Sure, you shouldn't let your friends hold you back. But I wouldn't underestimate the value of spending time with friends/family. One quote from Robb Wolf has always stuck with me: "It's understood that people who don't have enough social connections, they have as high a rate of mortality and morbidity as a pack a day smoker." http://youtu.be/Tvh23EnFDio
Maybe if your friends are holding you back then you should find new friends? The thought of going to restaurants alone isn't particularly inspiring to me. If you'll indulge me, here's a song about it: http://youtu.be/MnqdNErdVcU
"It's understood that people who don't have enough social connections, they have as high a rate of mortality and morbidity as a pack a day smoker."
How is it understood? I've seen things here and there about an active social life in old age being a key contributor to longevity, but are there any studies indeed showing that the health risk of being a loner (for all of one's life, or for some part of it) is equal to that of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day?
I actually had never looked up the studies Wolf was referencing before (naively, perhaps, I trust the guy to have reviewed the literature). But I think he is probably referencing this:
>Researchers at Brigham Young University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pooled data from 148 studies on health outcomes and social relationships — every research paper on the topic they could find, involving more than 300,000 men and women across the developed world — and found that those with poor social connections had on average 50% higher odds of death in the study's follow-up period (an average of 7.5 years) than people with more robust social ties. That boost in longevity is about as large as the mortality difference observed between smokers and nonsmokers, the study's authors say.
I can do two days at the gym, I can even socialize (I wonder if he he'd count 25% physical realm 75% internet realm relationships as healthy), but I don't know if I'll get out and do organic, open ended activities (frisbee, running with dog).
I'm definitely going to have to listen to more of this Robb Wolf, though. Thanks.
Maybe if your friends are holding you back then you should find new friends? The thought of going to restaurants alone isn't particularly inspiring to me. If you'll indulge me, here's a song about it: http://youtu.be/MnqdNErdVcU