The 3 Kinds of Connections You Need to Flourish
Three ways to intentionally engage with your most important connections.
Flourishing is about thriving across life’s varied dimensions, such as personal growth, meaningful relationships and a sense of purpose. At the heart of it all lie the connections we cultivate.
The authors of a 2023 study published in Frontiers in Psychology examined this in depth. They mentioned that everyone strives for personal happiness or well-being. However, flourishing is a broader concept, one that goes beyond momentary feelings and into the quality of how we live.
To better understand what actually supports flourishing, they designed a study to explore the role of connectedness. Over 100 adults between 18 and 71 years old were surveyed using established measures of flourishing and connectedness. The main aim was to see how strongly each type of connection related to overall well-being and whether some forms of connection played a stronger role than others.
Based on the 2023 study, here are three connections that we need to thrive in life.
1. Connection With Yourself
One of the strongest foundations of flourishing is the way you relate to yourself. Researchers found that self-love significantly predicts flourishing. To thrive in relationships or feel connected to the world around you in a healthy way, it’s important to build a good relationship with yourself and a healthy sense of self-love.
However, self-love has been somewhat of a controversial construct. Historically, the idea has been looked at in polarizing ways. It’s considered “good” when it’s associated with health and well-being and “bad” when it’s conflated with narcissism and selfishness.
Researchers sought to clarify this in a 2023 study published in The Humanistic Psychologist. They examined self-love in depth and worked to distinguish it from traits like narcissism. They broke down the idea of self-love into three essential components: self-contact, self-acceptance and self-care. Together, these elements form a more complete picture of self-love than just “feeling good about yourself.”
The study also highlighted that self-love and narcissism are opposites. Narcissism is rooted in insecurity and external validation, and self-love is grounded in acceptance and inner stability.
Researchers explain that when individuals cultivate self-love in this holistic sense, they are more likely to experience resilience and overall well-being. This reinforces the findings from the 2023 Frontiers in Psychology study. In the Frontiers study, people who showed higher levels of self-love reported significantly higher well-being. This is because many elements of flourishing, like acceptance, growth, resilience, and feeling at peace with life, come from what self-love cultivates. This suggests that how kindly and attentively you relate to yourself can deeply influence whether you actually flourish in life.
2. Connection With Others
Humans are inherently social beings. Evolutionary survival and growth as a species have always depended on cooperation and shared bonds. Early humans relied on group living for protection, hunting, and even for raising children. Today, the same principle holds true, though in a different form. Relationships are not only capable of giving you a sense of safety and belonging, but they also bring new perspectives into your life. In many ways, they push you to grow.
At the same time, having supportive connections helps you navigate challenges more resiliently, reminding you that you don’t have to carry life’s burdens alone.
Research published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology supported this with two interesting experiments. Researchers asked participants to estimate the steepness of a hill while wearing a heavy backpack. Some participants stood alone, while others were accompanied by a supportive friend. Those with a friend by their side consistently saw the hill as less steep. Even participants asked to imagine a supportive person in their life saw the hill as less steep. In contrast, those who thought of a negative person perceived it as steeper. The quality of the relationship mattered most. Closeness and emotional connection were the key factors that literally changed their perception of reality.
So, the quality of your relationships plays a pivotal role in your overall well-being. Flourishing, therefore, cannot be understood in isolation. It is deeply tied to how you connect with the people around you. The Frontiers in Psychology study found that flourishing was significantly associated with pro-socialness, which is the tendency to care for and act positively toward others. The researchers suggest that pro-social behavior may have a uniquely reciprocal quality.
When you treat others well, you are more likely to experience positive responses in return, which in turn reinforces your own well-being. In short, feeling connected with others enriches your life and the lives of those around you.
3. Connection With Nature
Your connection with nature plays a distinct and often underestimated role in your life. Spending time in natural environments has been known to be associated with reduced stress and improved mood, which, in the grand scheme of things, can give you a greater sense of perspective. This comes through the reminder that you are part of something bigger than yourself. Beyond health benefits, nature has the power to impact you in subtler ways through inspiration, recreation and even spiritual meaning.
A systematic review published in Science Advances explored these non-material contributions of nature, known as “Cultural Ecosystem Services” (CESs) and the impact they have on human well-being.
The researchers found that nature impacts your well-being through diverse pathways, such as by enhancing life satisfaction, emotional balance, and a sense of belonging. These benefits rarely act in isolation; they often tend to reinforce each other. However, at times they may involve trade-offs. For instance, the tranquility gained from solitude in nature may differ from the joy of sharing outdoor experiences with others.
The findings of the Frontiers in Psychology study showed that when examined alongside self-love and pro-socialness, nature connectedness correlated with both. However, it was not the strongest predictor of flourishing. One possible reason is that nature does not “respond” to you in the same reciprocal way people do. But it still plays a vital role. Nature helps in nurturing self-love, encourages reflection, and complements the growth you gain from connections with others. Together, these relationships support a state of true flourishing.
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