Get connected

Happy Valentine’s Day! Or Galentine’s Day for yesterday, if you observe it.

Whether you’re showing love and affection to a significant other, or your friends, family or colleagues, I hope you’re making time to connect in a meaningful way (ie. not through a screen). Not only is it more fun, it’s also better for your health.

According to the National Institute on Ageing, social isolation and loneliness have been estimated to shorten a person's life span by as many as 15 years. They even equate it to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has been investigating what makes people flourish. Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz are the study’s director and associate director respectively, and they wrote a piece in The Atlantic last month about the ongoing project’s findings. ‘It’s the longest in-depth longitudinal study on human life ever done,’ they wrote, ‘and it…