🧠💬 You probably send dozens of texts a week… but how many actually deepen a friendship? 💬🧠
- Olly Bridge
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Most leaders I work with are highly connected. Calendars full. WhatsApp buzzing. Slack never sleeps.
Yet many quietly feel… socially undernourished.
Information exchange isn’t the same as connection…logistics aren’t intimacy.
A message about meetings, dinners, or drop-offs keeps life moving…but it doesn’t meet our deeper social needs.
Clinical psychologist Miriam Kirmayer describes this beautifully: “we communicate constantly, but rarely intentionally.
And intention is where connection lives.”
What the science tells us
This isn’t just a “nice to have”.
Peer-reviewed research consistently shows that social connection:
✅ Is associated with lower all-cause mortality, comparable to traditional risk factors like smoking and obesity (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20668659/)
✅ Protects against depression and anxiety (Santini et al., 2020 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31910981/)
✅ Buffers stress physiology and supports immune function (Ozbay et al., 2007 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20806028/)
Importantly… it’s not only deep conversations that matter. So-called micro-moments of connection meaningfully improve wellbeing and reduce loneliness when they are genuine and personal.
Small signals. Real intent. Repeated often.
What this means for real leaders
Under sustained pressure, most people don’t lack time….they lack emotional bandwidth.
So the bar doesn’t need to be high, one intentional message a week is enough to matter:
✅ A specific memory you appreciated
✅A genuine check-in without an agenda
✅ A simple “I saw this and thought of you”
Not clever. Not polished. Just human.
Perfectionism is often the biggest blocker here and it’s rarely required for connection.
Leadership health isn’t just about sleep, movement, and nutrition…it’s also about belonging.
And belonging is built one small, intentional reach-out at a time.
At @Essentio Health and @Build a Bridge – Live Your Best Life, we help leaders strengthen the habits that quietly sustain energy, resilience, and performance…including the relational ones that too often get overlooked.
Because high performance was never meant to be a solo pursuit.
