Before we kick off the exercise, let’s talk about why planning is so important.  We homo sapiens crave authentic, human connection. When we don’t have it, it can lead to loneliness, disengagement, and hollow relationships. Yowzers, that took a dark turn! In fact, one of the oldest ongoing studies in history started in 1938 following 268 people and now their families. These smart Harvard psychologists and scientists found that the key factor that predicts human happiness is quality relationships. It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, friends, and community, are happier, they're physically healthier, their brains are more resilient, and they live longer than people who are less well connected. It’s not your income, IQ, fame, number of connections on social media, or the job you have. It’s real, human connection.

The research on the value of human connections is extensive. Shawn Achor, one of our favorite scientists, conducted a study proving that the statistical correlation between social connectedness and happiness is significantly higher than the correlation between smoking and cancer. For real! He suggests that just as we put warning labels on cigarette packs, maybe we should also put warnings on companies that have low social support.

It sounds cliche but there are a lot of distractions in life (hello, internet) and you have a lot going on. It’s easy to put your relationships and interests on the back burner. It’s harder to sort through what’s important, figure out what to do about it AND actually do the things. This exercise will walk you through step by step each month with the aim of fostering the connections and goals that are important to you. This leads to greater happiness and greater happiness leads to increased personal, professional and community fulfillment.

Spending some time making a game plan now will help your future self immensely and will save you hours in the next weeks and months by helping you remember what you’ve identified as your priorities.  You got this.

Next, we’ll share how this is going to work and what you need - time and supplies.  Head on over to Step 2 now….