Daily way to feel more connected with important people in your life
If you feel like you're not really connecting with someone even when you're in the same room, try this simple and powerful way of cutting through what's in the way.
Here's a daily way to build connection with important people in your life in a world where social media friends have replaced real friends and it's often hard to cut through white noise.
Something we know to be true is that one thing that gives us deep fulfilment is the level of connection we have with ourselves and the people around us.
What I find really interesting about connection is that proximity does not equate to connection. You can be around in a room full of people—visiting family, grabbing a drink with friends or someone you work with—but still feel like you are not experiencing real connection.
The reason it's so important is that when we do feel connection we feel more fulfilment. We are wired for connection. We need it. Those people who go around saying, ‘I am more of a solo person, I don’t really need connection’—well, all the science disproves that.
If you are human you are wired for connection, and what is called healthy attachment or bonding with other human beings.
And so one of the things that gets in the way of connection is being busy.
Does this sound familiar? You wake up, have your first coffee. You might have a run or do a workout, take care of something important, grab your phone and scroll through emails.
Then it’s into the traffic or the public transport system to get to work. Which is crazy busy, then you get home and take care of the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.
Then you go to bed and wake up and do it all again.
So many of us live this life where we are always rushing toward the next thing and instead of becoming aware of what’s going on around us we can tend to focus too much, or let our mind and thoughts, get trapped in our own heads.
When we are doing this incessant worrying and thinking and planning—and by the way, don’t get me wrong, there is a time for all that—but when we are stuck in this mode we tend to miss the moments of connection with each other, with ourselves, with the environment, with what is going on around us.
When that happens we tend to miss a lot of life, and so connection starts with the foundation of presence. Of being present.
Here's a daily way to feel more connected with important people in your life.
Take a deep breath and start to become aware of where you are. Start to become aware of the people around you. Hold an eye gaze for a moment.
An eye gaze is such a wonderful tool for deep presence. I’ve met people and I’ll bring them into workshops and we’ll do an eye gazing exercise and they’ll break down because they can’t remember the last time they held eye contact with another human and breathed it in and just allowed themselves to connect.
For most people it brings up a little bit of sadness or joy, sadness because of that loss of connection and joy because of just how good it feels to be able to connect with each other.
So when it comes to your life, when it comes to yourself and your relationship with other people, how present are you to those around you?
Are you fully ‘there’ or are you just connecting around them? You might be in the same room and both be on your mobile, looking at other people’s Insta. You might be together at the dinner table but someone’s reading the paper and the other person is thinking about what to watch after dinner.
It’s great to work out not just how much time you spend together but how well you spend it. It’s connecting vs just being in the same room.
The amount of connection you have in your life will directly be in proportion to the amount of fulfilment you have.
Connection gives us fulfilment and there’s so much more I could share around this and the quality of connection but right now I want you to become even more present in your own life and in the lives of other people who are important to you.
Give them the gift of your presence.
MATT LAVARS
One of Australia's leading coaches, trainers and speakers, and head facilitator at The Coaching Institute. In between mentoring thousands of coaches and leaders all around Australasia and helping others build incredible culture, Matt is passionate about fitness and music. His healthy office lunches whipped up in five minutes are the stuff of legend
