Record Live Podcast

The loneliness epidemic
Jarrod Stackelroth: [00:00:00] Hi there, everyone. I'm Jared.
Zanita Fletcher: And I'm Zenita.
Jarrod Stackelroth: We are your hosts of Record Live, a podcast where we talk about church, faith, and living well.
Zanita Fletcher: We believe as followers of Jesus, faith is more than just a set of beliefs. It's a way of life, something we put into practice.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Let's go live.
Zanita Fletcher: Hello everyone and welcome back to another week of Record Live. We have had, a bit of time off lately. , I have been sick and under the weather and you have been all over the place. You've been in Scotland, Jared, which is a bit of fun taking some rest and relaxation. Can you tell us one of your highlights from your time away?
Jarrod Stackelroth: Oh, wow. One of my highlights. So Scotland was a highlight. I'm glad it was summer cause I don't know if I could deal with the Scottish winter. It is [00:01:00] the first time. So I have. Scottish heritage. So I've always wanted to go and just see where my ancestors came from. , so that was really cool. Stirling Castle was amazing.
Jarrod Stackelroth: , we saw a concert in a cathedral of a South Wales men's choir and the local boys brigade and it was amazing. Really inspiring and uplifting. It was a random thing, you know, on your travels, you just going around and then you just happen to be in a place at the right time and the right place. And yeah, that was amazing.
Jarrod Stackelroth: We also went to England, for a wedding, have friends wedding. So , that was good. That was fun, but the British museum was one of the highlights, Just seeing some of the biblical era history stuff, the Egypt and they had a Syrian Nineveh Babylon exhibitions and. It was just interesting to see where some of the exhibits crossed over with biblical history.
Jarrod Stackelroth: , so I found that fascinating. , but yeah, on the whole, it was a nice little trip away with the wife. And yeah, we just,, got some R and R as you said, [00:02:00] and, probably not long enough to see all the stuff we needed to see, but it was,, it was long enough being away from the kids. So we had to get back and get back into real life.
Zanita Fletcher: Sounds good. Well, we are here again. Again, we miss you on record live. We couldn't do it without you. And we are talking today about, loneliness, which I'm sure is a topic that many people listening will have experienced or will be able to relate to., I feel like in the last few years, probably still since COVID we've heard of this term, like the loneliness epidemic being thrown around.
Zanita Fletcher: But I think loneliness is still something that is far more common and probably far more consequential. , than we think. , now you suggested this a little while ago, and we kind of haven't gotten around to this.
Zanita Fletcher: I know loneliness is something that many people experience, but I guess I'm wondering, why you were interested in diving into this topic specifically.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Yeah, I, I've just seen Zenita around me , I don't know if it's becoming more and more of a thing or I'm just more aware of it. , [00:03:00] Certainly since COVID, I've experienced a bit of loneliness myself, , wrestling with questions of, you know I live very far away.
Jarrod Stackelroth: It feels from my family, my immediate family. , and sometimes when life gets stressful, when life gets you down, you just want to connect with some like minded people., and when I look at my contacts list, it's like, who's going to really be there for me that I can open up to, or have that conversation with.
Jarrod Stackelroth: And you always, you often think, Oh, maybe I don't know that person well enough. That person's probably too busy. , with my family, they're in a different time zone. So when I want to talk to them is when I'm driving home from work, I've had a stressful day or something. And I'm like, I want to call my family, but they haven't finished work yet.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Cause they're half an hour behind. So like, it's like, Oh, , I won't call them then and I'll just sit here with my thoughts. And , I guess sometimes when you're in your own thoughts, that loneliness can feel sharper, it can feel more,, [00:04:00] extreme., but at the same time, I'm just seeing some of the commentary.
Jarrod Stackelroth: I'm seeing a lot of people talk about it and, and,, It can be a real mental health, battle as well, because, connection, community, those things really help with your mental health or your mental fitness, and the absence of that connection can really negatively impact that we've seen that a lot recent times, you know, a lot of commentary in the media, even about, the impacts of isolation, social isolation, working from home and not physically interacting, interacting on a screen like we are right now.
Jarrod Stackelroth: but not interacting in person , and the impacts that can have on people's social, social lives. , I quickly watched, , a couple of episodes of the Netflix, , documentaries about the blue zones recently. And one of the factors that was one of the things they found was this idea of community connection, social connection.
Jarrod Stackelroth: , [00:05:00] And yet we're seeing more and more people. not be connected with anyone. , and so I guess it's good to ask why, why is that? And what can we do about it? I guess that's part of what we'd like to tackle today in the conversation. Because at the intersection of faith and being practical with our lives and how we interact with others, is this,, our spirituality, our belief should impact that.
Jarrod Stackelroth: But also our connection and our community, you know, being the church means being in community. And if people are being lonely or feeling lonely, sorry, maybe they're not in community as, as we could be, or we should be, maybe we're not doing community right. , so that's some things to think about for us today,
Zanita Fletcher: yeah. we had a little bit of a chin wag before we pressed record. And I think it's interesting because we , Drew the conclusion that you can be lonely, but have a lot of people around you still, , which is certainly something that I've experienced. Like when I've experienced loneliness, it hasn't necessarily been because I've had a lack of [00:06:00] support or people who love me.
Zanita Fletcher: It's been because I've not been opening up about something that I'm struggling with. And so I feel alone in that, but I guess going back to that idea of church, like I think, something Christianity does really well is we gather and we have things like weekly groups and we meet. Every weekend we have all these things, so we aren't lonely, but if you were to talk to all of the people within those churches, many would probably still feel lonely.
Zanita Fletcher: So it's not so much about , do we have people around us? It's like, there's something else in the mix that we're not doing well enough, or we're falling short in, or we're not educated on or whatever, , that is still making us feel that way.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Yeah, I think it's the depth of connections or how many connections we have is one thing.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Are we making friends? Are we good at making friends as an adult? It's hard sometimes to find chances to make friends. When you're at school, you're with the kids all the time. So you're with them. [00:07:00] Same group of people in all your classes all year round, like you, you make good connections, but when you go into the workforce and in different scenarios in your life, it's a lot maybe harder to connect in that space.
Jarrod Stackelroth: , so that's 1 thing. What level of connection are you able to achieve with people when you just only interact with them like here and there, you know, you might see them at church on Sabbath and you don't see them during the week. , That's the level of your interaction. How do you get into a deeper thing?
Jarrod Stackelroth: You're busy with kids, you're busy with work. , And so those are some of the excuses I think we make to not contact, connect with people. , we just busy, busy, busy. , I think the other thing is, we sometimes misunderstand loneliness as like, I don't have any interaction with anyone. I'm stuck in isolation and I'm not seeing anyone.
Jarrod Stackelroth: I'm not. interacting at all. And that's definitely one angle. You can be lonely if that is the case, but, , I think we've all been to a party or [00:08:00] a wedding where we don't know that many people or even a church, you know, you're invited to potluck, or you go to church, you sort of stick to the outer, you come in, sit down, listen to the sermon, you wait for someone to speak to you, but you're sitting there and kind of uncomfortable.
Jarrod Stackelroth: And you can have people all around you. But you're not necessarily feeling connected to any of those people. And so it's not about being completely isolated, but it's about, I guess we got to get to the heart of what is loneliness. Well, it's not just being isolated and not having any interactions. But it's also about the level or the quality or the connection with those people that you're experiencing.
Jarrod Stackelroth: , And you can be busy. You can look like you have a lot of friends and acquaintances. You can have a thousand conversations a day with different people., but it can be surface level. So when the real challenges come into your life, you're struggling to who do I turn to, who do I connect with now?
Jarrod Stackelroth: Because I don't feel like any of those surface [00:09:00] level interactions will quite cut I think that's a challenge.
Zanita Fletcher: Yeah, there was a study that was done that I read a while ago. , and it was testing, like, some people think, or they just assume friendships should happen just naturally. Like they should just feel right and they should come about naturally.
Zanita Fletcher: And then others think that, , you've got to put effort in. So it's like intentionality. And I found that people who thought friendship was something that just happened By luck or chance, they tended to be lonelier than those who thought it came from effort. They tended to be less lonely and have more like flourishing relationships, I suppose.
Often I hear people say, I just haven't found , my group or my people or my clique. And I think they're probably the people who tend to think that way. We should just stumble upon it and we should just find the people we, kind of groove with or the people who get us.
Zanita Fletcher: But I think at least from my experiences, the friends that I have that are like my close friends, they're people who I've put a lot of effort into or like we've known [00:10:00] each other for a long time. It does take intentionality. It's not like the show friends where we just all live together and we just all get along all the time and or date each other and then break up and then rah, rah, rah, like it's, , It's different to that, but that's what we've kind of grown up seeing and watching.
Zanita Fletcher: And so that's kind of what we expect.
Jarrod Stackelroth: I was watching a YouTube video., I think it's like a podcast, but it's the diary of a CEO and they were interviewing, they were interviewing Simon Sinek and he's like well renowned for like, how you think and being entrepreneurial and, hacks to a good life and stuff like this.
Jarrod Stackelroth: , apparently he's, he's writing a book. about friendship because he, he said the exact same thing you did. We expect it to happen. , Just by magic. And it just doesn't, it, it takes some intentionality. He said, there's industries grown around, , relationships, divorce and things fixing, , marriage counseling, how to be a better [00:11:00] worker, a better CEO, a better,, inspired person, entrepreneur, this whole industry is built around fitness, making yourself.
Jarrod Stackelroth: better physically. No one is addressing the need of friendship and connection. And he said, , that's a huge area where we're, we're struggling and it's impacting our mental health. It's impacting our longevity,, all of these things. It was very interesting. He said, look, I've probably got quite a few people in my phone who I could actually call if something really went wrong.
Jarrod Stackelroth: If I was really down, they would be there to help me. They would fix that up. But he said, I've got far less people who I could actually call when something goes well, when I, when I have a success or,, When I win something, like I've done something, it's great. Someone that would actually get me enough to celebrate with me instead of being a bit jealous or , why are you telling me this?
Jarrod Stackelroth: Why are you blowing your own trumpet sort of thing? Someone that would just be there. And that really [00:12:00] challenged me as well. Cause I'm like, right. So often I'm feeling it when. When the chips are down, like you feel a bit lonely and you're like, who can I actually turn to? But actually if things really went badly in my life, there's probably a bunch of people that would jump in, and help me there.
Jarrod Stackelroth: But some of the loneliness comes in when it's just like, Oh, I got a bit of a promotion at work. I want to share with someone, but. no one really gets what I do. So, you know, Oh, I, yeah, I enjoyed my, my holiday in Scotland, , here's why I really needed it and why, you know, I felt good about it.
Jarrod Stackelroth: People like, like your Instagram posts and stuff, but then they scroll on and there's no like celebration unpacking, , and so that was quite a challenging, thought. It's actually a interesting video. It's quite long. And so I haven't finished right to the end of it either. I'm watching it in little chunks and stuff.
Jarrod Stackelroth: But I was, yeah, just very interested because I saw the idea come up. , I think the episode is [00:13:00] called in part, like, this is why you can't make friends and the guys like challenging, like, why are we struggling so much as a society to actually connect with people and to make friends with people?
Zanita Fletcher: You'll have to, , drop it in the comments so people can listen if they want to, , it is a good question.
Zanita Fletcher: I think we all. We all hear that kind of , Oh, who would you call in times of needs? But I guess all aspects of life, , we want to share with someone. And so it's even those like positive things that, , yeah, I guess we kind of need people to turn to in a different way. I remember during, , COVID when we were in lockdown, I was like feeling.
Zanita Fletcher: I just wanted to talk to people because we were inside like all day, every day. And I remember going to my contacts list and being like, I have so many contacts, like hundreds of contacts and being like, but I don't know who to call. Like it, I just. Same kind of thing was like, I haven't spoken to these people in years or , is that person going to think it's weird if [00:14:00] I go on?
Zanita Fletcher: And so I gave myself this,, this like uncomfortable challenge to just go through my contacts and just every day call the next person, which I've had some of those contacts in my phone since I like first got a phone at 15 kind of thing. So,, It was a bit daunting, but it was like some of those things, some of those relationships kind of kickstarted from that.
Zanita Fletcher: And that was really cool. And some of them I've never spoken to again, but it was like, we're both in lockdown, so let's just talk for a few hours and catch up is like, what else? But I think that is a common thing. Like something that stops us maybe from taking that next step is that like discomfort and that a lot of people these days have social anxiety and like It is uncomfortable to make those steps, whether it's reaching out to someone or being transparent.
Zanita Fletcher: , but it's also kind of necessary, to get what we want.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Well, it sounds like a bit of work to go through your contacts list and do that. But again, you've demonstrated [00:15:00] intentionality there, I suppose., and I guess, some of us, yeah, we may have trouble. Making friends or meeting new friends or even connecting with people who are old friends.
Jarrod Stackelroth: But it doesn't seem now, forgive me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me Zenita, that it's not necessarily a trouble that you have. , you may have experienced times of loneliness, but you seem to be good at connecting with people or. Recognizing when you need to and intentionally doing that. , I remember the story of , the seven 11 worker who became a friend, you know, invited to some events and different things.
Jarrod Stackelroth: So obviously you're looking for opportunities, but can you tell us a little bit about for someone who might be sitting here going, yeah, I'm vibing with this. I don't know how to do it. We could unpack all the reasons why. It's hard or why society doesn't allow us to, but if I want to get intentional, how do I do it? , I think I have some opportunities in my life, but I'm not necessarily taking them. what would you, how would you approach a scenario where you're meeting someone? Like, how do you make that person a [00:16:00] friend?
Zanita Fletcher: Yeah, I, I guess just for context, like I do feel like I have been blessed maybe with Parents who quite social and demonstrated that to me.
Zanita Fletcher: Like they've always prioritized their relationships and like growing up, we had neighbors and I dunno, it's just, I think it's one of those things that I've just been. lucky to grow up around and have also inherited maybe that confidence or those skills to connect with people. But I guess, , I think time is a struggle for a lot of people.
Zanita Fletcher: A lot of people have full time jobs and they don't have a lot of space outside of their job and their family to socialize. And I feel like sometimes people categorize Rise the people in their life. So sometimes they'll have like their work people or their work friends, and there's this idea that some people have that, oh, I just work with them.
Zanita Fletcher: They're not really like my friends kind of thing. They're just, I just work [00:17:00] with them. And you have these kind of, , I suppose principles. Of you can only become so close with the people you work with because you got to work with them and you got to do the job. And I kind of think that's maybe in some cases you need to have that professionalism, but I think you can still build close, good relationships with people in those kinds of circles.
Zanita Fletcher: , and so I think like intentionality. In those situations, like if you are someone who, , has a job that you, like a full time job, essentially, that you're at a lot of the time, and there's other people there, I think you could still be intentional about, asking people around you how they are and just, , taking that step.
Zanita Fletcher: That's a little bit more intimate, like, you don't have to tell them your whole life, but I think starting to just grow closer with the people around you is something that you can easily do, or if you don't, if you work from home, I'm sure you still frequent places like the grocery store or the petrol store.
Zanita Fletcher: So, , just take an [00:18:00] extra step by, , asking someone their name and remembering their name and then. Talking to them every time you go., I think we can kind of inch towards these things a little bit. Just like becoming best friends with someone straight away or, signing up to a sports class and trying to, I think they're all good things still, but , let's just start with the small steps, I think.,
Jarrod Stackelroth: I heard about a grocery concept. I think in Europe, they're trying it in some places. , you've got the self checkout and then you've got the express lane and you've got the normal lane, but they're trialing these slow lanes, , where you go to that lane for a chat, like your checkout person is going to take their time, have a chat.
Jarrod Stackelroth: To do your groceries and I guess I imagine if you went in the slow lane every week and you got the same person or a couple of staff that always serve you, you could get to know that person relatively well., and have a [00:19:00] chat, you know, just, , I guess they're, they're saying, oh, it's good for older people and for people who, are a bit isolated socially.
Jarrod Stackelroth: But it just reminded me when you were speaking of that, Of these ideas, there are people trying to change the system and bring in in our convenient, fast paced, busy, busy lives. There's people that are trying to slow down and make connections with others. , I think that's important. , Is this a spiritual problem?
Jarrod Stackelroth: Is there any spiritual, is there any spiritual sort of connection to this idea of this loneliness epidemic? What should we as Christians be doing to approach this? Is this the society's problem or is this our problem as the church?
Zanita Fletcher: I don't think the church has created loneliness, but I think it is I believe as Christians, it's kind of our duty to like, first of all, go and make friends with people because we can't really,, it's quite difficult to share Jesus with someone if they can't like see Jesus in you, or if they don't have people in [00:20:00] their life who love Jesus and follow Jesus.
Zanita Fletcher: , and so I think it is like a responsibility for us, but I don't know if it, Is rooted from a spiritual problem, personally. , There is a story in Luke where Jesus talks about making friends. It's actually quite a,, confusing story to get your head around. It's one of those ones that you tend to just like flip over because you're like, I don't understand that, but he does explicitly say, Make friends, but I don't know,
Jarrod Stackelroth: I'm just wondering, , people talk about the absence of the church in society and the decline of church in society and church was somewhere you could be in a community of like minded people.
Jarrod Stackelroth: , and yet the more individualistic our societies get, and I'm talking in Western societies, the more individually focused we get, the more we compartmentalize church into a, A few hours per week, and that's that thing. And then we don't see those people again during the week. We don't get that close or that in depth in our [00:21:00] relationships with them.
, , if you look at places where the church is most successful, and I'm not, maybe it's just, a random coincidence, or maybe there's some correlation. So let's, let's explore. I'm thinking of this as I, as a talk to you. But like in the Western world, we call the secular world. People are struggling for connection.
Jarrod Stackelroth: They're struggling with isolation. They're struggling with mental health issues, but they're also not religious by and large. They're not part of a religious community and they're not necessarily seeking that. They don't think that will give them the answer to any of those questions. But places where they, we see the church growing and where it's easier to share your faith because people will actually listen and are interested are places that are more communal.
Jarrod Stackelroth: They are more socially connected. And so you're not just sharing your faith. You're doing life alongside other people. And there. , your Christianity is contagious. Your faith is [00:22:00] passed on to the people in your village, in your family, in your,, it seems, I wouldn't say easier, it's just different, but , it's, it seems to be, , that the church is growing in areas where individualism is not reigning supreme, , running rampant.
Jarrod Stackelroth: , So that's what I'm thinking about. Like, okay. Not that individualism is evil, necessarily, I don't know,, but consumerism, materialism, some of the things that come out of that , pride that we always say the first sin was the devil, like, placing himself on equality with God, grasping for more in his own situation, and that, that's ,, the pride of self, in some ways, all sins are based around, you know, So I wonder if there isn't a spiritual part to this conversation, , spiritual connection, but also as we've discussed a little bit, [00:23:00] the antidote to loneliness is connection.
Jarrod Stackelroth: And as you mentioned, we need to connect with people. It's almost a spiritual imperative so that we can share the gospel. We can't share the gospel if we have no connections. , and yet many of us are fearful. In the same way, like the way I liken it, when I think of sharing my faith with someone, it's a lot easier for me to write something and even post it on a social media page of mine or put it in the record, , than it is to have a conversation with someone about my faith.
Jarrod Stackelroth: It's a bit harder, but also I might have the same trouble connecting or making a friend of that person. So I'm wondering if the two things aren't somewhat linked, like it's easy to
Zanita Fletcher: um,
Jarrod Stackelroth: Sort of proclaim but not easy to connect and the same sort of stress fear of rejection Uncomfortability that I feel about sharing my faith I feel in some senses about making a friend and I don't know how to go about either [00:24:00] very Naturally or very well, and I just wonder if we are struggling to witness in our cultural context because we don't have lost the art of connection, the art of making a friend.
Zanita Fletcher: Yeah, yeah, I would say so. , I think that we are becoming a much more individualistic society, like many more people work from home or work on their own. Many people are much more busy, so they don't have as much time, we're on technology and,, we know all these things, like, we are becoming a much more individualistic society, which is hindering us from, I think, being able to form these connections.
Zanita Fletcher: , and I think, I don't know, maybe people do know that. Communicating and making friends is a skill, but I think a lot of people don't put time into that or don't maybe learn that from other people as much as we could. There's this, there is this other thing, it's , like a common cognitive bias called the liking gap.
Zanita Fletcher: And it's this tendency we have to think [00:25:00] that people, don't like it. Like usually people like us more than we think they do. But I think we tend to go into interactions and assume that people Uninterested, don't like us, but it's also sometimes just like a lack of skills or knowing how to respond or knowing how to connect.
Zanita Fletcher: But ,if you kind of go into social situations, assuming people like you and are interested in connecting, then I feel like you can kind of trick yourself a little bit. But I don't know. I think social anxiety is something that is, super common these days, which is, I think is interesting. I don't know if it's always been like that.
Zanita Fletcher: I don't know if it was like that when you were young, but I think there is like, I guess a faulty mindset that a lot of us are carrying around.
Jarrod Stackelroth: It's almost like we
Zanita Fletcher: think other people don't want to connect, but everyone does. Like everyone's looking for more, like. closeness and intimacy. We're all afraid of it at the same time.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Thanks for just separating our generations. [00:26:00] There's Anita making me feel older than when I was young. When I was young, I don't remember. Decades ago, eons ago. No,, look, yeah, it does depend on the individual as well. Because,, if you've had bad experiences, a lot of us carry the experiences we had when we were young into every interaction.
Jarrod Stackelroth: In some ways, there's that small child inside us still fearing rejection or, whatever. And so when we interact with new people. In some ways, it's us and the confident front that we, , depict, and in other ways, it's that small child still like, is this person going to like me? Are they going to want to play with me?
Jarrod Stackelroth: You know, like,, we carry that around with us. And I don't know, I guess what you're talking about is a little bit of tricking that reprogramming reframing for that child, because it's, actually people like us more than we may think is what I'm hearing you say. And [00:27:00] we're actually harsher on ourselves perhaps than we are of other people.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Sometimes, , I have heard, that stat as well. And so maybe, maybe that's holding us back actually from what is a skill, a, , thing that we could cultivate. , in that podcast, I referred to before Simon Sinek was saying, , if you've got a business meeting and it's in your calendar, You'll, you'll do it.
Jarrod Stackelroth: But if you've got a lunch with friends or a dinner, you're much more likely to get out of it. , and I noticed that, Oh, with, , COVID, if you're a little bit sick now, you don't go to social events, but you do go to work or you work from home. And so you push through the important stuff. , but again, that's categorizing like the non negotiables.
Jarrod Stackelroth: I can see they talked about. measurable, measurables, quality measurables. And so you can measure the outcome of a meeting that you attend with an important person. Like,, [00:28:00] that, that will progress your agenda, your goals, your professional goals, but a date night with the wife. Well, that's a bit harder to measure.
Jarrod Stackelroth: , but 15 years of no date nights with your wife, because you keep pushing it off for business, your marriage is going to fall apart. Right. And so I found that really interesting. , the host of the podcast, the CEO, who is the diary of a CEO guy, he was saying he's now scheduling, those times with his partner and he has to, because then it becomes a non negotiable in his diary.
Jarrod Stackelroth: And it's not that It's not that, Oh, is this person not important to you that it would just happen spontaneously, et cetera. He's like, well, no, it's showing that what that relationship is, is equally as important as anything else that happens in my life. So it needs to be given its scheduled proper place.
Jarrod Stackelroth: It's important time, so I need to schedule it in. [00:29:00] And so I was like, wow, that's an interesting way to reframe relationships in terms of. How do we make sure that we're putting as much priority into those who we're connecting with as whatever happens at work or whatever happens, the school, the kids', school appointments or the sports, after school sports stuff that we won't miss, but we'll miss stuff that benefits us and that builds relationships and that connects us with other people in the long term.
Zanita Fletcher: Yeah, because
Jarrod Stackelroth: you can't measure it in the short term. And that's what they were saying. It's intangible, the benefit there. But after 10 or 15 years of those appointments, like that person's the most important person in your life, or you're no longer connected, and you're heading for divorce, something bad's going to happen because you're not.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Investing in that relationship.
Zanita Fletcher: That's interesting. They have like studied the physical effects of loneliness. And so we know that loneliness like affects heart [00:30:00] disease and dementia and depression. And we even know that people who are lonely have poor sleep. Like they wake up more throughout the night.
Zanita Fletcher: So , there's a lot of physical ramifications. We also know the same thing about the effects of not exercising and the effects of poor diet. But I feel like when it comes to. Exercise and poor diet and maybe smoking or like all of these other things in our life that we try to gain control of.
Zanita Fletcher: We have clear, borders around things like exercise. Like we know we should exercise for 120 minutes per week kind of thing. We know we should eat five servings of vegetables and two servings of fruit a day kind of thing, but when it comes to socializing and interacting with people, we don't really have , we're not told to say hello to five people in our neighborhood every day.
Zanita Fletcher: We're not told to have 150 minutes of heart to heart conversation per week. Like we don't have those. Guidelines, I suppose, which I don't know if we need to bring that in, but I do feel like we need to start being intentional about it. Like we are intentional about eating well and [00:31:00] exercising and getting eight hours of sleep because it is just as important.
Zanita Fletcher: Like people are.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Yeah. Experiencing
Zanita Fletcher: ramifications. I can see,
Jarrod Stackelroth: I can see the ads now the heart foundation recommends 30 minutes of meeting with someone every day or 30 minutes of conversation a day, connecting with others. Yeah, no, it's really important
Zanita Fletcher: and
Jarrod Stackelroth: they were using some of those examples.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Cleaning your teeth. Going to the gym, you don't notice the effects straight away, but if you don't do it for five years, your teeth fall out, you've got to go to the dentist and have a really bad, you know, thing. I thought you were
Zanita Fletcher: recommending us to brush our teeth with people.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Brush our teeth with people.
Jarrod Stackelroth: No. I
Zanita Fletcher: thought that's where you were going with that.
Jarrod Stackelroth: But as an analogy,, we don't notice it if we don't do it for a day. We don't notice it if we don't do it for three days. It doesn't make a difference if we don't do it all week, but you stack a bunch of weeks on top of each other where [00:32:00] you don't do any physical activity or you don't brush your teeth or you don't.
Jarrod Stackelroth: And you start to see really serious ramifications out of that. And so I think, yeah,, takeaway for me from this conversation and we're running out of time. One thing that it's really emphasizing to me is be intentional about connecting with others, find opportunities to get out of your comfort zone to either make new connections or reconnect in a more meaningful way with people you haven't really connected with recently.
Jarrod Stackelroth: How about you Zenita, any practical standout? Yeah, I feel like,
Zanita Fletcher: , I feel like there's a quote. It's probably one of those quotes that doesn't have a name to it, but it's be the friend that you want to have. And I feel like., that's a good way of thinking about it. Instead of just expecting to just find friends, just start being that friend to someone that you already know, or, someone that you already are in regular contact with, and just make small steps [00:33:00] towards that. , it doesn't have to be one to a hundred straight away, but just, start., I think that. helpful way to look at it.
Jarrod Stackelroth: That's a really helpful thing. And, , and even you could see it as a ministry serving other people by being there for them and, and in reciprocation, you're going to get more people who do you and come to you and are more there for you.
Jarrod Stackelroth: as well. So it's a win win sort of situation. Hey, I think it's been an interesting conversation today. , we covered a lot of ground. It's been quick and we're through it, but yeah, we, , thank you for watching with us. We encourage you to join us again next week for another record live. We've got a few good, Interviews lined up, starting to get lined up for this next season of Record Live.
Jarrod Stackelroth: So, thanks for joining us and thank you, Zanita, as always. It's been a pleasure.
Zanita Fletcher: Good time. Go
Jarrod Stackelroth: out there and connect with someone this week. God bless you all.
Zanita Fletcher: You soon everyone.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Bye
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