U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy & Adam Grant on Loneliness — Authors@Wharton

Introduction please welcome Professor Grant and Dr [Applause] marthy good afternoon everyone welcome Dr Surgeon General well thank you Professor Grant is that what I'm going to be calling you for this definitely not I only answer to Adam thanks V it's great to have you here um I can I just I just have to start by embarrassing you um I remember 2021 uh I got covid and I was the first person in our household to get it and uh I texted you and you proceeded to check in with me every day for at least two weeks there have to be more important things to do in your job as search in general but my family was very grateful and I I think you know everyone who knows you has seen you show up in that incredibly generous way and I think um you know I guess if we still had house calls you would be the person we would all want to show up at our door so I just want to start by thanking you for your your kindness and your thoughtfulness that is so nice of you thank you Adam thank you no actually one of the things I miss in this job is actually not being able to see patients as I used to over the years and whenever a friend calls me or a family member with a medical question um they think I'm helping them but I actually am really hungry to actually get back into clinical medicine again so it's it's always enjoyable for me and rewarding for me to be able to participate in people's care so I'm going to try not to make you regret that sentiment because we all have this image now of of somebody reaching out in need yes I get to matter but tell us why are you here how How did you end up on this path did you end up on this path I don't know I was going in New York and I got off of the wrong stop no not literally I mean how did how does one go from practicing medicine to being Surgeon General uh I have no idea uh and I actually mean that somewhat seriously because there's not like um there's not a defined path to becoming Surgeon General if you look at all my predecessors they all came to the role in in different ways and for me actually when I was growing up I never thought I would work in government I I never even considered the public sector as a place where I would spend time um in fact I remember and and part of this was because I grew up with parents who are immigrants from India who are deeply suspicious of of government to some extent um and they they weren't suspicious in the sense that they knew government had an important role but they always worried that um that it wasn't an easy place to sort of hold on to your values and to operate with Integrity um given their experiences back back in India so one day when I was actually in nth grade uh I had I was taking a world history uh course in high school and my teacher pulled me aside after school one day and she said I know you really like this world history stuff one day you should think about being Secretary of State and I was in ninth grader at the time super excited I came home and told my mom I said m m Miss Bryce thinks that maybe I could be Secretary of State one day she immediately picked up the phone and called my dad and said you need to come home and talk to him he's thinking about going into politics what so that was the the the notion of government when I was growing up but what so when I was going through training I you know went into medicine I took some many detours along the way some detours to start a few public health nonprofit organizations with my sister uh detour to go to business school as well which was a one of the best experiences of my life which I can talk about um many other detours but and at the time that I was actually uh you know called about serving in government I was practicing medicine and teaching uh uh medical students and residents I was building a technology company uh with three friends uh that was focused on using the sort of learnings of social media and evolving technology to actually accelerate research and clinical trials uh and I was actually building a Grassroots advocacy organization to try to improve our healthare system those are things I was doing all outside of government um but when July 10th 2013 I was um got off a Redeye flight and was going to pick up my laundry and the dry cleaners and uh I'm walking you to my car hands full of dry cleaning and my phone rings and it's a 202 number and I wasn't going to pick it up finally kept bringing as let me just pick this up and that happened be this call from the White House asking me would you be interested in being considered for the position of Surgeon General and um I thought this like where is this coming from this is like you know completely unexpected um and I called my now wife Alice and I said Alice I got the weirdest call and you'll never guess what it was and she said was it the White House asking you to be Surgeon General I was like how did you know she was like you know women we have better intuition than you do so but all that to say that the advocacy work that I had done had introduced me to the world of policy and DC you know to that whole like you know environment but still like I wasn't convinced government was a place where made that made sense for me to work I just didn't think was a good fit with my personality but the role of Surgeon General was actually quite different from all of the other roles that uh people had asked me about in government and because and what I liked about this role is that one it's actually truly an independent role your Fidelity is to science and the public interest not to politics or party and I remember being asked if what if you want to say something uh that's important for the Public's Health um but the the white house or the president tells you not to say it what are you going to do I'd say I'd say it anyway you know and what's the worst that could happen you get fired right but it feels like you know that what I loved about the the role was that that that was The Guiding Light you know and and that resonated with me it resonated with why I went into medicine why I was interested in public health um and in a weird way you know at that time in my life um my mentors and others who were trying to help me find my way and I was often lost you know when I was uh you know in those early stages of my career I still haven't quite figured out what I want to do after this job and probably won't until this job is over but they would always tell me that you know your life your work it just all doesn't quite fit together it doesn't make sense you're doing this advocacy stuff this Grassroots stuff you're doing this you know building this tech company you're doing the clinical work but you're not publishing enough in your uh in your academic role like you just got to be doing more of that they're like the sell just doesn't make sense and the first time that all of those threads actually made sense was actually when I served as Surgeon General the first time in the Obama administration because I found that all of my work in doing nonprofit stuff you know and public health served me well the Grassroots work helped me figure out how to build campaigns that would actually engage the American public even the tech work that I was doing I was we were building a startup and you know those of you whove been part of startups know that you do what needs to be done not what's in your job description right and so I ended up being the uiux guy you know for the site that we were building hiring designers critiquing sites building wireframes doing all that which I had zero skills to do but you build the skills that you need right and I actually found when we were developing our opioid campaign to change prescribing practices those skills came in handy because we didn't have the money to actually hire a whole team to do that so it was me and one other person on the team designing the whole site so all of these different activities made sense and I was reminded at that time of Steve Jobs's you famous 2004 commencement speech where he says you can't connect the dots in your life going forward you can only connect them looking back uh and that was certainly true for me reminds me of a a kard line that it's a a great travesty that life has to be lived forward but can only be understood backward we would like to be able to do it the other way around um so we met about a decade ago and I was struck by how unconventional your approach to this surgeon General role was um I always thought of the Surgeon General as the person who tells us not to smoke and you you were starting to please don't smoke get that in there goes without saying but but you were you were talking even then about mental health about Why did you decide to talk about loneliness loneliness and I I you know I think very early on it was clear that you were a holistic thinker and you didn't see the body as fundamentally separate from the mind but at what point did you decide this is actually part of my mantle as Surgeon General to talk about what goes on in our heads well you know you're right that it was something that always mattered to me and it mattered to me for two reasons one actually three one is because my mother and father brought me up that way to think holistically they had a medical clinic in Miami Florida when I was growing up and I came to see like very early on even before I really understood the science of what they were doing that the relationships that they were building with their patients the time they were spending with them helping them feel seen and heard and understood was actually just as important a part of the healing process as was their listening listening to the patient's lungs and palpating their abdomen and prescribing medications to them and so that was my first clue that health and well-being are bigger uh than perhaps what we may read about you know in a scientific textbook but in my own life you know I had also struggled at various times with my own mental health and well-being especially as a kid you know who struggled with loneliness and uh in retrospect with symptoms of of depression and anxiety but I didn't know what they were I didn't know what to call them I felt a real sense of Shame around it um so I was aware that that component of people's lives is is important and finally when I was practicing medicine you know itself after I became a doctor actually even before when I was in medical school when I was starting to see patients you know as a medical student one thing you have a chance to do which residents you know who are postgraduate often don't as much is you get to sit and spend more time with patients talking to them you had to hear their stories you had to go back day after day after day and learn more about who they are not just what their disease is and those conversations made it so abundantly clear to me that people are much more than their diagnosis and that if we don't understand how they are receiving their experience emotionally as well as physically then we're missing half of this the entire Human Experience here and we can't treat them as well we can't build relationships I saw time and time again Adam that that the smartest doctors in the hospital smartest in terms of like book knowledge in terms of memorization in terms of their ability to make a diagnosis and figure out what the right treatment was that when they didn't have have sort of like the appreciation for somebody's mental and emotional wellbeing that their help wasn't often they weren't able to connect with the patient and hence they couldn't deliver the full value of what they had in their heads to that patient because people need to trust you before they're willing to put themselves in your hands and you can only build trust by opening yourself up to the entire person to listening to them understanding who they are so that was sort of my experience of medicine actually that's what it taught me when I came into the role though even with all of that Adam I will say that the thing that finally made it clear to me that we have to take this broader approach in the role of Surgeon General was this listening tour that I did in the very beginning of my my first tenure and um it was a you know I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do and when I was a Surgeon General because I had a very long confirmation process it was a 13-month long confirmation process and there are all kinds of fun and exciting reasons why it took so long which Adam knows about it's because I had made a um at what was perceived at that time to be a uh audacious and outlandish statement which was that gun violence was a public health issue and that seemed to draw the ire of many people who then ultimately it led to political challenges but um and they asked me do you want to change your point of view on that I was like no it's like pretty obvious it's a public health issue uh people are dying in large numbers for preventable causes that's like almost by definition a public health issue so anyhow but during that time like when when I then finally was confirmed and started the job uh I remember my strong urge was like the communications team member from the Department came in and said okay uh tomorrow let's get you on Good Morning America on the Today's Show and all the big shows and uh and have you talk about your agenda for the country and I just after this whole bruising process I was like you know I don't want to like talk I just want to listen for a while you know so um they thought I was nuts but I like let's just spend the next two weeks traveling around the country and asking people simple question which is what can we to help and it was in those conversations that I learned so much that I heard not just about people's concern about obesity and diabetes and heart disease and cancer but I also heard from moms and dads who were looking at their kids struggling with depression and anxiety and we unsure what to do I heard from teachers who are seeing their kids uh taking their own lives at alarming rates that they had never seen before and were unsure what was going on um I heard from college students and graduate students who are on campuses surrounded by thousands of other students yet they said they felt profoundly alone because nobody understood them nobody they didn't feel comfortable being themselves around other people and so they felt isolated and Alone um when I heard that time and time again in big cities small towns all across America that's what really made it super clear to me that we've got to do something to address the broader mental health issues that people are dealing with while we also address some of the the other challenges like the cigarettes and the other public health issues that we focused on well let's talk about some of what you've learned over the the last decade then so you've talked about loneliness being also a major public health problem uh would love to talk about I think a little bit about what causes it but especially how to solve it um so I know you've you've been thinking a lot about individual Solutions about Community Solutions about policy Solutions as well um so let's uh let's look at this at multiple levels um we are here to talk connections at Wharton I imagine some of you are here because you thought the Surgeon General is the person who can tell you how to build a stronger Community here at Wharton so this is your chance tell us how so yeah there a Why loneliness is a problem lot of ways we can do this if if I if you okay with it Adam I'd love to maybe just talk about why this is a problem and and a lot of people think about loneliness and think hey it's just a bad feeling what's a big deal it turns out it's a much bigger deal than many of us thought that people who struggle with loneliness and isolation are actually a greater risk for depression anxiety and suicide but it also turns out even more surprisingly that there are greater risk for physical illness as well so we're talking 29% increase in the risk of heart disease 31% increase in the risk of stroke 50% increase in the risk of dementia among older people and an increased overall mortality for with loneliness and isolation that are comparable to the mortality impact we see of smoking daily even greater than the mortality impact we see with obesity and there are biological reasons uh as to why this is but this is why actually it's a profound Public Health Challenge and not just a bad feeling it's also extraordinarily common so I'm curious just by show hands how many people here know somebody in your life who is struggling with loneliness or isolation so almost everyone I should have asked how many don't know anyone probably would have been more instructive but this is every place I go Adam when I ask audiences this this is the same response almost every hand goes up in the room and this is what when we release a surge General's advisory on this topic last year U we noted that one and two adults in America are living with measurable levels of loneliness but the numbers are actually much higher among young people where they can range anywhere from 60 to 70% in some cases even higher so what do we do about it well this is the good news is that there is actually a lot we can do about it and we don't need to actually wait for an act of Congress to actually take action in our lives and build greater connection which thank God is the case because you know those actions take a long time and the I think we it's worth thinking about this on an individual as well as a community level what we can do so uh if we think about Wharton okay since you mentioned uh since we're here and you universities are places which have often in their Vision the notion of creating a community of shared learning of mutual support the challenge I think that we have especially after covid uh is that our social muscle weakened a lot and and I use that term very intentionally social muscle because like any other muscle you know it gets stronger when we use it more it gets weaker when we don't use it and if you've everever been on a gym routine and have fallen off the wagon you know that trying to get back to the gym sometimes it's just a lot of inertia right and the first time you go and lift the same weights that you had been lifting consistently for the past year first time you try to do it again it feels heavier it feels harder right running on that treadmill feels like oh my God I'm winded so much more easily but that doesn't dissuade us right we know if we keep going back then we'll feel better that seems obvious but it doesn't it's not always so obvious on the social front many people have told me after the pandemic you know especially the worst of the pandemic in the first year or so they said you know I don't know I want to come back but it feels a little weird to come back I feel uncomfortable like being these big groups I'm not sure what to say to people and I try to re reassure them that that's okay that's actually normal that's all of us working out uh you know our social muscle once again after a long time clearing the cobwebs and it will get easier each time we do it I think in this setting it becomes especially important to have spaces times and a bit of structure that allow people to get to know one another it's if you just throw a bunch of people together in a room and I hope that through Brownie and motion like connections will be made some people will connect but many people actually won't especially you know with this weaken social muscle we're dealing with so that's actually why sometimes we need a little bit of structure to allow people to start the process of sharing their stories with one another I'll give you a simple example that we use in our office actually this is something that we call the humans of OSG exercise which is Office of the Surgeon General but it's very simple it's like disarmingly simple and it takes 10 minutes once a week so this is not a massive investment of time it also takes exactly zero dollar to implement so the price is right right but when you think about this it involves during our all staff meeting choosing two people right and so let's just say Adam and I were the two people that were chosen and in that we would say you have How to build strong connections both have 10 minutes and we want one of you to interview the other just about your life anything is you know is fair play as long as it's not about your current job so in those conversations people ask all kinds of things they might ask hey what did you dream of doing like when you were were a kid who' you trust who' you look up to when you were a kid um where did you think you would live you know what are the things you do now when you're feeling stressed out uh or worried about something like who are the people you look to now who are your role models what's your favorite music whatever it might be we learn about the human being that's been on our team sometimes for a long time we didn't we knew their skill sets but we didn't know their Humanity but what is really striking to me is how we are so hardwired for connection that sometimes just a little bit of truly human interaction of learning somebody's story hearing about their life little bit of honest sharing can help Forge really strong connections and so we can build those through simple activities like that aasly to say on a personal level in terms of what you can do in your own life here there's a lot and it's actually again disarmingly simple U I'll tell you a few of the things that I like to to to do some of my favorite go-tos one is I like to and I say this to somebody who's actually lived through many periods of my life struggling with loneliness and isolation uh and I might tell you about one of those periods in a bit but you know I find that simply just taking 10 to 15 minutes a day to talk to somebody you care about whether it's in person or on the phone or through video conference makes a huge difference it can just be a call to check on them you don't need to have an agenda you don't have to like there has to doesn't have to be any planning involved it could just be like me calling Adam say hey Adam there's another way to work what's going on what are you doing what you do yesterday did you catch the Sixers game were you upset about the the no calls at the end like what's going on like you know it just be a simple I was upset about that but anyway you know it could be something very simple like that so 15 minutes a day to connect with someone you care about the second thing is to make sure when you're connecting with somebody in those 15 minutes that you're actually giving them your full attention sound simple super hard right how many times have we been in conversation as I have been when you're talking to somebody and then somehow your hand slips into your pocket somehow your phone comes out somehow if you're me you're on ESPN espn.com checking the scores you're looking at your inbox you're looking up the news like something's going on and then said 15 minutes later you're like wait I don't need to do this and I remember the content of what they said but I don't fly process what they were saying you like and we think oh I I remember the words so I got the conversation that is not the case right words that people speak are only one portion of how they communicate it's this moments of Silence it's a Nuance it's a body language it's a facial expression all of that feeds into how connected we feel to with somebody else so that's a second thing I do is to make sure that in those 15 minutes I'm giving them my full attention the third thing I do and this is going to make me seem super old but I actually call people on the phone and I pick up the phone when How to pick up the phone they call and that it's revolutionary it's like a big deal but it doesn't happen very often these days you know picking up a phone call is the equivalent of getting snail mail from somebody you know right it's like wow this doesn't happen but it's kind of neat when it does and I found that if I have the option like let's say I'm walking into this uh this talk with Adam and somebody calls uh you know right like 15 like two minutes before I'm supposed to roll in I could I have two options I could silence it and say I'll call him later and maybe I text him and say hey I'm in the middle of something I'll chat with you later or I can literally spend the same exact amount of time pick up the phone and say hey so good to hear from you Adam I'm about to walk into this thing is it okay if I call you back later or is something urgent you okay oh yeah everything's fine just was thinking about you want to catch up oh great I'll call you later takes 10 seconds right but it feels very very different because as human beings over thousands of years we evolve to process all of that other input not just the content again but the sound of their voice the tones the moments of silence all of that and so we get a lot out of Simply picking up the phone and that's why also when I try to call somebody and I can't get them I do another old school thing which is I actually leave them a voice message or sometimes actually will send them a voice memo instead of texting them um and I did that because I learned that from friends of mine who used to do that and I was like wow it's really nice to hear their voice the last thing I'll share with you and there are actually many simple strategies like this is I try to find one small thing I can do each day to help somebody else it could be super small it could be somebody's lost you know like uh you know in on the street and I give them directions or I'm on a plane and somebody's having trouble getting their bag up you know into the overhead compartment and I maybe give them a lift you know it could be something super small but it turns out service is one of the most powerful antidotes to loneliness uh when we serve other people we not only feel connected to them in the moment but we actually remind ourselves that we have value to bring to the world and that is something that we lose When we struggle with chronic loneliness we start to believe over time that we're lonely because we deserve it because we're not likable we're not lovable and that can be a downward spiral for people because the more you feel that the harder it is to reach out to other people and service can help break that cycle so those are some things that I do there's there's so much I think valuable to work with in there and maybe just to elaborate on a couple of the points um first of all my read of How to warm up connections the research on um on prosocial behavior and helpfulness um and its effects on well-being suggest that it's about as effective as taking anti-anxiety and anti-depressants um now this is not by the way a substitute in any way shape or form form let's be clear about that right but um I think that really helps us calibrate how powerful it is to know that we matter to other people um to your point about social skills being like muscles I'm thinking about some of the evidence on prisoners who go to solitary confinement uh and also astronauts in remote environments on the space station and how um the muscle metaphor may actually understate the effect because it's not just that you lose the strength it's also you forget how to do it yes and I'd love to talk a little bit about how do we warm up these connections that a lot of people are struggling with one of the one of the ways I've I've tried to do this in the classroom um I think you know this exercise from Jane Dutton where she says okay I want you to create a rapid high quality connection with a stranger in the room actually you know what let's do this live I want to give you all a chance to experience it before we talk about it so um I want you to turn to someone you don't know you have 60 seconds to try to make a meaningful connection with him go great be continued all right all right I hate to cut this off sincere apologies for interrupting all of you but what I think is so interesting is how nervous people would be if this was an assignment for tomorrow but how natural it is when we ask people to do it right away and if we go around the room I'm sure we'll see some common patterns so how many people um instead of asking what do you do asked a version of what do you love to do okay a few of you are got to a passion okay how many people people went to self-disclosure and shared something a little bit vulnerable okay how many people looked for a commonality something similar ideally an uncommon commonality something you share that's rare okay so there are a lot of these strategies that are pretty intuitive and it's not until you're forced to use them that you remember oh I actually do have those skills so that's that's one of my favorite attempts to to get people sort of back in the groove what else do you recommend well so I think those are are very powerful and the other thing I would just consider and I know sometimes this can feel scary but in terms of you sharing right I mean like there are a few elements of connection that make it really effective one is like when you're able to share honestly uh and openly uh the second is when you're able to to listen deeply and meaningfully and the third is when you're able to ask questions that actually prompt and make it create the space for somebody else to go deeper you know about something that matters to them um and those three things I think are really vital elements you know of of conversation and they can feel scary sometimes to do because you might think ah I'm just here and people want to have a good time I want to ask about like you probably want to hear something like deep or heavy from me they probably want don't want to answer questions about that but when you understand just how many people are hungry for human connection deeply hungry for it I hope it will remind you that in the same way that you want that like the chances are very high that the person that you're about to encounter whether it's somebody sitting next to you in a bus or classmate who you haven't met before who's sitting next to you in the cafeteria that that they are also looking for that kind of connection so uh life is short these conversations can make a big difference and asking meaningful questions listening deeply to people's answers is so powerful the listening thing in particular because I listening is how we help people feel seen and understood and heard it's how we tell people we respect them and right now there are a lot of people who feel invisible who don't feel like respected in the world and this is like I think we're like brought up in a culture that often says like we've got to talk talk talk talk talk that's how we add value to the world but a lot of times it's to our listening that we could add tremendous value as well sorry what were you saying couldn't resist uh I I guess Small talk confession as a shy introvert I've hated small talk my whole life and I've always wanted to jump to meaningful discussion right away and sometimes that's really jarring or off-putting to people and then I read this this research by Nick epy and colleagues which showed that most people actually want to go to deep talk and are not that excited to chat about the weather yes um or you know the game unless they really think that um you know that Maxi and MB got screwed which they did because we were up by five with 27 seconds left that's another conversation um but if there's no real emotion attached right people want to get to something of real consequence um how do you think about getting there because there there is that sort of it feels like you're you're jumping off a cliff a little bit and you don't know if the other person's gonna have a parachute yeah it's a good it's a good point I mean sometimes I think in a conversation you have to you you have to feel this out a little bit but sometimes if you share first more openly and authentically the other person will take a cue from that say ah okay maybe it's okay for me to share as well um versus like when you just immediately go in and ask them a question that demands vulnerability from them if you haven't established that vulnerability is okay in your conversation they might find that a little hard to do so sometimes us just sharing and leading by example can actually be just a simple but powerful way to to open up that conversation I like that my my favorite one so far has been U just asking what's your your most uncomfortable Small Talk conversation you've ever had uh which which kind of makes the point in a meta way and then sometimes uh sometimes that leads somewhere entertaining and other times it just leads to very awkward small talk about small talk so you win some you lose some um let's uh let's talk a little bit about um some of the policy perspectives uh because I imagine some of this could be relevant at the school level um I know in the UK social describing has become popular uh Curious to hear your thoughts about that but also um what should we be thinking about as a faculty as Administration um as student leaders as well that we can do at a collective level well I I think Policy from a policy perspective you know we talked about individual things we talked about what institutions can do but we have a broader challenge of needing to rebuild social infrastructure in our communities we used to think about infrastructure in the sense of build you know you know highways and bridges and Roads and sidewalks but social infrastructure these are the structures and programs and policies that actually help us Foster healthy relationships right like when you have a community that's cut up by highways with no public transport system it makes it harder for people to see each other when you don't have space safe spaces for people to gather makes it harder for people to have unplanned interactions for parents to encounter one another at a park that may be in their neighborhood for example um so those the sort of built infrastructure of our communities really matters and we historically have not focused as much on that as a place to optimize connection but the second thing that really matters from a policy perspective is our investment in the organizations that typically have brought us together but we've seen a decline in participation in over the last 60 years and those include uh service organizations recreational leagues uh even our faith institutions which all of these used to be powerful powerful sources of community for people but par ipation in all of them has declined you know over time and we need to rebuild many of those and that can be something that we do with both public and private investment the other thing that I would just say on on the policy front when you think about what we can do in institutions terms the institutional policy um and this actually applies to government as well is that we have also a broad data collection issue and I know data everyone snooz when talk about data it's like nerdy whatever but the problem is like data is like the is what allows us to see what's happening right and you know in medicine I know there's a version of this in business school like we always learn that if you don't measure it you can't manage it right and that's told in grad schools across the country in various professions but it actually is really true right so we've been like Flying Blind for many years on the issue of loneliness and isolation because we haven't prioritized that in terms of data collection and that's something that we can change now um but this is to an Institutional level as well so for example like one thing you could could do at a place like Borton is among the metrics of well-being that you track for students and for faculty you can actually include metrics around loneliness and isolation the good news is there are validated scales that one can use and so from a research perspective there's there are tools there you don't have to invent them on your own and that actually helps tremendously to help us understand what how bad is it and who is most at risk you know where we need to intervene U one of the large public universities that I I just uh visited and this we I just finished a College Tour on the subject of loneliness and isolation where we visited you know big schools small schools all across the country and one of the large universities out west did a survey of their students actually before we came and they said yeah we think loneliness might be an issue here we're not sure how much maybe it's a third of the students who struggling with it maybe quarter we're not sure their survey came back showing that 80% of their students said that they were struggling with loneliness and isolation they were stunned by those numbers another University we went to found that 93% of the students who were seeking mental health care services at the University were citing loneliness and isolation as reasons why they were seeking those Services right so when you start to measure and and understand this that's when you you you get the full extent of what's happening and understand who where to target your interventions but I think then you also have to evaluate your interventions right so there are various things that we could do like many universities I talked to have said well we tried to build spaces for people to gather but they didn't seem to to solve the problem and it's because it was necessary but insufficient right because what they were dealing with was something that Adam alluded to which was not just a lack of place together and time together but a lack of comfort and skill with Gathering and those skills and comfort had atrophied and dwindled over the course of the pandemic so then the question is how to build that up at another University we went to they said they found that the problem had gotten so bad in terms of comfort and skills that roommates the incoming freshmen were actually not able to have conversation with their roommates about things like hey I get up early you get up late what do we do about the alarm clock I'm messy you're neat how are we going to handle that you like to have guests over I don't I'm an introvert what should we do like those basic conversations which many roommates have had over Generations right there wasn't Comfort there so they found themselves having to actually do sessions with students to train them on how do you have this conversation like with your roommate and that might seem peculiar to some of you maybe who have been through college some years ago or maybe went through that experience and didn't have a problem but it is actually quite common you know for for many college students now so these are some things I think we need to do in terms of building programs you've got to collect the data we've got to build interventions and we've got to study those interventions to see what works I think the social prescribing that we're seeing the UK and just to describe what that is that's essentially the practice of if you go to see a doctor the doctor will screen you if they for loneliness and isolation if they recognize you're somebody who's struggling with either one of those then they will refer you to somebody just like they would like refer you to a heart specialist or kidney specialist but this person is actually connected to Community Resources and organizations and they can then facilitate a connection between the patient and an organization that can help them build community so let's say the person loves to do dance you know they may you know help them join an organization in the community that puts on dance performances or let's say they like to do art or they like to be part of a book club so they help facilitate that connection so it's not all in the healthc care system to do it uh but the healthcare system can help identify people um at risk so those are some I think social CRI is really powerful I think the data has the devil is in the details of How It's implemented right and this is why us studying these outcomes and different program designs is really going to be critical to ensuring that we have a design that actually does help people to reduce loneliness and isolation our dear colleague Seagal barade uh found in her research on loneliness that in the workplace if you Quality vs Quantity wanted to avoid loneliness she was curious about how many friends you needed and she collected guesses and a lot of people said 20 30 six seven and as you know she found it was only one you just needed one friend at work yeah and I imagine the same is true on campus um but our classes are very busy it's hard to make friends in class and then I think okay well clubs are the place we would go but I've heard over and over from students that they're members of 19 clubs on average and they don't go to any of them uh and that they're more resem Builders than Community Builders I just love to hear you Riff on that a little bit should we be joining fewer clubs should we have a limit to the number of clubs that students can join on campus so that if your max is two or three you pick the ones that are truly meaningful to you and you attend uh how would you think about this problem well I think qu quality matters much more than quantity when it comes to addressing loneliness um you don't need 100 friends but I think what has happened in a digital age is that we somehow ended up replacing our friends with followers our confidants with contacts and all of a sudden the quantity became really important right but the truth is like you may have like a thousand contacts you know on on social media but the real question is at 3:00 a.m. when you get up and are in crisis like are you calling one of those contexts can you be yourself with them can you be vulnerable and truly who you are that's the real question and you only need one or two people like that like in your life um so again quality really matters a lot but I think given that we're in a world that's constantly pulling us in the quantity Direction I do think it's important for us to to to be judicious with our time I think look joining 19 clubs in the like hood is that you're probably not getting a lot out of all of them right there might be a few though that you're getting something out of and so it's worth thinking okay how do I focus on just those right and how do I actually get to know the people in that club how do we get to know each other how do we do things in our community together how do we serve uh other people recognizing service again powerful antidote to loneliness if you can do that in one or two clubs you can make a huge huge difference right but you know I've been part of that experience of like being a member of like the good Jillian clubs and I can't even tell you which clubs I was a part of like in college because most of them were not meaningful to me they didn't change my life turned out I don't think they help me much for my career either or my next step um so I just think look the one thing we can't get back in our life is time right and it's worth especially in this moment like asking ourselves are we putting our time in the clubs in the relationships that truly matter to us um you know as an introvert also uh like you Adam like I I remember like freshman year of college orientation was super or extroverted right in terms of how it was designed right and it every minute of it yeah so did I I just like it just didn't quite gel like I but it felt like if you weren't going to like the big ice cream social if you weren't going to the big like you know night mixer nighttime mixer or whatever then you were a loser right and I just wanted to like sit down with one or two people and have like a long conversation you know H but that was just a little odd but what I would say is this is like the moment to just put those stereotypes and cultural norms aside and say in a world where truly we've learned especially you know through Co that quality of relationships matter who are the one or two people that you'd really want to spend time with that you'd want to really get to know like what can you do today when you leave here to actually start down the road of building a deeper relationship with them maybe it's messaging one of them saying hey can we get lunch next week you know I would love to just sit down and chat the two of us there's a simple thing I used to do which uh I when I was in medical school you know I I started medical school and I didn't know anybody who was in the class um I was in a new town I I didn't know you know I had no Community but I was also really introverted and I was worried about the same thing that happened in college happening in med school which is like I wouldn't feel comfortable all these mixers so what I did is and I also knew everyone was busy right they were taking 15,000 classes this that the other so I just said you know what everyone has lunch so here's what I'm gonna do at lunchtime I'm just gonna have lunch one-on-one with somebody a few times a week right a different person but this is how I'll get to know my classmates I'll just have lunch you know one-on-one with with different people and so it was a little hard to do in the beginning I was a little nervous I was like well what if they say like I don't want to have lunch with you I don't even know you you know uh but I found that you know I what we were saying earlier that everyone else was also really hungry for connection and so when I said hey do you want to have lunch tomorrow or or next week they like sure yeah why not and I built some of the closest friendships I I had like in medical school through those one-on-one lunches um and it became clear to me later on in that year of my first year after doing this maybe 40 times or so people then started saying hey uh people I didn't know would come up to me and say hey um is it time for my one-on-one are we G to have like you know lunch together at some point and what I realized through that is many of them were not finding that the just the large group Gatherings were actually facilitating the kind of depth of relationships and conversation that they really wanted so don't hesitate to to go smaller but think about who those one or two people are and what you could do seriously when you leave here to see them again to have like a meaningful conversation with them because those relationships that you buil during this time in school I mean you hear this this cliches are are right that the meaningful relationships you build here truly can last for a lifetime they can be deeply meaningful to you and seal barade finally who who Adam mention she you know many of you may know her she passed recently she was a professor here at Wharton but before she was at Wharton she was a professor at Yale at the school of management and that's actually where I was her student when I was in business school and so much of what she taught us in our organizational behavior class it was about a lot of different things that's you know that you would not find surprising in the curriculum but the unsaid part of the curriculum was that she fundamentally taught us about building relationships about how to communicate with other people how to build trust and about the incredible value of doing that not just in the workplace but outside it as well you're also reminding me of uh an Alum of ours Lightning Round Serena who went on to work with you who when she was here to build community she would organize little dinners and invite two or three people she knew and asked them each to bring one person she didn't know and she would rotate the people from week to week and I thought it was a wonderful way of bringing people together who weren't already connected all right let's uh let's go to a lightning round I want to make sure we get to some questions that were submitted uh by some of our attendees uh worst career advice you've ever gotten um worst career advice I ever got was to um was to not take risk because it would close off career opportunities for me that was told this in medicine I was told hey you go off and try take a year off and try all these new things and then you later want to go back and do a fellowship go back on the same path that you were on in Academia or otherwise that people won't think you're serious so don't get off the track because you won't be able to get back on that was terrible advice all right what about out uh this is also fun uh you mentioned that you did an MBA what was the biggest mistake you made in business school oh wow biggest mistake you know I would actually say the biggest mistake I made was actually not spending more time just hanging out with my classmates um I was it took me probably a good year I mean I would got into business school I was like this is a new world to me and I was like very studious like the first year to all the faculty I'm not saying people shouldn't be studious in business school please study hard learn the material curriculum is good but what I realized I was not doing enough of was actually getting to know people and business school is actually different from medical school in so many ways but the just diversity of experiences that people came with people from all over the world it was phenomenal and so I finally started doing that my second year but I wish I had done it earlier do you have a favorite tip for fighting burnout it's been another one of your favorite mental health topics yeah I mean my favorite tip um for fighting burnout is to find reasons to laugh laughter is so so powerful I had a series of funny shows that I would and video clips that I actually keep in my toolbox when I need to uh find feel Joy or inspiration and when I was starting to feel burned out during my first term as Surgeon General I would come home and I would dip into that tool box uh and so whether it's people whether it's a funny experience a video a show something that makes you laugh uh that's important for us to keep laughing if we want to stay on the path and not burn out let the record show that the Surgeon General who Favorite Shows ised issued an advisory last year about social media is recommending YouTube as a cure for Burnout uh I have to ask a follow up on that did you what are your favorite shows that you laugh at so I um so there's a lot of old westwing episodes uh that I really like for those of you uh like the westwing just dialogue is very very witty eron sorin's a genius so a lot of those I I really like um and then there are other shows that or movies that I just have found deeply inspiring especially Sports movies so Miracle like the movie about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team uh one of my all-time favorites um Glory Road uh which is uh about the I believe it's 1968 or 64 uh Texas Western basketball team college basketball team first all black uh team that was fielded and they actually won the national championships are the spoiler um but anyway those are some of the things that I I look for and I'm a big speech junkie so I like we generally look for you know to inspiring speeches there like MLK's final speech that he gave before he was assassinated always still gives me chills uh to this day um they're many like that you know that RFK in particular oh my gosh so many beautiful inspiring speeches of his that um they don't just make me feel better but they remind me what matters which is that it is our it's our connection to each other but also our commitment to one another to society that can often be the greatest source of fulfillment and joy um can I say we were talking about success no you can't do it okay go for it this is one of the things actually that I I've been thinking about a lot and has worried me I I do think that there's a story we've been telling ourselves for years now in society which is that we want to be successful because if we're successful we'll be fulfilled but what Society keeps telling us is that to be successful uh we've got to build our resume we've got to build our contacts we've got to essentially be find some way to become rich to become powerful or to become famous and gosh if we do all three of those things we've hit the jackpot we we've done it but I think it has become increasingly clear through both empirical evidence and stories and data that there's nothing wrong with pursuing fame or fortune or power but on their own they actually aren't reliable paths to fulfillment and to happiness and to well-being uh Adam and I I'm sure and many of you as well probably know plenty of people who are rich or powerful or famous and profoundly unhappy it turns out there's another Trio that's actually I think science tells us much more clearly is the path to fulfillment and that is belonging purpose and service the Common Thread between these three is they involve connecting with something bigger than ourselves and that turns out to be a very consistent and enduring theme whether you're looking at the research if you're a religious person you look at scripture you will find this theme running through scripture as well in different Faith Traditions you'll find philosophers writing about this over you know a thousand plus years but there's a lot of life experience and data that tells us that when we have a sense of belonging when we're connected to people can just be a few when we have a sense of purpose when we feel like there's something that we're gives us joy that we can delve into that will help contribute something to the world and when we are involved in Acts of service however small or big they may be these three turn out to be really enduring paths to fulfillment and I say this you know because I've also seen this through my conversations with patients over the years one of the great privileges and that I have good fortunes if you will in being a doctor has been over the years I've been able to sit with people at some of the most meaningful moments of their life when they're reflecting deeply on the life they've lived and asking themselves what really mattered in what I did over the last 20 40 60 or 80 years and this story that they tell very very consistently is that of connections to other people to relationships that's the story that they talk about they tell the story of what they contributed to their Community to the lives of other people like in the end it's it becomes very clear that it's our relationships and our service to the world that our greatest source of Joy uh none of those conversations I've had with patients in their dying days when I've been privileged to sit there by their bedside and hold their hand as they reflected none of those conversations have centered around them reflecting on how many followers they had on Instagram or how much money was in their bank account or which award they got uh you know at the last you know Gathering of XYZ Association they all talk about people they all talk about the contributions they were able to make to people's lives and so I just don't want any of us any of us to feel like we have to wait till the end of our life to discover that we can start living that kind of life right now and recognizing that if we put at the center of our Lives if we use as our fundamental Compass the pursuit of connection of relationships purpose and service that that will guide us toward a life that will be fulfilling it may not be an easy life may not always be a simple life it will have its ups and downs but fundamentally it'll be a life that we can look back on and say ah that was a life well it you've mentioned followers a few times uh so I have to ask one of the social media questions in here which is Social Media uh it seems to be a tight RPP walk between protecting especially uh young adults um and kids and on the other hand enabling people to make their own choices uh how do you think about managing that line and what kinds of protections do you think we need yeah sorry I'm the wrong way um I think look I think that you know as somebody who's spent many years building a tech company I'm a Believer in technology I think it can improve our lives in profound ways but I think what determines whether or not Tech helps or hurts us is how it's designed and how it's used and my big worry about social media in particular uh and I say this to somebody for many years you know has used social media is that I think particularly for kids for adolescents especially that I do worry that many of them have actually been harmed by use of social media and this is actually why we put out a report on this last year because the most common question I was getting from parents was about whether social media was safe for their kids it's a very reasonable question if you're a parent right we ask about whether the food that we buy the toys we buy the cars that we buy is safe for our kids why wouldn't we ask about this product that they're using actually much more than any of those in terms of sheer amount of time and the the conclusion that we came to after looking at the research and talking to to experts around the country and around the world really uh was twofold one is that there actually isn't enough evidence that tells us that it's safe and in fact there's growing evidence that points toward harms right specifically you know we were seeing this powerful association between increased risk of depression and anxiety symptoms young people were telling us directly on surveys nearly half of them that using social media made them feel worse about their body image we were seeing also just in terms of time taken away uh that there was a massive substitution that was taking place in terms of time spent on social media was time that was not spent in person with other people it was time that was not spent sleeping many kids were staying about third of adolescence were saying they were staying up until midnight or later on week Nights by using their devices and much of that was actually social media use the problem with all of this is that we might think well this is just a willpower issue people should be able to control and regulate how much time they spend that sounds good in theory right but what's happening is that these platforms are designed by some of the best product engineers in the world with some of the best Behavioral Science uh you know at their fingertips and it's designed to maximize how much time we spend on them right that's what the revenue model is based on and you're asking a child who's 13 14 years old at one of the most sensitive times of their brain development where we know that in that phase of brain development they're especially sensitive to social suggestion and social comparison and have difficulty with impulse control and you're asking that child to somehow manage something that frankly most of us as adults struggle to do right that is a recipe uh for disaster and I think it has sadly become one of not the only but one of the major contributors to the youth Mental Health crisis that we're dealing with today so I think we've few paths forward that we could take in my mind the most expedient thing to do would be to do what we do with other products that kids use which is to say we have to make these safe for kids and we have to demand the data that tells us that this is in fact safe for kids but in a very peculiar turn of events it turns out that researchers can't get full access to that data because the companies actually won't give it to them now if you're a parent and some of you may be parents like and I'll say this as a parent myself I I know you're a parent it doesn't feel good to know that something your kids are using that there's data about its effects on their mental health but that's not being shared with you not being made available to the public right so that's very concerning uh to me because we don't allow tolerate that with other many other products that kids use so I think number one we need data transparency number two we need to actually put in place safety standards like what we did for cars where we you know in the 1980s like when I was growing up like there was a pretty high rate of car accident related debts and we didn't say at that time you know what it's just a price of modernity this is just how it goes we just got to tolerate all these debts so the people can get from their home to McDonald's faster right like we didn't say that right we said but we also didn't say you know what let's go back to horses and Buggies because this car thing's not working out we said we have to make cars safer that was the path we said we had to go down and then we did it over years we put in place safety standards that got of seat belts and airbags and crash testing and a host of other measures that ultimately brought down the rate of car accident related deaths but but right now what we're doing is essentially with social media and kids is we're at we're we're putting them in cars that have no safety features functionally and we're asking to drive on roads with no speed limits no lanes and no traffic lights and we're saying hopefully you'll figure it out you know hopefully we'll get there and that is just in my mind just an completely unacceptable and also unnecessary approach to take but it will take some encouraged actually to put these safety standards in place to require this kind of data transparency uh and this is a place where I think State the Congress actually really does me to act States many states on their own are trying to put in place their own version of safety standards some are not sure how to do it are just saying you know what we have to just restrict uh kids and from using this or ban them from using it below a certain age and I can understand why states are taking these different approaches but this is a place where you actually do need a comprehensive solution I'm I'm generally pretty selective about where I think the federal government should put in place rules and policies because you can't be too overzealous about that this is one of those places where you actually do need uniformity and I think the fact that social media has been around for 20 years and we have not as a society put in place any meaningful safety standards and enforced them to me is just a dereliction of Duty and it's a failure from Congress and it represents I think uh ultimately a failure to abide by one of our most important responsibilities as a society which is to take care of our kids because if we're not doing that like what are we doing like what else is worthwhile if we're not fundamentally taking care of our children and that's what we've got to do and that's what I called for actually in our advisory last year and what we're continuing to push Congress to do that's very well put one more Tech question before a closing AI in Healthcare question um there are a lot of people curious about AI in the room um and in particular preventative medicine H uh where are you on how much we should be worried about AI in the world of healthcare versus excited about its potential and what do you see coming around the corner well I I'm actually both excited and and worried about and I think it's appropriate to be both because I think like any other technology like we were saying there is a great benefit that could come from it when you think about Healthcare in particular since that so what you're asking about Adam I think look AI has a potential uh to help us Aggregate and sift through and process knowledge that we know has expand Ed massively scientific knowledge medical knowledge but that is hard for a single individual to process or have their fingertips in at any given point in time that is valuable AI has a potential to help streamline many of the administrative tasks that nurses and doctors are spending their time doing instead of being at the bedside with patients which is where they want to be and where patients want them to be right and I think from a preventive standpoint also I do think that AI you know is can make it more feasible and possible for us to also more effectively identify who is at risk in our communities right so that we can better Target our interventions so that we can prevent cases of diabetes so we can get uh to people who may be at risk of cancer and prevent them from uh being found in late stages you know of cancer like I think in all of those ways AI could be really powerful I think the thing that we have to guard against them and this is important to do early especially given some of the failure to do so with social media what we've learned from that is we've got to make sure number one that we ar compromising people's privacy in the process right and that is a big concern uh right now the second thing we have to also Ure is that we still recognize the important role of human beings in the process of delivering healthc care like I'm a Believer in Tech but I also don't believe that a machine can hold your hand at the bedside and listen to your story and understand its significance and relevance and empathize and connect with you the way I believe only two human beings can do and that is not something I think that we should lose sight of um because that is the part of healing that my parents taught me about in their in my earliest days uh it's what they modeled so beautifully and so clearly but I I think that again to learn from our experience with social media if we don't have these conversations now if we don't establish uh the kind of safeguards and guard rails uh that we need around AI to assume that we're protecting privacy we're protecting uh you know what I mentioned the human role uh you know of nurses doctors and others in the healthare system then I worry that we will the pendulum will swing to an extreme and one day we'll wake up and realize wait hold on I'm not fully happy with all of my care being provided by a machine that doesn't really know me as a human being that I can't really see face to face whose hand I can't shake uh that just doesn't feel quite right there's something powerful about human to human connection that we began this whole conversation with talking about the power of human connection we can't get that lost in the race to make sure we benefit from the strong points and high points of AI okay final question yeah there are some people in the room who are curious about careers in public service and even those who aren't uh are always fascinated by what it's really like to be in the White House and how real The West Wing is so uh I wanted to ask you if you could give us a story that would maybe illustrate what your life is like uh and I think everyone I know who worked in the Obama Administration has a favorite Obama story so I'll turn it over to you to choose oh so favorite story from the White House huh is that you're asking um I mean the one of the things that I I try to do is you know every time I'm there any part of the White House The West Wing in particular um whether it's walking to our office there whether it's just going there for meeting is I I there's a there's a for any of you who have been to the White House you know that there's the the white building that everyone knows as the White House and then there's a building right next to it that's part of the White House complex called the eeob or the Eisenhower executive office building and I always like to stand on the top steps of the eeob um where you exit at the at the East entrance or exit it's called the Navy steps and if you stand at the top of the Navy steps you actually look out and see the entire White House you see the South some parts of the South lawn you see the North Lawn it's just this beautiful beautiful spectacle and I like to do that because it's sort of a moment for me to remember not to take that place for granted not to take the opportunity to serve in government and to be in a place like that not to take that for granted because when my parents came to the United States they came because from India because they wanted to build a life for their kids where we wouldn't be judged by our cast or the color of our skin or the fact that we had a funny sounding name or we had a funny accent they wanted us to be to live in a place where we would have opportunities where we would yes work hard but where we would be judged by our ideas you know by our willingness to contribute and be a part of a community and they were clear I about the fact that America didn't execute on that all the time they were clear about the fact that they were imperfections that those were aspirational values but they wanted to live in a country they wanted their kids to grow up in a country that aspired to those values and worked hard every day to make them a reality for everyone and with all of those high hopes that they came with like they never dreamed that their son would have the chance to serve in government much less to work in or walk through like a place like the the White House or that he would have the chance to sit with and advise a president like they they that was like Beyond even their comprehension but I remember when I was sworn in uh that first time I was actually then he was vice president Vice President Biden who actually swore me in for the role during the Obama Administration I remember thinking and saying to the friends and family who would gather that there are a few places in the world where where the son of a poor farmer from India could be asked by the president to look out for the health of an entire nation that's the power and the promise of America it's something I will always be grateful for and it's what I remember every time you know I stand on the top of those Navy steps whenever we go with our staff whenever my team members are there I'll also often make stand there too on our way out and just to take a deep breath to look out at everything and to remember their family to remember their Journey that brought them to that moment last thing I'll tell you on this is that it's a very I I know sometimes you look at place like that from the outside and it feels like it's probably hard to relate to other worldly whatever but it's actually very relational as well a lot of the same dynamics that you deal with in your relationships with faculty with friends with classmates a lot of those human dynamics are playing out there too you know there are passionate people who like really want to make a difference in the world and are working through all the challenges of being human beings and trying to do that how to communicate with to work with each other um but I do appreciate the fact that there are so many fundamentally Mission driven people there A lot of the folks who I work with there they could be making 3x salary they're making uh working in the private sector but working in the public sector was a choice for them because there was something usually something in their life experience that happened somebody who was hurt somebody who was not served a promise that was not fulfilled uh something that Inspire them to want it to come and make the the country better for everyone in that regard um and the one of the people who actually represents that uh a lot for me just on a very personal level is actually the president himself you know I got to know him um in particular during the pandemic uh before he was president when he had um he had re reached out uh you know with his team at in March of 2020 and asked you know he and I worked together a little bit in the Obama Administration but um but they had asked in March of 2020 like you know for me to to sort of do these daily briefings for him like on covid because it was rapidly evolving the whole world was changing at that time uh he was deeply concerned and wanted to understand the intricacies of how this was evolving so that started this process of doing these daily briefings uh with him um and it was nuts I mean they were like sometimes like 90 minutes long I was up till like 4 in the morning preparing for them like because you know you literally have to boil the whole ocean of everything was happening in the world on Co and figure out uh what does um this man who may be the next president of the United States need to understand you know about this evolving pandemic that by the way hey we in the medical and public health establishment barely understand either you know this is like evolving before our eyes and I was doing this thankfully in partnership with uh David Kessler who used to be the FDA commissioner and in a funny twist of fate was actually my Dean when I was in medical school and this is what brought us back together again um but the thing that I got to know about him there's a lot about him that I got to know but the the the piece that I really hold closest to my heart is just how deeply like he cared about people and I became very evident in our early conversations like it didn't matter like usually it was like when the No cameras around no one's paying attention it's like just like you fun as a very relational person and that way he reminds me of my mom and dad and how they took care of patients that they just cared about the person they wanted to know about the person and how they were doing uh I was briefing him one day and my son and daughter like burst into the room they were I think four and five at the time three and four they burst into we screaming right like I like it was like I couldn't talk over it was so loud but like he was just so kind he was like they're kids let them do what they're doing it's fine don't worry about it another time I was uh briefing him in his office when after he was president in the Oval Office about some covid related things and after the briefing finished I just stayed afterward just to talk to him a few minutes check in on him and and I was just telling him I was like hey your uh your your buddies at home because my kids call him Uncle Joe that's like their term they have for him and they call the first lady Auntie Jill so uh that's how they know them I'm not even sure if they know their president he's the president but they just called Uncle Joe but I said oh you know your your fans were just at were asking about you he's like oh really uh well what are they doing can I talk to them right now I was like I was like I'm looking at his staff right outside the door outside the oal office me like got to get him to the next thing he's late for something and he's like let me let me just let me call him let me call him right now and he like literally takes out his phone he's like here let me just give me the number let me let me call them and he spent the time to like make a phone call you know to to talk to to my family it's like I've seen him just even other visitors come like you know he'll spends so much time just um just showing them around and and learning about them and asking about their family um and it it whenever I I have time to spend with him it's just a reminder to me of actually exactly what we've been talking about this entire past hour which is at the end of the day in the final moments uh of our life what really matters are the people in our life the relationships we hold uh and every time he in the middle of a meeting will pick up a phone call because it's a family member calling and he's a commitment iron clad has always be there for his family every time I see him like asking about uh my family you know or about uh somebody else's family who he works with even though he's jam-packed with meetings um it's a reminder to me that life is busy life is crazy life is complicated but if we keep at the center of our hearts and if we keep clear in our Mind's Eye the fact that our relationships are our greatest source of fulfillment that those are the ones that we need to hold and protect and keep close that we need to invest in but those are the people who will be there for us no matter what if we do that then we have a really good shot of leading a fulfilling and happy life look I know we're over time so I want to leave you just with with one thing I do actually to remind myself of this like when when things get rough or when I feel like I'm being pulled into the Vortex of caring you know like more than I should about some of those other pieces that we talked about you know and so it just takes this is a 20- second exercise that I do but I'll ask you to do it with me so just I want you to hold up your right hand I want you to place it over your heart and I want you to close your eyes and for the next few moments I want you to think about the people in your life who have been there for you during good times and bad times people who have supported you whove been there when you weren't even sure if you believed in yourself people who reminded you that you mattered but they still cared for you I want you to feel their warmth and their love flowing through you feeling your heart and filling you with peace and I want you to know that that love that warmth is always there even if they're not here with you anymore because it resides in your heart now open your eyes what we all felt in those brief moments was the power of human connection we felt the power of love and that is something that we can cultivate each and every day in our life something that we can hold close and keep at the center of the lives that we live going forward I know that the world around us is telling us that we need to live a work centered life but living a people centered life will we prioritize our relationships that actually not only makes us more fulfilled it often helps us do our work better as well and so that's my hope for you you know leaving today is that there's something in this conversation something in your own Reflections something in the conversation you had with the person next to you that will remind you of the power of living a people's Center of life and that we'll remind you that you have the capacity to give and receive the love that is at the heart of building those relationships so let's build them let's enjoy them and let's ultimately benefit from the Fulfillment that comes from them Greatful that you were willing to come and join us today grateful that you made the choice to serve I can't think of a better person to be looking out for our well-being and uh I just want to say thank you thanks for my time