The Importance of Connection in a World of Constant Chaos

How often do you feel like you’re moving at full speed but unable to catch up? Or pretend you’re fine when you’re not? Or fear that you’re one crisis away from shattering?

We are working more than ever but feel like we’re never doing enough. We’re disconnected and exhausted but too afraid to ask for support or advocate for our needs. We strive to appear “fine” on the outside, but on the inside feel crushed by fear, anxiety, and self-doubt. Then, when we break, we blame ourselves for not being tough enough.

As professionals, parents, leaders, and citizens, we face unending demands on our time as we juggle an ever-expanding array of responsibilities. At work, we strive to excel, level up, and lead while grappling with growing pressure. The uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity in our environment produces even more stress and self-doubt as a dizzying array of issues constantly demand our attention. If each meeting feels more urgent and less productive than the last, you’re not alone: data suggest that we’re working more but accomplishing less. And, in a recent study, a staggering 75 percent of workers reported more stress now than in the previous year.

For so many of us, this chronic stress is taking a toll in the form of headaches, inflammation, immune problems, cognitive issues, sleep disturbances, depression, memory loss, and more. In one study I ran with about four hundred working adults across varied jobs and industries, the majority expressed concerns about how much more stress they could handle, and many reported feeling less motivated, less engaged, and less like themselves, as though they were “emotionally coasting” or powering through on autopilot.

With so many demands on our time and attention, we’re increasingly driven by “Mustivation” —doing things because we must or should—rather than motivation. Our struggle to keep up comes with guilt, anxiety, and lingering dread about letting others down. Smartphones further blur boundaries, and balance eludes us as we juggle virtual meetings with homework help and emails with vacations. Yet despite technology’s promise of greater connection, we’re also feeling lonelier. Because it’s a little too easy to stay at home in our pajamas watching Netflix and ordering from DoorDash, we’re spending less time with our friends.

CONNECTING IN AN AGE OF DISCONNECTION

At our core, humans are relational beings. In the beginning, we lived in small, stable groups of about 100 to 150 people, and sticking together was a core survival strategy. By sharing labor, resources, and information, and cooperating to hunt and fend off threats, early humans could survive and ultimately reproduce. (This may also explain why we especially crave the care and support of others when we’re feeling sick, scared, or in danger.) To survive, humans had to cooperate—and to cooperate, they had to care about one another. And so, we are wired to avoid loneliness and crave love and acceptance. The level of genuine connection we experience in our lives depends on where we fall on this spectrum:

Research reveals two basic building blocks of connection. The first is belonging. Because social bonds help us work together, we’re built to form them easily. For instance, one study showed that upon receiving a holiday card from a complete stranger, most people reciprocated by sending one back. Bonding becomes especially effortless in adversity; as any military veteran will tell you, lifelong ties are “forged under fire.” And we’ve all experienced how everyday moments of belonging—a cup of coffee with a like-minded colleague, the camaraderie of an intramural volleyball team, the higher power of a religious service—buffer stress and make us feel seen, heard, appreciated, supported, surrounded, championed, and defended.

The second connection building block is relationship depth. Because our ancestors spent their lives among the same relatives and other close contacts, these relationships had to be strong enough to stand the test of time. Relationship depth is fostered through interactions that boost trust and intimacy, leaving us with the sense that others truly care for us—and especially under stress, that we can rely on them for love and support. Our deepest relationships (with romantic partners, best friends, family, or even colleagues, bosses, and clients) function reciprocally, meaning that we both give and get care and support. We feel less connected when others take more from us than they give, and when others give more to us than we give them.

Belonging and relationship depth remind us that we’re not alone, which boosts our sense of self-worth and dignity. This doesn’t just feel good; it literally rewires our brains. Close connections trigger the release of feel-good chemicals like exogenous opioids. They’ve been shown to improve cancer survival rates (even after factoring in differences in income and medical treatment) and protect against death over the course of a decade. On the flip side, loneliness is as bad for our health as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day, increasing our risks for dementia and heart attack. It’s also strongly linked to mental health challenges and may be a contributing factor to the rise in mass shootings. According to former US surgeon general Vivek Murthy, this loneliness epidemic has become an urgent public health concern.

How did we get here? As I mentioned earlier, our ancestors generally lived in the same place with the same people for their entire lives, making it easier to deepen connections over time. Nowadays, we frequently uproot our lives and start over in new places. While our forebears lived in “extended kin networks,” with uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents, many cultures today live in nuclear families and have fewer extended family interactions. And where early humans would select from one or two dozen potential mates, we swipe through an endless number of complete strangers we’ll never even meet.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that social connections have been sharply declining for decades. Across gender, age, and ethnicity, in-person socializing has dropped 30 percent over the last fifty years. We aren’t just forging fewer close friendships; we’re spending twenty fewer hours on average with friends per month than we were twenty years ago. Demographic trends like falling family size and marriage rates further hinder close connections. As a result, only 39 percent of US adults feel “very connected,” and nearly half experience persistent loneliness. These effects are especially pronounced for young people, who are almost twice as likely to feel isolated. In one heartbreaking survey, almost one-quarter reported having zero friends.

As Derek Thompson writes in the Atlantic, “There is no statistical record of any other period in US history when people have spent more time on their own.” Of course, technology has played a key role, monopolizing our attention, displacing in-person interaction, and reducing relationship quality. (Everyone has that friend who can’t put their phone away at dinner—or maybe that friend is you!) And while the percentage of teens who are online “almost constantly” has doubled since 2015, research shows that it takes just one hour of daily screen time (on average) to cause loneliness, depression, and anxiety.

But technology isn’t entirely to blame. On a broader societal level, we’re experiencing what Derek Thompson dubs “a kind of ritual recession” stemming from sharp declines in community-based routines and more options for sealing ourselves off from others. Participation in collective activities—book clubs, sports teams, communal worship—has dropped by more than one-third in the last twenty years, and fewer than two in ten Americans feel “very attached” to their local community. According to sociologist Robert Putnam, trust in social institutions and other people has reached near-historic lows. Finally, the shift to virtual and hybrid work has left the workplace—arguably the last intact bastion of community—increasingly fractured.

BUILDING YOUR BEST SELF

The first tip, that it’s okay to not be okay, may sound familiar. But let’s be honest: intellectually grasping it is one thing, but wholeheartedly internalizing it is quite another. Embracing our pain is the first, and sometimes hardest, step in this journey, and the courage to take it will yield big rewards.

The next tip is even more foundational. Prioritizing your needs isn’t selfish or indulgent; it’s an essential ingredient for a better life. Especially in tough times, actively shaping your life around confidence, choice, and connection will bring out your most positive and powerful tendencies. Through enhanced energy, joy, and well-being, you’ll start feeling better. Through stronger performance and deeper learning, you’ll start doing better. And by charting a life based on your fundamental psychological needs, you’ll soon be living better—with greater meaning, purpose, peace, and even physical health and longevity.

In short, you’ll consistently become the best version of yourself, which in turn, will benefit everyone around you. Indeed, pursuing your own needs isn’t a zero-sum game. As I often remind CEOs I am work with, “When you get better, everyone benefits.” The same is true for the rest of us.

Prioritizing your needs will make you a better parent, partner, friend, worker, colleague, and citizen. You’ll become less emotionally reactive and judgmental. You’ll find yourself being more generous with others. It’s a classic win-win.

Adapted from Shatterproof: How to Thrive in a World of Constant Chaos (and Why Resilience Alone Isn’t Enough) by Tasha Eurich. (Little, Brown Spark, 2025).

About the Author

Dr. Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist, researcher, and New York Times bestselling author. Recognized as the world’s leading self-awareness coach (Marshall Goldsmith Coaching Awards) and communication expert (Global Gurus), she’s spent over two decades helping people supercharge their self-awareness, sanity, and success. She’s worked directly with over 40,000 leaders—and spoken live to hundreds of thousands more—on every continent but Antarctica. Her 2017 TEDx talk has been viewed more than 10 million times.
 
With a PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Tasha has been named one of the world’s most influential coaches by Thinkers50 and Coaching.com. The principal of Eurich Group is trusted by some of the world’s most powerful leaders—from Fortune 500 CEOs and founders to the occasional NBA coach—with clients like Google, Walmart, Salesforce, Johnson & Johnson, and the White House Leadership Development Program.
 
Her first book, Bankable Leadership, was hailed by Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran as “a refreshing approach that can change both lives and businesses.” Her second, Insight, was named the #1 career book by The Muse, sits on Brené Brown’s bookshelf, and is one of the three books famed Wharton professor Adam Grant recommends most often. She has appeared in outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, NPR, CNN, NBC, and Fast Company, as well as peer-reviewed journals.