The Social Health Advantage

The most important people in your life should not get whatever time is left over.

Think about the last time you ran into an old friend you hadn’t seen in years. The conversation came easy. You laughed about things you’d both half-forgotten, asked about kids and parents, wondered how so much time had slipped past. And before you walked away, one of you said, “We really need to do this more often.”

You both meant it. Then life resumed. The calendar filled, the weeks passed, and the dinner never happened. Nobody let anybody down. Nothing went wrong. Someone who once mattered deeply just slowly moved toward the edge of your life.

Earlier in my career, I thought about time in terms of what it could produce. If I was going to spend time with someone, I quietly evaluated whether the relationship might lead to an opportunity, an introduction, a deal, or something else that could advance my agenda. I am not proud to admit that. But it is honest.

The problem with that frame of mind is that you can become very well connected and still feel profoundly alone. You build a network full of people who know your title and your track record, but too few who actually know you. You get invited to things that matter professionally and skip things that matter personally. You optimize your calendar and quietly hollow out your life.

At some point, that math stopped working for me.

Now I think about the return on my time differently. Some of the highest-return investments I make have no financial or professional payoff at all. They are hours spent with old friends around a long dinner. Or investments of time building new relationships. A golf trip where nothing is being pitched or closed. A phone call with no agenda. A bottle of wine opened on a Wednesday for no reason. The return is a stronger relationship, a shared memory, the simple knowledge that there are people in your life who will show up when it gets hard, including at 2 a.m. when everything else is quiet and you need someone who actually knows you.

But those moments do not organize themselves. Someone has to pick the date, coordinate the calendars, make the reservation, and send the reminder. Someone has to decide that this relationship is worth the effort. I have become that person in many of my friendships. I organize an annual golf trip, regular group dinners, wine trips, sporting events, and weekend getaways. Coordinating the calendars of busy adults sometimes feels like negotiating an international ceasefire agreement, but I have come to see that effort as one of the better investments I make. I am not planning a trip. I am investing in the relationships that make everything else worth it.

This is what I mean by the Social Health Advantage.

Strong relationships do not protect us from loss, stress, or uncertainty. They make sure we do not carry those things alone. They give us people who will tell us the truth, celebrate our wins, and remind us who we are when life starts to distort the picture. We all need people with whom we can put the mask down. We need conversations that do not have to go anywhere, dinners that are not business development, and friends who knew us before our current title and will still know us long after it is gone.

One of the LITSG principles is Can’t Make It Alone. I used to think of that as permission to ask for help when things get hard. Now I think it means something larger. The strongest relationships are not built during times of need. They are built on ordinary Tuesdays, spontaneous phone calls, annual traditions, and the small moments when we choose to show up even when nobody needs anything.

Another LITSG principle is Minutes Matter. Where we invest our minutes is where we invest our lives. If the people we love receive only the minutes left over after everything else is finished, we should not be surprised when those relationships quietly weaken.

Relationships do not demand our attention the way work does. There is no alarm when a friendship has gone too long without care. No notification when someone important is slowly becoming a stranger. Most relationships do not end because something went wrong. They end because nobody went out of their way to keep them alive.

Pick the date. Make the reservation. Send the text tonight. Invest in your Social Health.

Life is too short to have thousands of contacts but too few people who truly know and love you.

Regards,

Scott
The Life Is Too Short Guy