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Harvard expert's 5-3-1 rule is the key to a healthy social life

How much time should you spend with your friends?

via Canva/Photos

Some long-time friends on vacation.

In a world where we must keep busy to survive, it can be easy to neglect our social lives. This becomes even harder as we age and our friends have families and more responsibilities. Once you hit your 30s, the friends you saw every few days can quickly become people you only see a few times a year.

Friendships need to be nurtured to keep moving forward. If not, one day, our closest friends will begin to feel like strangers. Sadly, this is a common occurrence, and studies show that as people age, their circle of friends becomes smaller and smaller. This is one of the many factors contributing to what's known as the "loneliness epidemic." Studies show that one in three Americans report feeling lonely regularly, and one in four has no social and emotional support at all.

Further, in a world with Netflix, video games, and social media, it can be easy to be entertained without making plans, leaving the house, or spending time with anyone. But that shortcut could lead to waking up one day with very few people in your life. We know we need to get out there and be social, but what’s the correct amount of time we should spend hanging out?

gym friends, friends, selfiesFriends spending time at the gym. via Canva/Photos

Kasley Killam, a Harvard-trained social scientist and author of "The Art and Science of Connection," has made it easy with her simple 5-3-1 rule, a guideline for evaluating social health. "We need to be intentional about connection, just like we are with exercise and eating healthy foods," Killam told Business Insider.

What is the 5-3-1 rule?

(5) Spend time with FIVE different people a week

A 2022 Harvard Business School study found that the more “diverse” the group we socialize with, the happier we will be. That means we shouldn’t just spend time with our close friends and family members but grab a coffee with a friend from the gym or spend some time with an old friend you haven’t seen in years. As the song goes, “Make new friends but keep the old one is silver and the other’s gold.”

(3) Nurture at least THREE close relationships

Focus on nurturing three friendships every day, whether you text them or make plans to see each other. These are the people at the top of your phone list or who would be your emergency contacts.

(1) Have ONE quality hour of social connection a day

Make time every day to socialize with someone, whether by hopping on a phone call with a family member or going on a walk with a neighbor. "That doesn't have to be all at once," Killam said. " It could be 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there." The important rule Killam says is that the interaction has to be “meaningful.”

friends, photos, selfiesFriends spending time at the Redondo Beach pier. via Canva/Photos

Socializing is great for our happiness but can also help us live longer. A study of senior citizens found that the more people socialized, the longer they lived. Those who lived the longest took time to socialize with someone once a day.

Living by the 5-3-1 isn’t just for older people who need to get back into socializing. It’s great for younger people because it can strengthen their relationships and their mental health at the same time. You may be busy these days, but at the end of your life, you probably won’t remember that long day you spent at the office or a random Thursday stuck in traffic. But you will remember that walk you took with your friend when you needed someone to talk to or that night you stayed a little late at your bestie's house making vacation plans.

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Education

Correcting these 7 body language mistakes could make you instantly more likeable

Body language isn't always intuitive, and we may be making a negative first impression without meaning to.

Charisma on Command/YouTube

Here are some simple ways to improve your body language in social situations.

You might be the most awesome person in the world—kind, thoughtful, pleasant, funny—and still not make a good first impression on people. The immediate, unconscious judgments our brains make based on body language aren't always accurate, but they happen whether we want them to or not.

First impressions are especially hard for people who struggle with social anxiety or with understanding the nuances of social interactions. When we're nervous, our body language can misrepresent us, making us appear to be more closed off and less approachable than we might be if we were feeling like our true, relaxed selves.

Thankfully, there are some specific ways we can consciously shift our body language to avoid people getting a wrong first impression.

A video from Charisma on Command breaks down seven common mistakes people make with their body language that gives people a negative impression and explains what to do instead. Some of these things are subtle behaviors we might not give a second thought. Others are things we do out of nervousness. With some simple, conscious practice, we can make a difference in how we come across to people we're socializing with.

Watch:

So, to recap:

1. Don't scan the room when talking with someone.

2. Don't let someone interrupt you when you're in a conversation with someone else.

3. Lean against a wall, chair, bar, etc.

4. Keep your hands out of your pockets.

5. Use precise and expansive gestures at the right times.

6. Keep your head up.

7. A brief eyebrow raise lets people know you're glad to see them (but might not be something you want to try to control).

Some people in the comments pointed out that scanning the room is an automatic safety behavior for some and that trying too hard to do some of these things could come across as stiff or disingenuous. Others, however, appreciated the specific advice. Body language is not intuitive for everyone, and pinpointing behaviors to pay attention to can help even the playing field with those who have more social skills and charisma naturally.

Several people on the autism spectrum expressed their gratitude for this kind of clear, direct instruction.

"Man, I so appreciate this channel," shared one commenter. "Being on the Autism Spectrum makes it really difficult to have social interactions and sometimes I don't act "appropriately" but I'm extremely good at mimicking and learning principles. These sorts of videos have made it easier for me to integrate into social situations to the point that people don't realize that I'm on the spectrum ... in fact, people are shocked when they learn that I am. Thanks for making life a little easier for me."

"I agree 100%," shared another. "It's taken me years to simulate neurotypical behaviors, but I'm mostly so good at it now that most folks have no clue. Charisma on Command has helped me hone that to a new level and I am very glad of it."

Body language makes up a lot of our communication, so it's helpful to learn how it works and how we can make adjustments to improve our chances of positive interactions with others. See more of Charisma on Command's videos here.

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communication
Joy

Making friends as an adult is hard. These five tips from an expert can help.

Friendships never stop being important.

Canva

Making friends is hard. But maybe it doens't have to be THAT hard.

Making friends as an adult is definitely not like making friends as a kid.

Remember how easy it was to make a new friend when you were young? Five minutes sharing a slide and suddenly you're bonded for life.

But as we grow older, making friends can become much harder. So hard, in fact, that some people equate having a large group of close friends to a miracle.

Friendships are an important part of life at any age.

Most everyone wants and needs friends, and research shows that friendships can have a huge effect on our physical and mental health. There's not much we can do about friendships that diminish and change as we age — people move, start families and new careers, and shift to new social circles — but it's important to keep forming meaningful, long-lasting connections with people throughout life, whether you're 25 or 80.

It's something that affects us all.

"Making friends is hard for everyone," says Ellen Hendriksen, clinical psychologist and author of "How to Be Yourself," a guide on learning to tame social anxiety. "It's not just you." But knowing you're not alone isn't going to get you the friend circle you want.

Here are five tips to getting into the mindset of making friends — and then going out and doing it.

1. Relax (aka the hardest step).

In college, my abnormal psychology professor told us about a guy who wanted to make friends — five friends (because we all seem have an arbitrary number of pals we think is appropriate). He went to a party and met five people he liked and got their numbers. This guy was so excited that he started calling his new friends immediately, asking them to do things and inviting them for coffee nearly every day.

Of course, his overexcitement became clingy, his new acquaintances suddenly started making excuses, and he ended up being a negative example for a group of undergrads learning about problems in human behavior.

"You can't make friends like a poacher," Hendriksen says. "Focus on being open and curious and thoughtful. Ask questions, listen when others respond, be friendly, and when you slowly inch into the mix, be intentional."

Allow yourself to be in the moment and ask questions that come up naturally. If someone says they're having a hard week at work, ask them about it. If someone tells you they've recently been on a trip, commit to asking something more than just "how was it?" Be interested.

shared interest, making friends, dog park, group involvement

Make friends through shared interests like a dog park.

Photo by Carol Magalhães on Unsplash

2. Repetition is key.

Most articles about how to make friends suggest that people find a hobby, join a group, or volunteer. But Hendriksen says that's not a fail-safe solution.

Ultimately, it's not the activity that matters — although it should be something you enjoy — it's the fact that you're finding a place where other people can get to know you over time. In fact, since more and more research shows that making friends takes longer than previously thought, it's important to give it some time; Hendriksen suggests giving it a season.

You don't have to join an official group or club. Hendriksen once turned an acquaintance into a good friend when the two bonded over their mission to try every Mexican restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The key is to engage in something that allows you to get to know other people and lets them to get to know you.

"You can go to the same dog park every morning," Hendriksen says. "You can join an Ultimate Frisbee team. You can walk your kids to the bus stop every day and chat with the other parents. Or you can start something with repetition. Have a weekly viewing party for your favorite TV show, start a writer's group, start a new mom's playgroup or a boozy book club."

Really, whatever works for you as long as other people are involved.

3. Disclose, but don’t confess.

Imagine you're meeting someone for the first time. You ask them how they're doing, and they say "fine." There's not much to work with because the other person hasn't disclosed anything. What else is there to say?

Now imagine a different person. You ask them how they're doing and their response is one of sheer distress: "Nothing is going right in my life. Parking was hell, my job kills me, and I'm still not over my ex." I imagine your response to this diatribe wouldn't be particularly positive.

And why should it be? These are things you'd tell to a very close friend, not just someone you've met at your new book club.

This doesn't mean we can never say anything negative — after all, we all have bad days. But your goal is to keep the connection on even footing. Sharing a little bit about yourself is fine, but the goal is to lead to further conversation rather than a deep emotional connection right off the bat.

Why doesn't confession work? Because it's too much, too soon. The goal of confession can be to foster a sense of kinship, but when that strong emotional connection has new acquaintances wondering whether you're looking for a friend or a therapist, the relationship is already off balance. You can get closer, but give it time first.

"Don't let them see all of the mess right away," Hendriksen says, "but let them see a little peek at the mess. What do you do? How do you spend your time? What do you think about? What are you like? Where are you from? What's your story?"

She notes that disclosing things about yourself may feel weird and even "selfish" at first, but it's just because you’re not used to it. Keep trying.

movies, specific day, concrete timeline, new friends

Suggesting a specific activity is better than 'let's hang out sometime.'

Photo by Simon Ray on Unsplash

4. Don’t fear the follow-through.

All of this meeting new people and sharing interests is leading somewhere, right? You also want to make more lasting connections with some of your new acquaintances.

To do that, you must initiate a plan and then follow through.

Sometimes, you'll be lucky and someone will ask you to do something first. But most people are a little bit terrified about stepping outside their comfort zone. And that means making the plans and following through can be tricky — for everyone.

The key is to be specific. "Do you want to hang out sometime?" seems like a nice, safe question that gets to whether someone wants to spend more time together, but it doesn't work. Even if the person says yes, you have no concrete timeline in place. You've thrown the ball into their court and are now at the whim of their schedule.

"Do you want to go see a movie on Saturday?" for instance, or "do you want to take a hike with me on Sunday?" are both great options to feel out if someone's interested in a specific activity on a specific day. If they say yes, then you're good to go.

If they say no? Well, they might come up with an alternative activity.

5. Allow yourself to be anxious. And then go for it anyway.

We've all been there: Someone invites you to an event, and you get excited, but when the day of the event comes, you'd rather be doing anything else. After all, comfort zones are ... well, comfortable.

Although the urge to cancel may be strong, recognizing that these feelings are normal is the first step to overcoming them.

Your brain, Hendriksen says, comes up with worst-case scenarios — What if you say something foolish? What if the other person is only doing it to be nice? What if you have nothing in common? — to keep you safe. "But really, it's a false alarm."

Remember when you were terrified about that presentation in class or that important meeting you were leading at work? Did it end up going OK, even if it was hard? Then why shouldn't this? After all, if you don't try, you'll never be ready.

Though most of us would rather, as Hendriksen says, cocoon ourselves away and hope that we'll emerge as beautiful social butterflies, the truth is that experience is the only way we can get there. So keep moving forward. You just have to take the first step.

This article originally appeared on 07.05.18

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Family

These 3 stories show how we're subconsciously teaching children to be fatphobic.

I was The Fat Girl™ growing up.

Nearly every school and class has one because fatphobia is about normalizing hierarchy and social control. No matter what the relative weight or size spread of the group, there's always a biggest kid.

Recently I was talking to a group of teenage girls for their high school's Women of Color Speakers Series. I talked a lot about what it was like being TFG.

Fatphobia shows up in a lot of different ways, and those ways change over a person's lifetime. Most people only think of stigma as the "moment of impact" — the moment when one person treats another person in a cruel or violent way because of who they are. But stigma is never just those moments; it can happen without the conscious intent of another person and can often seem harmless.

Children in particular are encouraged to assimilate into our ways of knowing and doing, which aren't always awesome — especially when it comes to fatphobia.

Here are some examples of fatphobia that occur in childhood to help illuminate the nuance of it:

1. Exclusively casting fat children as elders, foils, or villains in plays and productions.

Every fall from age 5 to 12, it came time to rehearse the Christmas play at my Pentecostal church. Each year, the plot was a little different but often included a beautiful girl, a boy hero, and a lesson about humility or the true meaning of Christmas. Every year, I, like most of my friends, really wanted a lead part. As hard as I tried, practiced, rehearsed, or memorized, I knew I wasn't the kind of kid who could ever be cast as a lead — because I was fat.

That didn't stop me from wishing, but each time it fell through, I kicked myself for having wanted something so unattainable.

The last time I was in the Christmas pageant, I was cast as Monica, a third-wheel loser who went around chasing the hottest boy in church as he barely tolerated my advances. I was proud of this role because, unlike previous years, I got several lines. For some reason, I was also dressed like a huge bell the entire time. I liked that I made people laugh, but I didn't have the intellectual tools to understand that they were laughing at the familiarity of the insulting trope.

When fat children are consistently cast as the same type of character, we are sending them (and everyone else) a message about what is possible, who deserves to be visible, what heroes (and villains) look like, and who is worthy of positive representation and outcomes.

2. Monitoring how fat children eat.

Science says that children are often hungry. They like the stuff they've seen popularized on television. They like sugar and starchy stuff because it's delicious but also because they're growing. As a child, I was on the receiving end of differential treatment in both directions — sometimes being encouraged to eat less than my smaller peers or being served twice or three times the amount of food without any indication from me that I wanted that.

It's important to recognize that no matter the size of a child, they have the right to have judgment-free eating experiences.

3. Asking fat children to ignore hateful language and behavior.

Children can understand notions like justice and community and are natural self-advocates.

We teach marginalized children to be disempowered. This is facilitated by adults' and peers' sense that certain types of anti-social behavior are normal. Because of our own cultural education, we don't see certain manifestations of sexism ("boys will be boys," especially if they're white boys), fatphobia, and ableism, for example, as a "big deal."

Furthermore, we are sometimes unknowingly committed to the hierarchies that are maintained through anti-social behavior because we see them play out in our own lives.

At school, it is the targeted child's job to self-resolve hateful language and behavior. This sets up the victim-blaming mentality that fat children carry into adulthood. It's never OK when someone targets someone because of their body size. Older children, peers, and adults can help develop easy-to-remember scripts and create communities of accountability where adults and teachers are not the only people capable of mediation or resolution.

There’s this belief that bigger children are more adult-like and can therefore withstand more emotionally or physically.

This is dehumanization and stigma, plain and simple. Childhood is not determined by how small or large a child is. Children — no matter what their size or what they've been taught about their size — deserve to be treated with care and responsibility, free from the stigma we grew up knowing.

This story originally appeared on Ravishly and is reprinted here with permission. More from Ravishly:

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