Don’t Buy Yourself Flowers

Loneliness is the new smoking:

“Data across 308,849 individuals, followed for an average of 7.5 years, indicate that individuals with adequate social relationships have a 50% greater likelihood of survival compared to those with poor or insufficient social relationships. The magnitude of this effect is comparable with quitting smoking and it exceeds many well-known risk factors for mortality (e.g., obesity, physical inactivity). These findings also reveal significant variability in the predictive utility of social relationship variables, with multidimensional assessments of social integration being optimal when assessing an individual’s risk for mortality and evidence that social isolation has a similar influence on mortality to other measures of social relationships. The overall effect remained consistent across a number of factors, including age, sex, initial health status, follow-up period, and cause of death, suggesting that the association between social relationships and mortality may be general, and efforts to reduce risk should not be isolated to subgroups such as the elderly.”

“The quality and quantity of individuals’ social relationships has been linked not only to mental health but also to both morbidity and mortality.”

“The influence of social relationships on risk for mortality is comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality.” (1)

So, stop buying yourself flowers.

It only seems like a helpful gesture because you’ve been hoodwinked by two of the worst ideas ever: proud self-reliance and stubborn independence.

You’ve been convinced that buying yourself flowers is the same thing as someone else buying you flowers.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The entire impact of receiving flowers rests in the fact that someone went out of their way to do something to make you feel loved.

You can’t do that for yourself any more than you can bite your own teeth.

For you to receive love, someone must give love.

Self-love is doing your very best to proactively meet most of your needs most of the time. Self-love is living in harmony with yourself.

Self-love isn’t doing for yourself what can only be done by another person.

I get it. Relationships can be hard. Relationships can be scary.

And relationships are life.

The best moments in every single person’s life are when they’re intimately, harmoniously connected with another person. When each person risks putting their very life into the other person’s hands. When “I” orientations become “we” orientations. When mutual trust becomes the amplifier that makes one plus one equal infinity.

This truth must never be perverted.

It’s easy to buy yourself flowers. All it takes is a few bucks and a little selfishness. And all you get are some flowers in your home for a few days.

All the while, no love was given, and no love was received. You’re as lonely as you were when you started, and so is everyone else.

Love can’t be hoarded. It requires movement. It requires circulation. It requires interaction.

So, spend those few bucks on someone else. It’ll make their day. It’ll make your day. And if you keep your heart open, it’ll surely come back around.

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”
—Morrie Schwartz

(1) Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-Analytic Review. PLOS Medicine, 2010, 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316.

About Jason Gootman
Jason Gootman is a Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach and National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach as well as a certified nutritionist and certified exercise physiologist. Jason helps people reverse and prevent type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other ailments with evidence-based approaches to nutrition, exercise, stress reduction, holistic wellness, and, most importantly, lasting behavior improvement and positive habit formation. As part of this work, Jason often helps people lose weight and keep it off, in part by helping them overcome the common challenges of yo-yo dieting and emotional eating. Jason helps people go from knowing what to do and having good intentions to consistently taking great care of themselves in ways that help them add years to their lives and life to their years.