Don’t be an Island

The one single thing that you shouldn’t be doing in your business and life.

I’m going to keep this one short because this doesn’t need to be a long post – the title says it all.

I once discovered that women, apparently, live longer than men.

Now, when I first found out about this I was appalled.

Surely sex shouldn’t be a factor that would determine long life? Well as it turns out, though, it does.

Author Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, also points us in the direction of a similar statistic that the inhabitants of a small US town by the name of Roseto, Pennsylvania basically live on longer than anywhere else in the US, and would mostly die of old age alone.

What’s interesting about both of these things is that they all come down to one thing, and that’s community.

Just like women, the people of Roseto lived longer because of the close-knit social and supportive community that existed around them.

The people there had formed tight networks and would talk to one another about everything – including their problems.

Facing challenges alone is just going to make you an older person quicker.

You’ll also find that the solutions to these challenges are difficult to come by when there’s only one person doing the thinking.

In business, it’s the same.

But problem-solving is just one example where it works.

In life, just as in business, you’ll face a lot more problems. Problems with money or even problems with other people (strangely enough).

To overcome these problems you need that support system around you, and that’s why if you’re an island, you won’t have that luxury.

You’re by yourself.

Businesses cannot function without people around it – people internal and external to that business.

Women live longer because they meet socially with their friends and discuss things that are truly personal to them… their problems.

What I found out – just be doing a little research – is that women don’t tend to meet up with their friends any more than men do.

Women also don’t speak to their family any more than men do, either.

What women do in the time with these people is speak about the things that are holding them back in some way.

Could this be the same in business?

The people of Roseto didn’t just make an effort to speak to the people in their neighbourhood.

They would spend hours talking to people on the street, have meals with generations of family members and would naturally spend most of their time within the community.

Always with other people.

Those people and their families were definitely not islands.

So look at yourself. Look at your business. How can you ensure that – by combining both – you are giving yourself a platform to prosper?

The answer is simple, of course: just don’t be an island.

Build up the people around you and look to always have deep and meaningful relationships with these people so that when you have a problem you need help solving, for example, you’ll have someone there to help.

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