The Power of Connection
“My religion is kindness.” — The Dalai Lama
Think of a time you were surrounded by people and still felt alone. Maybe a dinner where the conversation kept going but something in you had quietly left the room. Maybe a crowded commute where you were pressed against strangers and yet felt invisible.
Now think of a different kind of moment — one where you felt genuinely met. Not because someone said the right thing or fixed a problem, but because, for a few seconds, someone was simply there with you. A friend who sat with you in silence during a hard week. A stranger who made eye contact and smiled in a way that landed. A moment of laughter with someone you barely know that somehow felt more intimate than a hundred polished conversations.
Notice: the first experience was full of people. The second may have involved just one — or even none at all. Cort describes feeling profoundly disconnected in college, surrounded by friends, and profoundly connected during months of solitary retreat with no one around. Connection, it turns out, is not just about proximity.
And this matters far more than we realize. The research on loneliness is sobering: roughly three in four American adults report feeling lonely, and the health consequences are on par with smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Not a metaphor — epidemiological data across dozens of studies. But circumstances, it turns out, are only part of the story. So much of loneliness is related to perception. And perception can be trained.
Just as research revealed the scale of the problem, more studies also point to something hopeful: connection is a skill. Warmth, appreciation, compassion — these are not personality traits that some people are born with and others lack. They are capacities that respond to practice with surprising speed. After just seven hours of compassion training — spread over two weeks — participants showed measurably more generous behavior, not just better feelings. In Born to Flourish book, a senior executive transforms a toxic relationship with a colleague not through a difficult conversation, but through a private daily practice. The relationship changes from the inside out — and the colleague never knows.
Today we explore the second pillar of flourishing: the capacity to feel connected — not by changing our circumstances, but by recognizing the connection that is already here.
When connection is strong, we tend to assume good intentions in the people around us. When it’s weak, small misunderstandings become evidence of something worse. A grounding introduction to connection as a trainable skill — and what it quietly shapes in every relationship.
Cort describes feeling profoundly alone in college surrounded by friends — and deeply connected during months of solitary retreat with no one around. A wide-ranging conversation on why loneliness is now a public health emergency, and why the shift from disconnection to connection may be simpler than we think.
Empathy has long been considered a virtue. But when researchers trained people to empathize more deeply with suffering, they felt worse — and when those same people were trained in compassion, the negative feelings reversed entirely. A precise, surprising distinction between two responses most of us have never learned to tell apart.
A Practice in Expanding Connection
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Settle in with a few slow breaths. Let your body arrive.
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Bring to mind someone who is easy to love — someone whose face, when you imagine it, naturally brings warmth. A close friend, a child, a pet. Don’t think about them. Just let yourself feel the warmth of their presence.
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Stay there for a moment. Notice where that warmth shows up in your body. Let it be simple.
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Now, gently expand. Bring to mind someone neutral — a person you saw today but didn’t really notice. The barista, a fellow commuter, someone passing on the sidewalk. You don’t know their name. But they have a life as full and complicated as yours. Silently wish them well: May you be happy. May you be at ease.
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Now, if you’re willing, try something harder. Bring to mind someone you find slightly difficult — someone who creates friction or tension. You don’t need to excuse anything. Just see if you can find one thing to appreciate about them — a quality, a struggle they carry, something they’ve done — and offer the same quiet wish: May you be at ease. Notice what resistance arises. That’s not failure — that’s the practice working.
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Finally, extend this toward yourself. Offer yourself the same wish: May I be happy. May I be at ease. For many of us, this is the hardest direction of all.
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Close by sitting with whatever you feel. There is no right answer. The practice is the noticing.
If you’d like to experiment with a guided practice on Feeling Kindness
(For more, Healthy Minds Program App - Connection Module)
Today, try two small experiments in connection.
First: one conscious moment of seeing. At some point today — in a meeting, at a store, with a family member — pause before you respond to the person in front of you. For just two or three seconds, let yourself notice them as a full human being. Not their role, not what they need from you, not your opinion of them. Just: here is a person. Notice if anything shifts in how you feel toward them.
Second: one act of expressed appreciation. Choose one person — someone you interact with regularly but rarely thank explicitly. Send them a short message, or say it in person: one specific thing you appreciate about them. Not a general “thanks for everything.” Something precise: I noticed you did X, and it mattered to me. Watch what happens — both in them and in you.
Before bed: Look back over the day. Was there a moment when you felt truly connected to another person? Was there a moment when you were physically close to someone but your mind was somewhere else? What was different about those two moments?