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About this episode

Are you truly alive in your relationships, or just going through the motions? In a world overflowing with distractions, many of us drift into autopilot—checking boxes, chasing benchmarks, and hoping real connection will fall into place. But without genuine presence and intention, lasting intimacy becomes elusive, leaving us depleted, disconnected, and wondering why meaningful fulfillment always seems out of reach.

In this episode, discover how the science of connection can transform the way you approach your closest bonds. Through a blend of psychological insight and practical wisdom, you’ll learn why authentic connection is at the heart of emotional well-being, how to bring mindfulness and curiosity into your daily interactions, and why appreciating yourself and those around you isn’t just nice but vital. Tune in for actionable strategies to break free from autopilot, nurture deeper intimacy, and truly feel alive while you’re living.

Adam Dorsay is a licensed psychologist and host of the notable podcast SuperPsyched. He recently released his book Super Psyched: Unleash the Power of the 4 Types of Connection and Live the Life You Love.

Episode Highlights

08:43 The essential role of connection: Defining disconnection in mental health.

11:58 Cultural distractors and the brain’s bias against authentic connection.

15:10 Making mindful choices: Savoring life’s simple moments.

17:31 Beginner’s mind in relationships: Staying curious with long-term partners.

22:18 Experiencing awe: microdosing wonder and expanding consciousness.

25:03 The power of appreciation: How gratitude fuels authentic connection.

27:21 Authenticity, integrity, and the impact on genuine presence.

33:12 The four circles of relating to self and others.

35:47 Aligning choices with your values.

37:39 Simple ways to reconnect with others.

41:26 Reclaiming joy and presence in everyday life.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Start your day or transition moments by taking a few conscious inhales and exhales to ground yourself and become more present.
• Pause throughout your day to ask how you’re feeling and notice your needs; self-connection is the cornerstone of connecting with others.
• Engage fully in simple pleasures, like enjoying your food without distractions or truly noticing your surroundings on a walk.
• Regularly express genuine appreciation to your partner or loved ones for specific traits or actions, aiming for authenticity over routine praise.
• Adopt a “beginner’s mind” by approaching your partner with curiosity rather than assumptions, even if you’ve been together for years.
• Reach out to a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while—send a message or set up a virtual coffee date to rekindle meaningful connections.
• Identify and prioritize low-barrier activities that bring you joy, like dancing to your favorite song or engaging in a hobby, even for just a few minutes.
• Find and appreciate moments of awe in everyday life, whether it’s watching a sunset, marveling at nature, or simply noticing something new in your environment.

Mentioned

SuperPsyched: Dr. Dorsay’s Award-Winning Podcast

Super Psyched (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Super Psyched (book page)

Emotions: The Data Men Miss | Adam Dorsay | TEDxSantaClaraUniversity (YouTube link) (video)

Friendships in Adulthood: 5 Things to Know | Adam Dorsay | TEDxSanLuisObispo (YouTube link) (video)

How to Fall in Love with Questions (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Evolve in Love – Next Level (program)

Evolve in Love – Next level – Book Your Discovery Call

Essentia’s website (*Affiliate link)

Stratami™ Organic Mattress (This is the mattress we purchased) (*Affiliate link)

Classic REM5 Active Mattress – (The mattress we wish we could have gotten for the cooling feature) (*Affiliate link)

Connect with Dr. Adam Dorsay

Websites: dradamdorsay.com

Instagram: instagram.com/dradamdorsay

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship 

Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins 

Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

If you have a topic you would like it to be discussed, please contact us by clicking on the “Ask Dr. Jessica Higgins” button here. 

Thank you so much for your interest in improving your relationship. 

Also, I would so appreciate your honest rating and review. Please leave a review by clicking here. 

Thank you!  

*With Amazon Affiliate Links, I may earn a few cents from Amazon, if you purchase the book from this link.

Episode Transcript

Adam, thank you for joining us.

Jessica, I'm so happy to meet you. You are so cool, and just a pleasure to be on your podcast.

Yeah, likewise, fellow podcaster. I know that you have done many on your show as well. One of the things that you have put a lot of focus and emphasis on is connection, and we're going to be talking about that a little bit more today. For people who are just getting to know you, what would you like people to know about you and how connection became an area of focus?

Well, it was interesting. We were talking about Irvin Yalom, possibly the MVP of living people who've contributed to the field of psychotherapy. He said that every book he ever wrote bit him in the ass, and I think that's a great image. Because this book felt like it had taken a hold of me. After 20,000 hours of being with individuals and couples as a therapist, this word connection just kept showing up, and being a podcast host for hundreds of episodes, hearing the word connection show up.

The word connection itself is not well-defined. If you look it up in the dictionary, it basically says connecting two things together. That's not what people are talking about when they say they're searching for connection. You look it up in the APA definitions, there is no definition for connection at all. Yet within our DSM, our diagnostic bible, virtually every pathology described has a component of disconnection within it. Depression is disconnecting with the present, because we may be ruminating on the past. That is a feature of depression. A feature of anxiety is catastrophizing about the future and worrying and not being present. Trauma, dissociation, depersonalization. Then if you go into serious mental illness like psychosis, it's a break from reality itself.

There are books about connection that relate to connecting with your children, connecting with your spouse, connecting with your clients. There hasn't been a book, to my knowledge, that explores connection in and of itself. So that was what I aim to do. I wanted to look at the four realms of connection, as I see it, and we'll talk about that, I'm sure. As well as helping people make sure that the dash between their birth and their death date is that they have been alive while they are living.

Because so many of us go through life like a limp handshake, just kind of like: Okay, another day, another dollar, ooh, it's hump day. It's like, that's not what we're looking for in this precious thing called life, which is so astronomically improbable that any of us is here. The math, if you actually do the math of our parents doing what they did, I know the ick, but of them doing what they did when they did it, and all of our ancestors doing the same thing for us to be here, maybe we should actually really be alive while we're living. It's my contention that connection is the linchpin that will allow us to feel alive.

I absolutely agree with you and hear you. As I'm listening, Adam, I'm really aware that, to your point about connection not necessarily being clearly defined or a lot of guidance around it, that we culturally, perhaps, or in one's life, don't get a lot of support to be cognizant and mindful and conscious of our connection. We get a lot of messaging around how to be successful or what type of benchmarks that we want to achieve. There's this illusion that as we proceed and we check these things off, that we'll have more fulfillment, more vitality, more authenticity, and that is quite a fallacy.

Exactly, I refer to those as distractors. We have all of these distractors that are part of our brain. Our brains are here for basically two purposes: for us to survive, and for it to be as efficient of a machine as possible. Those are the two things it does. In it, we have possibly 200 or more cognitive biases that distract us. I roll up in my new car and I'm so excited about it, and I see next door: Oh my gosh, they have a better car. Oh my gosh, on the other side, better car too. I feel diminished. This is not good. It's social comparison. We have a negativity bias that allows the bad to outweigh the good. 99 great things happen, one bad thing happens, what do we remember? That's for our survival, we are meant to focus on the negative. These days it does more harm than good.

One of the things I want people to be able to do is know thyself. Know the bugs in our buggy brains, because they are very buggy. They've been great. I mean, the human species up until now has been a fairly successful one, we'll see how we go. I'm hopeful that we will get it together. But that's not what this podcast is about, that's for sure. But I want to make sure that people feel an authentic sense of connection.

The reason I called the book Super Psyched was not to pedal happiness all the time, like I'm being super psyched. I do want people to be super psyched when they are super psyched. But super connected to their psyches. Super connected to their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, really aware of what's going on while it's going on. To borrow a great quote from Carl Jung: Until we make the unconscious conscious, it will drive us, and we will think it was fate. This book is aimed at helping people raise their levels of consciousness, ask themselves, what am I doing with this precious thing called life? It is later than we think. I feel like I'm 17 inside, but my birth certificate would beg to differ, and I need to do things now. Now is the time. Yes, and now. Let's go, let's live.

Absolutely. I think as we talk about relationship, I do believe this has changed in the last 10+ years, that people are much more proactive, recognizing that they can be more intentional, they can be more skillful, and bring that awareness and consciousness to relationship. Like, it just doesn't happen to us. It's more of when we feel the challenges, how we turn towards that, or how we utilize that as an opportunity for growth. I think previously, there was this concept and perpetuated in media around like, it happens to us and happily ever-after, and the hard part is finding someone and really finding a good match, and then the rest is easy breezy. We know that that in fact is not how intimacy develops.

So one of the things you're really helping people understand to feel this connection, and I would love for you to define it as you've come to offer more description here, that it's really turning inwards and not having everything be pre-scripted or predetermined by outside forces. That we're in this habituated automated state, like we're just in a default. To your point, we do want to conserve energy as humans and animals, and that that's part of our design. Yet, that tends to not offer what we're really in service of or interest of.

It's such a good point, I feel like I'm talking to a kindred spirit as I listen to you. One of the things that the brain also loves is easy. So imagine it's Saturday morning, I'm sure this has never happened to any of us except for me, where you wake up, pet the dog, feed the dog, start making some coffee, open up some snail mail, open up your email, check out what's going on social media. Oh wait, there's that thing on Netflix, I need to get that streaming. Oh my God, look at that laundry on the sofa, I need to fold that. I'm doing all of these things at once and nothing. Monday rolls around and I ask myself, why didn't I do something that might have been a little bit harder, that requires a little bit more of a barrier to entry?

Because the fact is, that is another distractor, or a disconnector. We go for what is easy. And what is harder is putting on my boots and saying: You know what, I'm going to go for a hike. Pumping up my tires, filling up the water bags, and putting the bike rack on the car and the bike on top of it, and driving to a place to go cycling. Something I'm embarrassed I haven't done in quite some time. There are barriers to entry for the things that really give us a massive return on our investment of energy. It's our job to ask ourselves, what do I want to do with this time? It's totally fine and excellent if you want to sit in your jammies and your fuzzy bunny slippers and stream till your heart is content, if that is truly, truly, truly what makes you feel alive. I know I love streaming stuff on certain days, and that's one of my favorite activities ever.

But to do that, to really do it.

Yeah, that's right, and not doing something else while doing it. I believe I got this from Judson Brewer, he said his definition for mindfulness is being aware of what's going on while it's going on. A lot of us think that mindfulness is this hard thing to attain. It's really not. It's just being aware of what's going on while it's going on. You and I are quite mindful at the moment. This is almost like a talking meditation of sorts. You and I are not looking at our devices or doing other things simultaneously. So that is a big part of the book is savoring life. Savoring, which actually is a scientific term in the lexicon of positive psychology. How many times have you seen people, at a restaurant where you're paying a fortune, and all four of the people at the table are on their devices eating? What is going on? I feel like a two teen on Blonde saying, what's going on? Like, what are we doing? We're not tasting the food.

I love Winnie the Pooh. He looks forward to honey, he enjoys honey without any problem, and he remembers the honey. He enjoys it in three ways. That is, I believe, what we're directed to do. Let's be more like that. Let's be present. Let's be aware of what's going on while what's going on. Let's be alive while we're living. 

Yes, to be in the experience of it. It calls up, conversely, to what you're saying around the classic eating a raisin, the mindfulness exercise, if anybody has done that. It's so interesting in comparison. Because if I think back to a child, when I have a box of raisins and I take a handful and I chomp, chomp, chomp, and they're yummy and sweet and all the things, and I don't even really like raisins that much. When I remember doing this years and years ago, the real exercise is to take one raisin and put it in the palm of your hand, and don't even eat it right away. Using all the five senses to experience the raisin in this slow present way. I mean, that's a much deeper intimate connection with the raisin, to feel the folds, to smell it, to feel the texture and taste. So it's really, really important.

I remember my MBSR teacher, Bob Stall, teaching me that technique with the raisin. I don't like raisins either. We're meant to listen to the raisin. It was unreal! One of the things I ask people to do is, if you're walking the dog, or if you're taking a walk in your neighborhood, try to find something that you haven't seen before. I even do this, by the way, with the Cowbell, which is my favorite SNL skit of all time. I will watch it, God willing, till I'm very old. But watching Will Ferrell dance around with the Cowbell, with that tiny shirt and his belly hanging out, gives me joy to no end, and Christopher walk in. But I try to notice something new even on that video, that I didn't notice before when I watch it. Looking around and seeing can I see something new, that's a really important skill to have as well.

Which is so different than this: I know that, and I already got it, and I'm moving on. Which I think really applies to relationship, which in another term, I'm sure this correlates to what you're describing, the beginner's mind. That we could see our partner and maybe have been with them for 18-20+ years, and feel that we pretty much have them figured out, and yet they're living a whole new life and growing. If we can see them with these new eyes and use all of our senses. Again, it's not realistic to approach every moment in that intentional, fully awake.

Exactly, neither of us is endorsing that.

Right. But to have times where we can set down the distractors or the disruptors, and to be really in that undivided present state to make more connection possible.

Yeah. The most recent book I read was How to Fall in Love with Questions. Answers change over time, and yet all we care about is answers. When you said I know that, that means that the door is shut. There is no more curiosity. I know that. I love that you brought that one in, because when you say that, you've basically hardened the arteries of your brain in a sense. Basically, you're implementing cognitive rigidity, rather than cognitive flexibility. When I look at my wife, whom I've been with now for about 23 years, on some level, I feel like I should know everything about her, and there are oceans within her that I don't know about. Her cells are changing, and she's changing. She is fantastic, and it's my job to stay curious and not to be so presumptuous.

One of the things that we've learned in couple therapy is, no mind reading allowed. Mind reading is very dangerous. 

The more we use it, the more the neurons that fire together begin to wire together. Let's make that our new habit. Let's make our habit saying: Huh, I'm open to learning more, I want to know more, rather than I know.

No kidding, thank you for sharing that. It's quite profound. I can riff off of that, just my own experience and just how important that is. I echo my own experience of being interested in my husband and who he is, and I also agree that there is still so much capacity for me to deepen my understanding and what we can experience together, which is made possible through this wonderment, this curious attitude, as you say.

A million percent. One last thought I want to give is, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who lived about six decades ago, walked arm in arm in Selma with Martin Luther King, to give you a sense. He was a fan of something called Radical Amazement. He'd look at something that was perhaps rather ordinary, like a sunset, and say to himself, this sunset has never happened this way before, and will never happen this way again. He would take it in as if it were a miracle, because it is. Dacker Keltner very wisely began the study Awe, put awe under the microscope. Now what we've found is that, and that's the fourth level of connection that you'll hear about. Usually, I start with the center, but somehow, this time we're starting with the fourth. One of the connection points is something greater. For some people, it's religion and going to church. For the orthodox atheist, even they will go to the Grand Canyon and experience awe. What we found is… I wish we, as if I'm part of it.

Well, the industry, you're speaking about.

I mean, strangers were hugging strangers in 2017 during the solar eclipse, because they were all in an experience that was greater than them themselves, than any single one of them. They realized something big was happening. We can experience awe, and we can microdose awe. My friend and colleague, Dr. Michael Amster, describes looking at pancake batter and watching it go from a liquid to a solid. Isn't that amazing? Just something that we would see as being so pedestrian and ordinary, and yet it is quite amazing. If you really take in fire for all that it is.

Yes, I was thinking the same thing. You're talking about perhaps an altered state of consciousness or peak experience, that when we're in this place of awe, that we're allowing to be present, to experience the magic or the amazingness of what we're experiencing or witnessing or are a part of, and we get to be expanded in that. If we're like: Oh, I know that, or that we're not necessarily approaching it from that same attitude or mindset, that we're not going to be impacted or have the same expansive experience. Is that right?

That's my experience of it as well. I like to say that what we appreciate appreciates. That thing about my car, it was entirely true. It was my first brand new car. I've never had a brand new car in my life. I roll up, and my neighborhood people have really nice cars, and mine is not a head-turner. But I love it. I love it, and I make it a conscious point to authentically appreciate the car every time I drive it. That actually came about when I was working with someone who had a very expensive car, and he had become so desensitized to his car that he just didn't even think about it. I said, imagine you were 16 years old and you knew you'd get this car someday, I want you to turn on the ignition with that energy every time you turn it on.

He does that now, and he's so in love with his car. I know it's a non-human material thing, but this can also go to my wife. I refuse to take her for granted. People ask me, does she know how much you're nuts about her? I'm like, she knows. She hears about it multiple times daily. In my tradition, there's a term called Eshet Chayil, which basically means a woman of valor. It's an old term. But I let her know multiple times a day. This is a woman who will, in this lifetime, know that she has been appreciated for so many facets, and I'm going to try to do the best I can to appreciate her to that. Though, she doesn't need it all that much. She's not a junkie for that. But I've committed to doing that, because that's maybe in some ways more of an amazement that I feel, of being with this miracle of nature known as my wife.

I feel that way about my children. I feel that way about my animals. I really aim to be that way. I admittedly was born on the enthusiastic side of the bed. My nickname in high school was Enthusi-Adam. That was given to me in my garage band, I was the bass player. It really lent itself to Super Psyched becoming the name of the book, as well as my podcast. But again, I want to be very clear, it's about being authentic, it's about being super connected to our psyches. There are just so many tools. They're simple, but not easy, and they require practice. The great news is, with a few reps of this, it will become a habit.

So as I'm listening to you, I want to just comment. One thing you said that I'm grateful you commented on, it's based on research, and that often we think that the appreciating is for the other person. But typically, the person that is doing the appreciating is benefiting possibly even more. So this experience of perhaps gratitude is bringing you into more connection. It could be part of the practice. Would you agree?

A million percent, you nailed it. It's really largely for me. Now, it's interesting to note that in spite of the fact that the love languages model has been put under some scrutiny and some research seems to contradict it, I still like the ideas that have come forth from that. My wife's love language is certainly not words of affirmation. Mine is, one of them is that for sure. I get so much joy from emitting that energy. It's just true, I still feel like I'm in my first week of dating her, as a result of appreciating her at this level. I think that we can habituate to anything.

I forgot to mention about my car. Every time I drive that thing, I say, what a great car! I put on some new tires, because the OEM tires that it came with were just crap. I put on some unbelievably cool tires. Almost every time, at some point during a drive with my family, there will be, isn't this an awesome car? Then at another point, it will like, the tires are awesome, right. It's almost like Alfred Hitchcock showing up in a movie at some point, because he always made a cameo. Those lines will make a cameo, and my kids think it's hilarious. They know who they've got as a dad. They thankfully get it, and they don't roll their eyes, which is really amazing.

That's amazing!

I know, that's a miracle! Like, how did that happen? Because even Conan O'Brien's kids apparently roll their eyes. The great Conan, who I think is the greatest guy ever. But somehow they think that my stuff is pretty, and they're trying to place it into their lives.

Well, it occurs to me that it's two things. One is that it's connected to what is meaningful and valuable. Like you mentioned, know thyself. I can appreciate that when I make decisions that are in alignment, that I can continue to feel the gift and continue to appreciate. It's nurturing the gratitude and the experience of it. It's, again, that expansiveness. So it's like the gift that keeps giving. As far as cars, we're actually due for another car. We used to have two cars, and since our recent journey in the last few years, we're a one-car family. It was a car we purchased in 2014, and it's a black Toyota Prius. We still really appreciate it. Like, great gas mileage, and there's many features about it that we very much appreciate and feel aligned with what's important to us. So there's times where I'll touch the dashboard, I call it Pri-Pri. I say: Thank you, Pri-Pri.

Aw, what a nickname!

Because it's been like so good to us, and really, it's been a great car, and we've done a lot with it. Anyway.

Even the word Pri is at the heart of ap-pre-ciation. So that's pretty cool, what a wonderful synchronicity.

Yes. I saw you nodding around when we make a choice and we can continue to appreciate or have something that we're bringing into our life, whether or not it's a spouse or a vehicle or what have you, that we can continue to appreciate it. Then perhaps when we make decisions from that valued place of being congruent and knowing thyself, that works together.

Yeah, I think it can. There's just a little hiccup that I want to just mention. I'm not going to suggest that somebody appreciates somebody who is being unkind to them. That does not work. Appreciating someone who's abusive is almost akin to spiritual bypass.

Well, that goes against the authenticity.

But if it's real. We know that there is this golden ratio of positive to negative authenticity. Let's even just look at that in and of itself. For many of us, when we say something that is not true versus something that is true, when we are emitting energy, let's say we're bench pressing our max, we are more likely to be able to actually complete the rep when we're saying something that is true versus something that is false. To me, that is mind blowing. 

There's a perpetual cognitive dissonance. It's almost like we're walking around with rocks in our shoe. Once we are authentic, it's somewhat akin to getting rid of that rock in our shoe. We walk much happier.

We have a basis of comparison. I'm sure many people have had that comparison. There's an old joke. The husband asked the wife, honey, do you love me? She says, compared to whom? Having a basis for comparison can be helpful actually, at times. Especially if you think about a time in your life when you pretended you were into something because your friends were into it, but you weren't. Versus when you found your freak flag, what you were really into.

I love that. Even as you're describing this, Adam, I just can recognize times in my life where perhaps I overemphasized and I had to clean it up. Or even before I was in the practice of really being in my integrity, feeling when I'm out of integrity, and how this affects connection. I'm even feeling myself distancing and separating from the thing that I'm proclaiming, that's really difficult to be in. If some of the attributes about connection are: presence, vitality, being engaged in this fully sensational way, I don't know how to do that with that dissonance.

You can't. It's almost like saying, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to enjoy a delicious ice cream sundae with a whole bunch of balsamic vinegar in my mouth. It just doesn't work. I mean, balsamic vinegar is awesome, but these two do not go together. If you're doing something that is not true. Just to break it down for the listener, the way I decided to break down the four ways we connect, and I had it checked by a great many peers to make sure that they agreed, and they were all in agreement, that it's almost like a target, where the bullseye is yourself. Being connected to yourself is not selfish. It's not narcissistic, unless it is. But I'm not talking about it in that sense. I'm talking about just knowing thyself sufficiently so that we can go out authentically into the world. It informs all the other connections.

Then as we go to this next concentric circle on that target, it's connecting with others, it could be connecting with your romantic partner, your children. I include pets. Pets and friends. Friends for sure. But pets, I can't say enough, I used to run the Pet Loss Program at Humane Society, and the buckets of tears that people would cry, and they'd feel almost guilty for crying so hard, saying: Oh my God, I've never cried this hard in my life. The fact of the matter is, these pets are really, really significant others in our life. Not for my dad, not for some of us. But for those of us who it is, we have a full body yes experience as we talk about our pets. Then goes out one more ring, and that would be connecting with the world. That means art, that means nature, work, ancestry. The fourth is what we talked about in terms of something greater.

But one of the jobs is to find ways to connect that are meaningful and true for each of us in all of these four areas. Each of us has a different formula. My father, who could go through five lifetimes and not touch a pet, and I can't make it through a day. He could spend six hours in a Wagnerian opera, and I would call it a very expensive place to sleep, and he would be with wrapped attention, like: Wow, this is the best money I ever spent. I would say: Wow, I didn't sleep all that well, and that was costly. I can handle a three-hour opera, I enjoy those. But a six-hour Wagnerian, no, I'm out, tapping out.

So we all have different connection formulas. Each of us, as unique as our DNA are the ways that we connect. There's probably a lot of overlap between you and me, Jessica, and I Imagine there are places where you and I would be like: Oh wow, that's really interesting. That's one of the ways you connect? That's totally foreign to me. I might even try it. One of the basic dictates, mom was right about this: Try it, you might like it. That's one of the ways that we find greater connection.

My wife wants me to write a goofy Adam Sandler-esque song. I haven't picked up a guitar in a little bit, but I still know the basic chords. So I'm going to try to write a goofy Adam song. Because Adam Sandler songs are great. So it's time for me to write a funny song. I've never done that. I'm terrified of doing that. But let's give it a shot.

The other very just low-hanging fruit is looking through your contacts and asking yourself, who is a friend that I let things slide with? It might be a little bit embarrassing and awkward at first, saying: Oh my gosh, hi. I know it's been a minute. I know we live across the country, but I'd love to have a Zoom or a phone meeting. I know a lot of people say: Oh my God, not another Zoom meeting. I'll say, a Zoom meeting with a beloved friend, with a beverage of your choice, is so much different than a Zoom meeting at work. I mean, this technology is a freaking miracle. Here I am hanging with you, you're three hours away from me right now, and it's as if you're in my office. I can see your face. I can feel all of your nonverbal communications through your face. You don't get that through a text. Yo, what's up? Or a like on social media. I love the way Lori Santos out of Yale describes it. She says, it's basically the NutraSweet of connection. It's not real. So the second best thing to connecting to somebody in person is Zoom.

My buddy Jed, the greatest guy ever, I talk about him as the greatest guy ever in my book. He has one major fault, that he lives in South Orange, New Jersey. Damn it! It's been nine years since I saw him. I hung out with him over the summer, and at this rate, I will see him five more times before I die, if I'm lucky. So I have committed to being on the phone with him, do the Stevie Wonder thing. I just call to say I love you, I have no agenda. Or meet via Zoom, and I get to see his face, and we spend half the time just laughing our asses off because he's so funny. I'm sure that the half-life of a Zoom meeting with Jed is going to carry over, and guess what's going to happen? The opposite of the idea of hurt people hurt people. No, I'm going to be a stoked person getting people around me stoked, because I just talked to Jed.

No kidding! When you describe a weekend and coming into, if somebody is on the Monday through Friday work week, and they have the weekend off, that they're approaching Sunday night with a sense of depletion, or are they approaching the week from feeling enlivened and rejuvenated. It sounds as though, Adam, one of the things you're encouraging is paying attention to: how do you feel, what matters to you, where do you feel lit up, where do you feel excited and feel that joy, even for things that might be simple? Like, what came to mind for me, I feel like I'm pretty good at self-care. I sleep, I hike, I do yoga.

On an aside-aside, this morning, the yoga instructor, she says this thing. I take her class on Thursday. I take yoga many times a week. But she says, when you're breathing in, breathe in, and when you're breathing out, breathe out. I'm like, it's so interesting. But it goes back to what you were saying around, do what you're doing. Like, don't be doing multiple different things. Sometimes we breathe shallowly. So when we're breathing in, maybe we're stopping it, we're not really fully breathing in. So it's an interesting concept. But I play beach volleyball. I do other things. But what I don't do that I love, and that is super low-hanging fruit, is cutting a rug, just dancing to a song. It's not even choreography. It's just moving my body in an organic way that has been with me my whole life, and I don't do it enough. Partly because I used to turn it on in the environment, and I'm sensitive to my husband and various things. But we have earbuds.

It's not a big deal. Five minutes of that will give you probably an hour of good feelings, if not longer. I even defined the word connection, as I believe people mean it, and the definition was written by me and nine of my licensed mental health practitioner peers, including Harville Hendricks, who I know you also like. It's what makes us come alive. It's what gives us life force. It's vitality. What an ROI do you get from putting in your AirPods and dancing around, just like Ellen used to, and just going for it and cutting up a rug. In major League baseball, every home team at bat accompanies a walk-on song, and they are very intentional. You can tell that the batter himself chose the song. It could be country western, it could be hip hop, it could be reggaeton, you never know. But it works for them. If it didn't work, they wouldn't do it. So if I have a major presentation that I'm giving, I have a song list for the shower and getting dressed. I know Tony Robbins jumps on a little trampoline before he gets on stage.

Has a power move.

Exactly. Amy Cudi talks about that, the Wonder Woman pose and all these things. So these are really important. Oh my God, I could talk to you all day!

I know, our time.

I know! I'm so in love with this conversation. By the way, just to let the listeners know, I'm going to be so stoked for the next several hours because I just talked to Jessica.

Aw, that's beautiful. Me too. So Adam, for us listening, how do people get in touch with you and what you're up to? I'll put the link to your book on today's show notes. Is there anything else that you want to invite people to?

First off, please read the book. It's really, really readable. I wrote it so that you wouldn't have to expend any extra calories in your brain, and yet it will feed you. The other thing is, DrAdamDorsay.com. Dorsay, like the museum in France. Although, the name was made up, you'll find out about that in the book, by my grandpa, who is also a star in the book and a hilarious man. Let's see. I've got a couple TEDx talks, one on men and emotions, one on friendship and adulthood. I've got a really fun podcast, lot of great guests, everybody from Steve Kerr from the Golden State Warriors, to Temple Gran, and to Lori Gottlieb. You'll have fun with it. I cannot even get over what a fun time I've had during this conversation. You are an awesome podcaster, Jessica.

Thank you, Adam! Thank you so much for everything you've shared and everything you're doing, both on your podcast and your book, and all the ways that you deliver your thoughts and your sharing and knowledge and experience and education. So thank you.