Welcome to episode 342 of Live Happy Now.

It's time for celebrating the holidays, and for many people, that means walking through a minefield of social gatherings.

I'm your host, Paula Phelps, and this week I'm joined by relationship and communication expert Rachel D'Alto, who you

might recognize from appearances on programs including Good Morning America, the Today Show, or one of her

popular TEDx talks. She's also the author of the new book, Relatable, How to Connect with

Anyone, Anywhere, Even If It Scares You. Rachel is joining me today to talk about how to navigate social settings in a post-pandemic

world and offer tips for easing social anxiety during the holidays and into the new year.

Rachel, welcome to live happy now.

Great to be here.

This is such a timely topic for us. It's actually a universal topic,

but it's particularly timely right now with the holidays coming up because we're going to talk

about relatability. And when we talk about relatability, or more importantly, when you talk about

relatability, what is it that you mean? When I talk about relatability, it's our ability to truly make connections with each other

and to inspire people to want to invest their energy in you.

Because I think it's a big distinction between someone being likable.

Likeable is like, I like that person.

Relatable is, you know, it's really, I can see myself in them.

I want to invest my

energy in getting to know them. So it's kind of that next level. And it seems like this is something that we should know. Because we grew up, we had friends, you know, we got along with people. So it almost feels like, oh, I should know how to do this, but yet a lot of us don't. And it's that's becoming more and more common.

Is that correct?

100%.

You know, it's, that's becoming more and more common.

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