Everything I write comes down to one thing: replacing default with intention. Default is what you do without choosing it, repeating what was done before or what others do. Intention is consciously committing to a direction. Each piece approaches it from a different angle, and together they build toward an authentic, happy and meaningful life.

If you could know only one thing about a person to predict how happy they are, the quality of their relationships would be a safe bet.

What connection does
When researchers looked at the happiest ten percent of people in a study, one thing set them apart: strong relationships with friends, family and partners. They spent less time alone and more time with the people close to them. Connection was not the only thing they had, but it was the one thing none of them lacked.

A review of 148 studies, involving more than 300,000 people, found that stronger social relationships were associated with substantially better odds of survival over the periods studied.

Who we grow with
Who we share our lives with deserves attention when we think about how to take care of ourselves. That may sound obvious. Yet we can easily default to spending our time with people because we work together, have known each other for years, or have fun together, without considering how those relationships influence the way we live. Enjoyment and familiarity matter, of course, but I find whether and in what way we help one another develop more important.

In two studies, married couples recorded their experiences over several days. When people reported that their partner encouraged their personal pursuits, was available when needed, and avoided unnecessarily interfering, they also reported greater progress toward their goals that day and the following day. So the support we give one another helps us act on what matters to us.

Replacing default with intention clearly applies here. As we become more conscious of how we want to live and who we want to be, we should consider whether our closest relationships support that. Can we question ourselves, learn, and change together? Can we encourage one another without keeping each other attached to who we have always been?

Nobody ever finishes learning, thank God for that. We do not need to be in the same place, have identical beliefs or the same understanding of life. But a willingness to reflect on our own behavior, take responsibility, direct our life toward the common good, and support each other’s development matters. These are relationships we should consciously make room for: ones in which we build each other up and help one another advance in life.

Transformative relationships
Some people bring me into awe through their wisdom, kindness, or approach to life. Having people like that in my life, even in a small way or at a distance, brings me an incredible amount of happiness. Recognizing something so beautiful in how another person lives can make me feel deeply connected to them.

These are what I call transformative relationships. Through knowing someone, we discover more of what life can be, what we can contribute, or what we might still become. Their understanding can expand our own. Their way of acting on what matters can encourage us to do the same.

When that is reciprocal, there is something particularly powerful in it. We recognize something valuable in each other and help it develop. Someone’s confidence in us can help us act on an ability we have not yet fully trusted. What we discover through doing so can then become something we bring back to them. We keep contributing to one another’s development.

At a physics conference, I once attended a presentation about the letters exchanged between Albert Einstein and his first wife, Mileva Marić, who studied physics alongside him. Their correspondence reveals a shared intellectual life that is easily overlooked when we think of Einstein as a solitary genius. In one letter, he referred to “our work on relative motion.” The extent of her contribution to his published discoveries remains disputed, but their letters reveal a shared engagement with physics and invite us to consider how much understanding develops between people, even when history remembers one name.

The shared satisfaction, to me, plays a massive role in happiness. And, it’s an incredible way of advancing in life, especially when we have someone close, with whom we can explore an idea or question an assumption. We can be honest about where we struggle while also seeing what we are capable of. Both people remain willing to learn, and both contribute something the other could not have developed in quite the same way alone. I trust I will have someone like that close to me at some point in life. In the meantime, I still greatly enjoy them at a distance. 

In my beliefs, these transformative relationships don’t allow us to default to getting used to them and taking them for granted. I’d like to think they are what ‘defaults’ us to continued intention: recognizing these connections, making time for them, and consciously offering the same care and encouragement we value receiving. The happiness is already there in knowing one another, while what we make possible for each other continues to grow.

The default: keeping to ourselves
And yet, our default is often to keep to ourselves. In one of the courses I followed, I learned about experiments in which commuters on trains and buses were asked to either strike up a conversation with a stranger, keep to themselves, or travel as usual. People asked to predict the experience expected a more pleasant journey if they kept to themselves. But those who actually talked to a stranger reported a more positive experience than those who remained disconnected. People had also underestimated how interested others would be in talking to them.

Connection does not even need expression. In another study, people rated chocolate as more enjoyable when someone nearby was tasting it at the same time than when that person was doing something else. The participants did not speak or look at each other, but sharing the experience still made a difference. Our pleasure increases when we share it.

Turning our attention together
Connection can also grow through consciously turning our attention toward something together. People gather to pray for someone they love, remember someone they have lost, or express a hope for their community. In those moments, what matters to each person becomes something they give their attention to together.

Research offers some interesting ways of understanding that shared experience. In a study of a fire-walking ritual in Spain, researchers recorded the heart rates of people walking across the fire and people watching. They found similar patterns of changes in heart rate between walkers and spectators who were their friends or relatives. The same pattern was not found with unrelated spectators. Their connection to the people taking part appeared to matter to how they experienced what was happening.

Another example I recently learned comes to mind here: German physician Giulia Enders described how touch can help us calm one another. She gives the example of someone lying in a scanner while a person they feel close to holds their hand. Their heart rates synchronize and the more stressed person’s body moves toward the calmer person’s state, rather than the calmer person becoming more stressed. She describes physical contact as a way of communicating calm through the body, even without seeing each other or saying anything.

In a brain-imaging study, women faced the possibility of a mild electric shock while holding their husband’s hand, a stranger’s hand, or no hand. Holding their husband’s hand reduced the brain’s response to the threat, with greater reductions in some regions among women reporting better relationships. The relationship itself mattered to what that touch could offer.

These studies concern people sharing an experience in the same place. What interested me particularly was simultaneous prayer from different places, so I looked into it. Knowing that others are joining you, directing their attention toward the same person or hope, could itself change the experience. But would praying at the same time produce an additional effect?

In all honesty, as may be clear to you by now, I like exploring the science, but I mostly don’t need it to validate beliefs whose truth I can sense. I don’t believe our understanding comes close to encompassing all the intelligence out there, likewise I don’t believe our science can come close to capturing some things.

There is, however, work that offers a useful perspective on this. In a theoretical paper, Joshua Cockayne and Gideon Salter explore what makes praying together different from praying alone. They describe shared prayer as a situation in which people recognize that they are attending to something together. Drawing on psychology, philosophy, and theology, they propose that this can deepen community and help people act on common purposes.

Prayer can also influence how we respond to another person. In one experiment, participants received insulting feedback on something they had written. Those who subsequently prayed for the person who had insulted them behaved less aggressively toward that person in a laboratory task than those asked to think about them instead. 

That connects with loving-kindness: deliberately bringing someone to mind and wishing them well. Turning our attention toward their wellbeing gives us a way to practice meeting them with care, including when we feel hurt or frustrated.

What interests me about shared prayer is this bringing together of attention and care. We pause, recognize something worth caring about, and give it a place between us. I see that as one way of living our connection to the common good. The care we express together can also become something we carry into how we listen, respond, and support one another afterward.

Time makes room for connection
Connection needs time, and that is where another default gets in the way. Many of us trade time for money almost automatically. Research found that people who prioritize time over money tend to be happier, and one likely reason is simple: free time is often spent with others. When every hour has to earn something, there is little left for attention and the people who matter.

Allowing others to contribute
Connection also asks us to be willing to receive. We may enjoy listening, helping, or bringing people together, yet find it harder to let someone do the same for us. For me that is definitely true. However, with accepting an offer, asking for support, or sharing something we are struggling with we give the other person room to contribute to the relationship. We provide them with an opportunity to matter, and to be important to us.

It’s also true that knowing what you bring can make receiving feel more comfortable. When you are conscious of what you have to give, it becomes easier to receive in turn. Later on, I will explore receiving more extensively: what can hold us back from it, and how what others offer can become part of following our path.

Boothby, Clark & Bargh (2014)
Bremner, Koole & Bushman (2011)
Coan, Schaefer & Davidson (2006)
Cockayne & Salter (2019)
Diener & Seligman (2002)
Enders (2026)
Epley & Schroeder (2014)
Esterson (2019)
Holt-Lunstad, Smith & Layton (2010)
Jakubiak & Feeney (2016)
Konvalinka et al. (2011)
Renn & Schulmann (1992)
Whillans, Weidman & Dunn (2016)
Whillans & Dunn (2019)