Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #80 Why Spending Time With Your Friends Is More Important Than You Think with Dhru Purohit

Episode Date: October 22, 2019

Loneliness is an epidemic. We are surrounded by people yet many of us feel empty. Why is this? This week, one of my best friends, entrepreneur and podcast host, Dhru Purohit explains that many of us are craving deep meaningful connected friendships and we don’t even know it. We have the feeling that we are in control of our lives, that we are surviving, but we miss the fact that we need a deep connection to others to truly thrive. We discuss the power of touch and how having someone to open up to about the way you feel literally calms your nervous system down. We talk about why making friendships is harder as an adult and why this is a particular problem for men – a fifth of whom say they don’t have any close friends. We chat about our own personal experiences and what works for us. These days, many of us expect our partner to be everything to us – from confidant to our best friend – Dhru explains why having friendships outside of our intimate relationships is essential. Finally, we delve into how we can deepen the friendships we have and how communication is essential to maintain them. Dhru’s insights are invaluable and I think they will really make you examine the relationships in your life. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, I hope it inspires you to take some time out to sit down and talk to one of your friends. Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/friendship Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most people don't realize that they have a friendship and a disconnection problem. We have people around us. We have friends online. There's people that we're following. It doesn't seem, we're not isolated. We're not in the woods somewhere living in a cabin by ourself, not seeing anybody. So most people don't even recognize that there's a challenge when it comes to deep, meaningful, connected friendships in their life and the impact that it has on everything else that they care about. Hi, my name is Rangan Chastji, GP, television presenter, and author

of the best-selling books, The Stress Solution and The Four-Pillar Plan. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people both within as well as outside the health space to hopefully inspire you as well

as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier because when we feel better, we live more. Hello and welcome back to episode 80 of my Feel Better Live More podcast. My name is Rangan Chatterjee and I am your host. Now today's conversation is all about a topic that I don't feel gets mentioned enough in the context of our health and our well-being, and that is friendship. For me, friendship is not a luxury for good health, it's an absolute necessity. You see, loneliness is an epidemic

at the moment. We're surrounded by so many people these days, especially online, yet many of us feel empty. So why is this? Well, this week, one of my close friends, entrepreneur and podcast host, Drew Perhitt, explains that many of us are craving deep, meaningful, connected friendships, yet we don't even know it. We have the feeling that we are in control of our lives, that we are surviving, but we miss the fact that we need a deep connection to others in order to truly thrive. We discuss the power of touch and how having someone to open up to about the way that you feel

literally calms your nervous system down. We talk about why making friendships is harder as an adult and why this is a particular problem for men, a fifth of whom say they don't have any close friends. We also chat very openly about our own personal experiences and what works for us. These days, many of us expect our partner to be everything to us, from confidant to our best friend. And Drew explains why having friendships outside of our intimate relationships is absolutely essential. Finally, we delve into how we can deepen the friendships that we already have and how communication is essential to maintain them. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and I'm pretty sure it's going to inspire you to

take some time out to sit down and spend more time with your friends. Now, before we get started, as always, I do need to give a quick shout out to some of the sponsors of today's show who are essential in order for me to continue putting out weekly episodes like this one. Vivo Barefoot Shoes are supporting today's podcast and I have to say I am delighted that they continue to do so. I am a huge fan of Vivo Barefoot Shoes and have been for many years now. I've experienced a lot of benefits myself but also with many of my patients especially when it comes to issues with back pain, knee pain and hip pain. Vivo Barefoot Shoes are minimalist shoes. And basically, I wear them anytime I'm not barefoot. So for walking,

for work, but also for exercising. For listeners of my show, they have come up with a great deal. They are offering 20% off to all customers in the UK, US, Australia and selected EU countries. So if you had thought about giving them a go in the past, this is a great incentive to start. It's important to say that they do offer a 100-day free trial for new customers. So if you are not happy, you can simply send them back for a full refund. I think it is an amazing offer. If you have been sitting on the fence about trying minimalist shoes, do consider taking advantage. You can get your 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes by going to vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more. Now, many of you have already taken advantage of their amazing offer and have fed back to me really positive messages. Some of you unfortunately have not

been able to get the shoes that you wanted and are slightly frustrated. I have spoken to them about this. They are really trying their very best to help. Please do remember they are a small, independently funded and family owned and run business. They're growing super fast as more and more people experience for themselves the benefits of wearing minimalist shoes. And sometimes their supply has been slower than demand, but they are busy cobbling away and new deliveries come in every two months or so. Stock is really good at the moment. So if you've not managed to get the shoes you wanted, I really would encourage you to go back on the website and take a look. As I've already mentioned on previous episodes,

I think these are ideal shoes for our children. Children already have good movement mechanics and I think the longer we can keep them living as close to barefoot as possible, the better it is going to be for their long-term mobility and function. Please do remember that the kids shoes can easily be passed on from child to child unlike cushioned or padded shoes that shape to someone's feet. Because Vivo Barefoot shoes are so thin they're really easy to pass on from one person to another. There is less scuffing and moulding to any individual's feet and for years this is what I've been doing. I've been passing on my kids shoes to younger siblings, to cousins and friends. Remember,

you can get your 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes by going to vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation. So Drew, welcome to the Feel Better Live More podcast. It's an honor. I'm a fan of the podcast and it's a pleasure and also just honored to be sitting next to one of my dearest friends in the world. Thank you for having me on. Hey man, well, I appreciate that. And I guess that in many ways is what we're here to talk about today, this whole idea of friendship. And it feels a bit different having this conversation because you are one of my best friends.

There's a slightly different dynamic, right? You know, I feel like in many ways we're just, I don't know, we've got a couple of waters there. It's just like we're sitting in a cafe having a chat. Yeah, it's the beauty of it. Yeah, so I hope people feel like they're just sort of eavesdropping in on a private conversation that we might be having. This one just happens to be recorded. We've had so many of these conversations talking about friendship, growth, life, how it impacts all areas of our life, business, family, everything. It just happens that this one is being recorded, being put out on the number one

podcast in Europe. No pressure. No pressure. Well, no pressure for you. So look, in my last book, Drew, I dedicated a whole chapter to friendship. And I think I told you this. I think I put it in the acknowledgements that you and the work that I've seen you put out in many ways inspired that chapter. I think you, I think it was there in the back of my mind, but I think the way you articulated thoughts around friendship that I saw on social media, that I noticed when I was around you, was really quite inspiring. And so I realized that I hadn't really done a conversation on the

podcast yet, specifically on the topic of friendship. Yeah, I've talked about community a lot, but when I was thinking about who can I talk to about friendship, you know, there is no professor of friendship out there that I could find, right? But actually, in many ways, I think you are the professor of friendship because I think you have got a really beautiful way of talking about friendship. You've got a lot of actionable ways for people to think about friendship and how they can start to improve those relationships. So I guess the first place I'd love to start is why are you so passionate about friendship?

I mean, it's a good question. I ask myself this a lot and my friends ask me like, why are you so passionate about friendship? Why do you write about it? Why do you talk about this? Why is it infused into the episodes of the podcast that you record? And I say that I'm so passionate fundamentally because when I would give people advice, whether they would come to me and I've built many businesses before, whether they would come to me about business advice, health advice, any sort of challenge in life, I saw that much like you connected the dots in your book, The Stress Solution, I saw that the fundamental theme of how people navigate the world is the sense of tribe that they're surrounded on.

And I personally have been through times in my life where I felt surrounded by the right tribe and not surrounded by the right tribe and not surrounded by the right tribe and saw the impact that it had on me personally. The other reason that I'm passionate about is that I just recorded an interview with you on my podcast and you said something very interesting. You said that I want to give stress. This is why I wrote the book, The Stress Solution. I want to give stress the attention it deserves and talk about why it's such a problem in our lives and what we can actually do. Why I talk about friendship is that most people don't realize that they have a friendship and a disconnection problem. We have

people around us. We have friends online. There's people that we're following. We're not isolated. We're not in the woods somewhere living in a cabin by ourselves, not seeing anybody. So most people don't even recognize that there's a challenge when it comes to deep, meaningful, connected friendships in their life and the impact that it has on everything else that they care about. Yeah, I mean, that's powerful. And I guess that's what you're doing, aren't you? You're giving friendship the airtime that it deserves. And as we have just spoken about on your show, you know, I really do feel that the health and wellness space has been overly dominated or overly focused

on diets and movements. And I get that, you know. I'm not saying they're not important. I've written about this stuff. I do think they're important, but I think we have overly emphasized them at the expense of other components of our health that are equally important. And you can sometimes make the case that are more important because when you get things like stress and friendship right, as you've already alluded to, a lot of other downstream things come back online, right? And that I'm super interested in. So a couple of things you said there, you said that many of us are not aware that we've got a problem with friendship, right? So do many of us have a problem with friendship? Why can't we see it? And what is that problem? So let's actually give a big picture view of how friendship and

connection is translated into every area of our life. Let's say in a completely off topic from health, let's say you want to find the job of your dreams, the career of your dreams. You want to switch careers because you don't love what you want to do. Well, it turns out that only 50% of jobs in Europe and America are actually posted on sites that are publicly available or career pages for you to find. The rest of them, the other 50% are through networking and deep connections that are out there. Friends saying, hey, this company's hiring and maybe you should try out this career. Let's talk about, let's go back to health. We actually know from the data from the Framingham study, the heart health study that came out of Massachusetts, that our friends have more of an impact on our health behaviors than even our spouse or our parents can have. There was a paper put out by Harvard called the spike,

how obesity is actually a communicable disease in a way. Because when a friend had the largest spike in their weight, their best friend also followed. In fact, it was in the 50s in the percentage of the likelihood that you would, the impact that it would have on your weight, right? So those are just two factors, career, weight. Let's talk about loneliness. We are dealing with, and you've written about this so eloquently inside of your book, The Stress Solution, we are dealing with this epidemic of loneliness. People that are surrounded by other individuals, but actually don't feel like they have one person that's a best friend and men even more susceptible to this. I saw a YouGov study, a survey that came out of the UK,

and almost one fifth of men say they have no close friend. That is crazy to think because friendships, connections, deep, meaningful relationships, they impact every aspect of our life from our health to our happiness. I mean, you had Dan Buechner on your podcast and talking about the blue zones. One of the key factors in the blue zones is not what they eat. It's how they live and these deep, meaningful relationships that are there and how that plays into the sense of connection and belonging in life. Every area of our life is touched by friendships, but just like stress, because it's not always obvious, it goes overlooked.

Yeah, I mean, those blue zones in Okinawa, they have this concept called Moai Mates. those blue zones and in Okinawa they have this concept called Moai Mates um I think it's five friends that these guys have for life that they're there to help um you know um emotionally uh physically when you need physical help financially they're basically five close people who are there for you for life you know you've got that tight group to rely on. And you just shared a very alarming statistic about how many men don't even have one friend or someone. And it sort of echoes that we talk about loneliness. We talk about this loneliness epidemic that is fast spreading throughout the world, which is slightly ironic as we're living in this super connected culture, certainly super digitally connected culture. And a lot of people don't realize that men between

the age of 30 and 45 are actually some of the loneliest, one of the loneliest groups in society. Now that is striking. Like one of the loneliest groups in society, men aged between 30 and 45, that is absolutely one of the reasons why the male suicide rate is so tragically high in that age group. So, you know, is this a problem, would you say, that applies more to men than women? Or does it show up in different ways in these different sexes? So before I get into that question, which I want to answer, I want to set the stage for how it's impacting us all, because the one thing there, both men and women, to look at in our modern day and age is that there's a few factors that are all happening at the same time. And then we

can look at why it might be impacting men a little bit more than women. So the first thing is that our modern life is completely different than how we lived before. There's nobody that's written about this better than you, right? So your listeners know about this aspect. So let's look at some of the ways that it is different when it comes to our relationships, deep connections, and friendships. For thousands of years, no human being could actually really survive on their own without a community, a village, friends, individuals that had their back. You couldn't fetch water, chop wood, make a housing, hunt. It was very difficult to do things on your own that way. And that's where human beings are so reliant on one another compared to, let's say,

solo animals. Over the years, what's happened is that as we've gone away from the villages into cities and our modern lifestyle and jobs and technology that we have now, the interesting thing that's happened is that today, we are not reliant on other people that we know for our daily survival. We're still reliant on other individuals. For instance, we're recording this podcast in our studio over here. Somebody out there somewhere is keeping these lights on at the facility, right? At the facility where they're running the electricity through this building. Somebody made our food this morning that we had at the cafe that we went to but we don't have

connection to those individuals we can actually if you wanted to a human being especially in a major city uh in in western uh the western part of the world could go an entire few weeks without seeing another human being interacting with somebody that they need to know. They can order food on their phone through an app and have it delivered to them. They could watch Netflix. They could do all their job and computer work by themselves. We're not relying on other people for our daily survival, right? So that's the first thing. But I would argue that actually, if you want to thrive, just because we're not relying on people that we know for our daily survival, the basics,

shelter, housing, food, I actually would argue that if you want to thrive in life, if you have big dreams and goals that you want to give attention to, if you want to feel love and deeply connected to the people in your world, if you're going through a challenging time in your life, maybe you're a new parent for the first time. If you're starting a business and you want to create something incredible, the bigger your goals and dreams are, the more you actually need deep, meaningful friendships around you to support you in that process. So we went from this time period in history where we were relying on each other for survival. Now we actually don't really need each other for survival

necessarily. People that we know, intimately know, friendships. But in a way, people are a little confused. They're confused because, hey, I'm living. I'm doing my job. I'm driving to work. hey, I'm living, I'm doing my job, I'm driving to work, I'm getting through the day. And you can almost forget that you're missing out on something. One of my favorite sections that you wrote about inside of your book was the chapter on touch. The section on touch is so beautiful because you make the argument for, and you present the science to actually support it, that touch, we live in a society now through a combination of a bunch of different factors, touch is not as part of our daily life as it once was. And what are the impact of those things? And how can sometimes just a small amount of regular touch with our partner, with our friends, our colleagues, even sometimes with strangers, dramatically improve our health and prevent us from building up stress that's

there, right? And I would argue in that same way that deep, meaningful friendships, what's the value of sitting down at the dinner, in the morning, going to coffee with a friend and saying, you know what? I've had a really tough week and this is what's on my mind. And even if that friend doesn't give you advice, just them listening profoundly lets your nervous system know that you are not alone. And that's why I'm raising the alarm when it comes to having us check in and saying, just because you're surviving doesn't mean necessarily that you're thriving in your life. Yeah. I mean, so powerful. And I guess what you're saying is for most of our evolution, having a tight knit community, having really good friends was essential. It was critical. You wouldn't be able to thrive. You wouldn't be

able to survive without it. So it's gone from being critical, it's now been optional. And now that it's optional, many of us, A, we're not probably doing enough with our friends, and we can really dive into why that might be. But as you say, a lot of us aren't even aware that this is an issue. And we sort of, in many ways, we can kid ourselves, but because of social media, and it's not all anti-social media, which we'll certainly come to, but it's also this whole idea that often we see what our friends are doing. We see so much of them on Instagram stories, or we see pictures of where they've been on holiday. We see pictures of their children, we see pictures of what they had for dinner last night, right? But we've not actually seen them. And so it is, I think there's so many factors in the

modern world that are sort of conspiring to make the norm. You mentioned the blue zones, the blue zones, what I love about them is that the environment dictates the outcome. People aren't trying to be healthy. The way their environment is set up means that actually they do have community, they do have friendship, they do eat minimally processed food, they are physically active. And I guess, effectively what you're saying is that the modern environment for many of us is set up in a way where we actually don't need friends anymore. We don't need it. It's not baked into our rituals and our schedules. And we still have friends. But the real question is, is the depth of those friendships? You know, most people will say that they have friends. And there's also, just like most people say, hey, I sleep every night.

And one of the things you talk about is what's the quality of that sleep? How deep is it? So even if you have friends, the questions that we can start to ask ourself is what's the depth? Here's one simple question that I have for everyone and that I've brought up in other interviews before. Do you have someone in your life, right? Just check in for a second, ask yourself, do you have someone in your life that you can go to and be honest about what's not working right now? And it could be multiple people. There might be some parts of your life that you feel more comfortable sharing with one person, another person with, and other parts of your life, you feel more comfortable sharing

with another person. But do you have somebody besides your partner, by the way, right? And we can talk about why that's important. Do you have someone besides your partner, your husband, your wife, your girlfriend, boyfriend, that you can go to and be honest about what's not working? We know that so much stress in individuals' lives comes from not accepting what's going on. You know what? I had a really tough week at work, and I'm not really sure if this is the career that's right for me.

We know that a lot of people don't actually go and tell somebody honestly that that's what's going on for them, and they hold it inside week, day after day, week after week, month after month, and then now it becomes a part of our lifestyle. So the first question is for everyone is, do you have somebody that you can go to and open up about honestly what's not working in your life? Because most people don't realize that they have a friendship and a deep connection challenge in their life until something goes wrong. I talk about friendship a lot on my podcast and on Instagram and post different articles and studies about the space that I follow. And I get a message that quite often

looks like this. Hey, Drew, I'm a new mother, a new father, right? I've seen you talk about friendship. I've seen you talk about friendship. I've seen you talk about community and connection, how important it is. It didn't click for me until recently. I've had a kid. I'm the first one in my group of friends to have kids. And now my lifestyle is different. And maybe I've taken some time off work and it's really challenging. My kid is not sleeping as well, or I don't know how to handle this. And I look up and I realize I'm kind of dealing with this alone, or I moved into another city. Let's talk about another factor that's fundamentally changing connection. So many individuals, especially young adults, young professionals are not just moving once,

but twice and three times. Every time you move to a new city, you got to start over. We used to grow up in a village and kind of stay within a certain distance of that area. Now we're being taken to all different parts of the country or the world or different cities where we have to go and create new friendships and new connections from scratch. Ask yourself, do you live right next to the people that you were friends with in high school and college? Most of us probably don't. And if you do, then you're lucky. You say that. And I agree wholeheartedly with you. I'm just going to interject with a quick story from my clinic because I think this really echoes what you're saying.

story from my clinic because I think this really echoes what you're saying. So I saw a patient recently, maybe a few months ago now, and I think it really illustrates exactly what you've just been talking about, but how it doesn't always transpire that just because you've got friends nearby that you actually see them. So this is a 37 year old chap who ran his own business, self-employed, driving a sports car, you know, working late into the evening on emails. He was working every weekend, you know, from the outside, super successful, you know, living a good life. Now he comes in to see me and he's not feeling so good. He says, Dr. Chastity, I feel a bit low sometimes. Sometimes I lie in bed in the morning. I can't motivate myself to get out. Sometimes I'm, you know, I'm trying to work and I can't concentrate. And often I just feel low.

And he was concerned that he had depression. Now, as always, I try to really understand what was going on in the various components of his life. Now, I ran some tests. You know, I try to really understand what was going on in the various components of his life. Now, I ran some tests, you know, I did some bloods, they were all normal. And it was quite clear to me that actually all this guy did was work. And he was quite lucky. But as you had just talked about, he lived in the village where he grew up and a lot of his friends lived nearby. But here's the thing, he never saw them. And when I asked him about this, he said, yeah, I don't know, I kind of see what they're up to. I see what they're doing on social media. I see where they've been

on holiday. I see what they had for dinner last night. I kind of see what they're up to, but I don't actually see them. And so what I suggested to him, I said, look, would you be open for the next maybe four to six weeks? Would you be open to this as a suggestion? I would love you at least once every week. I would like you to see one of your friends in person. And when you're with them, try and put your phones away so that you're really present for the interaction. And he was like, okay, sure. Yeah. I can give that a go. You know, the guy's pretty desperate because he's, you know, he's clearly not doing well and he sort of valued my advice. He goes away. He comes back six weeks later and I ask him, how are you doing? And he said, that's just, I feel like a different person. Like I feel like I've got my mojo, but I've got my

energy back. I'm sort of concentrating more. I'm more productive. I'm feeling good. I said, okay, great. Now, can you tell me what you did? So, well, the very first time I got together with my friends, as you asked me to, we played a game of five-a-side football. Okay, that was great. But after that, all we did is every Sunday morning, we went to the local cafe and we chewed the fat over a latte together, right? So, you know, this guy, did he have a mental health problem, right? He had symptoms that were consistent with the diagnosis potentially, but it's not what he really had, a deficiency of friendship in his life. And when he corrected that friendship deficiency, not only does he feel better himself, he corrected that friendship deficiency, not only does he feel better himself, he's more productive in his job. He's, you know, so many other downstream effects in his life start to come together. So

I just wanted to sort of break in your point there where, you know, if you were asking the listeners to have a look at their own life, and I was just wanting to jump in and say, many people might be listening and they might live near their friends, but maybe they're not prioritizing, right? It's true. And really, it emphasizes this idea that every society in the world, regardless of what your ancestry is or where you came from, we had rituals. We had rituals on a weekly basis or a monthly basis. A few years ago, I went to Kenya with a group of my friends, part of this group called Summit Series. And we went and spent time with this local nomadic tribes people in Northern Kenya called the Samburu and their cousins of the Maasai. And we got a chance to see how are they being affected by climate change and understand how they're also

working in partnership with the government to protect elephants in the local population and also just observe their culture, watch, take it all in. And one of the most beautiful things about it that was a great reminder is that there were weekly rituals that everybody in that local village that we went to, it's a nomadic village, every nine months or so when the cows have eaten up all the grass in that area, they move on. But no matter where they move to, everybody in that village knew the next few rituals that were coming up. This is a tribes that actually it's kind of a little crazy, but they primarily drink milk. They don't eat really anything at all. And occasionally they'll drink some blood from the cow. That's been how their

lifestyle has been and probably how their gut microbiome has evolved. They eat some twigs, some berries and that sort of thing. But every so often when there's a marriage or a birthday or something special or a time of the year, they'll get together and they'll have a big feast. And these rituals are there and they sing songs and there's this depth and there's this connection and it's baked into their life, just like the Blue Zones. And in your podcast with Dan, they're not going to the gym. They are walking uphill to go to meet their friends or to go get water or to go get food or to go to the local market. It was baked into their lifestyle. And your story highlights something very important that I tell

most people is that, okay, let's say you do have friends and you're not seeing them in your area, which is very common. You're not making time for them. The question that I ask you is that, what rituals do you have on your calendar? Do you have something that I call, and is one of my number one tips when it comes to this, do you have an opt-out event? An opt-out event is something that regularly happens on your calendar with a group of friends. Maybe it's even once every two months. Once every two months, we're going to get together on a weekend, and we're going to go to this thing. And it's a reoccurring event in the calendar. And you only have to let the group know if you can't make it. I have one of these events in my life. Every Thursday morning, there's a group of

my guy friends. We have an opt-out event. And that event is we go on a hike together. It's one hour. We get up really early on Thursday. Some of the guys in the group have kids. Some don't. Everybody's busy. They have businesses. Some are running guys in the group have kids. Some don't. Everybody's busy. They have businesses. Some are running big businesses that are out there. And we get together locally here in the Pacific Palisades, just right next to Santa Monica. And we go on a hike. And in that hike, we just talk about what's working. But more importantly, anything that we want to talk about that's not working in our lives. And we don't even give each other advice. We just sit there and it's the bond and it's the community of walking and talking and just feeling like you're with another group of individuals

that understand you. And the most interesting of topics come up. People open up about challenges they're facing in their marriage. They open up about things that are not going great in work. They open up about how they had a severe drop in income because things changed in their business that might be there. Whatever it is, they know that once a week, and I'm not saying that everybody out there has to do this. I'm just giving an example. That's what you do, right? It's what we do. And we do it, we make it a priority because we've seen how much of an impact it's had for us. We've been doing this now for four years. We have some of the guys that drive 30 minutes away just

to come to a hour long hike because they've seen and their wives, their wives come to them and say, you got to go to MMT. You got, we call it Man Morning Thursday, right? You got to go because you're a completely different human being when you come back. It makes you a better father, a better husband, a better partner, has you show up more in different areas of your life. That's just one example of something that I do that anybody who's listening can do, and it doesn't have to be with a big group or a hike or take an hour. It's just simply having reoccurring event on your calendar to connect with your friends. And Rangan, if I could tell you one other thing, there's a book, it's called The Five Regrets of the Dying. And it's written by this author, Bronnie Ware, who was a palliative care nurse from Australia. And

in taking care of thousands of patients, well, let me take that back. In taking care of hundreds of patients in the course of her work who were near the end of their life, you start to see that people open up and share their biggest regrets that they went through. And she started writing these regrets down with the permission of these individuals that she was taking care of. And she found there was a common theme. There was these five regrets that kept showing up regularly for these patients that were at the end of their life. And one of the top regrets that was so fascinating, and I see people read the book and they always are so surprised, but it makes sense retroactively. One of the top regrets in these top five was, I wish I kept in better touch with

these golden friendships that I had over the years and didn't get so busy that I just let them go. Right? Imagine that that's one of the top five regrets on people's death then. I think it's so important to be reminded of that because we all fall into the busy trap. You know, we're all getting bombarded with things to do and, you know, demands and, you know, just all kinds of things. We all know how busy the modern world is for many of us. And that is remarkable to think that that is one of the top regrets. And I think I can, I'm sure that people will be listening to that and thinking, you know, I've sort of deprioritized my friendships a little bit. I certainly know I had over a number of years. And actually the process of hearing a lot of your work and also writing the book on stress really motivated me to actually re-put in some of these things. Now, look, what's really interesting for me, and there's a couple of themes to expand on here, is that, and I wonder if this is why this problem seems to affect men

more or certainly in a different way to women, is that my really good buddies, most of them, are people I met at university, people I spent five, six years living with, hanging out with, becoming adults with. We've left home, we've gone off to college or university, and you can invest time with these people. You grow up together, you go out, you party, you have heartache, you do these things together and it bonds you. Now, I guess where I live, I don't actually feel that I've got that many really good friends nearby me. I don't, right? I guess I feel I'm super busy. I probably haven't made an effort, if I'm honest, locally to develop friendships. And so what I do is with, you know, I'm very fortunate to have a number of really good

friends, but there's one particular group who we all like playing golf. Well, you know, we play golf, I should say. And we have made a vow that we're going to meet up twice a year for a weekend together and to play golf. Now, it's actually not about the golf. Golf is simply the glue that actually gets us there. You know, it's about getting together, but I don't know if it's because we're guys or not, but we need a reason. We need like a valid reason in our heads why we can actually go for the weekend and leave our wives and our kids and go off. So there's a few things there. One of them is, what if you don't have friends nearby? Is twice a year, in your view, enough for some of those deep friendships? And I guess the other point I

wanted to really echo what you just said is that you said sometimes your friends' partners say, hey, you got to go to this because you're a better husband, you're a better boyfriend, you're a better dad when you come back. I've noticed that when I go away with my friends for the weekends, if I go in super stressed, now often sometimes we come back like physically tired, but mentally I feel refreshed. I come back, I'm a better dad. I'm a better husband. I'm a better doctor. Because it seems to nourish a part of you that nothing else can. So I guess to sort of break down those themes, I'm talking about what happens when you don't have friends who live nearby to you. nearby to you. And why is it, I guess, is it something that affects men in a different way than women? Let's start with the men piece because I told you I'd come back to you on that.

I think the one thing that we see is that on national surveys that have been both done in the UK and the US, men do report being lonelier than women as a whole, right? That's just what we've seen. And Sanjay Gupta did a nice series for CNN talking about the different stages of life that loneliness can peak. And interestingly enough, it happens in very sort of transitional moments. Going from college into the workforce, you see a peak in loneliness when people are trying to find their new tribe and community, because oftentimes university or college was away. And then now people go back to the towns that they came from or move somewhere. Another big time is that when we are retiring, you see a big spike in loneliness. And then oftentimes there's a big spike in loneliness in like the eighties.

If somebody's lucky enough to live that long, the eighties, if somebody's, uh, um, lucky enough to live that long when it could be that, uh, they're moving into, uh, if they're moving out from their normal home, if there was a loss of a partner or if there was some other major transition that was, um, that was there, you know, I'm not an expert in the space of, uh, brains, even though I host a brain podcast, I like to interview the other experts that are there. But one fascinating book that one of my podcast guests gave to me was a book called The Female Brain. And inside of there, one of the interesting things that the author shares is that men's brains and women's brains are wired a little bit differently.

And women's brains are actually wired with more neuro connections around connection. And in a way, in a beautiful way, we're actually seeing now that some of the data on like female managers is like women are actually better managers than men when it comes to like the office environment, like keeping in check, managing a lot of different things, relationships, other stuff, like being aware of it all. Women's brains are very wired to that. Increasingly, interestingly enough, men's brains, the author argues, and this is just a big paraphrasing, you know, you can read the book and dig into the science that she shares in the multiple studies that she references. Men's brains are very good at sort of

honing in on a problem, more neural connections front to back, honing in on a problem, and very specifically it on their own. There's this idea also too that they should not have these deep friendships and relationships. You in my podcast that we just recorded, even the idea of men giving each other like physical touch, like a hug sometimes can be very weird in certain communities. The other aspect of don't, you know, we tell young boys like, don't cry, right? Don't open up about your feelings. Be a man. All these things that are baked into society have ripple effects. But from everything that I've seen, men need just as much connection as women. So you have to ask yourself, what are the factors that are preventing us? And I'm sure it's layers deep with some of those reasons that I just presented.

But if we don't start having a conversation about why it's important and how to start integrating these deep connections and friendships and community into our life, we will start to suffer from the results of missing out. There's a really great story that Malcolm Gladwell and a few other authors have featured in their writing. And it's a story of this town called Rosetto. There was a town in the 1960s in America called Rosetta that was primarily made up of Italian immigrants that moved to the States. And these families, I'm sure there was one family that set up in this town and said,

hey, come on over. And the rest of the family started setting up. And as they migrated to this town, they also brought with them a lot of the rituals and lifestyles that they practiced back in Italy. There was men's clubs. The pace of life was slower. You often had three generations living in the same household. It looked very similar to their lives back in Italy. In fact, you had men that were part of one or more social groups that were there, people and families regularly sharing dinner together. So why this town is interesting is that there was a local doctor from this town who met a researcher at a bar and said, you know what's really interesting? I'm a doctor in this local town and not a single man in this town has died from a cardiac event, right? From a heart attack, who's under the age of 55. And this researcher peeked their ears up and said,

this is really interesting. Let's study this. Let's find out what's going on. So they put an initiative together. And again, you can read about this. You can literally type in Rosetta effect and read the Wikipedia entry about it. And there's a few other documentaries that have talked about this story in this town. And as they were researching, because they didn't know what was going on, they said, maybe it's the food that they're eating. Well, it wasn't the food. Maybe it's the water. It's not the water. And all these other factors that they looked at, they said, you know what? Maybe we have this wrong. Maybe it's not what this town is doing, but rather how they're living.

Maybe it's not what this town is doing, but rather how they're living. Let's look at this aspect. And interestingly enough, they found these factors. The average male that was in there, adult male, was part of one or more social groups that were there. You had three generations living in a household. People would slow down and have dinners together. They regularly would meet up on the weekend to celebrate different rituals that were baked into their lifestyle. Interestingly enough, as the lifestyle of the town started to change into the late 60s, you had the first person under the age of 55 die

from a heart attack. And then into the 70s, that trend continued. And by the time it was the 80s, mid 80s, early 80s, the town just looked like the national average that was out there. And this shows us the true impact that having deep connections and friendships has on all of us. It affects our health, our well-being, our stress. all of us. It affects our health, our wellbeing, our stress. And if we don't actually start having a national and a global conversation, my biggest concern and fear is that we're going to live in such a world that has all these technological advances, and yet people are feeling deeply not understood, not shooting after the biggest, highest expression of what they can give back

to the world, and that it would actually impact their health along too. Yeah. It is incredible. That is a powerful story. I'd never heard of that effect before, actually. It's so powerful that they actually call it the Rosetta effect. Wow. It's showing the effect in a way, you could almost say it was like a mini blue zone, not that individuals were living to 100 and beyond there. It was almost had the potential of being a blue zone. And it counteracted itself when the lifestyle changed with the local population. And we saw the impact on both sides. You know, as you were describing that story,

um, a thought that popped into my head was that, I mean, I guess it's slightly unrelated, but I guess it goes back to that theme of me saying that I don't have close friends who live nearby me, really. Not really, really super close ones. Although there is one who I see about once a year and we keep saying we should play more sports together more regularly and we don't. And again, that is simply a fact of not prioritizing it. But we talked about a lot of the problems in culture and how, not all the problems, a lot of the consequences of the way we're living our life, I should say. And even if you think about something like fitness and the fact that, hey, you want to

take up yoga? For example, you can go on YouTube now and learn how to do yoga. Nothing wrong with that at all. I think that's fantastic. And I think it can absolutely change some people's lives. But one thing I've started doing a bit more with patients now is like, sure, use the YouTube to learn, do a bit at home, learn some of the basics. Of course, it's always better to learn from an instructor, but if that's not available to you, fine. But I've started to recommend, I said, look, why don't you go to a class once a week as well? Because often if people feel isolated and they're doing a lot, they're trying to be healthy for their wellbeing and doing something at home, I'm saying,

look, sure, do that. I'm a big fan of doing small amounts every day, but I think there'll be something powerful about you finding a local class where you meet other like-minded individuals who also like to practice that. And I've seen some really powerful effects. And I guess it really ties into this, you know, it ties into friendship, but it ties into the bigger piece of community. And, you know, some people, unfortunately, will tell you, will tell you, I don't have any good friends. Like, I actually don't have any friends. I hear what you're saying about friendship, but I don't have any. So what should I do? And I guess this is where that intervention comes from me is I have had some people like that who I recommend they do this. What do they like doing? What do you want to do? Right, try it, go to a class,

you'll find you're already going into an environment where you're going into a place where other people have the same shared interest, which again, it's not a necessity for having a friend, but it certainly can help. So I don't know, what would you say to someone who's listening to this who says, I don't have any good friends. What can I do? You know, if would you say to someone who's listening to this, who says, I don't have any good friends. What can I do? You know, if somebody is listening to this podcast, they are someone who probably has a growth mindset. You know, they're interested in growing. And if you're interested in growing and you are looking around you and saying, okay, maybe I moved, maybe I'm in a different place than where I grew up. Maybe I lost the friends that I had

before because we weren't on the same page or had similar values. How do I start? How do I actually go and find the community and the connections that I want to build in my life? And I'll actually steal a phrase that my friend Lewis Howe shared with me. He said, go to where people grow. Step one is always go to where people grow. Where do people around you go to grow? Is it that yoga class that they're going to? Is it that salsa class that they're going to because they want to learn a trade? Is it that local university or community college where they're just taking a class for fun they're just going back and they're taking one class on like world religion or doing this where do people in your local town or city go to grow because if you value a growth mindset you want to better yourself you want to be the

best version of yourself to your family your kids your uh business your co-workers your society your business, your coworkers, your society, then being around other people that also have a similar mindset is inspiring. Rangan, every time I spend time with you, I feel so energized and so driven to go after the next vision of what my goals may be. You as a friend and my other close dear friends that I have in my life make me a better human being in every practical way. You know, the interesting thing about this men's group that I'm part of, we started having a chat and just anecdotally looking at how our incomes have all risen together over the years. You get one person in the group who has a big spike because they were to create something

new in their business or do something for individuals. And then the rest of the group kind of follows. This idea that we become the average of the people that we're around is true. It's almost contagious, right? It's contagious. And you want to show up and you want to be stronger. So if you don't know where to start, the first thing is this, is not only go to where people grow, but understand that it's not about quantity. I'm not telling you to go be friends with every single person that's out there. I'm not telling you to have 10, 15, 20 friends. I'm not even telling you to have five close friends that are there, as long as you have one person that you can go to and spend time with. Now, on a practical level, maybe your best friend

that is truly your best friend doesn't live nearby you. You know, we don't see each other that often, maybe two, three times a year if we're lucky. Well, this will, I've not been here for 15 months. I guess you've been to the UK. Yeah. Twice a year, let's say. Twice a year. So we don't often live. So even having somebody that's not living next to you and still maintaining that friendship,

we still have the ability to pick up the phone. We still have the ability to FaceTime with individuals. And I don't think that those things are bad because it still allows the maintenance of the relationships that's there. How many times have I called you or you've called me when we're workshopping an idea or want to talk or just catch up? That is still part of the connection. I do think though, even if you have that, even if you have a few best friends or individuals that are in your world and they may not live next to you,

there is something powerful about being in person. Maybe that person in your local town isn't now your best friend or your closest friend, but there's somebody that you can still do things with because you don't even have the potential to create deep and meaningful friendships if you don't even have the potential to create deep and meaningful friendships if you don't start with just somebody. You have to get to know.

And just like a kid would go, you know when you're a kid, making friends was super simple. You'd go next door and you'd knock on the house and you'd say, hey, can Tommy come out and play? As an adult, one thing that we've lost and that I hear from a lot of people is they say, it's just so much harder to make friends as an adult. And I say, well, okay, I understand that because in university and when you're a kid, you're making friends primarily based on the logistical area that you're in. As an adult, we actually have to practice something which comes naturally to men, which is you got to ask people out on like a friend date, right? You got to ask people out.

You actually have to put yourself out there. You meet somebody cool. You meet somebody interesting at yoga class. You say, hey, you know what? You sound really interesting. I love what you're up to. Let's hang out sometime. Let's grab a coffee.

If you don't make that initiative, if you don't make that outreach to somebody, you won't even have the potential. And what I see often is people are not actually even trying to make friends. We're not putting in the effort to actually create those deep and meaningful friendships around us. I think, yes, we're not putting in the efforts, but even hearing you articulate that, I bet some guys listening will be thinking, yeah, there was someone at sort of, I don't know,

martial arts last week who I kind of like, but I felt a bit shy. It's a bit like dating, right? I feel a bit shy to say anything. I mean, I'll just hang out, but I don't feel I could say, hey, should we hang out sometime? And this is where I come back to, is there, I'm not saying females don't suffer from loneliness or have issues with friends or, you know, I just see it a lot more in guys. And as a man, I guess myself, I guess, I don't know, I sort of see that a lot of men, we have difficulty asking, hey, should we just hang out? You know, I think men often feel that we need a strong reason to hang out. We can't just hang out for the sake of it. It has to be some strong reason. I guess for me and this small group of unibuddies,

we go and play golf. So why do we need the golf? We could get together. We could get together. If we can't find a golf course where we all can get to, we could get together in another way, but we don't. Golf, and again, there's something wrong with that. Golf is the glue that gets us there. So I think some of it is, yes, we're not making the effort. B, we feel a bit shy in the same ways we might do with dating. But I really, I can't stop thinking about this idea of intensity that you're talking about. It's not about quantity. It's about that quality. And I guess we take our own experience. I met you, I'm going to guess four years ago. I'm going to guess something like that. We've not physically seen each other that much, but when we are together, there really is an intensity. I've been here, well, for about seven days now,

total trip will be 10 days. We see each other a lot. A, I'm staying at your house, which helps, but we're often getting breakfast together or dinner together. So over that course of the week, although we're working and doing our things in the day, we're catching up and we can continue conversations and we can sort of really get to a real depth. And if I'm honest, that is one of the appeals for me to come out to LA, right? Yes, I can come here because I know I can record some really great podcasts with people who will live out here. Yes, I'm here to promote the book, The Stress Solution in the US, but I'm not in New York, right? I could have gone to New York. I've come to LA because for me, it feels, hey, you know

what? I get to go. I get to hang out with Drew and his family when I'm there. I've come to LA because for me, it feels, hey, you know what? I get to go. I get to hang out with Drew and his family when I'm there. I feel like I go back a better person, a much improved person. And a huge part of that is from hanging out with you. And the way you show up as a friend, I think really helps me. I go back, I've got all these new ideas in my head. I can't wait to get back, see my family and start implementing new ideas in my personal life, but also in my professional life. So, you know, you said at the start that these friendships, it's not only about the friendship, it's what it also leads to. And so something you shared at the start, Drew, is... Can I make a point to something you shared? You know, when you and I

first met, and I had heard your name previously from my business partner, Dr. Mark Hyman. And then we met in London at this event and actually got a chance to hang out. And I told you, you know, Hey, anytime like you're in the U S like come like out to California, come chill, come stay with me. And, and I'm used to making that initiative and reaching out because my life has been so much better from having deep, meaningful friendships. You said something about men that I want to have a very honest conversation about. One thing that I've heard from a lot of guys that I think is sometimes the elephant in the room that people don't want to talk about, it's maybe not politically correct sometimes if you want to say, is say, I don't want to reach out to another guy who I think is interesting that I could learn from and we could have a

friendship as an adult male because it comes across as gay, right? I'm just going to say it because a lot of times there's this thing, whether it's gay or weak or sissy, what are all the things that people used to say to young men back in the day? Oh, don't be a girl, right? Think about how toxic that is that if you have a young male that's, you know, a young boy that's crying and saying, oh, stop being like a girl. young male that's, you know, a young boy that's crying and saying, oh, stop being like a girl. Oh, stop being so sissy, right? Even as a young, you know, being in my 13, 14, 15 years old, being on the soccer team that's out there regularly attacking somebody's manhood was part of being in a group of guys. And that was the societal toxicity that was there. And that has lingering effects that's there. So sometimes there's this component of, it feels weird.

It feels weird because am I coming across as a particular way? Is somebody going to question my sexuality? Just so I can clarify, when you say gay, the term gay, and for people who are listening to this, when Drew said that, he was putting in inverted commas. Yes. Just be super clear, because gay can mean different things in different cultures. Are you talking about potentially insulting someone's sexuality and talking about homosexuality? Exactly. And of course, it's so amazing that we live in a day and age that slowly, slowly, and we still have room to go, especially in the States, that all sexualities are embraced and people can is this questioning that goes back to being teased as a kid that the last thing that you wanted to appear as, as being, you didn't want to be appear as being feminine or somebody to question your manhood, or if you were gay, like whether you were heterosexual or homosexual. And I think that we have to have an honest conversation about it because it's like, well, why wouldn't you read out you reach out? Why wouldn't you just say like, hey, let's hang out? Why would men have an issue with crying if they felt like crying?

Because somebody once when they were younger said, don't cry, be a man. And we have this phrase, I think you probably have it here in the US of just man up. Man up, exactly. of just man up. Man up, exactly. Arguably, one of the most toxic phrases I've come to believe in language, in the English language. I really think that we don't realize the hidden power of a phrase like that and what it does. I mean, language is super important. The way we use the language and what that does in our brain and what it does to our behaviors and our beliefs, I think is very much undervalued. But these words, they change things in your body. You know, I can so resonate with a story that was a phrase I heard at the playground, at school,

as a teenager, even at university, I heard that term. You know, it's now in hopefully the enlightened society in which we're living, A, it's such a ridiculously prejudicial thing to say, right? But it also does have that impact that it's causing men to not reach out and they don't want to be perceived the wrong way, which is, it is ridiculous, but I'm glad you brought it up because you're right. It is the sort of thing that we don't like to talk about, but unless we talk about stuff openly and honestly, how is anything going to change? And our hope, I'm sure, is that one person heard that and goes, you know what, that is me. And actually, maybe this will be the little nugget that starts a chain of reactions of change.

You know, our beliefs drive everything. So the question is, if you start to feel yourself, like think back, when I ask most people, think back to the last six months, you probably met somebody interesting in the last six months. I'm not saying that you had the most amazing conversation with them, or maybe you did. You met somebody interesting that you thought, wow, this person's cool. I would like to hang out with them a little bit more. And especially if you are a man and you didn't reach out to that individual, And especially if you are a man and you didn't reach out to that individual, ask yourself what beliefs are driving that, right? Even if you're a woman and you didn't reach out to that individual, what are the beliefs

that are driving that? That it's weird. It's weird to reach out to somebody and say, hey, would you like to hang out or play basketball or come join this other group that I'm part of? Or, hey, you know what? You guys seem really amazing. Come over for dinner. Me and my wife will make dinner for you, right? Why is that weird? If you thought that that was weird, what beliefs does it bring up inside of you, right?

What things does it make you think about? What are you reminded of? What stories are you reminded of? What are all the old ideas that you have that would prevent you from doing that. And specifically, if you're a male thinking about toxic masculinity, toxic masculinity and how it shaped your views of not even opening up. Oh, I don't need to talk about it. You hear this a lot with older generation of men. I don't need to talk about my feelings, right? I don't need to talk about stuff, right? That is a toxic belief that is holding you back. Everybody has a different way that they handle feelings and process. I'm not trying to force anybody to talk, to not talk about stuff, but we're human beings. We all need camaraderie. And an interesting thing about the society that we live in,

and especially men, when you look at these national surveys on how lonely they are, even if they are in a relationship, which can help a little bit with loneliness for sure, the one thing is this, you can't get everything in your life from one person. We are not living in these villages anymore, like that Rosetta village that was based on this Italian community. We're living isolated places where even if you are in a relationship, it's you and that individual together and you're expecting everything in your life. you're confident on, your friend, everything that you're going to talk to about all aspects of life. And that is not healthy either. We need an entire village. And nobody said it better than my friend Esther Perel, who writes a lot on this topic. She said, what we used to get from an entire village, we now expect from one person. When I saw this quote a few years ago, I don't know where I saw

it, or even these ideas came into my awareness, it possibly was something that you posted on Instagram, I guess, or a mutual friend of ours, Dallas Hartwig. Dallas talks about a lot of these themes sometimes as well. And I remember sitting there and just really reflecting on that for a few days and thinking, yeah, we do that. We kind of expect our partners to be everything. We expect them to be our best friends. That's even in societal common parlance now. Your partner should be your best friend. Really? Maybe, maybe not. But we accept these things as facts. We expect our partners to be, they're our sexual partners.

We want them to be brilliant parents. We want them to be our best friend that we can open up to about everything. We want them to be fun to hang out when we go out to watch a game. We want them to be fun to hang out with when we go for a walk. When things are going bad in our life, we want them to be able to support us. And if you think about it, that is a pretty high bar for any human being to reach, right? That is such a high expectation. And I think that really changed things for me in my own relationship when I thought, hey, you know what? Actually, really connecting with my friends is going to make me a better husband. Actually, why do I expect my wife to be all these things for me? Is that realistic? Am I being selfish? Actually wrong. And maybe if you, you know, start to prioritize your friends and start to really connect with them, that will take the pressure

off your wife having to serve some of those roles. And it has transformed our relationship. And I, it's funny, like one of my buddies, Luke in Edinburgh, like one of my best friends, like it's so fun when we chat on the phone and sometimes we'll just literally start laughing about the most stupid things. I feel like a kid again when I'm often on the phone. So when we're both in the right moods and often like my wife will come in and she'll be like, oh, you're talking to Luke, aren't you? You know, like in a very joking way, but in a very sort of, you know, this is kind of trivial kind of boy chat, you know, just, but you know what? It's great because actually it means she doesn't have to engage in that stuff with me. She doesn't want to, I can get that out of my system with someone else. And I think that that really illustrates, doesn't it? These different roles

that different people can play. And I just think that's a really nice thought for people. Your partner, your husband, your wife, your partner can be one of your best friends. But if they're your only best friend at the absence of other best friends in your life, that's when we start to see challenges because that's when the friction, and there's nobody that's studied this better than the Gottman Institute, John Gottman, who runs an approach to mar friends, that's the foundation of an incredible relationship. Right. And in addition to that, it's like, you can't expect it all from one person. So let's have some other friends too, because the other aspect, when it comes to also attraction and being together over a period of time is that the more you want your partner to like everything that you like, the more you're stripping away their individuality. Maybe

you have some friends that you like playing golf with and your partner is not interested in playing golf with. That's okay. How did you know? Right? That is okay. It's good for them. It's good for you. We don't need our partner to be all of those things for us. Yeah, I completely agree. And, you know, without sharing the name, one of my buddies who's, you know, has been on the dating scene for a little while and, you know, trying to find someone and, you know, was always looking for, you know, what the same interests are. You know, I think this one's going to go super well because they're also into the same hobbies

as I'm in. And I would always say, hey man, look, that's great. There's nothing wrong with that, but don't make that your sort of, don't make that a requirement. You know, I don't think it matters as much as I used to think. If I look at my own relationship, you know, some of the music I love and music's a huge part of my life, it's not Vid's cup of tea, right? It's not her, It's not her thing. Now, there's plenty of things we do share together, but there's other things we don't. We have different interests. That's okay. You guys share values. You have similar values, and that's beautiful, which means that you don't always have to have the same hobbies. In fact,

this whole idea of opposites attract sometimes, right? It's good to have different experiences because you both can bring things to the table. Shout out to Vid who I've met many times and she's amazing, right? And it's great that she has her stuff that she's into and you have your stuff that you're into. Yeah, for sure. Just taking a quick break in today's conversation to give a shout out to the sponsors of today's show. Athletic Greens continue their support of my podcast. To be really clear, I absolutely prefer that people get all of their nutrition from foods. But for some of us, this is not always possible. Athletic Greens is one of the most nutrient dense whole food supplements that I've come across and contains vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, and digestive enzymes. So if you are looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy

to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. For listeners of this podcast, if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of Athletic Greens which is worth around £70 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. I want to probe this area a little bit more because as you know throughout the week I've been sharing with some of the stuff that I've been growing with in my own life at the moment and how I feel that that's changing me and how it's helping me feel freer and more sort of present in what I'm doing. And you mentioned when we met, you said, hey, come out and visit, you know, come out and visit and stay, you know, whenever you need to.

out and visit and stay, you know, whenever you need to. So I think that there are various aspects of my personality that are very much not wanting to intrude, not wanting to be a burden to someone. I think, as you touched on before, is there a slight British tendency for that, for this sort of maybe over politeness? I don't know. I think there's clearly, there is a cultural difference, I think, generally speaking, between a lot of Brits and a lot of Americans. I think that's fair to say. I'm not making judgments. I'm just saying there is a difference, right? And I think both things can be problematic in their own ways when taken to extremes. I don't think one is right or wrong. I think the way Americans typically will stand up for themselves and able to value themselves and sort of, in many ways, sell themselves. Something that potentially when I was growing up in the UK might have come across as a little bit brash sometimes. But actually, I am now starting to think about it as, hey,

isn't it great that you can actually stand up for yourself and value yourself in that way? Do you know what I mean? I think that's something I'm starting to change, but I'm going to put you on the spot here and ask you, what was it like with me initially? You made offers like that, you know, my interactions with you in terms of taking up an offer like that versus how it is today. Have you seen a change in the way I, you know, accept your generous offer for help and accommodation and to come and stay with you out here? I don't know. Have you seen a difference? Yeah, I know exactly what you're asking. I would love to chime in. And I'll start off by saying that so many people, their biggest

fear is being a burden on other people. And they don't want to either let them in or tell them how bad it is or ask them for help. Now, the challenge is sometimes we are in a place in our life where we've asked somebody for help on something and they can't be there for us. And they might have their reasons for not being able to be there for us. But the other beautiful thing is when we ask people for help or we offer people help and they accept, it does something interesting lead to our nervous system. It lets us know that, hey, they've got our back and I've got our back. The fact that you took me up on my offer to come out with your family,

stay at my place, hang out, we'll show you around. First of all, I got the benefit of having a new friend and his family in my world. The other thing it did is it let me know like, wow, you're comfortable to accept that. If I'm ever in town, I'll come and stay with you. There's this bond that happens when we let people in and we both ask and offer. It creates deep connections. In here in Los Angeles, there is an integrative psychiatrist by the name of Omid Naeem. And he shared a beautiful story. He said, a lot of these deep connections that we have in friendship happened when we had happenstance and dependency. You can't have deep connections without creating some sort of dependency. And I mean that in a healthy way, right? We're dependent on each other. I need help from you

because I don't know how, you know, back in the village days, like, you know, who knows if my family has enough food this winter. You support me. I support you. A genuine sense of reciprocity baked in. He said, the modern example is think 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, when you needed a ride to the airport, you'd call up a friend and say, Hey, listen, let's say you didn't have family that could drive you there. I have an early flight. Can you drive me to the airport on Thursday? And next time I will drive you, right? That is a connection that gets formed there. Two people who are now relying on each other know that they can ask and offer favors that are there. So initially, I'm not sure what framework or mindset that you're in, but I do know that it's like, whoa, this guy is offering to have me and

my family stay at his house and show me around and other kinds of components. But I'm not sure how you took it or you didn't take it. But what's happened since that time is that if I come out to the UK, you're like, hey, come and hang out, come and stay with us, or even on a more practical level, right? Let's say you're workshopping through a challenge or a problem you're experiencing in your life. I know that when I'm there for you, you're also likely there to be there for me. It's through asking and offering help that other individuals in our life let us know that both they can come to us and we can go to them. Now, I will say this with a caveat. There are times in your life that

you find that a relationship might be unbalanced or that there's things that somebody might be more of a taker, right? There's probably people listening here that are like, yeah, I had that friend that I asked for help and I gave so much to. And then they weren't there for me. And that brings up a secondary part to this, which is, did you actually go and tell them, Hey, you know what? It hurt my feelings a little bit. I kind of needed help and support. And I don't know exactly what was going on with you, but it kind of felt like you weren't there for me. You know, back in the day when we all lived in villages, we had to deal with con I'm overgeneralizing here for a second, but you couldn't just continue to avoid things. You're going to see that person every day. So there had to be a matter and a way to resolve conflict and address things call it like the old school way of doing stuff,

just like bringing it up and chatting about it and saying, hey, what's going on? Or just saying, having a little bit more understanding. So if there's somebody in your life that you feel that you've been there for and you've asked them for help back and they haven't been there, I'm gonna ask you an honest question.

Did you just honestly bring it up to them? Did you bring it up to them? Did you bring it up to them and tell them that it hurt your feelings without coming in heavy on judgment of what they, why they did it? You know, what happened for them? Just telling them that it hurt your feelings and then asking them, you know, why it happened. I think what you just said is so profound. And I think it goes far beyond friendship, this actually, this is ultimately what you're talking about is any human relationship. Human relationship.

It's beyond friendship. And actually friendship, of course, is just one component of human relationships. I know so many people will have heard that and deeply resonated with that and thought, I'm holding onto a grudge. That person did that. And I am frustrated. I'm not going to call them. I'm not going to do that. But without ever expressing that. And you know what? The funny thing is, if you were that person's friend, you would love to know. I hope most people would love to know if it's said in the right way. He said, hey, look, you know what? Maybe you didn't mean anything by this, but when you did that, I felt this way. And you're right. We hide. We retreat into our own lives. We retreat into our phones so we can

distract ourselves from actually having those potentially challenging conversations. But I don't actually think they're as challenging as we think, because it's that fear of opening up that leads to so many problems. I, you know, if you talk to a therapist or a counselor, it always comes out of communication. You know, it always comes out of communication. If it's your partner, have you told your partner you feel like this? You know, and it's amazing. And yeah, you know, I've applied this in my own marriage. You know, when you actually don't, resentment is when things start to go downhill. I think you once said that to me. It's kind of, it is when we feel resentment and, you know, that is a sign for me, wait a minute, what's going on here? Bring it up. Often it's misconstrued. Often the other person doesn't

know that they've done something that makes you feel like that, right? So you would say a lot of these friends don't know that you feel like that. Or they were going through a really tough time and they couldn't be there for you and you have more understanding for them. So even though the situation can't change, they shared, you know what? I didn't open up and share, but I got fired from work. Or my dad's going through, you know, it's just been diagnosed with a disease. Honest communication will allow you to have that understanding and strengthen those bonds that are there. It's like breaking a bone, right? It grows back even sometimes stronger than it originally was. But when we ghost, you know, we often have this term ghosting. I don't know if they have it in the UK. It's used primarily in dating that you go on a date and you just don't reply back

to somebody and they have like no clue. Did it go well? Did it not go well? Right? But we often ghost in friendships too. I'm not going to deal with that. I'm not going to bring that up. We hold a grudge. Years later down the line, we have regrets in our life of why we didn't keep and maintain those beautiful relationships over something silly. Drew, you're someone who has a lot of friends, right? Well, I certainly perceive you to have a lot of friends. You're very open. You are very kind and you help a lot of people. And the question is, you are super busy, right? You're running companies, you put out weekly podcasts, you run teams, right? There's so much going on in your life. How do you make time for these friendships? Sure, I get you've got Man

Thursday with your really close group of buddies, but you seem to have a very wide network. Do you have a wide network of friends? And if that is the case, as it appears to be from the outside, how do you find time in a very busy work life that you have, how do you find time to maintain that depth with them? How do you find time to maintain that depth with them? You know, when I was reading your book, running your latest book, you have this section where you talk about your morning routine. And you talk about making time for it. First of all, it doesn't have to take that much time, but why you make time for it.

Because you see how it sets up the foundation of the day. How you start your morning is how the day goes. And when you don't have it, you see the contrast that ends up happening. So fundamentally, I want to say this. If you're someone who doesn't feel that you have a connection challenge, if you're someone that feels like my life is going fine the way that it is, this may not make sense to you. If you're somebody who realizes the benefit that friendships have in your life and deep connections, and by the way, you can have a friendship with your child, right? You can have a friendship with your partner. You can have a friendship with your parents. In fact, my relationship with my parents drastically improved when we went away from them seeing me as just

their son and me as my mom and my dad. And we saw each other more as friends. But what was interesting for that for me is that you had that conversation with them. I did. It didn't just happen. You didn't just leave it to chance. There was some intention behind it. Right. And that's a whole other, you know, I'm sure if we want to get into that, we can get into that. But just to answer your question, when you see firsthand the impact that having deep connections makes in your life, you start to realize that it's important to prioritize. No different than some of your listeners who are prioritizing their sleep or their mindfulness or their mindset or their diet.

You make it a priority because you see the value of when it's there and you see the value when it's not there. And again, for anybody who maybe hasn't seen that, it's usually shows up when we're going through challenges in our life. When we fall down, when we go through a tough time in our life, a breakup, transitioning jobs or careers, a business idea not working out, a challenge that we're having with our kids or our spouse, it's usually then when we look up and say, do I have people around me that can lift me up when I'm down? And if you don't feel that you have that, that's step one is recognizing that maybe I have a friendship, community, and tribe

problem, a challenge, right? So once you've recognized that there's value for it, just like integrating a morning routine that you talk about in your book, it doesn't actually take that much time in our actual life. It's not about running around and having the most amount of friends. I have a lot of friends. I get fueled by people. I don't watch TV. I'm not watching Netflix and other stuff. I'm a little bit of an extreme, right? I usually only watch when I travel and watch movies when I'm flying for business meetings and other things like that. My joy is actually sitting down and asking people, what are their dreams and goals in life and how can I play a

supportive role in that? My joy is hearing about the story of how did Rangan become the integrative doctor and the champion for wellness and lifestyle medicine that he is. What are the challenges and trials and tribulations that he went through? I love human connection and I really get fueled by people. Not everybody's like that. I have an amazing sister, my younger sister, who has a smaller group of friends, doesn't like being around a bunch of new people all the time. And yet the one thing that she does is she makes these regular occurrences in her calendar to check in on connection and say, how can I strengthen the couple, the few deep meaningful

bonds that I have? And it can be as simple as a coffee date that you do with individuals. It could be as simple as scheduling a phone call to chat with your best friend from college who you still consider your best friend, but they don't live in the same town as you. It's not about quantity. It's about that quality, but you will never make it a priority if you don't firsthand see the difference that it makes in improving your life. When I have something that I've gone through in my week that's challenging and I can go to a friend and talk about it, that's when I make the connection that I'm so thankful for the friendships in my life. When I went through the hardest challenges in my life and I had a tribe around me that said,

hey, how can we help you? Whether it was a death of a family member, whether it was a breakup, whether it was a business conflict that was there. When I am able to go to the people around me and say that I'm so thankful for having these individuals in my life, that's when I look back and reflect that I'm so glad I put all this time and effort and energy into friendships. And those are the big situations. I don't want to just say that we rely on our friendships during these macro stresses as you talk about. How about just fun and enjoyment? My week is more fun when

I take a few moments. I'm lucky that I am in an office building with one of my friends that is a few offices down for his company. Even if it's five minutes, I pop in and I say, hey, what's up, man? How's your day? Amazing. We give each other like a quick hug and I run back into like my world and his world and I may not see him for the rest of the week. That actually leaves me with a little boost of energy that I come back to my daily life with. Can WhatsApp groups provide the same sort of connection? I think people have to ask themselves that. When I first started out and I was creating my first company and I was graduating from a group of friends who loved and cared about me, but maybe we started to have a

little bit of a different set of values. It wasn't about going out and drinking at the local pub on the weekends, right? Maybe it was about working out and reading and mindset and lifestyle. I started to realize, okay, you know what? I need to hang out with more people that also have a growth mindset. So let me go to where people grow, as my friend Lewis Howes was saying. And I started including those individuals in. I didn't have a lot of those local friends. Just like you say, you live in a town right now where you don't have maybe like a close best friend that's there, right? And you know what? I don't want to demonize technology because the way that I strengthened a lot of those initial friendships was I would

keep in touch with them online. The one thing I'll say is this, everybody here knows that just written form messages, everybody's been in a situation where a text message has been misunderstood in terms of the tone, right? Towards, let's say the negative, but that also goes towards the positive too. There is something still about hearing somebody's voice and occasionally seeing them in person that's so central to our nervous system that makes a role. So I would never demonize these tools because that's how often I keep in touch with you. And it's made a difference in my life. But I just want to say that we don't only want them. We do need in-person physical connection if we want to get the most benefits that are there. I think you said before, use online connections to create offline connections.

Exactly. Some of my closest friendships, I first met them online. It could be that I see that they're a local practitioner in the area who's also interested in health and wellness. It could be that they are into the same sports that I'm into. We have mutual friends that are there. So online is actually a great way to find people who have similar interests as you, and then use that online connection to schedule a hangout offline. So you can get those benefits of being in person with individuals. I think that's really powerful for people to hear because, you know, technology does get demonized a lot in terms of what it's doing to friendships and connections. But again, I'm not sure it's the

technology, it's more how we're using it. And if we can use it productively, it can be incredibly beneficial. And, you know, we're in this health and wellness world and you see all the time people join forums, they follow the same people, they develop a connection. And then you see photos popping up saying, hey, we've been communicating online for two years and now we got together for the first time. I feel I know this person so well because we've had so many connections. And it's, it is, you know, the world is evolving. You know, we're not living in those tightly knit tribes where we all have the campfire every evening, where we have these baits and rituals. So we've got to find new ways and new tools and tips on

how we can make it happen. And I think online can be incredibly useful if you're a member of a forum on Facebook, let's say, where people can actually get together and chat about similar things. This was actually one of the reasons why a few months ago I set up my first closed Facebook group. I'd never done one before, but people were listening to the podcast and they were saying, hey, this is great, you know, but we'd love to connect with other people who also really like your podcast and listen every week. And it's, you know, yes, I post about it on social media, but it's not, it's not quite the same thing. And, you know, people now are using the Facebook group for many things. Yes. They're talking about the podcast. So when a new episode comes out, they're jumping on and they can have conversations with other people about various

themes that they like, themes that they didn't like. Right. That episode was great. I'm a young mother. I'm having my first kid and somebody else chimes in and say, hey, this is what worked for me. Yeah. And then other people are using it as a way of actually saying, hey, you know, I'm having a problem. I've heard, I've read Dostoevsky's book.

I want to make this change, but I'm struggling to make it. And then people are chiming in and saying, hey, look, you know, I had that problem. What I did was A, B, and C. Someone else says, hey, that's a great suggestion. But actually, what I did is this. And, you know, it's like, because a lot of what I do now is online, right? It's through the medium of podcasts. I'm trying to communicate with people or books. I don't get to meet every reader. I mean, this is one of the reasons I do love things like book tours is that you get to meet people whose lives your work is touching, which is just great to actually have

that human connection. It really fires you up. But it's incredible to see how that community has grown in just a few months. I mean, I don't go on there that much. I don't have time. I try to when I can, but these are people who've got a shared interest who are helping each other. And it's wonderful. It's not about online or offline. It's really about intentionality because there's plenty of people that are not even on Facebook or Instagram or other things and may have a few friends that are in real world friends, right? And they don't feel understood. They don't feel connected. They don't feel connected. They don't feel that they can open up to those individuals. Now, I'm sure there's a lot of layers. If somebody

can identify that, there's always a lot of layers. No two people are the same in terms of why those reasons are happening. But the question is always intentionality. And so I would ask anybody who's listening to say, do I have a group of people, even if it's a small group of people, that understand me, that want to help me be a better person? You can have a ton of friends locally, but if their primary way of connecting is habits and behaviors that are not helping you grow, if that's a priority to you, then is it helping or hurting? So it's really about intentionality. It's not about quantity. It's not about online or offline. It's about intentionality so that you can feel understood, connected, and that especially when life gets tough, you can go to somebody

and you have their back. They have your back and you have theirs. This is what human connection is all about. Because when we don't have that, you can start to spiral downward. That's when loneliness can turn into depression, can have impact. I mean, people talk about loneliness being equated to cigarette smoking, long-term chronic loneliness being equated to cigarette smoking, long-term chronic loneliness, being equated to cigarette smoking. There was another study that was done, I believe at Yale University, I'll just double check and give it to you for the show notes, that they were measuring loneliness in the flu with college students always taking it with a grain of salt, but students that were exposed to the flu virus in the study who were purposely kept lonely and their friends were not able to check in on them recovered slower than people who had individuals checking in on them and saying, how are you doing? Are you okay? all areas of our life. And that's why I'm so passionate about talking about the subject.

Because you could think, friendship? Is this about like a kumbaya type thing? And it's such a soft subject. It's so obvious that we don't talk about it. And that's why we need to talk about it. For sure. Another way I like to explain it to people is, think back to 2 million years ago, when you're in your hunter-gatherer tight-knit community and you guys are getting on with your business. Let's say one day you're not part of that community. You don't know where they are, you're not with them, you're separate from them. Your body is super clever. Your body knows that you're now vulnerable to attack. So it prepares you for that.

It ramps up your immune system. Your body becomes inflamed. Your blood becomes more prone to clotting. This is basically the stress response. That happens because your body is smart. It is trying to protect you so that if you do get attacked by that lion, if that lion does come and attack you and you're now bleeding,

well, your blood is more prone to clotting. So actually you're not going to bleed to death. Actually, the blood's going to clot. So actually there is an evolutionary mechanism here at play. It's just that, as you said, right at the very start, we're kind of living in this world now where we don't need friends to survive, but we certainly do need them to thrive. Drew, you mentioned to me over the last few days that there are different kinds of friendships. I think you mentioned two different kinds. Why don't you just expand on that? Yeah, this is an easy way for people to do an inventory check-in. Because again, if you're listening to this podcast, you're somebody that's interested in growing, bettering yourself. And sometimes we find

ourselves in a place in life where we have some friends, but we may not be on the same page with them. And so I have these two categories that I use to try to describe the friendships that are common in our world. The first thing is understand that when you were young, the way that you made friends, because you didn't really have the resources and you couldn't drive or really travel on your own, you primarily made one type of friend. And those friends were what I call logistical friends, right? They were friends that were in your area. They were in your same school. They were in your same neighborhood. It's because you were in the same space that you were able to be friends. Same thing that happens in university. The people that you meet often, that's usually when you start to figure out what you like and don't like, but still

for most people, you're going to become friends with the local people that you're in in your university. And often when people get their first job, it's also primarily people that they are becoming friends with are people that they happen to be in the same office complex with. Usually after you enter into the workforce and you look up and your friends have moved or maybe you've moved once or twice, most people who are interested in growth go through a period of time where they look up and they say, okay, I'm thankful for my friends, but I don't know if the tribe that I have now is the same tribe that I needed five, 10 years ago. Maybe I need a different type of friend group to support the new goals, dreams, and values that I

have now. So I say, when you look at your friends that are there, especially if you're feeling like there's a mismatch, you want to ask yourself of the friends you have, nothing wrong with having logistical friends. And again, this is my own just terminology that I've made up for this process that I've used to explain this idea. Nothing wrong with having friends that you just met, that you happen to meet at work or that you happen to meet in your university or that their kids also go to the same school as your kids go to the same school as your kids go to school. And, but if you feel like there's a mismatch or you're missing out, you want to ask yourself, do I have intentional friends? These are friends that I just didn't

have that. I just didn't happen upon that. I just didn't bump into because we were in the same physical space, but I'm choosing them. I'm choosing them on purpose because we have similar values, because we have similar mindset, because we have similar goals and dreams. And that leads to a deeper level of understanding and support. Sometimes the same friends that we had 10 years ago are not the same type of friends that are going to be the closest to us moving forward. So an inventory check-in for anybody to look at, hey, do I have intentional friends in my life is a good way to think about that. Yeah, I love that. And it's also sort of the follow-up for that for me is that a lot of people get stressed out when they change in life, Their lifestyle has changed.

Let's say they become parents or let's say they do a bit of personal growth and they no longer, the things that they used to do, they no longer want to do. For example, drinking. Let's say some people, you know, used to drink heavily in their 20s and their university days and their college days. And then as life evolves, they no longer want to do that. It doesn't fit where they are in life at that time. Yet some of their old friends to do that. It doesn't fit where they are in life at that time. Yet some of their old friends still do that. That can start to cause a lot of turmoil for people. I've seen it in my own life. I've seen it in other people's lives where it's like, oh my God, these were my best buddies. These are the guys I used to hang out with all the time, but

we've got nothing in common anymore. And I kind of, for me, I always say, look, that's okay. You can look back on those times with fondness and you can recognize that, hey, they were a great group of friends at that point in your life. They certainly served a purpose. You served a purpose to them. You guys had fun, but it's sort of okay. And I think I wrote about this in the stress solution. I say, you can move on with thanks. You can say, hey, cool. It was great. But maybe that group wasn't meant to be the same tight-knit group for me in my 40s as it was in my 20s. That's okay, right? And it's okay when friends, it's totally okay. And it's also okay that if anybody here has invested time in their personal development and started growing, at some point in time, for most people, you've probably had a friend or a family member say, you've changed. You've changed now. Oh, when we used to complain or talk about gossip or

these other subjects, you were fine. You loved it. Now, all of a sudden, you're reading these books or listening to these podcasts. You've changed, man. It's a derogatory thing, isn't it? It's a derogatory thing. And you know what? It's amazing. I hope I've changed. I hope that you've changed too. And then we become better, more whole, more complete versions of who we really are. And that's okay if somebody felt that. That's okay because you are evolving in your journey. And sometimes people don't understand really what they mean. Actually, there's always like, just like in lifestyle medicine, you're always trying to get to the root cause. Really what people often mean when they're

saying that is that we used to bond over some common things. It doesn't feel like we're bonding over those things anymore. And often I see that as like a cry. I see that as a cry where people are saying like, I miss you in a way. Now, if you can figure out how to hang out with them on your terms now, maybe there are some habits or some behaviors that don't work for you anymore. If you can figure out on your own terms, you know what? I have changed actually. I don't like to talk about gossip as much anymore. I don't want to just complain about our friends, but you know what? I value you and I value our friendship. Would you want to go do X? Would you want to go do Y? Do you want to go on a morning run? Creating another opportunity so that they know that if you still value them and you care

about them and you want them in your world, that there's still a pathway for the two of you to bond. You know, it comes back to what you said before about communication. You know, have you let them know? Because I think that is a very common term. And I think many of us, I'm talking from personal experience here, you find it quite threatening or you've changed, man. And it's like, it's almost like an insult. I think the other person, as you say, you know, probably doesn't know what to feel. They feel a loss of something and that's their way of saying it. But the person who's on the receiving end, it's kind of like, no, no, man, I've not changed. I'm still the same person, you know,

until you really get comfortable in your skin. And I can tell you with one of my friends, as I certainly have changed over the last few years, and I used to project as to what that other person would think, right? So I used to make up a story in my head, oh man, how's that going to work out? Because I'm not doing that behavior anymore. I'm not, you know, I don't really enjoy going to the pub anymore and sitting down over a few beers like I might've done 10, 15 years ago. It's just not where I'm at anymore. No judgment. It's just not me anymore. And I would project and I'd chat about it with one of my other buddies and we actually figured out, actually, maybe it's all in our heads. So, I just openly had the conversation and it was fine. And my mate had actually figured that out anyway. And he was totally cool with it. So, I'd created a big story and drama in my head over something that was never a drama in the first place, or it might

have been, but over time we evolved. So I think your point about communication, like if your friend has done something to hurt you or you hold some resentment, maybe sort of express it. I think that's a common theme, right? It's communicate it. And if actually you have changed and the other person doesn't want to change and feels that actually you don't have anything in common anymore, I honestly have some friends like that who were really, really good buddies in my twenties. And if I'm honest, there is no commonality anymore. We are, we have gone down different paths, but I still look at them now with fondness and go, hey, it's not that I don't like you anymore. I had a great

time with you. We were super, super close friends. I'll always be there for you if you need me, but our lives just don't sort of overlap anymore. And that's okay. That's totally okay. Because if you think back to just, why are we here? Why are we here? Even just the name of your podcast. We're here to live more and everybody gets to decide what that definition is for them. What does live more look like to you who's listening at home today? Is it being the best parent you can be? Is it showing up in your community in a certain way? Is it putting out a certain message into the world that inspires individuals? Whatever your version is of living more, we have to think about our friends and

deep connections as supporting that for us and us supporting that for them. When you get clear and clear about your mission and your purpose of what you're trying to bring to the table, that's when you realize that the true reason to have, even though we don't need each other to survive, quote unquote, it's actually helping each other thrive in this mission and purpose of living more in whatever way that shows up for us. And it turns out that if we help a few other people do that with their mission and vision, they also help do that for our mission and vision. And it's more fun when we do it together yeah lovely really really inspiring probably a good good way of starting to wrap this conversation up drew um something i want to ask you and i appreciate i'm not giving you any preparation for this um is you are very well read you have you always reference various books that you've read in your life that has made a huge impact on you. And I wonder if you could share some of your top recommendations

in terms of books that you have read that have impacted your life that may be relevant to the sort of conversations we've had today. You know, maybe one or two or three, however many come to mind. I just think they could be really valuable resources for people who are interested in the kind of topics you'd like to talk about. Absolutely. So one of the first books that I'd recommend, especially for anybody that identifies as being shy or an introvert or somebody who has not naturally leaned towards having and maintaining a lot of different friendships or a few different friendships, I'd recommend a book by a gentleman named Keith Ferrazzi. He wrote a book called Never Eat Alone. And in this book, he tells the story of his life, of how he started to learn and value deep human connection,

and how he understood that a central part to living the highest version of whatever expression is that you want to bring to the planet is supporting other people's goals and dreams. And it's just an incredible story. On the surface, it can look like it's about networking, and it's really nothing to do with networking. It's about true human connection. So there's a, that, that's the first book that I'd recommend never eat alone by Keith Ferrazzi. It will supercharge your understanding. You know, my dad came back, my dad is part of a men's, um, uh, like almost the equivalent of like a Bible study in his local community for the Hindu temple that he's part of. And he came back one day after being part of this group and he said, you know,

I learned something really interesting today from the teacher that runs this group for couples. He said that sometimes shyness is a little selfish, right? When we're being shy, we're being selfish. And my dad said, okay, what do you mean by that? He said, when you're being shy and you're holding back your unique talents and gifts from somebody else, you're robbing them of the opportunity to benefit from everything that you've gone through, to benefit from how incredible of a friend you are, to benefit from your lessons and experiences in life. And this book, Never Eat Alone, it kind of taps into that and says that it's when we lean into connection that not only do we receive the benefits, but we help

other people become a better version of themselves. So that's number one. The second book that I'd recommend out there, and this is for anybody that has a message or a vision that they want to bring to the world in any capacity. It's a book called Tribes by Seth Godin. He says that if you have a vision or a mission, Rangan, I know your mission very well because we've talked about it many times, right? Impacting lifestyle change for individuals that are out there. Anybody who has a vision or mission in the world that they want to bring, this book is so important for all leaders to read when it comes to building communities, leaders to read when it comes to building communities, friendships, and how to lead people through a common theme that's out there. For my work, I'm always thinking about how I can

take, how can I create some of the same trends and themes that make me a good friend to other friends to bring it into the workplace so that we all can support each other a little bit better. And this book by Seth Godin talks about a lot of those themes. The other book that I'll recommend is actually not a book about friendship. And it's by somebody that I referenced earlier, John Gottman. And he wrote a book about, I mean, there's so many books that he has out there, but he has a book about the foundations of communication for couples and marriages. I'm blanking on the title, but it's like seven successful habits of relationships or successful marriages. We'll find it and put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. The same things that make you a great partner and a great communicator to your husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, those same themes that Dr. John Gottman talks about in his research

also make you a good communicator to a friend, also make you a better boss, also make you a better parent. So inside of there, Dr. John Gottman talks about a couple things that I'll just share as a couple anecdotes with you. He talks about something called the five to one ratio. He says, happy and successful couples have something in common, which is they have side. They have five positive things that they express to one another. Positive things like gratitude, appreciation, deep reminders of love, could be physical touch and affirmations that are there. I've found the unique thing is that my most successful friendships have the same thing. Leaning into gratitude, telling somebody that you care about them and why, telling them why they matter to you. So the same things that make you great in relationship, make you good in friendship,

make you good in business, make you good in work, all these things affect each other. It's not like our friendships are in isolation in the corner somewhere, right? How good of a friend we are to other people impacts every other aspect of our life. So I've recommended this book to a lot of people because so gracefully, Dr. John Gottman has broken down these categories and talked about the importance of focusing on these things like gratitude to strengthen our bonds and connections with those that we love. So those are three books that I would recommend. I'm going to go and order all of them now. I don't have any of them. I've known you for a good period of time now. And I think they just sound amazing. They sound like, as you say, not just lessons for friendship, lessons for life, right? How do you become better at life? Drew, you have shared some truly wonderful insights today.

I think, I don't think there's anyone out there who is really trying to elevate this whole idea and importance of friendship in the way that you are. I think it's incredible. You've certainly brought it to my awareness and my attention. And then I'm obviously able to take that and help people by putting it in a book, for example.

So I think you really are helping a lot of people. I think awareness is key. If we don't know that there's an issue there, how are we going to make any changes there? What are your plans? What are you working on at the moment? What sort of things are you doing in your life? You know, I am fundamentally a business operator and I like building businesses and teams and connections. And really I use it as an excuse to work with my friends and family. I have a podcast where I try to integrate the themes of friendship in there. And I've been chatting about this more with friends like yourself. And one day maybe I'll write about this topic right now. I just talk about themes like sociogenomics and lessons that we can learn about from the towns like Rosetta

and the Blue Zones and how it impacts our health and our brain health. That podcast is called The Broken Brain Podcast. We just recorded, you are our first interview ever that we did. Thank you for that. We just recorded another interview with you, so listeners can check that out. I try to incorporate the themes of human connection and deep relationships into there for mental health, for brain health, in addition to talking about foods that support our mental health and our brain health and other aspects of life. But that's the main area that I put out work on this topic right now. And I love to ask the practitioners, doctors, and individuals and researchers on my podcast, what are their routines for including friendship and community in their life?

Because no one routine works for everybody. And I want listeners in my podcast to see how you can incorporate it in. And it's, again, going back to my central theme, it's not about quantity, it's not about online or offline, it's about intentionality. And it's just about you finding that intentionality for you. So I talk about some of that on my podcast. For sure. And I'd highly recommend people go and check out your podcast. If there was one episode that we're going to start with, because you have a lot of episodes now, of course, you've had lots of wonderful guests, but is there one in particular you might point people towards to actually start off their journey on your podcast?

Well, I'll give you two answers. The first one is if you've never listened to my podcast before, start at episode one. Because I feel like there was things that we talked about in your interview on episode one that I haven't heard you talk about exactly that same way. It's always different when the microphone is turned on. It's one of the funny things about being a podcast host, isn't it? Is that you interview other people or you, I don't like the term interview, actually. You have conversations with other people, yet sometimes people want more from you. Like I have heard that quite a lot. So yeah, I think it is quite nice. Certainly the podcasts that I love listening to and yours is one of them. I love it when the tables get turned and actually I get to hear

one of my favorite hosts, what is going on in their life and what are their thoughts? So I can, I totally get that. Yeah. So if there's another one that I'd say that's on the topic of taking friendships and community and extending it beyond, I did an interview recently with an inspiring woman, rockstar, entrepreneur who I've been friends with for a while. Her name is Marie Forleo. And she recently came out with a book called Everything is Figureoutable. It's a central theme that she's used in her life. Anytime she's come up against a challenge with her health, business, any other aspect in life. And one of the things she talks about is that if we are truly going to be resilient and face any challenge in life, one of the ways that we increase that

resiliency is we invest time in creating a tribe that gets us, supports us, and has our back. So it was unique to talk to her about friendship towards the end of the conversation and integrate these themes. So that could be interesting for listeners. For sure. And Drew, are you active on social media? And if so, where can people find you and learn more of this wisdom and these tips? Well, I mostly post on Instagram and you can find me on YouTube as well too. But the place that I write the most about the topics of friendship and themes on that topic would be Instagram. You can find me at my first and last name, Drew Pierhut.

That's the primary place that I'm writing right now. That's awesome. Drew, you truly are an incredible human being. Having you in my life has certainly changed it for the better. Meeting you is probably one of the best things that's happened to me in the last few years. Thanks for making time today. Really enjoy chatting to you. And welcome to the Feel Better Live More podcast.

Rangan, thank you so much for your work. You know, I'm not an author right now yet, maybe one day. And you so concisely, because I haven't had the practice of, I've done a few podcasts on this topic, not as many. You've been on so many podcasts and interviews and other things like that. So I'm still always workshopping these ideas. But when I got your book, when you sent me, so graciously sent me your book, The Stress Solution, and I read that topic on friendship and that chapter on relationships, I thought you did such an incredible job to synthesize so many of these themes that people are trying to figure out practical ways to integrate them in their lives. figure out practical ways to integrate them in their lives. And you just are great at that. I just want to let you know, I don't know if I've ever just truly set it out flat out like that. You are so great at taking these different things, telling people the minimum viable thing that they can do to improve that area of their life. And you did that so well for this topic of relationships in your book. So thank you for being such a force for good in the world.

That's fine. Well, I appreciate the kind words. And I have no doubt that this will not be our last conversation on the podcast. So until next time, we'll see you soon. Thank you, sir. That concludes today's episode of the Feel Better Live More podcast. So what did you think? As you can probably tell, I really enjoyed that conversation in no small part because I got the chance to sit down with one of my best friends

and simply chat openly and honestly without distraction for around two hours. In fact, when was the last time you did that with one of your friends? I think this is such an important episode. Please do let Drew and I know what you thought. We would absolutely love to hear what particular bits resonated with you. Which bits do you think you are going to take action on? Drew is super active on social media, especially on Instagram. His handle is at Drew Perhit. That is at D-H-R-U-P-U-R-O-H-I-T. Please do let us know what you thought. And if you can remember, please do use the hashtag FBLM so that I can easily find your comments. If you want to continue your learning experience, now that the podcast is over,

please do visit the show notes page for this episode, drchastity.com forward slash friendship. There are links there to all the studies that Drew mentioned in the show, as well as the books that Drew recommended there at the end. So please do take a look, drchastity.com forward slash friendship. Now my most recent book, The Stress Solution, came up a lot in the conversation today. There was a whole section in that book on relationships. Yes, a whole chapter on friendship that I discussed today with Drew, but also a whole chapter on intimacy and another one on human touch. These are some of my favorite chapters in the book.

And I've had so many messages since the book came out telling me that this section in particular has really helped people improve the quality of their relationships, whether it be with their partner or with their friends. You can pick up a copy of The Stress Solution in all the usual places in paperback, ebook, or as an audio book, which I am narrating. Don't forget guys that this podcast, like most of them these days, was recorded in video. You can see the whole episode on my YouTube channel, which is drchastity.com forward slash YouTube. Please do check it out and please do subscribe. it really helps me raise the visibility of these conversations especially on youtube now as well as the full episode on my youtube channel you will

see lots of short snippets of the best bits of all of my various podcasts on there if you know someone or you know family members who would benefit from the information in these conversations but they're not a fan of audio podcasts, please do let them know about my YouTube channel. I really do want to get these conversations out to as many people as I possibly can. If you enjoy my weekly shows, please do consider supporting them by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or whichever platform you listen to podcasts on. You can also help me spread the word by taking a screenshot right now and sharing with your friends and family

on your social media channels. Or you can simply do it the good old fashioned way. Next time you meet up with your friends, which I hope you're gonna now do with more regularity after hearing the conversation today, perhaps you can discuss this episode or other conversations on the podcast. I really do appreciate you spreading the words.

A big thank you to Richard Hughes for editing and Vedanta Chastity for producing this week's podcast. That is it for today. I hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure that you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back in one week's time with my latest episode. Remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it because when you feel

better, you live more. I'll see you next time. Thank you.