Quotes from Vivek Murthy

When we have emotional pain in our lives, we are going to seek to relieve that pain in some way.

Be very disciplined about dedicating some time - even if it is five minutes a day - to calling or talking to someone you love. That kind of consistency, even if it is just five minutes a day, helps to remind us that we have a well of connection in our lives.

Anchors are those people in your life who remind you of who you are - your values, aspirations, and worth - even when you forget. Keep them close and always let them know how much they mean to you.

We don't just want to eradicate illness. We want people to achieve their full potential.

We can experience an erosion of self-esteem when we're lonely, as we come to believe that it's because we're not likable or because something is broken inside of us. And that can just compound that loneliness further and further.

What defines loneliness is our internal comfort level.

When people tell you that you're less-than and that you don't matter and that you're inferior, you internalize some of that.

I trained in internal medicine, and I expected most of my time would be spent on diabetes or heart disease or cancer. What I didn't expect was that so many people I saw would be struggling with loneliness.

When I was training in medicine for example, there was a culture in medicine that strong people didn't need sleep, that the less you slept, the more you just powered through a tough call not on no sleep, the stronger you were. That is not helpful to have a culture that supports healthy practices like that.

We can work on sharpening our prescribing practices, working with clinicians to ensure we're treating pain safely and effectively.

Part of the reason people don't talk about their loneliness is that they feel they will be judged for it.

I have long believed that there are fundamentally two forces or emotions that drive our decisions - love and fear. Love has its many manifestations: compassion, gratitude, kindness, and joy. Fear often manifests in cynicism, anger, jealousy, and anxiety. I worry that many of our communities are being driven by fear.

If you use that time where you're alone in ways that bring you joy and peace, then that solitude can have a really positive effect on your life.

We will not solve the addiction problem in America if we don't address social connection.

I want to work with faith-based leaders to address the negative attitudes that are still too often associated with mental illness, attitudes that hold people back from getting the help that they need.

It turns out that our ability to connect with other people is driven by our ability to connect deeply with ourselves. And that can be just a few minutes sitting on your porch feeling the breeze against your face. That can be a few moments spent in meditation or in prayer or remembering three things you're grateful for.

There are several factors in modern society that contribute to loneliness. One is that we are more mobile than we have been in decades past, which is fantastic in many respects, but also leads to us to move away from communities that we grew up with and got to know over time.

We know that chronic loneliness has consequences. It certainly depresses our mood. And in terms of our health, people who struggle with loneliness also have an increased risk for cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, and anxiety. Loneliness is also associated with a shorter lifespan.

I think that if we want to create a healthier country, we need to empower more people to make changes in their lives. But we also have to empower them to help change their environment.

When it comes to our relationship with loneliness, specifically, it's important to understand how our relative introversion or extroversion informs our preference for social interaction.

If you're very introverted, you prefer to spend much of your time alone, and when you do connect, you'd rather get together with one or two close friends than face a crowd.

Loneliness can become a downward spiral.

We can't underestimate the power that we have as individuals to provide the support that people need to provide that transition from a place of pain to a place of possibility.

Well, the responsibility of the surgeon general is to make sure that the public has access to science and access to it in a way that is understandable and that is applicable to their everyday lives.