what do I value today? Because what you value today is going to be different than what you valued maybe 10 years ago, maybe 10 years ago, your big party animal. And then now, he's still are, I mean, you know, he's still not exchanged. I still see it burning man. Fist pumping on the dance floor, but, but today, you know, maybe, you know, you just got married to beautiful wife. You're nesting, you move, you have a house in New York now. And, and so maybe your values today are family driven and whereas 10 years ago, I might have been different. So I'm, you know, I'm seven months pregnant today as well. So my values are different and values are sort of kind of the guardrails through which you live your life. You know, what are the, what are things that matter to you? And you can Google values and see sort of what values come up. And there's all kinds of lists that come up in my book. I list out about a hundred values that you can choose from, but it's also made, you can find the internet and you can begin to sort of map out what do I care about today and really sit with yourself and, and connect to that, that essence. So write that down on one circle and that will give you again, the beginning of roadmap for the type of other people that you want to connect with, like what are, you know, sort of shared values are so critical, right? Yeah. And then the I, As if you name it, then you can identify others, right? That's right. Exactly. And then the I in, in your via chart is your interests. So, so what am I interested in today? So, you know, it's different from your values and your values is more sort of kind of intrinsic qualities, family, you know, community, work, life balance, you know, that sort of thing, right? Whereas your interests might be things like hiking and yoga and mindful meditation and music festivals and, you know, and day breaker and day breaker. Yeah. Thank you. And all kinds of, right? So, so it's, it's, what are you interested in, in tangibly doing today? And then, you know, some people I do this workshop with was like, well, I don't know. I don't, we all have interests, right? So dig deep. If, if, you know, if you don't have an interest right now, then start cultivating them, you know, and that's, and that's, but that's what's so fun about this going in journey is that life is, we have a hundred years to live on this planet. Let's really begin cultivating our interests that are outside of just work. Only, only a hundred years if you eat right. Right. Right. Follow my advice and connect in the community and follow Rada's advice. Then you get to a hundred. Exactly. If you read all of Mark's books, yeah, for sure. And, and then your abilities are, and I really think about abilities through the lens of what can you bring to your community? So what are your abilities? Not just like I'm a good public speaker, but what can you bring to your community? So are you, is one of your abilities to ask amazing questions? Is one of your abilities to, to cook? Are you a good cook and chef? Can you cook for your friends? Are you with one of your abilities to gather people in your home? Is your home a really wonderful place to gather? Is, you know, one of my, you're a great DJ. Exactly. Exactly. So like two of my friends, I love giving this example. You know, one of them, she always has a purse full of like electric candles. So that went, you know, she, she really, she like doesn't like neon lighting. So she'll walk into any room and she'll just be like, Oh, no, no, no, this is like too harsh. Like she'll turn off all the lights and break out all these like electric candles and like vibes out the place instantly. And it's incredible. And you have these other friends who are great sort of artists, musicians, who are always play great things and do skits. And that's exactly right. It's so fun. Yeah. So they bring instruments like Eli and I bring gold stars often to gathering. So we'll say, Mark, you did great. You know, it was a wonderful thing. You just said, here's a gold star for you. Right. You know, we went to the hospital when Eli's father was sick and we gave all the doctors and nurses gold stars and said, thank you for what you're doing. Great job. You know, checking his pulse. You look at you like, what? And they all started competing with each other for how many the doctors, like serious doctor competing with each other for how many. It's like kindergarten. Yeah. For how many gold stars they got. And they put in their badges and it was this like hysterical experience. And we turned this sort of otherwise scary place into a playground. And, you know, it's whatever we can bring that feels good for us. It feels natural to us. Bring that to your community and your experience and write that in your abilities chart. We often think of ourselves as what we're into, not what we do. Like we, we like to judge ourselves by our interests and our actions. And so I think what you do is a better measure of who you are. Like, how do you actualize the things that you say that you're into? And it's so hard, especially when it's like against your, your, your brand, like not eating sugar, you know, a third meal. Whatever, when you have the cake, it's that kind of thing. Um, yeah. And when it comes to community, when it comes to friendship, you know, like you need to actually do the things. So you said, you know, like the best way to be invited to parties to host the party. Well, that's exactly right. And every community has someone that makes it their charge, um, to gather and organize that community to bring people together. Um, and so that's the first step. And then I think that part of the work is on yourself. Like if you want to build community in any space, if you want to have friends that have certain traits or, um, or expertise or interests, you have to be interesting in that space. So like, you know, for, for you, um, I think that if I had literally just no interest whatsoever in the things that you do in our passion about, it would probably be an odd friendship and vice versa. Right. It would just be like, okay, nice enough guy, but like, I gotta become friends. I gotta start spending time together and hanging out. But if I, you know, like I imagine you talk to people who, who, you know, are huge fans of your work and read every one of your books, but they don't, they're not coming up with questions to the, the ideas, the big ideas. If, if, uh, so for me, you know, if you're saying like, how did it start? Like, how do we begin? It's not about how we maintain relationships now. Um, uh, it's how, like when you're, when you have, you know, a couple of friends, you're not in a particular field. You don't have cool, you know, the cool people around you can help you build and grow your life. Um, you know, I love that the word enthusiasm of the root is in fears. It means wisdom. Right. And if you can find your enthusiasm and you can learn in enthusiasm, then it's not work and then you can become great at something and you can become knowledgeable at something and start collecting the questions that you have and then ask your stupid questions to really knowledgeable people when you get the opportunity and it's fun for them. I'd say that's the whole game. Now you're a fun friend. Now you're interesting to talk to. And then you take that next step, which is like, you know, all, you can't take it personally, people are busy. But if I asked you, you know, five times to go and do something interesting, whether it's a small gathering with other people or go for a hike or do whatever. It's just again, like, uh, I guess I'll end with this to this particular, uh, question. Uh, there's a, there's a, we talked about it in the book, it's getting Michael Hebb, he's a dear friend of ours. He's like, you know, there's a artist around the table. He's the one who said that, you know, the table is the greatest, greatest piece of human technology ever created. And the first time I met him, yeah. And the first time I met him, he pulled me or chatting and was like, Hey, man, you know, sometimes people say, uh, keep it real. There was a gap. Oh yeah. The music, do you keep it real? Yeah, bro. I keep it real. It's like, yeah, don't do that. Ah, what you need to do is keep it surreal and just do things a little bit beyond other people's imagination. Just a little bit of surprise. This is not like rocket science. We don't need you to paint a boss. Yeah. We just need you to meet the trust. Yeah. It's so great. You were sort of talking about really a key part of building friendships and relationships is being interested and curious. And it's a reminder of my mother who said to me, not, what did you learn in school today, but what questions did you ask? And so I was always annoying. Guys, your mom sounds brilliant. Who asked also questions. I was a kid in medical school who sat in the front row and when he leaves, I understood everything and asked every question I had. And I knew that all the time because I want to learn. You know, I think, I think I read it in your book, we have, we have two ears and one mouth and we should use them in that ratio. And I think that's exactly right. And that's how you build connection and community. I want to just do it before you move on. When you say that quote, two ears, one mouth, totally agree, but you also have to use your mouth. You can't just use your ears only, right? And I would imagine that there are people in that class of ears who are like, man, Mark, go away. Wish this guy would be annoying. Yeah. Sure. I'm sure that. But, but I'm sure there were way, way, way more who were like, man, so appreciated that Mark asked that question. I wouldn't have asked for that question that I wouldn't have thought of. 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