“Financial success depends on warmth of relationships and, above a certain level, not on intelligence.”
source: Wikipedia, Grant Study

I recently watched the TED talk given by Robert Waldinger on “What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness.” One of the key things he points out is how important relationships are throughout life.  Our childhood relationships set our foundation but we can strengthen and build a happy life with the connections we maintain.  We may believe fame, wealth and high achievement are what we need to pursue to have a good life. “But over and over, over these 75 years, our study has shown that the people who fared the best were the people who leaned in to relationships, with family, with friends, with community.”

Per Robert there are three primary lessons about living happy and healthy:

1. Social connections are really good for us, and that loneliness kills.
2. It’s the quality of your close relationships that matter
3. Good relationships don’t just protect our bodies, the protect our brains.

From the Biz of You perspective our social connections are one of the primary resources we have to nurture and steward throughout our lives.  We do this by using our available time to connect and reconnect with those in our networks both close and afar, not just online or in chat rooms, but face to face where we interact and share energy and ideas.  How we interact with our environment and more specifically the people we care about has more to do with the Biz of You than how much money you make or put away for retirement.