The Dr. Hyman Show - The Most Important Medicine for your Health and Longevity with Radha Agrawal

Episode Date: November 7, 2018

Having weak social ties is as harmful to our health as being an alcoholic and twice as harmful as obesity. Lack of support is one of the number one things my patients complain about. I’ve seen, firsthand, how social isolation can manifest into illness. Studies show that isolation can set off a cellular chain reaction that increases inflammation and suppresses the body’s immune response to disease. Without community, we cannot survive and we cannot thrive. Finding our tribe is the topic of this week’s episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy with guest Radha Agrawal. Radha is the Co-founder, CEO, and Chief Community Architect of Daybreaker, the early morning dance and wellness move-ment. 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. In this episode, Radha makes a case for community. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did.

How do we find our people and why is it important to find our people? My guest on this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy is a community force. Radha Agrawal is the co-founder, CEO, and chief community architect of Daybreaker, the early morning dance and wellness movement that 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 who wake up at dawn to go dancing, which is impressive. She is also the author of a new book called Belong, Find Your People, Create Community, and Live a More Connected Life. Radha believes that without community, we can't survive or thrive. In this episode, we're going to talk about how social isolation can manifest into illness. We also discuss the contagiousness of positive and also negative behavior.

We know that our social networks matter more than our genetic networks, so community is important for our mental and our physical health. Radha shows us step-by-step how we can create a thriving and supportive community, starting with going inward and acknowledging our own values and gifts, and then taking those gifts out in the world to make friendships that matter. You don't want to miss this episode. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and that's Pharmacy, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter, and we're going to have a great conversation today with Rod Agarwal about things that really matter, which is loneliness and belonging.

Radha's quite a lady. She's a powerful force in the universe. She's the co-founder and CEO and chief community architect of Daybreaker, which you may not have heard of, but it's a big early morning dance and wellness movement that's global in 25 cities, different countries, a dozen colleges, and has a community of half a million people who wake up at dawn to go have a dance party, which is pretty awesome. She's also an amazing entrepreneur, co-founder of Thinks and Live It Up. She's an author, speaker. She's a DJ, and I have partied to her music. It's awesome.

She's an inventor. She's an investor and was named one of the eight women who will change the world by MTV. She's also the recipient of the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award, which is something I'd like to win, and also has spoken about social entrepreneurship and community building to audiences around the world. Her new book, Belong, Find Your People, Create Community, and Live a More Connected Life, answers the questions, how the heck do I find my people? That's almost as important as, what the heck do I eat? Maybe more important, actually. And how do I create a large and meaningful community in the real world? Radha lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her love,

Eli, a baby's on the way, and her twin her twin sister Mickey who's also been on this podcast and has lots of family and friends within a few blocks and has built an extraordinary community which I've been in and seen. You can most often find her tinkering with community and experience design projects or on the dance floor at Daybreaker at Dawn in New York City and if she's not dancing at Sunrise New York, she's in some other part of the world dancing her butt off. So we're here at Wellspring and we just talked. You actually danced your butt off this morning in the pool with music and piano. It sounded amazing. So you are a unique human. You have done some things which are pretty unusual, creating super sprouts, which was making vegetables and the superheroes, dancing on the lawn of the White House, which are pretty unusual, creating Super Sprouts, which was making vegetables and the superheroes dancing on the lawn of the White House, which is pretty awesome.

You have helped your sister co-found Thinks, which is a disruptive underwear company that helps women not have to deal with all the bleeding of periods. And when you were the inspiration for it, because you were doing a three-legged race and got your period and made a mess and were like, why do we have to do this? Isn't there a better solution? And you have built an amazing community yourself in New York City with a group of very powerful, creative, and loving humans. And you have been sort of an activist in the space of creating love and community, which is something we all long for and thrive. We all have this longing to belong, connect, and many of us feel isolated and lonely.

I think 40% of Americans feel lonely. It was sort of striking. I was at a conference recently, a Future of Health conference, and there was a whole session on loneliness as an epidemic and as a driver of so much mental illness and suffering and really loss in the society. And we all are connected on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, and yet we're really not connected. So talk about what the inspiration was for your book and how you came to sort of be this human who has created this extraordinary community in real life,

not just a bunch of Facebook friends. Well, first of all, thank you for having me on The Doctor's Pharmacy. This is so wonderful to be here with my dear friend and compadre of mischief. Yes, that's true. I, you know, this book, it really came as an answer to sort of many years of building community around the world, right? So with Daybreaker, we grew the community to half a million people, like you just said, in 25 cities around the world and four continents.

And in that time, I learned so much and we saw so much around sort of the topic of isolation and loneliness. And I mean, that is the number one epidemic that we're facing in this country right now. Yeah, people have to be lonely to get up at six in the morning and go dance, right? I know. It's an adventure. It's definitely an adventure. It is.

It's pretty awesome. But, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, you know, one in four Americans have zero friends to confide in. This number has tripled in the last 30 years, right? There's a direct correlation between cell phone penetration and social media penetration and our isolation and loneliness. Like the graph is almost identical. So it really is interesting to sort of realize

that we have these sort of slot machines in our pockets, right? These cell phones in our pockets that are dinging away and taking us away from our connection points and making us more isolated when the goal of them from the very beginning was to actually connect to social media, right? So what's happening is we've given keys to a Ferrari to a five-year-old without teaching them how to drive, right? That's what's happening.

So there's all this beautiful knowledge and beautiful technology in our pockets. We just haven't sort of harnessed it correctly. So I wrote the book Belong because, you know, the last five years I've been getting emails and phone calls and messages from community members all around the world asking me how to build community. You know, I want to build my own version of Daybreaker or I want to, I moved to a new city, I don't have any friends, I don't know what to do. And so I began sort of buying up every book I could find on community building. And I realized, wow, every single book is quite theoretical in nature,

sort of led mostly by academics. And I just think that I wanted to offer a practical guide. I wanted to sort of from boots on the ground, we've done it for five years, we've been in the ring, blood, sweat,, been in the ring, blood, sweat and tears. And when I want to give people a very sort of simple step by step guide for just how to do that, let me hold you by the hand, and walk with you on this path of community building. And so if you know, we go through these 10 inflection points in our lives, like when we move to new city, when we go to college for the first time, when we start a new job, when we get married,

when we have a baby, when we get divorced, when we retire. There's so many moments in life where we're starting all over again. And at each point, we sometimes tell ourselves it's harder and harder to make friends. As I go on this 20-city book tour, I'm on city number 14 right now,

most people who come to my book events are sort of in their 50s plus and share and are sharing how how much more of a struggle it is now for them to find community members than it was before and i think we begin to put these social barriers on ourselves because um society really favors the youth in tabloids and magazines. And so it's on us, on all of us to begin recognizing actually the beauty and wisdom of sort of our experience as well. Yeah, it's so important. Today we're seeing so much otherness in the world. That's right. We basically vilify the other we disconnect from other human beings and you see things like the pittsburgh shooting and synagogues you see pipe bombs being sent this

doesn't only happens for people who are isolated and disconnected exactly right and it's easy to demonize somebody you know no and i remember when i was in medical school i went to russia was the soviet union at the time uh that's because i'm really old and i'm still so please and it was stunning because we were there on a mission that was called citizens diplomacy and the idea was you know the other the russians were demonized the soviets were demonized and they were bad and evil the evil empire right and we were like no no these are human beings and let's connect with them as human beings and And so we spent, you know, three weeks around the Soviet Union meeting with medical students and connecting with them and building relationships and building the community.

And it was really profound. It impacted me because I realized that, you know, if we're isolated, it's easy to kind of make somebody the enemy and to disconnect. And what you're offering is sort of the antidote to this isolation disconnection that keeps us from authentic connections with each other and with building a real community we all have this longing to belong we all came out of an evolutionary history that was tribal we're all in we are born in community we are literally born inside of a mother's womb so we are born in right we're born in community. 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 societal ills. It's every societal illness.

So obesity epidemic, our lack of... So tell us how each one, obesity because... So being socially isolated is as harmful to your physical health as being an alcoholic and twice as harmful as obesity because cellularly, right, we end up storing more. And again, you're the doctor here, but as there's so much sort of knowledge around

and studies around when you don't belong, all of a sudden your cellular reactions become slower, you're metabolizing food less fast. And there's actually a lot of studies that I've read around that. Maybe you're depressed and anxious and using food as your source of comfort. Well, that too, of course, that too. But it actually sets off a cellular chain reaction. Our lack of belonging and isolation sets off this sort of cellular chain reaction that sort of

slows down our metabolism as well. But also, you know, every, 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, it's, what's the word? It's, it's uh um what's the word it's it's contagious yeah and and and so he um 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 daybreak on college campuses to inspire connection without substances as And so we want to create Daburr Corner College campuses to inspire connection without substances as well. So we're now on 15 campuses. I guess we're getting up at 6 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. Dancing with burritos. And so unpacking some more, our political strife 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 today, many of whom are mentally, have mental illnesses, well, 85% of people experiencing mental illness are isolated or alone. And so because we ostracize them from society,

they're not welcome because they're not mentally sort of abled, right? So that piece of it only sort of creates that sense of anger. And so it's on each and every one of us to out there who's listening on this, you know, 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 experiencing

mental illness. How can we actually bridge those divides that every single human on this planet can belong? And so the cover of my book has a doorway on it, right? Because the concept of neighborhood, neighborliness is also lost. You know, I live in New York City. We live in New York City. We don't, do you know your neighbor's names? Do you know the neighbor across the street?

Yeah, we just moved in. Right, 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 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're not need sugar but if you need salt yes yeah exactly you're not gonna get a bag of white sugar definitely um yeah so it but but i think you know 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 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. 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 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 it's 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 now. And our community is what gives us that life. And so from 30 to 35, Mickey and I spent all of our effort and time focusing on community. And I'd create all these 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-exploration first to get to know who we are what we value what we can bring to a community and how we're showing up how are we at listening how are we at um connecting with you know um 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 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? Is to better relate to the outside world, right? We go inside. It's called self-care, but it really should be we care. Yeah, right, exactly. It's like, I'm going to get a massage. I'm going to 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 ladder down to isolation, loneliness, and sadness. Yeah. 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 this sense of, and it's not like 100 people, it's like five people or four people. And most people can't even say there's one friend they have that they can call up when they feel bad or sad who they can have an honest, transparent conversation to. That's really heartbreaking, and it's so much of a driver of so many of the ills of our society. It's something people don't talk about.

And it's what, 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's contagious, but health is contagious. That's right. And obesity's 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 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 um and take a look at this map right and this map will begin to and and what i like to do is color code it so work friends i'll color code in green right and family um i'll color code in red and and um friends that i choose i'll color code in in orange right so different colors just to sort of see ah okay cool okay, cool. So, you know, and then I have this kind of axis of energy that I created in my book in chapter one, 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 is up into the right so um 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 all, we've all, we're all, we all go through that. And so really looking at this. Although I know your family, they're all pretty awesome.

Well, you know, we all- Your dad's Indian, your mom's Japanese. My dad's, yeah. Your sister's a doctor and your sister's, you know we are your mom's japanese my dad's yeah sister's a doctor and the other sisters you know well you know it's and culturally it's interesting right like um uh you know my father my mother are most some of the most loving community builders i know in fact they they um they modeled what community looks like for us um and yet it's interesting because culturally talking about love and and and sex and and and differently, you just don't talk about those things with your Asian parents.

And so on one hand, they're the best community builders I've seen. On the other hand, I do long for a little bit more kind of emotional honesty. But I think, again, we all have those sort of issues. I'm going through the motherhood process right now. I'm seven months pregnant. I keep asking myself every day, what kind of parent do I want to be? And anyway, so plotting this graph, 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 they making excuses? Am I being lazy?

Is it just easier to keep them around? You know, what is it? Are they energy givers or energy suckers? That's right. Exactly. And, and, and, and can I, and, and can I sort of be honest and vulnerable with that person and share, Hey, listen, um, this is how I'm feeling right now in this relationship. And, um, it's not working for me or I'm, I'm really, you know, sort of wanting to spend time with, you know, sort of more positive forces. I'm,

I'm going through pregnancy right now and, um, 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, you know? So I think that there's that honesty piece there that we forget. We end up just ghosting our, you know, our people in our lives. You know, we end up running away or we end up shit talking

and it ends up being a very negative experience. But, you know, saying 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 yeah and hopefully they'll go on the journey of self-exploration too so rather than just cut them off just have a real honest conversation with them that's right that takes courage and vulnerability on all of our ends,

but it doesn't create resentment on the other side that leads to negative storytelling and hurt and all other sort of larger issues. So that's the first step in going in. The first step is auditing. So taking inventory. Yeah, taking inventory, exactly. Auditing community you spend time with. The second thing that I did when I turned 30,

and this is exactly what I outlined in my book book is my own journey that's taking me from feeling like i don't belong to this incredible connected joyful um community that gives me wings um and and lets me fly um the second thing i did was i wrote down a three column list and um which we'll get into and just as a 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, right? We do this type of audit again for our romantic relationships. We do this for our professional careers, right? I want a job that pays this much. I want a job that has this type of vacation. I want a job that pays this much i want a job that has this type of vacation i want a job

that you're right like in terms of life it's interesting in terms of life planning we it's not a category it's like why not love work it is money exactly friend is not a category and it is the most important when i say the most important category in life to focus on and everyone says focus on money power fame and building your business and but really none of it will happen and or will result in joy or joyful life experience if you don't have a community being like oh my gosh mark high five like whoa we get to celebrate your major win new york times bestseller list again holy shit let's go 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 it's it's so critical that we continue to put our laptops down and keep our word and go to those dinners with our friends and say yes to the dance floor and say yes to adventure because at the end of the day no matter no amount of success will mean anything if there's no one to celebrate it with, right? That's true. So column one was all the qualities of looking for a friend. So I wanted friends who talked about ideas and not each other. I wanted friends who said, f*** yeah, 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, who were good listeners. I wanted friends... I wrote down everything I was looking for in a friend, which was kind of vulnerable because there's so much shame around saying I don't belong or there's so much shame around writing down the qualities. It just feels desperate for some reason in today's society.

But if we just removed... Not really. That's what i'm saying but but if we removed all of that stigma because there is stigma around FOMO right fear of missing out and fear of being left out you don't tell people like yeah i was left out from the party and it really hurt like you're we're so proud we don't really talk about that right but faux blow is a concept talk in my book quite a bit which is fear of being left out right which is a more subversive negative version of FOMO yeah right and then JOMO is joy of missing out which is the joy of of of missing out and having the confidence to know there's other things to do yeah but so column so column two is all the qualities I don't want in a friend right so I don't want friends who are negative Nellies, lazies, shoulder shruggers, you know

Debbie Downers, Netflix, and chill watchers all the time, and homebodies. I wanted friends who were just like really authentic. Say yes to life. Say yes.

And I call it an FYF in my book. It's a very good one. And somebody else might want a friend that they can sit around and do knitting with. That's right.

That's what I'm saying. Drink tea in the afternoon. Everyone's different. So your qualities are going to be very different from my qualities, whoever's listening out there. And that's exactly

what you want to do right now is ask yourself, where do I feel the most energized? And then column three, perhaps the most important column, was all the qualities that I need to embody in order to attract the friends that I want. All the qualities that I need to embody. So I need to be less of a workaholic. I love my work.

I need to put my laptop down. I need to be less judgmental workaholic. I love my work. You know, I need to put my laptop down. I need to be less judgmental and, and nitpicky and perfectionist. And, um, you know, I'm a, I'm a CEO, right? I run companies for a living. And so my job is to focus on what's going wrong, right? My job is to focus on how to improve what's going wrong. So if I bring that, I used to bring that into my relationships and to my friendships, I'd be nitpicking what's going wrong in those relationships instead of being grateful for what's going right. So that sort of understanding. It's just in your frame. 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. Um, especially as, you know, as an Asian woman, you know, you grow up in a household where it's like, you're only loved if you get an A, you know, A plus, you know, so, so it's, it's, um, and you did all right. You were into Cornell and you were on the varsity soccer team. Um, but yeah, so, so I think, I, so I think it's so important to take that audit and look in the mirror and ask yourself, 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 at yourself. Where you're not the best friend and what you want. That's right, the qualities looking for. So what else 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. By the way, the book 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. It's not a bunch of words. It's like very fun. I really like pictures and colors and it just makes the whole journey of community building a lot more playful and colorful.

So what are the other going in steps? So yeah, so one more going in exercise I'll share before we move on to going out is I have you also assess what I call your via chart. So, so it's, um, imagine a three sort of, um, uh, Venn diagram, three circles that you draw. So circle one is your values. The V in via is your values. The I in value in, in the via chart is your interests and the A is your abilities. So just write down your values, your interests and the a is your abilities so just write down your values your interests and your abilities in three concentric circles and um sit down with yourself and ask yourself today

mark hyman what do i value today because what you value today is going to be different than what you valued maybe 10 years ago maybe 10 years ago you're a big party animal and then now you still are i mean you know you still nothing's changed i still see a burning man um fist pumping on the dance floor you know but um but but today you know maybe you know you just got married to beautiful wife you're nesting you move you have a house in new york now and um and so maybe your values today is more family driven and um whereas 10 years ago i might have been different so i'm you know I'm seven months pregnant today as well. So my values are different.

And values are sort of kind of the guardrails through which you live your life. You know, what are the, what are 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 a hundred values that you can choose from. But it's also something you can find on the internet and um you can begin to sort of map out what do i care about today and really sit with yourself and and connect to that that essence um 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 so shared values are so critical right yeah um and then the i as you name it then you can identify others right that's right exactly of other people you want to connect with? Like what are, you know, so 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 I in your VIA 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. Yeah, thank you. And all kinds of, so it's what are you interested in in tangibly doing today and you know some 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 that's what's so fun about this going in journey is that life is we have a hundred years to live on this. Let's really begin cultivating our interests that are outside of just work. Well, only 100 years if you eat right and follow my advice and connect in the community and follow Radha's advice. Then you get to 100. Exactly. If you read all of Mark's books, yeah, for sure. 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 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 are you what was one of your abilities um to gather people in your home is your home a really wonderful place to gather? is, you know, one of my, you're a great DJ. Exactly. Exactly.

So like two of my friends, I love giving this example. You know, one of them, she always has a purse full of like electric candles so that when, you know, she, she really,

she's like, doesn't like neon lighting. So she'll walk into any room and she'll just be like, Oh no, no, no, this is like too harsh. Like she'll turn off all the lights and break out all these like electric candles and like

vibes out the place instantly and it's incredible yeah and you have these other friends who are great um sort of artists musicians who are always instruments exactly play great things and do skits and that's exactly right it's so fun yeah so they bring instruments like eli and i bring gold stars often to gatherings. So we'll say, Mark, you did great. It was a wonderful thing you just said. Here's a gold star for you. Right.

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 checking his pulse. And he looked at you like, what the? And they all started competing with each other. The doctors, like serious doctors, were competing with each other for how many the doctors like serious doctors competing with each other for how many kindergarten yeah for how many gold stars they got and they put on their badges and it was this like hysterical experience and we turned this sort of otherwise scary place into a playground and you know it's whatever we can

bring that feels good for us it feels natural us, bring that to your community and your experience and write that in your abilities chart. All right, so we've got the inventory. We've got your BIA chart. You've got three column lists of where they fit in terms of whether they're bringing you life and energy or taking it away. So what about going out? Then you've done this inventory, you've done all these things.

What's the process of actually going out with this and finding your community and building it? So step one, and there's some people who are like, I'm shy or this doesn't come naturally to me or it's so much easier for you, Radha, because you're naturally more extroverted, which I, by the way, break those labels in my book too in part one is we talk about the fact

that we have begun to sort of label ourselves into corners. So I'm an introvert, I'm an extrovert. That's a good example with Carl Jung, who kind of named those terms, and people are really banding around those terms. I've seen friends who are definitely extroverted start dating introverts, and then begin identifying as introverts and disappear from the face of the planet. And so I think we've taken these terms too literally, where Carl Jung himself, who defined these terms, said that if you are only introverted, you'd be in an insane asylum. If you're only extroverted, you'd end up in an insane asylum.

So we are on a spectrum of introvert and extrovert, which I call metavert in my book, right? We are all metaverts. So let's just stop. Some days I'm social. Some days I want to be at home by myself, filling up on on energy and so I think if we stop putting these social limitations on ourselves we'll begin to allow so much more exploration in the communities that we're a part of and and so so exploration so going out begins with first like removing all of these labeling and and then

getting sort of a deep understanding of who we are that going in experience. And then it's just putting your shoes on, like I would say put your shoes on, write down five communities in and around you that align with your values, interests and abilities, and then begin exploring them. So it's a light touch, right? So for me, the first year was okay. When I went on this journey, when I started at 30 years old, I realized I didn't belong. And I was going to sports bars and doing kind of like the everyday thing. I asked myself, okay, what are the things that I really care about? What am I interested in? So I realized I'm interested in entrepreneurship. I'm interested in music festivals,

and which I'd never really explored in my 20s, right? I just was kind of doing the city life thing. So I began looking up all the cool music festivals around and I stumbled upon Burning Man, um, Lightning in a Bottle and different music festivals I started going to. And I started going to entrepreneurship summits, like Summit Series and, um, you know, various communities in New York and across like Nexus Summit community. It's sort of a Young Global Leader Summit. So I began sort of charting this on a little map as well. So you go to pre-existing gatherings of people who had similar interests. Exactly, interests, values.

And all of a sudden, I started meeting people. And I started realizing, oh, wow, wait a minute. You're interested in the same things I'm interested in. We want to solve problems for the world. And I began to sort of find my people for the first time. And one by one, I said, hey, let's hang out. And whereas before, I used to have siloed relationships, right? Like I had my friends I work out with.

I had my friends that I go travel with. I have my party friends. I have my intellectual friends. But this was the first time in my life also that I wanted to remove all the compartmentalization and just bring everybody together fearlessly. Because I think so often, for some reason we can get territorial

with our friendships as well. I call that the oxytocin overload, which is actually a term around when you become so close to somebody as a friend one-on-one, there's this sort of animal instinct. Yeah, exactly, animal instinct that you don't want to share that person with somebody else. Whether it's your kids or your family and friends, that overload is there. And it's on us to just recognize that it's happening, to know, wait, I'm feeling irrationally jealous.

I'm feeling irrationally territorial over this friendship. And to name it and just say, hey, I just want to let you know that I'm feeling irrationally territorial, and I know that's oxytocin, because I care about you so much. But so that going out piece is so critical, and first tearing down all the needs for those siloed friendships and just bringing everybody together,

which is what I did. And again, it could work differently for everybody, but for me, just breaking down the barriers and sort of fearlessly introducing my friends and watching them develop friendships without me, feeling jealous of their friendship was actually something new that I didn't have in my 20s. So in my 30s, I was like, wow, that's so cool.

I did this. More is more. More is more. I connected them. They're now friends without me. That's so cool. And they thank me when they see me. Every once in a while, they're like, oh my gosh, thank you so much.

This person is such a meaningful person in my life now. And more is more. So like everyone listening out there, connect your friends fearlessly. Recognize that the rising tide truly lifts all boats. And when we actually courageously and fearlessly connect one another, life becomes far more rich. So then going out and exploring all these communities, I began finding these people, bringing them to my house,

hosting dinner parties that weren't just wine and cheeses. Everyone listening, let's stop doing wine and cheeses. I think we're past that. I think it's time that we really think about gathering as a more meaningful um connection point kombucha and kale chips now right exactly kombucha exactly but there's just you know i talk about entry rituals like when someone comes into your home how are they coming into your home is it just like hey i'm here with wine or are you greeting them with you know a little wishing well to say hey today when you're coming into my to my home i

want you to share a little wish that you have for this gathering. I mean, tribes always had rituals. That's right. Always had ceremony. That's right. And you're saying, let's bring that back into our lives. Exactly. Because it creates meaning and context and connection and love.

And not just from a macro perspective, right? So Daybreaker, we have the method. So let me just kind of start with everyone listening, sort of with this idea of when you go out for the first time, you're now aligned with your inner values, interests, and abilities. Start exploring the communities around you fearlessly. Start connecting people around you fearlessly. And then start gathering people into your home. Yeah.

So don't wait to get invited to a party. Create one. That's exactly it and then it's actually one of my favorite things to do is is to actually invite people to my house cook for them and just hang out exactly my favorite thing and and that's exactly it so so so don't wait for the invitation create the invitation um and then secondly is is you know once you've kind of so it's sort of like if i if i were to take 10 000 foot view of this whole experience of, so it's sort of like, if I were to take 10,000 foot view of this whole experience of community building,

it's self, you have to belong to yourself, right? Then you create a community, a personal community for yourself. But once you've built that personal community, then you build community at large. So it's inside, right? And then small community for self and then larger community for society.

And how do you do that? So that's what I call the crawl method for community building. I talk about this in my book. So once you've built a community for yourself and if you realize, okay, I have three to five friends that give me wings with whom I can call. I've done the exploration of my communities. I've gone in, I participated in those communities to get my, you know, my hands dirty, connected with them. Now I really, I, you Now, the most generous act we can do, like I keep saying, is to create community for others. So once we have that sense of safety

and knowing that we have our own people, now it's a matter of creating community for others. So I really believe that if every single human being created community for others, not just for themselves, the world would no longer have any of our issues that we have today um so so sometimes you're like wow how do i begin creating a community at large like how do i do this and and so i distilled it into very simple community building rubric that i call the crawl method for community building so um that's why i built the

daybreaker movement around the world and we can sort of dissect that for how you built your community, you know, of 2 million, you know, people or millions of people who listen to your, to your work and follow your incredible teachings. But but but there's, there's, you know, while community building sounds like a very squishy concept, and sort of gray area yeah there are sort of um defined rules that that i've identified that can help anybody on their community building journey what if they live in an area where they just don't have the connection with people i just a woman came up to me the other day and she said you know i i'm i'm living baltimore as an african-american woman and i i'm into yoga and mindfulness and healthy eating and you know isn't, my friends aren't,

my community isn't, I'm not sure what to do. I really want to find those people who are in my community but they're just not around me because I live in the inner city in Baltimore which is poor and disenfranchised and disconnected. Totally. Never heard of kale. So there are plenty of yoga communities in Baltimore

and I think that it's um it again takes so much courage to be the first to try something right and so i think it's one thing and then and then the the second most courageous person is the second person to join the community right so if she can find one person to create that centrifuge and then the two people will create to another center right so so that's why you and mickey are so powerful you're like a double trouble well you know it's i mean so it really requires you know that level it's courage it's so yes it's discouraging it took me two years by the way to find my people and and so so often you know we live in a society that is so

transactional and so instant and automatic. I push a button and 24 hours later, I have the box in my mail from Amazon. I can order takeout any moment. So everything is incredibly rapid today that we have forgotten that patience actually takes 80 hours to call somebody a friend. It takes one second for someone to push a like button on your social media social media but takes 80 hours to call somebody a friend right which is why it's so potent to go to a festival because you're spending 80 hours in a weekend with somebody right and you go deep with them very quickly or if you're doing a upstate new york you know weekend with friends with fireplace around you you know and you sleep over with each other that in that one weekend you can call something you can go from strangers to best friends yeah um so so but that time is so so crucial um so and it takes patience again it

takes patience and so all i can i would tell the woman in baltimore is have patience continue reaching out my mother moved to baltimore recently here's a wild story for you this is three weeks ago this is brand new story my mother and i cried when she told me this story she moved to baltimore with my dad to be close to my sister and her grandkids and she didn't know a single person and she courageously she's seven year old woman japanese is her first language english so she has you know broken english and she writes a letter a handwritten letter says hello my name is mire i just moved to portimor i want to make japanese lady friends and not male friends but lady friends because i have a husband who i love and she puts in parentheses anyway and she's she's like um i would like to speak japanese with women and um and you

know revitalize you know that part of my life um here's my phone number please call me if you want to spend some time signed mire and then she drove it to the closest japanese restaurant in the neighborhood i shit you not yeah and gives the general manager of the japanese restaurant and says excuse me can you please show this to japanese ladies if they come in and the following week mark her phone did not stop ringing off the hook oh my god so she's everybody has this long U-Ticket Act, right? Well, exactly. But she's a Japanese woman. She could have been like 70 years old.

I moved to a new city. I don't know anybody. She now has had three play dates already. She called me the other day. She was like, this woman, she's 55. And she's a lawyer. She has three kids. She's a very powerful Japanese lady.

And she was so proud and excited of her new friend and and that's that's what i want everyone out there listening to to understand never too late it's never too late it's never too late and if you're rejected the first time try again it's try again and again and again you know my best friend one of my best friends today he texted me over and over again um because I was just busy and doing my own thing, um, to hang out. And I just was, I just wasn't, I just, you know, he wasn't top priority, but he just kept texting. And finally, you know, six weeks later, he texted like again for the 10th time was like, Hey, I'm the neighborhood. You want to spend time together? Um, not in a

creepy way and not an annoying way, but just like, you know, kind of just like him in the neighborhood. And I was like, look, I'm having a party party at my house do you want to you want to come over and he came and he added so much value he was so fun and so interesting so charismatic max dossell my friend who's yeah and um and now he's one of my dearest friends you know so so have the perseverance to to when you know somebody might be a good friend and good fit and they might be also maintaining their own community right i have i had a big community by then um so he just was patiently saying hey and instead of just being like hey i want to hang out he was like how can i contribute well that's what i was going to say i think most of us are saying what can we get from

our friends what how can they fill our hole our need instead of saying how can i serve them how can i be a contribution in their life? What can I do to bring light and love to them? And I think that's a very different way of being. And I think that's also critical for relationships. And the more you give, the more you get. It's just the way it works. And I think it's just shifting that frame of reference.

That's right. Yeah. And none of it is rocket science. One of the cornerstones of belonging, and talk about my book is being an fyf a friend it's very technical um and that's it like if you just say f yes to life if you lean in and whether you're shy or not you can still be sort of a lean-in friend that says i would love to exclamation point you know yeah um so i think if we can if we can sort of remove all of our cool factor barriers, and like, I'm an adult, I need to be serious, take me seriously,

or I was bullied as a kid, or I used to dance, but people used to make fun of me. My mom and dad made fun of me. My sisters made fun of me. We begin to lose that light. And so let's just start over and hit the refresh button, reset button. Unbelievable. So how do you then sustain the community yes so this is actually so so important in life is community is sustained at the intersection of mystery and safety right community is built at the intersection of mystery and safety. And this goes for your personal relationships and for your your relationships, sort of a community at large.

So what I mean by that, let me start with your relationship community at large for Daybreaker. You know, we're a morning dance party. There's the safety in knowing that it's going to be a well-produced event, that we've curated great food and beverage, that it's going to be good people. It's not alcohol in the morning. Yeah, there's no alcohol in the morning, that we have wonderful wow moments and performance and great DJs. The whole experience is going to be well-produced with the safety of knowing that.

But the mystery of not knowing where the next event's going to be, what the theme is going to be, who's going to be DJing, what are all of our performative wow moments. What are, you know, we add this element of mystery, right? That's what your mom says, right? Exactly. You got to keep some mystery. Yeah, that's right.

Didn't Mickey tell you that? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's the key to a successful marriage is keeping a little mystery. As soon as your partner knows everything about you, it's game over. But same thing with friendships. So separate bathrooms oh my gosh well there's mystery in in number twos also but um but uh yeah no the mission

in friendships as well you know so so so daybreaker grew because people always kept asking you know oh my gosh where's the next event going to be where's like but it's the same applies for your personal relationships right in your personal relationships, right? In your personal relationships, instead of doing the same thing over and over again, like we used to go to the same sports bar every Sunday as a, you know, in my twenties and watch the same football. And just after a while it was stale and boring. And like, what am I doing? I'm like wasting my life. So, you know, continuing to push each other as friendship, as friends to say, Hey, Mark, this is your turn. Surprise me. Right. Um, you, it's your turn to plan the weekend or the event

hosted dinner party at your house. Next time it's my turn. Next time. So we rotate turns and creating surprises for each other. Or when you walk into event, one of my dear friends, David Yaris, you know, David, um, you know, he would bring, and this is one of my favorite stories in my book that I write about, you know, we were having breakfast one morning, um, just at a restaurant and he pulls out a miniature pumpkin from his jacket pocket and just puts it on the table. And I'm like, David, what's the pumpkin about? And he was like, no, just table garnish. And I just was like, you were ridiculous and so silly and and then the next time he hung out he brought pine cones and put them around my office table and brought pine cones

for my my my my team members and just like just like it's things that he found in the fort it's just like whatever you go buy it you go buy it he just like found it and and just that level of creativity like whenever i see him now my tail wagsags. I'm like, what's he going to do now? What silliness is he going to bring, have up his sleeve today? And it takes nothing. It just like, it doesn't take any money. It just takes a little effort,

you know? So, so that mystery piece is so critical and, and having your friends continue to wag their tail for you. If you, if you're the same negative Nelly, every time they hang out with you, you're like,

woe is me. I'm Eeyore. Life is terrible. You know, like they're not going to want to hang out with you, you're like, woe is me. I'm Eeyore. Life is terrible. They're not going to want to hang out with you after a while. Or if you're sort of doing the same thing over and over again, you're constantly wanting to go to the same club.

It's just keep life interesting and mysterious. But the safety is that knowing that you're a loyal friend, that you're always an ear to listen to. You're going to be there. I'll be there for you, Mark, if you need me. It's true. I call you up.

I need something. You're always there. You're always, yes, I'll help you. I'll do this. Yeah, and that's important to me, that you feel that sense of safety in our friendship, but that you know that when we hang out, you're going to be like, oh, God,

what rot am I going to get today? Right? I hope that you feel that. It's true. I totally feel that. So, yeah. So I think that's the beauty of the opportunity that we get to bring to our friendships. And if we just brought more intention to it, life is so much more fun on both sides.

It's like, I love surprising my friends. I love bringing fun things to our community gatherings. And our friends are always like, oh, God, what are the twins going to do now? That's fun. So great. Yeah, I definitely experienced that. And I also see the way you have created this amazing community. And in some ways, I find it surprising that you describe your 20s as this isolated, disconnected time.

Because I don't know you from that time. I know you from after that time for the last seven years or so. Well, I wasn't isolated. I was definitely social. But I was social and sleepwalking. Yeah know you from after that time for the last seven years or so. Well, I wasn't isolated. I was definitely social, but I was social and sleepwalking. Yeah, you were connected. Yeah, like we were all social, but we can be sleepwalking and social, right?

We can be hanging out with our coworkers whose cubicles are next to ours and just be talking about the weather and not actually be intentionally going deep. So many of us don't realize that we are sleepwalking. I think the thing is most of us feel like we're the only ones experiencing what we're experiencing.

That's right. And being in that connected community is so powerful. And we see that in medicine. I mean, we at Cleveland Clinic are running these small groups to help people change their life. And they actually work better than one-on-one visits with a doctor for the same condition. Exactly.

It's just striking to see that. I want to do stuff with you on that. I really think that there's so much in community and health that go hand in hand. Yeah, it's so striking. And it's like, wow, we didn't do anything different. We didn't tell them anything different. We didn't do any different kinds of tests. We didn't do any different kinds of interventions.

But the results, because people are sharing their stories, are relating to each other they're helping each other the doctors are relevant in the picture well here's a wild sat right like like why do you think women don't smoke cigarettes when they're pregnant because no other women do and it's not because their doctor said not to it's because societally the other women will say hey shame on you you should not be smoking cigarettes while you're pregnant yeah so women when they're showing they stop smoking because of societal pressure not because of doctor's orders yeah so that's very interesting yeah and the peer pressure works for creating health or creates disease you know if your friends are all drinking beer and having pizza

and watching sports or whatever tv or you'll like be like need to be overweight and unhealthy if your friends are all drinking green juices and going to yoga class well guess what you're probably going to be also i think i have one more thing to share about my 20s why i was sleepwalking in my 20s because in college think about when you were in college what was your college experience like great right connected community friends great but there was but so so i was i was a weirdo okay so you had that so for me i had that too in some sense but it was also sororities and fraternities and keg stands and i was more of a hippie we had like i can see that so you you did it right we were living in community houses we all shared dinner together we all cooked

one night a week together oh that's so great's so great we actually had a community group where we create intentional community where we had you know probably 30 or 40 people we gather and bring food and potlucks and share and connect and have fun and go swimming and that's so and you know I had that too we had that too in many ways but I think I also had a very classic American college experience which is just like everyone binge drinking, you know, fraternity parties, sorority parties,

and like, you know, being cool and caring what everyone else thought. And, you know, that type of, of experience. And then,

so when I, when you graduate, because in college, we're not taught. And this is what a big focus for me to now is belonging. Starting when you go to college, when you leave your home, right? When you leave the comforts of your parents belonging starting when you go to college when you leave your home right when you leave the comforts of your parents house and you move to college you have all this

imprinted behavior that happens in those four years you're in college that you carry through your 20s so for me it started freshman year of college right and then you carry through your 20s until you realize wait a minute this isn't who i am right so so i i really believe that we have to imprint starting freshman year of college and teach people how to belong from the moment they step into school to ask themselves, how am I showing up? What do I want to bring to this community? What do I not want out of my college experience? And really give them that framework. Yeah. Not just automatically default to the typical behaviors. Yeah. So great, Radha. It's an amazing story. So one last question.

If you were queen for a day and you had a magic wand or a magician, you could actually change something in our society, what would it be? It's so easy. I would want every single human to feel that exhale of I'm home. I want every single human to feel like they belong and that they feel like they have community and friends that they can count on. I think if we can all feel that well if anybody's feeling disconnected or isolated or lonely or that they don't have a

community the first thing i would do is grab rada's book belong it's a powerful roadmap to getting into a beautiful community and rediscovering the joy of friends and connection. And I, I just can't recommend it enough. So, uh, if you want to learn more about Rada, go to Rada, I grow all.com. That's a G R a W a L.

And, uh, learn about her. She's spoken at many amazing places like Facebook and, uh, has done very cool stuff. And, uh,

she's a force to be reckoned with and someone to watch going forward. And I'm excited to be your friend and to be part of this and I definitely feel more connected in the community being around you and your crew which now has become my crew and even at you know the ripe old age of 58 it's never too late to actually start to just build more and more connected community so thank you Rodan if you've liked this podcast, The Doctor's Pharmacy, I suggest you write a review and tell us what you think. If you enjoyed it, please share it with your friends and family on Facebook, social media,

and please sign up if you haven't already wherever you get your podcasts. You've been listening to The Doctor's Pharmacy with Dr. Mark Hyman, Rod Agraw, and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey, everybody. I just wanted to remind you all that the information in this episode is not intended to be used as medical advice.

Always work with your doctor, and if you can, find a functional medicine doctor. My staff, including physicians and nutritionists at the Ultra Wellness Center in Massachusetts, is trained in functional medicine to find the root cause of disease and create health for you every step of the way. For more information about the Ultra Wellness Center, visit ultrawellnesscenter.com.