3 Habits of Highly Social People

Happiness Encyclopedia XI from the Happiness PhD Project...

I will do my best to outline three practices for investing in the relationships component of life.

The first is grounded in neuroscience. Social-emotional contagion explains how we transmit our emotional context to one another. You know the expression “monkey see, monkey do”? There’s truth to it.

In an Italian laboratory in the 1990s, researchers noticed the monkeys would often mirror the things the researchers did. They studied their brains and found that primates (that’s us) have highly developed mirror neurons that take on the expressions and gestures of others.

In humans, this social-emotional contagion is well documented. Emotional states are transmitted in a matter of milliseconds and can often spread through groups. Think of how yawning and laughter are contagious.

In Peter Kaufman’s lecture on multidisciplinary thinking, he explains how to make use of this:

You’re standing in front of an elevator. The doors open. And inside the elevator is one solitary stranger. You’ve never met this person before in your whole life. You walk into the elevator; you have three choices for how you’re going to behave as you walk into this elevator. Choice number one: you can smile and say good morning. And I say, at least in California, if you do that, 98 percent of the time the person will smile and say good morning back. You can test it. Okay. My guess is you’re going to find that 98 percent of the time, people say good morning. Choice number two: you can walk in and you can scowl and hiss at this stranger in the elevator. And they have no idea why you’re scowling and hissing at them. And I say 98 percent of the time, they may not hiss back at you, but they will scowl back at you. And option number three. This is where the wisdom comes. You can walk into the elevator and you can do nothing. And what do you get 98 percent of the time if you walk into an elevator and you do nothing from that stranger in the elevator? Nothing. It’s mirrored reciprocation, isn’t it? But what did you have to do? You have to go first. And you’re going to get back whatever you put out there.

That’s the practice. Remember that when it comes to emotions, you bring the weather. In most instances, you control the emotional weather and dynamic of the interaction. If you go for a hug, a handshake, or a smile, you get it back. If you frown, scowl, or say nothing, you get that back too.

So, bring the weather of genuine interest in the other person and a context of positive emotion and positive outlook. Try to make them feel important and appreciated. Try to bring happiness – and in doing so, you’re liable to get more of it yourself.

As Oscar Wilde said, “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”

So the first principle is: bring the weather. Be intentional about creating genuine interest, appreciation, and positive emotion (assuming that’s the appropriate context).

The second is sort of the inverse application. Nearly 100 years ago, Dale Carnegie explained it best when he said, “The only way to win an argument is to avoid it.”

Think about it. Have you ever really won an argument?

Odds are, you may have gotten a feeling of superiority or self-righteousness – sure. Maybe you even got the other person to feel dumb or give up. But is that really winning?

I sometimes say, would you rather be right or be happy? And there’s an old poem that goes something like this:

Here lies the body of John O’Day,
Who died defending his right of way.
He was right, dead right, as he rode along,
But he’s just as dead as if he were wrong.

Get it?

Striving to be right often undermines our quality of life and our ability to actually move forward and get an optimal result for everyone (see our current political situation, for example). So, if you want to have better relationships, focus on understanding and moving forward – not on right, wrong, or winning.

Continuing on with this point from Dale Carnegie: avoid the three C’s. Never criticize, condemn, or complain. Criticizing puts others on the defensive, condemning erodes cooperation, and complaining creates a negative atmosphere that is rarely constructive. Avoiding these habits isn’t about ignoring problems avoiding confrontation, but rather navigating relationships more skillfully.

The third practice – run your relationships like a business.

I want to be clear: I don’t mean make them transactional or all about work. I mean be intentional about keeping in touch and nurturing your relationships, because they’re truly your most valuable asset. In fact, a better analogy would probably be: be a gardener with your relationships. But I don’t know anything about gardening, so you get business.

Think about how businesses use a CRM – a Customer Relationship Management system – to stay in touch, add value, and deepen connection. Most of the time, they’re quite simple: they have some information on the person and some regular cadence for keeping in touch and building the relationship.

We use them for work, but why not for the relationships that matter most?

So, when I say “run your life like a business,” I mean bring that same level of thoughtfulness and structure to your personal connections that a good company would bring to its customers or key team members. If you’re a CEO, you meet regularly with your leadership team. In your life, you’ve got your spouse, your kids, your close friends, your parents, your old friends – are you putting time on the calendar for them with that same sense of priority?

You wouldn’t just “catch up” with your VP of Sales whenever it was convenient. You’d schedule it, because that person matters. You wouldn’t talk to a potential customer then see what happened. You’d take some notes and keep track of how they’re doing, because the relationship is important. The same should apply to the people who matter most to you in your personal life.

One way to do this is to build a simple system for staying connected. I use a spreadsheet where I list people I care about – close friends, mentors, extended family – and check in to see who I haven’t talked to in a while. That way, if I haven’t spoken to my godfather Marty in a few months, I’ll notice and reach out.

You can also set reminders. On January 23rd, for example, I had a little notification pop up: “Keep in touch with Julio” (a family friend), and another that said, “Check in with Louis” (a longtime college friend). These reminders help me make sure I’m not letting the important relationships fade. It’s also how I remember birthdays and special occasions (like my mom’s, which is also on January 23rd).

One of the biggest reasons people feel lonely is that they stop investing in established relationships. In many cases, friendships fade slowly, then all at once.

There is a term for this in psychology: relational entropy – it describes the natural tendency for relationships to gradually break down over time if not intentionally maintained. You may also see it described as friendship decay.

When we look at trends in loneliness in countries like the U.S., we see this may be a critical driver of unhappiness and mental illness. According to the American Survey Center, about half of Americans have three or fewer close friends, and 12 percent have none.

Perhaps the real lesson here comes not from academic research, but from a quote I heard from a Vedic monk about ten years ago: “One old friend is worth two new ones.”

Having an intentional system prevents this friendship decay.

Some people even schedule weekly development time with their partner or kids. They set aside time to ask: How are we doing? What’s going well? What’s not? That keeps relationships continuously improving.

Scheduling social time in your calendar and using the systems I mentioned above serve the same purpose. When I write “manage your relationships like you would a business,” I mean create structure, protocols, and information management to ensure you are continually investing in life’s most important asset: relationships.