Nicola Gunby, a 30-year-old entrepreneur, longed for a community of friends when she moved to London after the pandemic, but was shocked to find herself isolated in one of the biggest cities in the world.

Gunby, the co-founder of social and community networking app Cliq, hails from Nottingham in the U.K. and settled in London with her partner Jason Iliffe in 2021 after a stint in Australia.

Gunby and Iliffe were expecting to become embedded in the city’s social scene but soon found that meeting people was a struggle.

“How can you be in a city of millions of people but struggle to find true connection?” Gunby said. “It felt really impossible.”

Gunby tried everything. She attended networking events for female founders but found them too corporate. She even turned to apps like Bumble BFF, which she found to be “super transactional,” while Facebook groups were “so outdated.”

Gunby and IIiffe soon realized that the issue was far bigger than themselves and started musing over the idea of a social networking platform that brought people together in real life.

After drawing up some plans, they hired an app agency to build the barebones of an app and trialed it at universities.

Cliq, which was founded in February 2023, is described as an antidote to stereotypical social media platforms. Users can join communities focused on their interests and hobbies which can range from running, reading, Pilates, and faith-based groups.

The purpose of the communities is to arrange events so users can meet up in person and kindle friendships.

“It’s just making it easy to meet people in an authentic way … and teaching people to put their phone down, which is very difficult in this day and age when our screen time is so high and we’re so addicted to our phones,” said Gunby.

Since its launch, Cliq has raised £528,900 ($646,000) in funding and built a base of 100,000 users worldwide, with the U.S., Australia and Bali its main markets outside of the U.K.

The creation of Cliq comes as people search for connections amid what’s been described as a “loneliness epidemic.”

Gallup’s global loneliness poll, which collected data in 2023, showed that one in five people surveyed worldwide felt lonely “a lot of the day.” The same demographic of people were more likely to say that they felt anger or physical pain.

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s 2023 report “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” highlighted that loneliness is becoming a growing issue across generations and is a great risk to physical health contributing to things like dementia, stroke, or even premature death.

“It’s 100% a global issue,” Gunby explained. “The pandemic made us a lot more introverted as people … I think it made a lot of people a little bit scared to socialize again.

“That’s coming out of the works now, and people are wanting that in real life, connection,” she added.

The loneliness issue has also been exacerbated by technology and social media, according to Gunby.

“We feel so connected through our phones that we can see what our friends or influencers are doing constantly, but many of these people we don’t actually see, so we feel like we’re connected on the surface level, but when we look deeper down, we’re actually really not,” she said.

“The loneliness crisis is going up and up and up, and so many people are looking for connection, but none of the apps are doing anything to solve this.”

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently told “The Oprah Podcast” that one solution to loneliness is not to focus more on ourselves, but to pay attention to the world outside us by investing in three things: relationships, service and community.

“When we focus on connecting to something bigger than ourselves, that’s actually when we find joy,” he told Oprah Winfrey in a January episode of her podcast.

Gunby said the reason why Cliq works is because its communities operate around a shared interest and purpose. She described a distinction between social networking apps and social media apps.

A social networking app is less about consuming content and more about connecting with friends, Gunby said, citing the old days of Facebook as an example of this.

“The younger generation, and we speak to a lot of them … they’ve never really experienced what a true social network is,” she said. “Every single platform since then has been social media, so Instagram, TikTok, for example. We’re just sat consuming. We’re scrolling. We’re addicted to our phones.”

“We’re not actually socializing with anyone, and it’s taking away that face-to-face interaction,” she added.

Cliq, she said, is the middle ground between the “nice, social media feel,” and making it easy to meet people.

“That’s why we wanted to create a hybrid model of: you connect with people online before you connect offline,” she said.

She pointed out that social events can often be difficult for more introverted personalities and it can be awkward to strike up a conversation with a random person when you have nothing in common. With Cliq, the activity is the common interest, she added.

“So you go to a run club as a social, maybe you’re really shy and you don’t want to open up, but you could talk about the run. You go to a book club. Maybe I don’t want to speak about myself, but you talk about the book,” Gunby said.

“If you’ve got that common interest with someone, or you’ve done that activity, or it’s the community’s focus around something, you have something to open with.”

We’ve all dealt with emotionally immature people: They get defensive at the slightest criticism, they constantly deflect blame, and then they try to guilt you into feeling sorry for them.

Emotional immaturity is a growing problem, and whether it’s in your personal or professional life, communicating with them can be a real struggle.

As experts on the psychology of communication, we know that if you’re not careful, you can also easily run the risk of seeming emotionally immature to others. Why? A lot of us automatically use certain emotionally immature phrases without even thinking about it.

Here’s a list of the most common ones to avoid:

People who are emotionally immature often won’t take responsibility for their own actions when something goes wrong. So what do they do? They extricate themselves from situations by immediately stating that they are not to blame. 

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An emotionally immature person will do everything in their power to not take responsibility for their actions, and a common tactic is to make it seem like you, or literally anyone else, is in the wrong — not them.

You can almost imagine a little kid saying this one. This phrase is a way for them to avoid any true accountability or genuine communication with the person they are engaging with.

This is a combo of gaslighting — trying to make others believe a false reality — and shifting the blame again. The message they’re sending: You’re the problem, not me. Another toxic phrase in this vein is “you’re being too sensitive.”

People use that simple “whatever,” often with a shrug, to say, “I’m done discussing this.” It’s an emotionally immature method to shut down the paths of communication and figuratively walk away from any further discussion.

Here we go again with the gaslighting. People who are emotionally immature rewrite reality, both for themselves and, possibly more importantly, for others. When someone says something like this, they’re typically trying to evade responsibility and make you think something else happened.

In this case, emotionally immature people walk away from any complicated issue by throwing it onto someone else and dismissing any and all responsibility. It’s the perfect example of transference.

Another example of invalidating other people, and one that is used in both personal and professional relationships. By saying phrases like this, an emotionally immature person is dismissing the other person’s concerns and opinions, and belittling their reaction.

Yes, it’s usually best to focus on the future. But emotionally immature people will often accuse people who bring up their mistakes of harping on the past. They don’t want to learn from their mistakes and they don’t want an honest discussion about whatever is happening. They want to move on without addressing the issue.

Here’s an example of how emotionally immature people passive-aggressively avoid taking responsibility for what they say. It might sound like they’re trying to smooth things over, but it’s actually more of a way of critiquing someone, then distancing themselves from their statement. 

Emotionally immature people often use broad generalizations. Instead of engaging in constructive honest conversation or using specific examples, they will issue an accusatory blanket statement and use that to avoid any further discussion. 

If there’s one phrase that really sounds like a kid said it, it’s this one. How many of us used “but all the kids are doing it” argument trying — usually in vain — to get our parents to allow us to do something? But emotionally immature adults use it, too.

They’ll pull out the time-honored “everyone’s doing it” argument as a justification for something they want to do or already have done. Of course, they’re blameless if they’ve done something wrong, they were just going along with the crowd, after all.

Kathy and Ross Petras are the brother-and-sister co-authors of the New York Times bestseller You’re Saying It Wrong, along with other popular language books, and co-hosts of the award-winning NPR syndicated radio show and podcast ”You’re Saying It Wrong.” They’ve also been featured in media outlets including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and Harvard Business Review. Follow them on Bluesky.

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Few things say “luxury” like private jet travel. 

Whether you have your own plane or pay thousands of dollars per hour for access to a private aircraft through a service like Flexjet, the price of avoiding traveling with the masses is steep.

Kenn Ricci has turned the luxury of flying private into a successful entrepreneurial career. Once a pilot himself, Ricci spent years flying A-listers like Elton John and Bruce Springsteen and even piloted Bill Clinton’s plane during his presidential campaign.

As the chairman of Flexjet, the nation’s second-largest commercial private jet operator, Ricci has made it his mission to make sure that the very wealthy are getting their money’s worth when they step onto one of the 600 to 900 flights his company operates daily.

“Why do people pay $80,000 to go to London when they could fly first class or premiere for $12,000 or $15,000?” he asks. 

The answer, Ricci says, is because there’s one thing that the very-wealthy value above all else: Time. 

While the privacy, luxury and convenience of private air travel is a huge draw, Ricci says the real selling point is the peace of mind that tens of thousands of dollars can buy you on your trip. 

“Where can you buy time? Where can you buy less stress?” he says. “That’s what they’re really paying for.”

Even flying first class, travelers have to deal with airport traffic and TSA lines. When they get to their gate, their flight could experience a delay or be canceled outright. 

When you’re paying up to $10,000 per hour flying private, Ricci says, that stress is taken off of your plate. 

“When our plane breaks, or if the weather’s bad, we feel bad for the customer. We find alternatives. We solve their problem,” he says. “If you’re on an airline and the plane is canceled, you have to solve your own problem. They’re paying for the removal of the hassle and for the gaining of time.” 

“We want your problem solved,” he adds. “I’ll say ‘What will make you happy? Whatever you want, we’ll do that for you.’”

Sometimes that problem solving means finding alternative travel arrangements. For particularly disgruntled customers, that might mean Flexjet offers to comp the hefty price tag of their trip as an apology for the inconvenience. 

“This is what customers like about us: If we fail you, we’re apologetic,” he says. “We didn’t meet the standard, we didn’t meet your expectation. So they’re getting attention, and that makes the travel experience different than when you have to slog your way through it.”

Still, Ricci doesn’t recommend that his clients break the bank to fly private no matter what. In fact, he often tells customers that they should be spending no more than 10% of their discretionary income on his offerings.

“I pride myself on not making you do something that wouldn’t be in your interest,” he says. “If you have disposable income of a million dollars, you’re nuts if you’re spending more than $100,000 a year on this asset.” 

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Mindlessly scrolling through apps. Drinking too much coffee. Biting your nails.

If you’ve ever tried to quit a bad habit cold turkey, or replace it with another action, you probably know that neither method gives you the same degree of satisfaction. Neuroscientist and psychiatrist Judson Brewer has a strategy for you to try instead: Train your brain to no longer see the value in doing the thing you once loved.

“When we become disenchanted with unhelpful behaviors or addictions our brain, it leaves this space in our brain where it says, ‘OK, give me something else,’” Brewer, the director of research and innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center, said on an episode of the “10% Happier” podcast that aired last week.

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The advice is derived from Brewer’s own 10-plus years of studying and practicing Buddhist mindfulness, he said. Mindfulness practices have been linked to higher self-compassion, life satisfaction and an overall sense of well-being, studies show.

You can retrain your brain to devalue a specific habit in three steps, said Brewer:

1. Recognize your bad habit loops

This first step is straightforward: Identify the behavior you want to change and, slightly trickier, what causes it. Maybe you procrastinate more when you’re stressed, for example, or your shopping habit rears its head more frequently when you’re bored.

2. Ask yourself, ‘What am I getting from this?’

Don’t just think about your bad habit. Really closely evaluate how you feel when you’re doing it, Brewer said: Chances are good that it has more consequences than rewards, in ways you haven’t consciously thought about before.

Brewer tested this theory firsthand with chronic smokers, he said in a 2015 TED Talk. The majority of his test group had previously tried to quit, and failed, six times on average. “Go ahead and smoke. Just be really curious about what it’s like when you do,” Brewer told the participants.

Afterward, Brewer recounted, one of the smokers’ feedback was: “Mindful smoking: smells like stinky cheese and tastes like chemicals. Yuck!”

“She knew cognitively that smoking was bad for her. What she discovered just by being curiously aware when she smoked was that smoking tastes like s—,” Brewer said. “She moved from knowledge to wisdom … from knowing in her head that smoking was bad for her to knowing it in her bones.”

3. Embrace the big-picture reward

Most people fail to give up bad habits because they can’t find something that feels better, said Brewer. Their fidget toy didn’t compare to skin-picking. Reading a book didn’t beat binging on TV shows.

You can regain cognitive control by exercising some more curiosity over why you’re so drawn to the habit you want to ditch, Brewer said in his TED Talk. The more you can think about your habits in a big-picture way — why you’re feeling this craving, how your body and mind respond to it — the more effectively you’ll be able to guide your own actions and ditch your automatic response, he said.

Such mindfulness is more likely to lead to long-term changed behavior than simply cutting yourself off from your guilty pleasure, he added.

“That’s not how we change behavior. That’s not how habits change,” said Brewer. “Even if we could dopamine fast, which you can’t really do, it’s not going to affect anything except make somebody miserable because they’re depriving themselves of all these things that they were addicted to.”

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When we think of successful kids, many of us picture straight-A students, sports trophies, and college acceptance letters.

But after years of studying over 200 parent-child relationships, I’ve found that true success is more about raising kids who are confident, emotionally secure, and deeply connected to themselves and the world around them.

The parents who really understood this embraced sometimes unconventional strategies that prioritized curiosity, a love for learning, and emotional intelligence over societal expectations.

Here are nine things they did differently early on:

Instead of worrying so much about how their kids reacted to challenging situations, these parents understood that their behavior would influence their child’s level of resilience. They modeled mental and emotional strength by being mindful of how they managed their stress in front of their kids.

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Instead, they encouraged reflection with “you should be so proud of yourself” or “you worked very hard on this — how does it feel?”

While well-meaning, “good job” can create reliance on external approval. These parents focused on fostering intrinsic motivation, helping their child take pride in their own achievements.

Through quality time, active listening, and shared experiences, they made their kids feel valued, safe, and understood. This also fostered the child’s confidence to take risks and thrive.

They avoided punishment, knowing it builds resentment and disconnection, not skills. Instead, they let natural consequences teach lessons.

For instance, if a child forgot to do their homework, they faced explaining it to their teacher — a chance to learn responsibility and problem-solving. This approach built accountability and resilience.

Instead of offering rewards for good grades, they focused on cultivating a love for learning. Whether their child excelled or struggled, they kept the focus on growth and made it clear that grades didn’t define their worth.

They encouraged their kids to ask “why” and “how,” rather than simply accepting the “right” answer. This fostered curiosity and gave their child the confidence to challenge the status quo — key traits of future leaders.

Whether solving a math problem or explaining a favorite game, these moments gave kids a sense of importance. By stepping back and letting their child take the lead, these parents showed respect for their child’s abilities and nurtured their self-esteem.

Reading wasn’t a chore — it was woven into daily life. Whether picture books before bedtime or novels on lazy afternoons, reading became a natural and enjoyable part of their world, fostering creativity and a lifelong love for learning.

They treated emotions as valuable, not something to fix or avoid. When their child was upset after losing a game, for example, they might have said, “I can see how much this matters to you. It’s hard to lose something you care about.” This simple validation helped their child process emotions and build resilience.

Reem Raouda is a parenting coach, mother, and creator of BOUND, a parent-child connection journal designed to nurture emotional intelligence and self-worth. She is also the founder of Connected Discipline Method. Through her coaching and courses — including Power Struggles No More — she has helped hundreds of families foster connection and harmony. Follow her on Instagram.

Want to up your AI skills and be more productive? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Use AI to Be More Successful at Work. Expert instructors will teach you how to get started, practical uses, tips for effective prompt-writing, and mistakes to avoid. Sign up now and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+ taxes and fees) through February 11, 2025.