Sermon Illustrations
Greeting Neighbors Maximizes Your Wellbeing
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, haven’t you heard? Mister Rogers said so—and now his simple advice on how to be a good person has been backed by sophisticated polling data. A recent Gallup poll on health and well-being showed that saying hello to more than one neighbor correlated with greater self-perception of well-being.
Averaged across five dimensions that included career, communal, physical, financial, and social well-being, the increase which greeting a neighbor had led to around a two-point increase on a scale of 0-100 up until the sixth neighbor, at which point further greetings had no measured impact.
Men were more likely to greet neighbors than women, as were people with children under the age of 18 in the household, and people with a household income of more than $120k a year. Individuals aged 40 to 65+ were the most common greeters of neighbors, and 27% of the participants greeted five neighbors or more in a day.
The report continued, “Notably, greeting neighbors is also linked to career wellbeing (liking what you do each day), physical wellbeing (having energy to get things done), and financial wellbeing (managing your money well).”