It's Not About the Cornhole. How Much Quality Time Do You Spend with Friends?

Cornhole for Wellness.

Konken’s Newest Social Club

"A new sport, you find your friends." (Horrible german translation.)

It’s not about the cornhole.

Moving abroad or relocating cities can be challenging. Moving overseas makes for great stories and perspective, but it’s difficult to branch out and make new friends. Especially as an adult! Especially if you don't speak the language!

PSA (public service announcement): Learn some other languages when you are young. Think of all the friends we miss out on because we can’t communicate!

Meeting new people all of the time is … exhausting. Bubbly extroverts might not mind, but since most of us are probably on the Introvert — Extrovert spectrum somewhere in the middle (lets call it “ambivert”) it’s important to figure out how to create situations to meet neighbors and new friends but without so much effort and MINIMAL small talk.

Holing up in your new apartment or home is probably part of the reason depression and anxiety surround relocation so often, especially in the military overseas.

The “Spanglish”, “Germanglisch” and other “ish” communication are even more exhausting! It’s fun for about 10 minutes over a bottle of wine, but the language butchering thing gets old real quick.

Cornhole to the rescue!

I hate small talk. You probably do too. It’s why most of us avoid a sales job and spend years upon years in school to avoid going into sales to make half the income. In health care (my choice for 7 years of student loans), we’re constantly trying to educate patients to create an “environment for healing” so they can heal themselves of pain naturally.

This is basically "setting the stage so that healthy behaviors just happen. Here are a few examples of preparation that allows the good decision to be made even when we are tired or stressed.

1. Meal prepping on Sunday afternoon makes it easier on busy lunchbreaks or tired evenings to reach for something already cooked that is healthy vs ordering a greasy pizza.

2. Spending money on blackout curtains blocks the light to allow easier and better sleep.

3. Knowing yourself enough to join a gym with an accountability buddy so you actually exercise daily.

4. Download 10 minute meditation apps that are so easy you can take a moment to connect to your breath, start becoming aware of your stress triggers, and start becoming less of a jerk.

There are countless other tricks to save us from ourselves for health and wellness and they really do make it easier not to fall into the typical traps of self sabotage.

However, when it comes to a healthy social life there is little to be found in advice from the establishment of science and health care. Industry has stepped in and created "social media" to fill the gap. Is this actually helpful?

According to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, a study showed that the more time young adults spent on social media, the more likely they were to have problems sleeping an