Category Archives: Wellness

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Is Too Much Stress Damaging Your Chromosomes?

Too much stress, including stress in your workplace, damages “telomeres” on the ends of your chromosomes and causes rapid aging.  Interestingly, when people connect in supportive relationships it triggers the production of enzymes called “telomerase” that heal damaged telomeres.  Check out this outstanding 58 minute National Geographic documentary entitled “Stress: Portrait of a Killer” about this and other research on the effects of stress. It includes an excellent segment on the famous Whitehall research studies in the UK that established stress and mortality were inversely related to hierarchy in organizations.

Update: I recently returned from speaking, teaching and meeting with leaders of organizations in business, higher education and government in Houston, Fort Worth, Texas and Erie, Pennsylvania.   ASTD’s The Public Manager recently published a version of a case study I wrote about CNO Admiral Vern Clark’s improving the U.S. Navy’s culture.  The article is entitled “Great Leaders Connect with the People They Lead.”

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Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?

Check out this excellent article in The Atlantic entitled “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”  Some eye-popping statistics and quotes from the article include:

  • In 1950 less than 10 percent of American households contained only one person.  By 2010, nearly 27 percent had just one person.
  • A 2010 AARP survey found that 35 percent of adults older than 45 were chronically lonely as opposed to 20 percent a decade earlier.
  • Roughly 20 percent of Americans — about 60 million people — are unhappy with their lives because of loneliness.
  • “Across the Western world, physicians and nurses have begun to speak openly about an epidemic of loneliness.”

The rise in loneliness has led to an explosion in the number of paid confidants.  A 2010 Hoover Institute paper stated in 1950 the U.S. had a combined 33,000 paid confidants including clinical psychologists, social workers and therapists.  By 2010 that number reached an estimated 1,091,00 paid confidants which includes new categories such as mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, and life coaches.

Clearly, Facebook and other assorted addictions to media are not the only contributors to the epidemic of loneliness. The geographic spread of families, increased time spent working/commuting to work, and the decline of relationships in the workplace are also responsible.  Regarding relationships in the workplace, the push for productivity has contributed to a rise of cultures that label people who take time to build relationships as slackers.   Today, having lunch alone in your office is the norm.  Unfortunately, productivity and innovation take a toll when workers burn out from a lack of human connection.  They learn to play “face time” games that make it look like they’re working, when in reality they’re not.  Creating Connection Cultures in organizations to achieve “relationship excellence” is wise.  We most recently made the case for Connection Cultures in an article entitled,”The Science of Engagement,” that appeared in the Spring edition of  Training Industry Quarterly.

In addition to the The Atlantic article on Facebook making us lonely, here are two other readings I recommend.

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One Easy Way to Be Happier



Americans are connection deprived. A quarter of Americans live alone and the number of Americans who haven’t had a conversation with a best friend over the previous six months has tripled since 1985 to nearly 25 percent of the U.S. population.  This also likely means Americans are running low on oxytocin, a molecule that is associated with empathy, trust, morality and connection.

To learn more about oxytocin, check out Paul Zak’s fascinating TED lecture.  Here are just a few interesting points he makes:

  • Oxytocin is found only in mammals
  • Massage, dancing, sex, social media and praying boost oxytocin
  • Empathy boosts oxytocin and, as a result, increases moral behavior
  • Con artists learn to manipulate oxytocin levels in people
  • Sexual abuse, stress and testosterone inhibit oxytocin production
  • Weddings cause the release of oxytocin, especially in the bride and her mother
  • The easiest way to boost oxytocin is to hug someone
  • Zak prescribes eight hugs a day boost your oxytocin levels and make you happier

Hopefully, one of the above points catches your attention so that you’ll take time to watch the lecture.  It’ll be 20 minutes well spent.

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A Healing Connection

We’ve been doing more work of late in the health care field, helping organizations such as the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center develop Connection Cultures that boost employee engagement and improve patient outcomes.   If you have a story to tell or are aware of practices that boost connection at hospitals, would you please post it on the comments below or email me at mstallard@epluribuspartners.com. Thank you.

On that score, while speaking recently at Texas Christian University, a student, Romel Schearer, told me about the remarkable story of Bill Cabeen, a cardiologist who had the courage to connect with one of his patients, Nikki Luederitz, rather than remain disconnected in the name of “professionalism.”  Dr. Cabeen’s courage and support not only saved Ms. Luederitz’s life, it changed her in a profound way. To learn how, listen to “The Tale of Two Hearts.”

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In Search of Happiness

Happiness is much sought after these days. Book stores and magazine stands are full of titles that promise to unlock the secrets of happiness.  Positive psychology courses are all the rage on college campuses across America. Recognizing that happiness gets attention, I recently decided to title a chapter I’m writing “Should Leaders Care About Employee Happiness?” The chapter will be included in the American Society for Training and Development’s new Handbook of Management.

In my view, the primary reason happiness is on the decline in America and in many market democracies around the world is that we’ve become “achieve-aholics” who, as a result of our achievement-seeking lifestyles, lack sufficient human connection.  Lacking connection, we eventually dysfunction. As achieve-aholics move through adulthood, they feel a sense of boredom, emptiness and meaninglessness.  Many are mis-diagnosed as having depression when in fact they are just lonely (I wrote about this in an earlier post on the rise of loneliness in America). To feel better, achieve-aholics oftentimes seek illegitimate thrills (e.g. sexual affairs, pornography, extreme sports and extreme business risks) or they self-medicate to numb the pain, which leads to substance abuse. In my opinion, this is why America, with a mere five percent of the world’s population consumes half of the mood-altering pharmacological medications and two-thirds of the world’s illegal drugs (a point that Joseph Califano, head of the National Center on Substance Abuse at Columbia University, made in a video interview on the Atlantic’s website).

The bottom line is that we are human beings, not machines.  As I consistently present on this blog, and all the science makes it abundantly clear, we need human connection to thrive.

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New Research: Friendly Workplace = Longer Life

During our speeches and workshops we conclude the section where we present research from a diverse fields of knowledge that makes the case for connection to thrive at work and in life by stating:

“connection = life” whereas “disconnection = death” (we point out that this applies to both individuals and organizations)

Now we have additional research about the effect of connection on individuals in the workplace to prove it.  A 20-year study by researchers at Tel Aviv University found that workers who reported working in cultures where they experienced positive social interactions and felt emotionally supported to the people they worked with were 2.4 times less likely to die over the next 20 years than those who reported they didn’t feel emotionally supported at work.   The New York Times recently included an article about it entitled “Friendly Workplace Linked to Longer Life.”  (You can purchase the published research findings on Psychnet at “Work-Based Predictors of Mortality: A 20-Year Follow-up of Healthy Employees.”)

This provides additional evidence that the “Connection Cultures” we described in Fired Up or Burned Out are essential for people and organizations to thrive for sustained periods of time.  Connection boosts hormones and neurotransmitters that make us feel more alive, more energetic, more confident, more creative and better problem solvers.  Furthermore, during periods of stress, connection reduces stress hormones such as cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine.  This helps us cope with stress and anxiety so that we are more likely to make rational decisions rather than rash decisions when our emotions overwhelm us.

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Community: Often Overlooked Cause of Good Health

A couple years ago I had the good fortune to meet Malcolm Gladwell at a Rotman Business School event and tell him how much I enjoyed his work. One of my favorite stories in Malcolm’s latest book entitled Outliers is about Roseto, Pennsylvania.  As it turns out, residents of Roseto were outliers in terms of their good health. A curious doctor set out to understand why.   After a methodical study he concluded that it wasn’t diet or exercise that mattered.   The reason Rosetans were living longer was the culture they lived in.  As Malcolm wrote:

In transplanting the paesani culture of southern Italy to the hills of eastern Pennsylvania the Rosetans had created a powerful, protective social structure capable of insulating them from the pressures of the modern world. The Rosetans were healthy because of where they were from, because of the world they had created for themselves in their tiny little town in the hills.

“I remember going to Roseto for the first time, and you’d see three generational family meals, all the bakeries, the people walking up and down the street, sitting on their porches talking to each other, the blouse mills where the women worked during the day, while the men worked in the slate quarries,” Bruhn said. “It was magical.”

Thanks to The New York Times, you can read the wonderful story Malcolm wrote about Roseto, PA at this link.

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Emotional Connections Important to a Healthy Life

The emotional connections that Jason Pankau and I write, speak and teach about are in the workplace and in life outside of work.  Research has shown that Emotionally Focused Therapy for marriage helps couples develop and the maintain the emotional connections that have been shown to be the most important factor predicting marriage longevity (and emotional disconnection is the top predictor of divorce). Emotional connections are important to children too. Research has shown that teenagers who feel connected to their families and/or friends are less likely to become involved in sexual activity or drinking alcohol at an early age. Two books I recommend on this topic are Safe Haven Marriage and The Five Love Languages of Teenagers. These are outstanding books that will strengthen your relationships with your spouse and children, and improve your wellbeing in life.