Wild Love. A striking name for a workshop. The mind itself can run wild trying to work out what it’s about.

What is it? It’s a brilliant two-hour workshop I attended a few weeks back, on opening up the heart to connect to oneself and others in the room (for clarity, hugs were the extent of the physical contact in the room!).

It was great, powerful – and yet there was something so simple and natural about it.

A friend and I commented on how being at this workshop, in a Dublin yoga studio, was like being in a cocoon. A safe space where you could interact with, relate to and connect with people.

We both equally acknowledged the challenge of bringing this feeling into the world outside. In this fast-paced, head-focussed, technology-led world, the heart, with it’s innate yearning to connect and interact, can struggle to fit in.

I have a vision in my head right now. It’s of an embodied heart walking along a busy Dublin street. It seeks connection with passers-by. A hello, a glance. Any one of these simple, binding, ageless experiences that has connected humans for all time.

However everyone rushes by. Earphones in. On the phone. Nobody willing to slow down or look up. To connect for the briefest moment.

In this moment, their only connection is to 4G.

If the world could talk to us would it say that it is happy? I suspect it might say:

“Arrah, I’m unsettled by what I see. Everyone’s so busy. I’d like people to slow down. I tried to design things where people took time for one another. Connected with each other. It seems to me, from what I see today, that there’s an opportunity to come back to that.”

There is clearly an opportunity for greater connection. It is estimated that approximately 400,000 people in Ireland suffer from loneliness. The British Government now has a Minister for Loneliness. Loneliness has been my biggest challenge (bigger than financial uncertainty) going from employee in a big company to self-employed.

What can we do to create connection in the world?

I feel that there’s a simple starting point. It comes in the form of ten words.

Please. Thank you. Sorry. How are you? I love you.

These ten words sincerely spoken, or written, are at the heart of connection. They can brighten the day of a recipient. And warm the heart of giver and receiver alike.

The Iphone 8 retails at around €700. These 10 words are free to use. And they connect as powerfully as 5G.

If the imagined quote above is in anyway a true representation of what the world would say to us, surely we can help the world out through by using these ten words as much as possible. And in doing so we bring ourselves back to the heart of humanity. Connection with ourselves and others.

How can you use these ten words this week to give the world a helping hand?