When Vivek Murthy was a child, he’d wake every morning filled with a deep sense of dread. He would get out of bed, get dressed, eat breakfast, and feel the tightness in his chest expand through his body as he sat in the backseat of his parents’ car on the way to elementary school.
“I didn’t want to be alone on the playground,” Murthy says on the Greater Good Science Center’s Science of Happiness podcast. “Or alone when they asked people to partner up in class on exercises. And I certainly dreaded walking into the cafeteria each day, not knowing if there would be somebody to sit next to. That pain ran deep. And that sense of deep loneliness stayed with me for many, many years.”
Murthy went on to study at Yale and Harvard, become a physician, and then become the first surgeon general of the United States of Indian descent under Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden.
Murthy had a perfect, accomplished life—from the outside. On the inside, he still felt lonely.
“Feeling socially connected isn’t what’s on your resume,” says Murthy. “It’s about how you perceive yourself and how you measure the world, and if you tend to look more at the darkness or at the light.”
Fostering deeper relationships—while combatting loneliness—is one of 10 well-being practices that we share in our new book, The Science of Happiness Workbook, and in many ways it’s the most fundamental. Relationships form the bedrock of many other keys to well-being—from compassion to gratitude to purpose—and research finds that they are essential to flourishing within ourselves and our communities.
How loneliness is bad for your health
In his career, Murthy began to study loneliness, both his own and its greater societal impacts. He found that loneliness was epidemic—and not just in the United States. “In my conversations with health care leaders from other countries, I really saw that many other nations were experiencing very high rates of loneliness.”
Murphy discovered from research that loneliness is less about being alone and more about feeling dissatisfied with the connections we have. When we are chronically lonely, over time we experience an erosion of self-esteem. We come to believe that we’re lonely because we’re not likable, we’re broken in some way. We tend to become ashamed and turn inward.
We also get sick. Research finds that loneliness actually activates the same brain networks as physical pain, and it can lead to weakened immune function, increased levels of inflammation, and an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, dementia, depression, and anxiety.
But Murthy was most struck by the data on longevity.
“The degree to which our life is shortened is similar for loneliness as it is for smoking 15 cigarettes a day,” he explains.
These health effects are signals that our bodies send us when we’re lacking something we need for survival: healthy human connection. “And in that sense, it’s very similar to hunger, to thirst,” says Murthy.
The surgeon general post has a decades-long legacy of addressing smoking, obesity, and sedentary living, yet Murthy realized that loneliness had not been on their radar at all as an important public health issue.
So, after decades of struggling with his own loneliness in secret, Murthy vowed to speak up and bring more connection into his life and into the folds of society.
A practice for more connection
As part of his efforts to connect more deeply with others, and as an exercise for our Science of Happiness podcast, Murthy reached out to an old friend living abroad and asked him to share something good that happened to him that day—and Murthy listened. They ended up making it a weekly practice, using a video call so they could see each other.
“What’s really important is that we were fully present with one another,” Murthy says. “That means making eye contact, putting away our phones and other distractions. It means giving the other person the gift of your full attention, listening deeply, and also asking thoughtful questions.”
Murthy would often enter those conversations stressed and uncentered. As U.S. surgeon general, he was always in and out of meetings and also feeling like a bad father to his young children because he was so stretched for time. But as soon as he started talking, he would feel things settle inside of him. “It felt like time expanded,” he says.
In a world that is so oriented around taking action, Murthy realized we can forget just how impactful it is to pause and have the experience of listening deeply to someone else.
“Sometimes the power of our presence in itself can be deeply healing,” Murthy says. “These conversations were an opportunity to focus on what was good, on the positive, and on what I had to be grateful for. I needed to do that more consciously.”
The practice Murthy tried for our podcast is called Capitalizing on Positive Events, and research suggests that it can improve your relationships—and help the other person feel good. You can try it for yourself:
Ask a friend, family member, colleague, romantic partner, or other acquaintance to tell you about a good thing that happened to them today. It doesn’t matter what type of event or how important it was, as long as they feel comfortable discussing it.
As they share, listen and try to respond actively and constructively, meaning that you:
- To the best of your ability, make good eye contact. This shows that they have your full attention and that you are interested in what they have to say.
- Express positive emotion. This could be smiling, nodding, or even cheering (if appropriate!).
- Make enthusiastic comments. For example, “That sounds great,” “You must be so excited,” or “Your hard work is definitely paying off.”
- Ask open-ended questions to find out more about the positive parts of the event. Questions about who, what, when, where, or why can help sustain your conversation. For example, if the person tells you about receiving recognition at work for a project they completed, you could ask for more details about the project, what aspects of the project they feel especially proud of, or how it felt to be recognized.
- Comment on the positive implications and potential benefits of the event. For example, “I bet this means you have a better chance of getting a promotion this year.”
One strategy is to pick a specific aspect of the event that sticks out to you and begin by commenting on that: “You seem really happy about what your boss said—tell me more.” Or “It must have been satisfying to do so well on something you worked so hard for.”
Many people, when they first hear about this exercise, worry that their responses will sound phony or scripted. However, once they start, they tend to report that it feels natural and easy to do.
Coming home to community
While serving as U.S. surgeon general, Murthy’s investigations into loneliness led to his book, Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World.
In his personal life, Murthy noticed that his mood lifted thanks to weekly chats with his friend. Their conversations were brief, sometimes no more than 15 minutes, but the impact on his emotional state and sense of peace lasted for hours afterward. He felt more optimistic about the world and less weighed down by its challenges. He felt a boost of physical energy, as well. That brief amount of time connecting with his friend, done consistently, rejuvenated him.
Murthy soon understood that these connective moments could be found anywhere: a compassionate greeting from the barista at a coffee shop, a kind comment from a work colleague, a warm hello on the elevator. When Murthy was fully present, fully listening, he was able to derive a lot from these short interactions—they were all opportunities to connect.
“I’ve come to realize that we evolved to be social creatures, that we were meant to be together, and that we are truly interdependent,” says Murthy. “And when you understand that, then this larger mission to make us a more connected community and help us build more connected lives is not an effort to transform us into something that we are not; it’s an effort to return us to who we naturally are.”
Source: Greater Good – Happiness • original article