Reach out and reconnect with someone — Tamara Mendelson

In my classroom last week we had a discussion about the good and bad sides of texting. One of my students wrote a paragraph about the differences between how we used to communicate and how we communicate now. Her essay was funny and ironic. She wrote simply and clearly about how she communicated when she was a kid. If she wanted to hang out with a friend, she walked out her front door and walked down the street and to a neighbors house and asked if her friend could come out and play. I laughed. It was so simple. So timeless. And in today’s world so unusual.

Although this student is a 20 something, it reminded me of my own childhood. When I would walk the two blocks to my friends house, back when the home phone was the center of all outside communication. I distinctly remember a series of AT&T commercials with the tagline Reach Out and Touch Someone. They were especially prevalent during the holiday season.

Back in the days

Long before cell phones and text messages when people actually used the home phone to talk to people. The advertising spots were like little movies of life with the express purpose of getting people to pick up the phone and call someone far away. Long distance was expensive then and my guess is they were very successful. Ma Bell (as it was called then) was the largest phone company in America and didn’t break up until legally mandated to in 1982.

My point here is not to give you a history lesson about the monopoly of the American phone company. It is to share the message that this is the perfect time to reach out to someone you haven’t been in touch with for a long time.

Through social media and texts and Whatsapp and Snapchat it’s never been easier to reach people. And yet, this time of year, the holiday season often leaves people feeling alone and lonely. Relationships are everything, and no matter how much time has gone by an old friend will always be happy to hear from you. (Tweet it!)

I reconnected with someone

In the last couple of years, I have reconnected with a few people that I thought were lost from my life forever. All it took was an email and a shout out from LinkedIn. One of these folks became a client and the other an email penpal sharing pictures and memories from thirty years ago. I didn’t initiate either of these contacts so I was lucky. But I did accept them in the spirit they were offered.

One of my roles as an Educator and Emotional Wellness Coach is to help people move forward when they get stuck. In that spirit I studied and received a Certificate in Positive Psychology from University of Pennsylvania this past summer. I didn’t make up the title it was suggested as part of a lecture about the future of psychology.

As a practice, I don’t go back into people’s childhoods and break open every trauma and then help deal with each trauma. We deal with the here and now and through common sense and goal setting we try to bring people through to the other side of their personal struggle.

Are we isolating ourselves?

One of the things I see again and again in my practice is people isolating themselves from other people. And in this holiday season of light and love I want to suggest you reach out to someone who was important to you that you may have lost along the way. A grade school friend, a college roommate, an old neighbor. People who knew you at a different time in your life would probably be thrilled to be contacted.

For all our technology and immediate gratification we have somehow lost the ability to just reach out. Our circles have become smaller. The people around us don’t get a second glance as we are so busy with our screens and sharing. YouTube videos and screenshots and emoji’s and other nonsense, I believe, are allowing us to lose the ability to have real face to face interpersonal communication. Oh, and this may come as a shock to some of you, but emjoi’s are not emotions. They are a clever way to get you to spend more time on the phone and less time actually communicating.

So here is my challenge to you for this holiday season

Reach out and touch someone (not in a creepy #metoo kind of way) but actually reach out to someone you miss or have lost contact with or would like to be back in communication with. If geography is an issue then try Zoom or Skype or Facetime.

I often hear the refrain from people who are stuck or sad and are going through a bad time that they don’t have any friends. I don’t believe that. Make communication real again by having real communication. If you want good friends, be a good friend. Those goes for family members as well. I don’t mean you need to talk to all of your family all the time. How about a favorite cousin? Don’t rely on family get togethers to stay in contact. Drop an email, FB Messenger, text, Whatsapp or make an old fashioned reach-out-and-touch-someone phone call.

There are approximately 7.7 billion people on this planet. It doesn’t seem like such a stretch to find one or two of these people to be in touch with. It might be a bit frightening at first but think about how great it would be to reconnect with someone you care about?

Reach out and touch someone. Let me know how it works out.

Be kind to yourself.

Now over to you: Who will you be reaching out to?

Originally published at www.tamaramendelson.com on December 9, 2018.