You Might Also Like: The School of Greatness

**Lewis Howes** (0:01)
Small business owners, listen up. You started your business because you had a vision, not because you wanted to spend your nights figuring out payroll, benefits, paperwork, and all the little details that somehow become very big details. That's where JustWorks comes in. JustWorks is the payroll, benefits, and global hiring platform to unburden your brain from all the complicated small business stuff. They handle the things you can't afford to get wrong so you don't have to worry because building a business is hard enough. You don't have to worry when it just works.
Sons out and so is Dad. This Father's Day, find what will make his summer with Lowe's Father Day deals. Get two free DeWalt power tools when you buy a select 5 amp hour battery kit. Plus get a free Blackstone 6-piece stainless steel griddle kit when you buy a select Blackstone griddle. Shop Lowe's Father's Day deals in-store or online. Valid through June 24th while supplies last, selection varies by location. Hiring isn't just filling seats. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, they'll help you match with candidates who can actually move your business forward. Target candidates by skills, certifications or location. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results now with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 Sponsored Job Credit to help you get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast.
Terms and conditions apply, hiring, do it the right way with Indeed.
Welcome back, everyone, to The School of Greatness. We're very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Charles Duhigg of The House, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, author of the number one New York Times bestseller, The Power of Habit, which has now sold almost 10 million copies, and author of the new book, Supercommunicators, How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. I'm super excited you're here. And I wanted to start with a quote before we dive in. Okay, I saw this quote about the current loneliness epidemic that's happening in the world, but specifically in the US. And this was from the, I believe, the general surgeon who said the lack of social connection poses a significant risk for individual health and longevity. Loneliness and social isolation increase the risk for premature death by 26% and 29%, respectively. More broadly, lacking social connection can increase the risk for premature death as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Poor or insufficient social connection is associated with increased risk of disease, including 29% increased risk of heart disease and 32% increased risk of stroke. Furthermore, is associated with increased risk for anxiety, depression and dementia. I want to start by asking you to reflect on that. I'm curious, how can the principles in super connectors, super communicators, how can these principles really help put an end to the loneliness epidemic that we are seeing in the US, but also in the world?

**Charles Duhigg** (3:46)
It is a fantastic question and probably the most important question to be thinking about right now.
There was this study that was done called, they now call it the Harvard Adult Happiness Study. You're probably familiar with it. The longest longitudinal study that's ever been done. And it started over 100 years ago, it was actually called the Grant Study at first because this guy didn't grant, gave money to start it. And they started following all these people, originally just students at Harvard, but then people who lived in tenements in Boston and as everyone got married and had kids, they started following them. And they had these hypotheses. What they wanted to figure out is, what is the correlate with future success and happiness and most importantly, longevity, health? And they had these hypotheses. Again, this is like the 1910s, 1920s. They were like, you know, if you have a two-parent family, you're probably gonna live longer than if you have a one-parent family.
If you go to Harvard, you're probably gonna live longer than if you didn't go to Harvard. And they studied all this stuff. What careers people have, what they eat. And they found ultimately there was only one overwhelming thing that determined whether people were happy and whether they lived a long time, longer than an average. How many connections they had to other people, particularly when they're 45 So there's nothing magical about 45 except that they would look at people at 45 and they found if you had twice as many friends, like people that you're actually engaged in a relationship with.