She lived in a cute modest-sized house in Merrick, Long Island and raised my mom and my two uncles. She married her life partner – my Papa – at 21, who she knew from the ice cream parlor. When she was an early mother, she worked at a card store with all of her friends, who lived on the same block as she did. They would carpool to work together, borrow sugar from each other’s houses, go to church together every Saturday night and spend lots of unscheduled time hanging out with each other.

My Nana and Papa loved doing many things together, especially traveling. Because my Uncle worked for an airline, they got heavily discounted stand-by flights. My Papa would always be pacing back and forth, praying that a stand-by seat opened up, while my Nana would just be sitting reading her Danielle Steel novel. She would tell my Papa that if there was only 1 standby seat left that he should take it and she’d meet him there.

My Nana had Type 2 Diabetes, but that didn’t stop her from treating herself every day to some pretzels and the occasional marshmallow.

My Nana would always smuggle Twizzlers into the house when we had braces because she knew we loved the candy and my Mom banned them, given the Orthodontist’s instructions.

She didn’t take life too seriously and was always laughing with her husband, girlfriends and children.

Most importantly, Nana was always so patient with me and herself. In her later years, her hearing went away. I always remember getting so frustrated with her because she couldn’t hear anything and would always ask me to repeat things. Eventually, she stopped asking me to repeat things and would just smile and clasp her hands together, saying “great,” when she couldn’t hear what I said.

Just writing this, I’m beaming with smiles – my Nana was such a wonderful, loving person who truly enjoyed life to the fullest.

***

I contrasted my Nana’s life with mine. I have a few close friends and many acquaintances, but no life partner (but maybe I should start hanging out at the ice cream parlor). I live alone and couldn’t even tell you the name of someone who lives in my apartment building. During the week, I wake up in the morning and on a good day, work out – but alone. I head to work, where I spent most of my day alone or having more surface-level conversations with my co-workers. I value my daily check-ins with my manager and the occasional evening phone with my friends, where I can have deeper-level conversations. After work, I’ll either head straight home or go on a date.

On the weekends, I cram lots of social activities in to stay in contact with friends. Every social interaction is scheduled weeks in advance, given everyone’s busy schedules, and comes along with a google calendar invite. I meet so many people and want to stay in touch that it sometimes feels like I’m PMO-ing my friendships just to keep up with what everyone is doing instead of having deep conversations. I do not belong to a religious group, or even meet with the same group of people, outside of my co-workers on a regular basis.

I take life way too seriously. I spend a significant amount of energy and time focused on career, fitness or personal development achievements, never just “hanging out” with friends or family. Accordingly, my self-identity and self-worth is highly tied to these individual-focused things, rather than community-oriented things.

Don’t get me wrong… I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to pursue my career and broader personal development ambitions – something that was not readily available to my Nana and previous generations of women – however, it seems to come at a price of being socially connected.

***

Despite that we can easily connect with one another – we can text our friends at any minute, jump on a call with our friend doing an internship in Kenya or fly home at any point – we are increasingly more socially isolated. A recent Cigna study of >20,000 US adults revealed that 47% of Americans report sometimes or always feeling alone or left out, 27% Americans rarely or never feel as though there are people who really understand them and 43% of American sometimes or always feel that their relationships are not meaningful. It is important to note that we will all ebb and flow out of loneliness, but these stats are alarming, compared to the rates of loneliness reported 20 years ago.

Studies have shown that low levels of social connectedness is a greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking and high blood pressure. I’m not a doctor and I’m falling subject to availability heuristic, but I think the main driver of my Nana’s death was loneliness – not having her life partner or friends around to share life with prevented her from weathering the physical disease — not the physical disease itself.

People who are more connected to others have lower levels of anxiety and depression and higher self-esteem, greater empathy for others and are more trusting and cooperative.

***

Studies have also shown that human variation in the desire for connection is broad. Some people’s need for inclusion or sensitivity to exclusion is low enough that they can tolerate moving away from friends or family without much distress. Others have been shaped by genes and environment and need daily immersion in close social contact in order to feel okay.

Regardless, I think that we could all use deeper social connections in our day-to-day life. Moving from more surface level social connection to deep connection requires three aspects:

 1. Investing Time in Shared Experiences With Others: It’s hard to develop a deep connection with someone unless you spend significant time investing in your relationship with them.

Studies have shown that it takes 94 hours for acquaintances to become casual friends, 164 hours for casual friends to become friends and 219 hours for friends to become good / best friends. These figures are likely conservative, given the structure of the study.

One of my friends talked about how he was open to making new friends, but in his current stage at life, there were no more experiences that would force significant shared time with others – like growing up in the same town and navigating Kindergarten to 12th grade together, going through fraternity hazing together or going through banking analyst years together.

It is true that earlier in life, there are more structured events to facilitate strong friendships. However, you can still build shared experiences into your life – you just need to proactively find the time.

Over the summer, a friend and I went on a beach trip together for 3 days. The shared experiences of hanging out at the beach, jet-skiing, biking around town and getting me a tetanus shot after I stepped on a nail, have forever brought us closer. Because we had lots of time together, we dived into deeper discussions about our upbringings, instead of just discussing recent life updates.

2. Sharing Your Story – and that means the whole story – not just the roses and confetti; it means sharing all the inconvenient and messy stuff that we usually bury deep inside ourselves with someone else. It takes a lot of courage to open up and be vulnerable, but it’s key to developing a deep connection.

Studies have shown that having online daters discuss controversial and taboo subjects like STDs and abortion is more effective in building a connection than “safe” topics like the World Cup or their favorite desserts.

My connections with my friends used to be much more surface level. I was okay sharing with my friends my successes and some of my anxieties at work, but there were other insecurities that I bottled up and refused to discuss with anyone because I was scared they would judge me for it and I thought I was the only person in the world who felt these crazy things. However, once I opened up, I found that everyone is struggling with a lot of the same issues – the anxiety of being successful “enough,” the challenges of finding a life partner and learning to be comfortable in our bodies. It’s only by sharing these challenges that I was able to connect with my friends. And by opening up, they too were willing to open up about their challenges, which in turn has led to deeper connections.

3. Accepting Others Fully: You won’t agree with every choice that someone makes, but that does not mean you should be judgmental of it. In order to deepen your connection with someone, they need to feel secure in telling their story. That means that you will accept them, not judge them, no matter what they say.

One piece of advice that stuck with me was from FBI agent Robin Dreeke: “People do not want to be judged in any thought or opinion that they have or in any action they take. It doesn’t mean that you agree with someone. Validation is taking the time to understand what their needs, wants, dreams and aspirations are. What I prefer to try to do is, as soon as I hear something that I don’t necessarily agree with or understand, instead of judging it my first reaction is, “Oh, that’s really fascinating. I never heard it in quite that way. Help me understand. How did you come up with that?”

As someone who loves to solve problems, especially other people’s problems, I constantly find myself jumping in with advice, especially with my family members. However, now I try to understand their perspectives. That doesn’t mean that I agree with their perspectives, but I can understand why they have a certain pattern of thinking or what drives their actions. I found that just listening to them has made them more willing to be vulnerable and open up, compared to before, when I would be more judgmental.

***

I’ve been thinking a lot about my Nana recently because I am finally internalizing the meaning of her legacy – that life is about having deep-connections with each other, not having a laundry list of achievements.

So this week, figure out how you can add some more deep social connection into your life – maybe its striking up a conversation with someone in your apartment building, opening up to a friend about something that has been eating at you or trying to understand your friend’s or family member’s perspective without being judgmental. Just like we make sure we get our vegetable count and step count each day, make sure you get your social connection in each day!