The Dr. Hyman Show - How Community Shapes Your Mind, Body, and Well-Being

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Imagine a small town where neighbors gather for every celebration, and people stay remarkably healthy simply because they’re deeply connected. Research shows that meaningful relationships—not achievement, diet, or even exercise—are the strongest predictor of long-term health and happiness, while loneliness can be as harmful as smoking two packs a day. Our social bonds influence gene expression, lowering stress and inflammation and activating the body’s natural healing pathways. By prioritizing kindness, investing in uplifting relationships, and creating simple moments of togetherness, we tap into one of the most powerful longevity tools we have. And the hopeful truth is that building just a few authentic connections can change your life in profound, measurable ways. In this episode, I discuss, along with Radha Agrawal and Jeff Rosenthal, why deep, authentic connection is one of the most powerful determinants of our physical health, happiness, and longevity. Radha Agrawal is the co-founder, CEO, and Chief Community Architect of Daybreaker, the early-morning dance and wellness movement. Daybreaker currently holds events in 25 cities and more than a dozen college campuses around the world and has a community of almost half a million people. She is also the author of a new book called Belong: Find Your People, Create Community, and Live a More Connected Life. Jeff is the Co-Founder of Summit, a cutting-edge organization best known for hosting global ideas, festivals and events, and is the co-owner, principal designer, and developer of Summit Powder Mountain and Powder Mountain ski resort in Eden, Utah. He’s the co-author of Make No Small Plans: Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams, and Building Community.  This episode is brought to you by BIOptimizers. Head to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use code HYMAN to save 15%. Full-length episodes can be found here: The Surprising Key To Longevity The Most Important Medicine for Your Health and Longevity How Mindset And Community Are Key To Realizing Your Dreams

Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show, it wasn't career achievement, it wasn't exercise, it wasn't a healthy diet that determined the quality and happiness of your life. It was good relationships. Good relationships keeps us healthier and happier. The holidays are supposed to be joyful, but for many of us, they're stressful. Between travel, family, busy schedules, and late nights, our bodies burn through magnesium past. Magnesium is responsible for over 600 processes in the body, including sleep, muscle relaxation, mood and stress response. Most of us are deficient without even knowing it.

That's why I take magnesium breakthrough from bioptimizers. It has all seven essential forms of magnesium in one capsule so your body can actually absorb and use it. This holiday season, give your body what it needs to feel calm and sleep better. Visit bioptimizers.com slash hymen and use code hymen to say 15%. Before we jump into today's episode, I want to share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey. While I wish I could work with everyone one-on-one, there just isn't enough time in the day.

so I've built several tools to help you take control of your health. If you're looking for guidance, education, and community, check out my private membership, the Hyman Hive for live Q&A's exclusive content and direct connection. For real-time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit Function Health. You can also explore my curated doctor-trusted supplements and health products at Dr.hyman.com. And if you prefer to listen without any breaks, don't forget, you can enjoy every episode of this podcast, add-free with Hyman Plus. Just open Apple Podcasts and tap try free to start your seven-day free trial.

What do the longest living and most joyous people in the world have in common? Well, they all share one common trait, a sense of belonging, of community, of connection. You know, when we have a tribe to leave on, when we are connected to others, we have a sense of belonging, when we feel there's a worth outside of ourselves, we can really tap into an incredible array of our own inner pharmacy. not the doctor's pharmacy, but our own inner biochemistry lab and our brain that regulates so much of our health. So when we're talking about today is how the strength of our relationships is one of the key factors, maybe the key factor in determining longevity. I'll just say a quick story about a community I might have mentioned before, but it's a Rosetta, Pennsylvania, and it was

read about this years ago on one of Deepak Chopra's books. And they found that it was a was this tribe of, not tribe, a community of Italians that came over on mass from Italy, from this little town, Italy. And there were, you know, all different levels of society, wealth and, you know, achievement and success, at least monetarily. And, but they all came over. But the thing that was unique about them was that they had a deep sense of community. And no matter what station life you were, who you were, everybody celebrated everything together. All the holidays, all the birthdays and the weddings and the funerals and everything was in community. And then when they came to the States, they adopted the same crappy lifestyle habits as Americans,

but they didn't die at the same rate because they had this sense of connection. Now we know a lot about this research because one of the biggest factors in terms of your risk for premature death is loneliness. Being lonely and socially isolated is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. That's really serious. So biological aging as a result of all of our stressors and our psychological stressors and relational stressors, our lack of connection is really important. Lack of physical touch, lack of intimacy plays a huge role, not lack of being understood and seen

and witnessed. There's a huge role in so much of the ailments that we're suffering, not just mental illness, but also physical illness and our longevity. So this whole idea of sociogenomics, I actually can't. came up with this term years ago when I was in Haiti and then it became part of medical literature, not because of me, but because other people also started glomming on to it. And it was the idea that our social relationships and our social networks may be more important than our genetic connections in determining our health and our health outcomes.

And that our lifestyle certainly influences our genes, but so does our social connections, our relationships influence our gene expression. And it's really not an abstract theory or notion. It literally is biology, our thoughts, our beliefs, our relationships, our relationships, relationships all drive real changes that we can measure in our gene expression that can join inflammation, stress hormones. For example, you're having a conversation with somebody. If it's a loving, connected, intimate conversation, your anti-inflammatory genes will turn on.

Your healing and repair genes will turn on. Whereas if you're in a conflictual relationship or a conversation with somebody, you're going to have your stress hormones increase. You're going to have inflammation increase. You're going to increase all sorts of bad things in your body that are produced by your body that cause harm. So we have huge, huge, huge motivation, I think, to focus as a key part of our health strategy and just life happiness strategy, a deep sense of community and making sure we build that. So our social connections, our community, our relationships, all are associated with long

lifespan, with a better mental health, with improved physical health, things like blood pressure, waste, circumference, body mass, inflammation. Now it's in Icaria and Sardinia, which are two of the blue zones and the Kuwait Peninsula, and one of the things these communities have in common where people live to be longer than anywhere else, and I wrote a lot about this in Young Forever, my new book, was the power of community. They all were part of this fabric. And they all had their place. They all had their role. They all had a meaning and purpose. Even if you're 100 years old, I remember Julia was 103 months, she said, and she basically was still working at 100 years old, making all sorts of wedding accoutrements, like doilies and

little lace things. I don't know what they do or in Italy, but it was kind of cool. She was constantly working and making stuff for all these weddings and was still involved in the community life. So I want to share a little bit about a study that kind of reflects the power of this. And it was an 80-year study called the Harvard study of adult development. And it had been producing data on so many different things on who lives longer, happier, healthier lives. And they wanted to understand not what makes people sick, but what makes people thrive, what makes them well. So what were the lessons from this study was an 84-year study, right? Long study, they were tracking the same people and over generations asking thousands of questions,

hundreds of measurements to find out what really makes people healthy and happy. And they were giving these people are giving regular updates on their life, their health, their income, their employment, their marital status. They filled out questionnaires and were part of interviews where they revealed their fears and their hopes or disappointments or accomplishments or regrets, life satisfaction, and lots more. And this had a really incredible impact by providing lots of data. The researchers use this data to assess how people's lives, their experiences, their attitudes affect their well-being. And one of the thing that was so powerful from this study was sort of surprising. It wasn't career achievement. It wasn't exercise. It wasn't a healthy

diet that determined the quality and happiness of your life. It was good relationships. Good relationships keeps us healthier and happier. That was powerful. And the studies leaders that are, I mean, obviously the people started the study are dead. The current leader of the study, Robert Waldinger from Harvard and Mark Schultz, have a new book.

It's called The Good Life, Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. And it's a great book. I actually had Robert Waldinger on the podcast, the doctor's pharmacy, and you can learn more about the book and things there. But what are the things that we can do? What are the lessons learned from the study? But how do we improve the quality of our relationships? First, we have to look at ourselves, right? Who are we? What is our life like? What are the choice we're making? How are we not prioritizing relationships? So we can get really busy. We can do all sorts of stuff that we think is helping us get ahead. We can spend too much time on social media. But we often don't really think,

about building and investing in the quality and the number of our relationships. And for me, I know personally that my relationships, my friendships, my community is the most important thing for me. It really is what keeps me grounded, keeps me healthy, keeps me happy. And then more and more as I get older, I focus more on this as opposed to like when you have kids in a career and try to just kind of get by. And it's like sometimes friends can fall by the wayside. it's really important to find and it even can be just one or two good friends it makes a huge

difference now um when when these people in the study actually uh were interviewed they really actually benefit from this interviews because it helped them realize where they neglected their relationships and then they considered sort of looking and finding oh how can we improve that so maybe look at your own life what's your social life like what are the who are the people in your life that that you care most about, that you want to have a relationship. Think about how they support you and how often you spend time together and maybe do a little bit of effort to actually focus on what matters to you most and help you make decisions that actually can enhance the quality and number of your relationships.

So maybe spend more time with people who make you laugh and who elevate you and less time with people who drain you and are, you know, energy saps. So I, you know, I think it's important to find friends and community members that help bring you up and not take you down. You know, sometimes you meet with people. All we want to do is complain and go on and on about everything. And I think there, you know, there are other people who, when you're around them, you laugh, you have fun, you play. And it's just, that's what you want. You know, prioritize relationships.

We schedule in exercise. We make ourselves maybe time to make a healthy diet. We focus on our career and work. but we don't focus on prioritizing those relationships that matter and being showing up and being present for us rather than zoning out on social media you know rather than like you're doing a million things at once focus on on your relationships you know when during covid i i think we all felt a little isolated and so i reached out to about six of my close male friends and we all have known each other for 40 often plus years maybe 35 the small the fluist i think was 25 years And so we've known each other and we formed this group and every, every Tuesday at 6 o'clock, we meet for an hour and a half and spend time together and share about our lives. And it's been one of the most impactful things I've done. And it's something that you can do.

It doesn't take any organization, you just need to Zoom link or it's really pretty easy. And you can have these deep connections and relationships that allow you to be seen and known and can really help activate so many healing pathways in your body. Make time to talk to people, right? And it came in sometimes with small relationships that matter, but a study in the University of Kansas found that the simple act of just reaching out to somebody, a friend, for conversation once a day, dramatically increases happiness and lowers their stress hormones.

So hanging out of friends, lowers your stress hormones, pretty good. And also, it's not all about you, right? So take time to ask questions, find out what's exciting for you. them find out what they're struggling with find out what makes them happy have them share their life with you and value their opinions be present focus and don't um don't just kind of be superficial with them but go deep uh so maybe try to have one conversation a day and put that in your calendar and and see what the effects will be over time super important uh next thing is be kind you know my grandmother uh used to ask my mother when she came home and said i met this new friend she says are they

kind. And I think kindness was such an important value in my family and how do we be kind to each other. And, you know, the relationship happiness is determined by how you are in that relationship. And there was a research study at Michigan State that looked on data for our 2,500 married couples. And they found they were, you know, how good they were in five different dimensions. Were they extroverts? Were they agreeable? Were they conscientious? Were they stable emotionally? Where they open to doing new things and experiences? And the ones who had higher levels of agreeableness and emotional stability also had higher happiness. So the more kind of kind and positive you were, the more likely you were to be happy. So people invest a lot of time in finding someone

who's perfectly compatible. But that might not be the whole story. It's more about being the people you care about in fostering those deep connections. Also, a friend of mine had a word that I really loved, which is called cop-tuitiveness, which is where you cop to it. If you screw up, if you make a mistake, you cop to it. And it's really about learning to apologize, learning to repair relationships, learning how to have nonviolent communication and owning your stuff. Like I said, also a great way to build relationship is to ask questions. Instead of talking about yourself ask questions about somebody show that you care show that you're interested in what they care about or thinking about um someone wants advice don't just give them your opinion ask them questions

to guide them to the right answer that they know themselves also don't be shy about expressing your love there are lots of ways to to love and lots of ways to express it maybe it's simple things you know, um, uh, I, uh, I had a, uh, a flight that came in other night late. And I usually take the Uber home. And my partner, she showed up unexpected and picked me up at the airport. It was like, just brought me such joy and delight. It was such a simple thing, you know, 10, 15 minutes from the airport here. And it wasn't a big deal for her, but it made a huge difference in terms of my own happiness. And it was really powerful. So, uh, help help, help your friends with a project, you know, ask them what they need to do, whether it's clean up the garage,

or work on a project together, you know, call an old friend. Maybe they haven't heard from you a while. Maybe you just want to check in on them, ask them how they're doing. Maybe you want to focus on helping somebody who's trying to do something that may be difficult for them, trying to support them and give them some love. Also, when you have a partner or a close friend, do little acts of kindness, give them a little gift, you know, buy them something they like, you know, get them. something that makes them smile can be super simple you know when when you often uh don't do these acts

kind of life just it's a little bit flatter and when you do them it's super fun like like i said my partner picked me up the airport it was like wow you know i got that she really cared also um tell people how they you feel about them don't wait till their eulogy to tell them all the things you like about them be specific give people feedback about what you love about them, what you liked about them, what makes you happy, and how you feel in their presence, who would you be without them? You know, who would you, who would you be now that you're with them? What, what are they inspire you to do? And thank them for, for what they do and, and how they show up for you. Don't be shy. Like I said, don't wait until someone's dead to write a eulogy about

them. It's better to have eulogies when you're, when you're alive. And I, you know, I actually had a group, friend group where we would get together. And on people's birthdays, we would basically go around and for everybody's birthday, we would share a little bit about what they're like and what we like about them, what we love about them, something that inspires us about them. And it's like getting a living eulogy. It's pretty awesome. The holidays are supposed to be joyful, but for many of us, they're stressful. Between travel, family, busy schedules, and late nights, our bodies burn through magnesium past. Magnesium is responsible for over 600 processes in the body, including sleep, muscle relaxation mood and stress response most of us are deficient without even knowing it that's why

i take magnesium breakthrough from bioptimizers it has all seven essential forms of magnesium in one capsule so your body can actually absorb and use it this holiday season give your body what it needs to feel calm and sleep better visit bioptimizers dot com slash hymen and use code hymen to say 15 We are literally born inside of a mother's womb. So we are born in community and without it, we cannot survive or thrive, right? And it's so clear that our lack of belonging or isolation is the actual essential issue that ladders down to every other societal problem that we are facing today. So gun violence.

Unpack that for us because it's a big statement that loneliness is a cause of so many of societal illness. of every societal illness. So obesity epidemic, our lack of, so. So tell us how each one, obesity, because. Because, so being socially isolated is as harmful to your physical health as being an alcoholic and twice as how harmful as obesity because cellularly, right, we end up storing more. And again, you're the doctor here, but is there's so much sort of knowledge around and studies around when you don't belong, all of a sudden your cellular reactions become slower, you're,

metabolizing food less fast. And there's actually a lot of studies that I've read around that. Maybe you're depressed and anxious in using food as your source of comfort. Well, that too. Of course, that too. But it actually sets off a cellular chain reaction. Our lack of belonging in isolation sets off this sort of cellular chain reaction that sort of slows down our metabolism as well. But also, you know, every anxiety and depression, you know, one in three,

college students are anxious or depressed today. One of the reasons we launched daybreak on college campuses is because my fiance's little brother, three of his best friends commit suicide in college, and turns out it's, it's, what's the word? It's contagious. And so he... It's true. Both positive and negative behaviors are contagious.

Absolutely, exactly. And so we looked into it and we realized, oh my gosh there's such a huge issue on college campuses around drinking and binge drinking and um so you want to create day park on college campuses to inspire connection without substances as well as we're now on 15 campuses because we're getting up a six o'clock to go dance you're not going to party too late we start a little bit later because they're definitely not going to come and we have to lure them with burritos but it's cool um dancing with burritos yeah no but i you know i and so like unpacking some more like our political strife right now you

know, the political polarization that we're facing today, you know, I think the Make America Great, again, hats, you know, the red hats that people are wearing on the Republican side, it's a statement of connection and community. I'm a part of something. And these are disenfranchised community members often who are being recruited who are saying, hey, join our barbecue, we're cooking for everybody, here's some hats for you guys, and all of a sudden I went from feeling like I don't belong to, here's a community that really is welcoming me with open arms, the pipe bombers, all of the gun violence that we're facing, many of whom are mentally have mental illnesses, well, 85% of people experiencing mental illness are isolated or

alone. And so because we ostracize them from society, they're not welcome because they're not mentally sort of abled, right? So, so that piece of it only sort of creates that, that sense of anger. And so it's on each and every one of us to, um, out there who's listening on this, on this podcast right now to really make friends with everybody, whether it's someone who's older than you, younger than you, someone who's mentally, you know, sort of, um, um, experiencing mental illness. Um, how can we actually bridge those divides that every single human on this planet can belong? And so the cover of my book has a doorway on it, right? Because the concept of neighborhood, neighborliness is also lost. You know, I live in New York City. We live in

New York City. Do you know your neighbor's names? Do you know the neighbor across the street? Yeah, we just moved in. But do you see, I don't know my neighbors. I've been there for three years, you know, and I've tried to make friends with them and there's sort of this kind of don't talk to me type of thing. And, and so we're making a big effort. You know, we have a welcome committee, like little figurines outside our door that says, you know, welcome to our home. You know, if you need salt, come and borrow it. and we're trying but it's on all of us

society needs to embrace the concept of neighborhood again I think if you not need sugar but if you need salt yeah exactly you're not going to get a bag of white sugar and bought his house definitely

yeah so but I think community if the most generous act we can do as human beings is to create community the most generous thing we can do for ourselves

and for each other is to sort of extend our hand and say, hey, will you be my friend? So that's true for, you know, for me, when I turned 30 years old, I looked myself in the mirror and I realized I didn't belong.

And that was the beginning of my journey to community. And that's the first page of my book. Yeah, in my 20s, I spent sort of sleepwalking. I was in sports bars watching football, drinking beer that I didn't want to drink and trying to be cool and relevant and hanging out with what I thought society,

you know, sort of deemed as cool, like going to clubs and getting drunk and blacking out all. the time because I'm Asian and I can't handle my liquor and then at 30 years old I woke up and I had this like whoa aha moment where I was just like what have I been doing like who am I and that the light in my eyes was dim and and I just could hard to imagine I mean right but in this last nine years like headlight high beams shining in the world well this is the last nine years right like we totally and and you know you're such a and you know you're such a dear friend now and

And our community is what gives us that life. And so from 30 to 35, Mickey and I, you know, spent all of our effort and time focusing on community. And I'd create all the exercises for myself. And in my book, I talk about going in, right? You have to go in first to belong to yourself. So often with community building, we're grasping outside of ourselves to find those friends.

But it really starts with this journey of self-expiration first to get to know who we are, what we value, what we can bring to a community. how we're showing up. How are we at listening? How are we at connecting with, you know, with everyone around us and, and. It's almost like focusing on not only how to find a friend, but how to be a friend. Yes, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. So the first half of my book really challenges the reader in a gentle and loving way to go inside and ask themselves, how are we showing up? And how can we, how can we sort of shine a light on ourselves first in a beautiful way, in a glorious way, before we go out. I think so much of self-help today also,

it traps us. We get trapped in self-help. We get trapped in personal development, that we forget that the whole point of personal development is to do what? It's the better relate to the outside world, right? We go inside. Self-care, but it really should be we care. Yeah, right? Exactly. It's like, I'm going to get a massage. I'm going to like take care. I'm going to eat healthy so that I can take care of my children better, so I can serve my community better, so that I can show up for the world better. And yet we forget that. We just get trapped in the look at me selfie moments

without realizing that that's actually the sort of the ladder down to isolation, loneliness, and sadness. So in Okinawa, which is one of the longest lived people in the world, they form a community at birth of babies that are kind of connected by their parents that go through life together and go through all the ups and downs and trials and tribulations from birth to like 100 years old.

and it builds a sense of, and it's not like a hundred people, it's like five people or four people. And it's, you know, most people can't even say there's one friend they have, but they can call up when they feel bad or sad who they can have an honest, transparent conversation too. That's really heartbreaking, and it's so much of a driver, so many of the ills of our side,

it's something people don't talk about. And it's what, you know, when we were with Rick Warren and Saddleback Church, I had the insight of using the power of community to help people create health. So suicide is contagious, but health is contagious. That's right. And obesity is contagious, but so is, you know.

Good health. Good health, right. And I think that's such an important thing you're creating in the world. Is this call to belong and not only to belong, but actually you've created a very specific roadmap. So I want to get into that now. You've talked about going in to go out. So let's talk about going in and what that means and how do you do that?

Right. So, you know, I have about 20 exercises in my book that really, take you by the hand, the whole point is to get dirty in this journey of self-exploration and have fun. But going in starts with first an audit of who are you spending your time with, right? Just take a moment to write down who are the people I'm spending my time with today, at work, at home, around me, family, friends, relatives, who are all the people you're spending your time with?

And just write that down on a piece of paper and take a look at this map, right? And this map will begin to, and what I like to do is color code it. So work friends, I'll color code in green, right? And family, I'll color code in red. And friends that I choose, I'll color code in orange, right? So different colors just to sort of see, oh, okay, cool. So, you know, and then I have this kind of access of energy that I created in my book in chapter one, or in part one of the book where you sort of assess, okay, who are the community members

who are bringing me up and who are the community members in my life are bringing me down. So looking around, you begin to see, ah, cool. So all the green quadrant sort of is up into the right. So therefore, I realize that my work life

is very positive. I have very positive community at work. But then maybe there's more red dots around family and friends in the negative quadrants. So you're like, ah, okay, I need to really understand and assess what's happening in my family life

so I can really heal that or support that or ask myself, you know, how do I connect and handle family members? And we've all, you know, we've all, we're all, we all go through that. And so, so really looking at this. Although I know your family, they're all pretty awesome. Well, you know, we all, we all are, your mom's Japanese. My dad's, yeah.

My sister's a doctor. And sisters, you know. Well, you know, it's, and culturally, it's interesting, right? Like, you know, my father, my mother are most, some of the most loving community builders. I know, in fact, they, they, they, they, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, they modeled what community looks like for us. And yet it's interesting because culturally talking about love and sex and differently, you know, you just don't talk about those things with your, you know,

with your kind of Asian parents. And so on one hand, they're the best community builders I've seen. On the other hand, you know, I do long for a little bit more kind of emotional honesty. Honesty, yeah. But I think, again, like we all have those sort of issues. I'm going through the motherhood process right now. I'm seven months pregnant, and I keep asking myself every day, you know, what kind of, you know, what kind of parent do I want to be? And anyway, so, so plotting this graph, you begin to sort of see a pattern of, okay, cool.

So, you know, here is my entire life, you know, life map, and it begins to give you sort of the beginning of that story. And then from there, you ask yourself, okay, why am I spending my time with these people? Are they grandfathered in? Are I making excuses? am I being lazy? Is it just easier to keep them around? You know, what is it? Do I not have... Are the energy givers or energy suckers? That's right. Exactly. And can I, and can I sort of be honest and vulnerable with that person and share, hey, listen, this is how I'm feeling right now in this relationship and it's not working for me. Or I'm really, you know, sort of wanting to spend time

with, you know, sort of more positive forces. I'm going through pregnancy right now. And I don't necessarily. I just want to spend just some more time connecting with the joy in my life, you know, and things like that, right? Being more honest and vulnerable and I've had those conversations. And it's wonderful. Either it becomes a mirror for that person to say, oh, wow, I realize I'm not showing up the way you want me to. Or they say, okay, I totally understand and let's, you know, reconnect after you give birth. So I think that there's that honesty piece there that we forget. We end up just ghosting our people in our lives. We end up running away or we end up shit talking and it ends up being a very negative experience. But, you know, saying

sort of, this isn't the time to spend time with somebody right now because I want to level up with my community members is the best thing you can do for yourself and for your friend too because they will begin to see how they're showing up. And hopefully they'll go on the journey of self-experation too. So rather than just cut them off, just have a real honest conversation with them about that's right that takes courage and vulnerability on all of our ends but it doesn't create resentment on the other side that leads to negative storytelling and hurt and all other sort of you know larger issues so so that's the first step in going in so the taking inventory yeah taking inventory exactly auditing community you spend time with the second thing that I this is why

I did when I turned 30 and this is this is exactly what I outlined in my book is my own journey that's taking me from feeling like I don't belong to this incredible connected, joyful community that gives me wings and lets me fly. The second thing I did was I wrote down a three column list, which we'll get into it. Column one was all the qualities I was looking for in a friend, right? So I just wanted to write down and actually manifest and call in. What were the qualities that I was looking for in a friend? We do this type of audit again for our romantic relationships.

We do this for our professional careers. right? I want a job that pays this much. I want a job that has this type of vacation. I want a job that, right? In terms of life, it's interesting in terms of life planning, it's not a category. It's like love, work, money, like friend is not a category. And it is the most important, when I say the most important category in life to focus on, and everyone says, focus on money, power, fame, and building your business. But really, none of it will happen and or will result in joy or a Joyful Life experience, if you don't have a community being like,

oh my gosh, Mark, high five. Like, whoa, we get to celebrate your major win. New York Times bestseller list again. Holy shit. Let's go and throw a giant party for you. You know what I mean? If you're just kind of like writing by yourself in your room and have no one to celebrate,

then at the end of it, you're empty again, you know? So it's so critical that we continue to put our laptops down and keep our word and go to those dinners with our friends and say yes to the dance floor and say yes to adventure because at the end of the day no amount of success will mean anything

if there's no one to celebrate it with, right? So column one was all the qualities I was looking for an friend. So I wanted friends talked about ideas and not each other. I wanted friends who said, fuck yeah, you can bleep that out. To life.

I wanted friends who really took care of themselves and took care of each other. I wanted friends who were interesting and interested, right, who were good listeners. I wanted friends, yeah, I just, I just, so, so I wrote down everything I was looking friend to friend, which was kind of vulnerable because there's so much shame around saying I don't belong or there's so much shame around, um, writing down the quality, it just feels desperate for some reason in today's society, right?

But if we just removed, right, that's what I'm saying, but if we removed all of that stigma, because there is stigma around FOMO, right, fear of missing out and fear of being left out. You don't tell people like, yeah, I was left out from the party and it really hurt. Like we're so proud. We don't really talk about that, right? But Foblo is the concept talk to my book quite a bit, which is fear of being left out, right?

Which is a more subversive, negative version of FOMO. Yeah. Right? And then Jomo is joy of missing out, which is the joy of missing out and having the confidence to know there's other things to do. Yeah. But so column two is all the qualities I don't want a friend, right?

So I don't want friends who are negative Nellies, Lazy's, shoulders shruggers. Debbie Downer. Debbie Downers, Netflix, and, you know, chill watchers all the time and home bodies like I wanted friends who were just like you know really say yes to life say yes like and I call it an FYF in my book it's a very and then somebody else might want a friend do they can sit around and do knitting with that's right that's what's something so everyone's different so your qualities are going to be very different from my qualities

whoever's listening out there right and that's exactly what you want to do right now is ask yourself where do I feel the most energized and then column three perhaps the most important column was all the qualities that I need to embody in order to attract the friends that I want. All the qualities I need to embody. So I need to be less of a workaholic. I love my work. I need to put my laptop down.

I need to be less judgmental and nitpicking and perfectionist. And I'm a CEO, right? I run companies for a living. And so my job is to focus on what's going wrong. My job is to focus on how to improve what's going wrong. So if I bring that, I used to bring that into my relationships and to my friendships.

I'd be nitpicking what's going wrong in those relationships instead of being grateful of what's going right. Yeah. So that sort of understanding. Yes, that compartmentalization of in my work, I'm going to be focused on really kind of wanting to improve service and product and whatever, but in my personal life to really compartmentalize and say, hey, wait, let me really focus on what's going right.

Especially as an Asian woman, you know, you grow up in a household where it's like, you're only loved if you get an A, you know? Right. A plus. A plus. You know, so it's, it's... And you did all right. You were into Cornell and you were on a varsity soccer team. But yeah, so I think it's so important to take that audit, you know, and look in the mirror and ask yourself, you know, how are you showing up for your friends too?

So that was a really important... So that's going in is doing an inventory of your life and what matters, looking at yourself. Yeah, looking yourself. Where you're not the best friend and what you want. That's right. The quality is looking for. is part of going in. So going in,

there's also another exercise I do, and there's so many more, but I'll share one more before we go out. By the way, the book is full of these amazing practical exercises. It's not like, oh, you should be in a community and you should go have friends, and it's like a roadmap,

step by step, to take you through the process of how do you create community capacity in yourself and how do you build and find community? And it's really, really awesome. Thank you. And I illustrated the book, too, so every page is fun to read.

Like, I have a hard. It's not a bunch of words. It's like very fun. I really like pictures and colors and energy. just makes the whole journey of community building a lot more playful and colorful. So what are the other going in? So yeah, so one more going in, actually, I'll share before we move on to going out

is I have you also assess what I call your VIA chart. So it's imagine a three sort of Venn diagram, three circles that you draw. So circle one is your values. The V and VIA is your values. The I in the VIA chart is your interests. and the A is your abilities. So just write down your values, your interests, and your abilities in three concentric circles. And sit down with yourself and ask you else, today, Mark Hyman, what do I value today?

Because what you value today is going to be different than what you valued maybe 10 years ago. Maybe 10 years ago, your big party animal. And then now, you still are. I mean, you know, something's changed. I still see it, Burning Man, fist pumping on the dance floor. But today, you know, maybe you just got married to beautiful wife, you're nesting, you have a house in New York now. And so maybe your values today is more family-driven.

Whereas 10 years ago I might have been different. So I'm seven months pregnant today as well. So my values are different. And values are sort of kind of the guardrails through which you live your life. You know, what are the things that matter to you? And you can Google values and see. sort of what values come up and there's all kinds of lists that come up. In my book, I list out about 100 values that you can choose from. But it's also something you can find on the internet

and you can begin to sort of map out what do I care about today and really sit with yourself and connect to that essence. So write that down in one circle and that will give you again the beginning of roadmap for the type of other people you want to connect with. Like what are, you know, shared values are so critical, right? Yeah. And then the I. Because if you name it, then you can identify others, right? That's right, exactly. And then the eye in your V-A chart is your interests. So what am I interested in today?

So, you know, it's different from your values. And your values is more sort of kind of intrinsic qualities, family, you know, community, work, life balance, you know, that sort of thing, right? Whereas your interests might be things like hiking and yoga and mindful meditation and music festivals and, you know, and daybreaker. breaker yeah thank you um and all kinds of right so so it's it's what are you interested in in tangibly doing today and you know so people i do this workshop with will say well i don't know i don't we all have interests right so dig deep um if if you know if you don't have an interest right now then start cultivating them you know and that's and that's what's so fun about this going in journey is that life is we have 100 years to live on this planet let's really begin cultivating our interests that are outside of just work only only 100 years

if you eat right and follow my advice and connect in the community and follow Rada's advice then you get to 100 exactly if you read all of Mark's books yeah for sure and and then your abilities are and I really think about abilities through the lens of what can you bring to your community so what are your abilities not just like I'm a good public speaker but what can you bring to your community so are you is one of your abilities to ask amazing questions is one of your abilities to um to cook are you a good cook and chef can you cook for your friends or you what was one of your abilities um to gather is your home a really wonderful place to gather um is you know one of my

you're a great dj yeah exactly exactly so like two of my friends i love giving this example you know one of them she always has a purse full of like electric candles so that when you know she she really doesn't like neon lighting so she'll walk into any room and she'll just like oh no no no this is like too harsh like she'll turn off all the lights and break out all these like electric candles and like vibes out the place instantly, and it's incredible. And you have the other friends who were great sort of artist, musicians, who are always playing great things and do skits. That's exactly right.

It's just so fun. Yeah, so they bring instruments. Like Eli and I bring gold stars often to gathering, so we'll say, Mark, you did great. It was a wonderful thing you just said, here's a gold star for you. Right. You know, we went to the hospital when Eli's father was sick, and we gave all the doctors and nurses gold stars and said,

thank you for what you're doing great job you know checking his pulse you look at you like what and they all started competing with each other for how many the doctors like serious doctor are competing with each other for how many kindergarten yeah for how many gold stars they got in there and they put on their badges and it was this like hysterical experience and we turn this sort of other wise scary place into a playground and you know it's whatever we can bring that feels good for us it feels natural to us bring that to your community and your experience and write that in your abilities chart We often think of ourselves as what we're into, not what we do.

Like, we like to judge ourselves by our interests, not our actions. And so I think what you do is a better measure of who you are, like, how do you actualize the things that you say that you're into? And it's so hard, especially when it's like against your, you know, brain, like not eating sugar, you know, a stir meal or whatever. When you have the cake, it's some of you, that kind of thing. And when it comes to community, when it comes to friendship, you know, like, you need to actually do the thing. So you said, you know, like the best way to be invited to the party is to host the party.

Well, that's exactly right. And every community has someone that makes it their charge to gather and organize that community to bring people together. And so that's the first step. And then I think that part of the work is on yourself. Like if you want to build community in any space, if you want to have friends that have certain traits or expertise or interests, you have to be interesting in that space. So like, you know, for you, I think that if I had literally just no interest whatsoever in the things that you do are passionate about, it would probably be an odd friendship and vice versa, right? It would just be like, okay, nice enough guy, but like, I got to become friends. It's not going to start to spend the time together and hang out.

But if I, you know, like I imagine you talk to people who, who, you know, are huge fans of your work. And they've read every one of your books. But they don't, they're not coming up with questions to the ideas, the big ideas. If, if, uh, so for me, you know, if you're saying, like, how did this start? Like, how do we begin? It's not about how we maintain relationships now. It's how, like, when you're, when you have, you know, a couple friends, you're not in a particular field. You don't have cool, you know, the cool people.

people around you can help you build and grow your life. You know, I love that the word enthusiasm, the root is in fear. It means with them, right? And if you can find your enthusiasm and you can learn in enthusiasm, then it's not work. And then you can become great at something. And you can become knowledgeable at something. And start collecting the questions that you have. And then ask your stupid questions to really knowledgeable people when you get the opportunity. And it's fun for them. That's it. That's the whole game. Now you're a fun friend. Now you're interesting to talk to. And then you take that next step, which is like, you know, you can't take it personally. People are busy. But if I ask you, you know, five times to go and do something interesting,

whether it's a small gathering with other people or go for a hike or do whatever, it's just, again, like, I guess I'll end with this to this particular question. There's a, we talk about it in the book is a guy named Michael Heb. He's a dear friend of bars. She's like, you know, there's an artist around the table. He's the one who said that, you know, the table is the greatest. piece of human technology ever created. And the first time I met him, yeah, and the first time I met him, he pulled in your chat and he was like, hey, Red, you know, sometimes people say, keep it real. You know, it's like, yeah, duh.

He's like, do you keep it real? Yeah, bro, I keep it real. It's like, yeah, don't do that. What you need to do is keep it surreal and just do things a little bit beyond other people's imagination, just a little bit of surprise. This is not like rocket science. We don't need you to paint a Bostia. We just need you to meet the stuff for us.

Yeah. It's so great. You were sort of talking about your really key part of building friendships and relationships is being interested and curious. And it sort of reminded me of my mother who said to me, not what did you learn in school today, but what questions did you ask? And so I was always the annoying. Guys, your mom sounds brilliant.

Who asked also questions? I was a kid in medical school who sat in the front row and wouldn't leave while I understood everything and asked every question I had. And I do that all the time because I want to learn. I think I read it in your book. We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them in that ratio. And I think that's exactly right. That's how you build connection and community. Before you move on, when you say that, quote, two ears, one mouth, totally agree,

but you also have to use your mouth. You can't just use your ears only, right? And I would imagine that there are people in that class of years who are like, man, Mark is going to wish this guy. I mean, yeah, sure that. But I'm sure there were way, way, way more who were like, man, so appreciated that Mark asked that question. I wouldn't have asked.

But that question I wouldn't have thought of. And so now everybody else has a fuller knowledge of this topic. If you love this pod. When it comes to supplements, you only want the best. for your body, the kind with the highest quality, cleanest, and most potent ingredients you can get. That's exactly what you'll find at my supplement store, where I've hand-selected each and product to meet the most rigorous standards for safety, purity, and effectiveness. These are the only supplements I recommend to my patients, and they're also what I use

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