St Albans recently hosted its first ever TEDx event. The theme of the day was Community and I had the privilege of being one of the speakers. The title of my talk was “Why loneliness may be worse for us than cancer”. The title of this post is actually a quote from George Bernard Shaw, which I finished my talk with. In my talk (which I’ll go through another time in more detail when it’s available online), I covered:
- How common loneliness is (we have 1/2 lifetime chance of being affected)
- How serious it can be (it’s thought to be worse for us than obesity, physical inactivity or smoking and can increase your risk of early death by 30%)
- How it causes disease (because it triggers inflammation within our bodies)
- The idea of a screening programme for loneliness that we can all be part of
- The power of social prescribing to help address loneliness
Photos by Stephanie Belton.
Our team of speakers, selected from all those who had applied to TEDx, has become a little community in itself. We’d been working together for almost 6 months and really bonded as a group. Getting to finally see everyone give their talk in full was brilliant, particularly with audience being so receptive and enthusiastic. Between us we covered loneliness, homelessness, neurodiversity, the concept of blue zones in youth work, how to lead in the business community, helping people understand how it feels to be transgender , eco-renovation, volunteering, collective joy and many other topics.
Photos by Stephanie Belton.
Connection with others is one of the most important pillars of wellbeing. It often aligns with purpose as another pillar, and if we’ve got this right in our lives then a lot of other issues, like sleep/movement/nutrition/stress management all tends to fall into place. I think that the delegates the TEDx St Albans day really appreciated that and as speakers and organisers we all had great conversations…and made more connections!
If you’d like to become part of the Feel Good for life community, you can do this in a number of ways. You can sign up for the Feel Good Factor, my regular newsletter & blog. You can also take up membership of Feel Good for life. As a member not only do you receive the Feel Good factor, but you also get email support from me, the opportunity to join an exclusive live monthly webinar where we cover topics related to lifestyle medicine, health and wellbeing (also recorded for members to view later) and the opportunity to put your questions to me and my colleagues live during the webinar or submit them via email beforehand. I’m looking forward to welcoming you to our very own FGFL community!
