Influential Introvert: Communication Coaching for Professionals with Performance Anxiety - Happy People Fall in Love with Strangers More

Episode Date: February 22, 2026

Love isn't what most people think it is. It’s not a bond between partners or family, according to Dr. Barbara Fredrickson – it’s a micro-moment of positivity that resonates in your body when you connect with someone, even with strangers. And the research is clear: The more of these moments you create, the happier and healthier you’ll be. Read the article.Love 2.0 book***I’m your host, Sarah Mikutel, a communication and mindset coach. My work is about helping people like you share your voice, strengthen your relationships, and have more fun.As an American expat living in the U.K., I value curiosity, courage, and joy. A few things I love: wandering European streets in search of the best vegetarian meal, practicing Italian, and helping my clients design lives that feel rich and meaningful.If you want to become a more calm, confident communicator at work and in your personal life – let’s talk.Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

In the summer, the lighthouse behind me comes alive as a champagne bar. And in July, hundreds of women and some men dance around it in flaming red dresses. And this is to recreate Kate Bush's Withering Heights video. And in the background, we've got the sea, we've got the white cliffs. It's so gorgeous. It's so warm. It's so friendly. On this winter day, though, the granite lookout point that I'm standing on is empty.

aside from me and a man and his dog. I take out my earbuds so I can take in the sound of the waves. The morning feels crisp and still. A much-needed respite from the howling wind we have been experiencing for weeks. I notice binoculars hanging around the man's neck, so I ask, what are you looking at? Seagulls, he says. They change their plumage for the mating season. You can see their heads are already turning black.

I look closer at the birds soaring above us. I see one. Wow, I have never noticed this before I say. You taught me something new. It turns out the binoculars that I thought were around his neck were actually a camera. And he shows me a few shots of other animals that he has taken since retiring recently. Here's a seal I saw this morning, he says. What?

I cannot contain my excitement. The sweetest seal pup. stares up at me from his photo. Do you think he's still around, I ask? We look around for him. We wait a few minutes, but the seal does not make an appearance. So I wish the man well, and I make my way home along the harbor arm. But then I hear, come back. The man is shouting at me. Come back, he's here. So I turned to see the seal's head bobbing in the water, and I run back in that direction. The man has his camera out. He's snapping another photo, and I am buzzing with my first close-up of a seal in the wild. His eyes were so soft and expressive like a deer

is like doe eyes but seal eyes. I'm Sarah, by the way, I say to the man, Tony, he says. And later I walk home feeling lighter and warmer and more connected to this world. Psychology researcher Barbara Fredrickson would call what happened between me and Tony a moment of positivity resonance. And that she says is the true definition of love. In her book, Love 2.0, she writes, love is not sexual desire or the blood ties of kinship, nor is it a special bond or commitment. Sure enough, love is closely related to each of these important concepts, yet none, I will argue, capture the true meaning of love as your body experiences it. Love is an emotion, a momentary state that arises to infuse your mind and body alike, a micro moment of warmth and connection that you share with another

living being. End quote. So by this definition, you might have a more loving relationship with your local barista than an absent partner. Or even more controversially, maybe your mom does love you more than your sibling because of the frequency that you get together to hike or paint or whatever you do together. Whether you agree with Fredrickson's definition of love or not, and I don't, I think you can still feel love for someone without them being present, including when they pass away. The well-being benefits of experiencing these moments of connection with people you know as well as strangers are backed up by plenty of studies. But here's what makes her research exciting and useful for all of us. If love is a micro moment of connection, then it's in our power to generate more of it.

Every day with everyone. It's something we create through our attitude and how we interact with people around us, including people we're meeting for the first time. So here's just one study to back this up. Customers and Starbucks were assigned to either have a warm, genuine exchange with their barista. This means eye contact, smiling, a bit of chat. or to keep to themselves and simply order. Those who made an effort to connect reported a stronger sense of belonging. In another study of more than 800 commuters who had interactions with shuttle bus drivers, even the smallest positive interaction, like a greeting, a thank you, have a nice day.

This predicted greater life satisfaction and positive emotions, even after accounting for personality differences. And these aren't just feel-good findings. In one of the largest studies of its kind, Harvard researchers tracked more than 6,000 adults for 15 years to see how their emotional lives affected their hearts. People who had what the researchers called emotional vitality, this is a zest for life, a sense of engagement,

and the ability to process emotions in a healthy way, they were 19% less likely to develop heart disease. So love doesn't just protect your heart in the poetic sense. It literally protects your heart. To quote Barbara Fredrickson again, once you actually forge a connection with someone else to create a shared moment of positivity resonance, the doors of perception widen further in unique ways. You come to view one another as part of a unified whole, a single us rather than two separate means. And compared to other positive emotions, love stretches your circle of concern to include others to a greater degree. End quote. I love that she is bringing up the circles of concern. And this is actually a concept that goes back nearly 2,000 years

with the Stoics. And this is something that is more important than ever. The world has always been chaotic and full of suffering, but it feels particularly heavy right now for a lot of people. Some of us are experiencing a new kind of fear and even despair in places like the U.S. Where masked ice agents have been kidnapping people, killing people, I think a lot of us are shocked at what we have been witnessing and appalled. Even though the Stoics would say we shouldn't be shocked by anything like this that's thrown our way, We should know that anything's possible and people are people. It still feels quite shocking to a lot of us.

And we're tempted to shut ourselves away from the world and think, everyone else is crazy. I am just going to stay in my little cave. It's feeling hard right now. And we're like, what is even happening to society? We talk about isolation and brain rot and doom scrolling as if they are normal parts of our culture. This kind of living is not normal. and it is not healthy. Humans need other humans to flourish. And we are not living in the olden days when we were in tribes of 150 people and we knew all of our neighbors.

On the one hand, a lot of us are living in isolation. And on the other hand, we are living in this digital world where billions of people are showing up and often yelling at one another. So let me go back to the circles of concern again. This was something that the Stoic philosopher Hierocles talked about nearly 2,000 years ago. He described our relationships with other people and with ourselves as concentric circles. So imagine at the center is you. It's yourself. And then if you have one ring out of that, that's your family. And then imagine another ring outside of that. There's your neighbors, and these rings keep going. So there's strangers than all of humanity. A lot of people talk about the environment now as being part of a circle of concern. And our job, he argued, was to bring these different circles closer into us. We want to create greater ties outside of our immediate self, outside of our immediate family, so that we're showing a greater care for the world.

So we're treating strangers a little more like neighbors, neighbors a little more like family. And most of the time, this looks small. You learn your barista's name. You offer a smile. You check in on the elderly neighbor after a snowstorm. You ask the new person at work how they're settling in. You build the muscle of noticing other people and caring about what happens to them. But sometimes the world demands more and how we show up tells us who we are. When ice came for their neighbors, thousands of Minnesotans chose not to stay silent. They chose to fight back. They delivered food and medicine to families too frightened to leave their homes.

They organized neighborhood watch groups. Parents and teachers patrolled school drop-offs and pickups to make sure that children got there safely. A tow truck company started returning the vehicles that were abandoned during ice raids. He was bringing them back to the families they belong to. And this is such a beautiful example of people showing us what it looks like to expand your circles of concern. It's not a theory. It is something that we should be living. It's a model for living well and sometimes a survival strategy, as we've seen recently.

We need each other. To quote Frederickson again, by nature's design, your body is equipped to handle it all, to defend against true threats and to uncover and create nourishing micro moments of love, not just with mates and kin, but perhaps most consequentially with those outside your family circle. End quote. Now more than ever, she argues, our survival is depending on the love we share with strangers. Plus, it is simply more fun in life to feel that oneness with other people, to be curious, to laugh, to feel like we are part of something greater.

And it doesn't take much. We don't have to wait for yoga retreats in India or digital nomad meetups in Bulgaria to connect with strangers. It doesn't require a ton of distance, a ton of expense. We can simply ask somebody to watch our computer while we get a glass of water at a cafe and then ask them about the book they're reading when we return. Or we could simply just ask them about their book. When Tony and I met at the lighthouse, we,

were just on our regular morning strolls. I asked him a question. He taught me something new about seagulls. He called me back to see the baby seal, which was pretty legendary. To be fair, I am putting that in a yogurt tree in India territory. That was very special to me. But the point is connection isn't just limited to the legendary. Love lives in the ordinary. And this is something that we all have the power to generate every single day. That's all for now. I am communication coach Sarah Mikital, and I am sending you lots of love from my home in England. Until next time. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity,

whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.