A part of life is experiencing isolation and feeling like no one understands what we are going through. Speaking for myself, the moments I’ve felt depressed are the times that I felt the most alone. It’s been proven that we need meaningful social interaction for our overall well-being. The article the Connect with your Calling project is based on (http://www.oprah.com/health/Just-Say-Hello-Fight-Loneliness) emphasizes that the way to combat loneliness, which affects our mood and overall mental health is to find connections that add value to our life.

In this day and age of texting and social media there’s a tendency to want to use technology as our primary way to connect to others but these connections aren’t as significant as face to face interactions. I want to clarify that I’m not against using technology as I use social media myself, but spending time talking to people in person creates a bond that technology can’t replicate. Having someone acknowledge your presence by carving out time to see you shows that you have value to that person. The reason is because our bodies are wired to connect to others. As the saying goes, no man is an island unto himself.

So why am I advocating for people to make connecting with others in person a priority for this project? There are three reasons actually. The first reason is because I’m passionate about helping those that look fine on the outside but are suffering from loneliness and need to start living a more meaningful life by connecting with others.

Secondly, as I’ve been studying Dr. Brene’ Brown’s work on vulnerability, I agreed with her findings that generally people have a lot of “friends” or associates but not many people that truly know them at their core, people they trust to be completely transparent with on a personal level. According to her research, people that are happy or live wholeheartedly have about three people that they have a close relationships with, where both parties reveal their true selves to each other. I believe the way to find these people that we have a deeper connection with is to be open to the process of meeting new people in person.

Finally, I’m troubled by the cultural shift of decreasing face to face social interactions and having more dependency on social media such as “friends” on Facebook. By doing this, we could be potentially robbing ourselves of truly getting to know people and consequently finding out if that person could be the missing link to help us reach our full potential. During this project, as I intentionally find people that share a common bond and connect them, I believe they will be able to reach goals they couldn’t have accomplished on their own.