Put a photo of yourself as a little kid—preferably one where you’re laughing and free—inside your medicine cabinet. Each time you open your medicine cabinet, think of three things you’re grateful for.
Wrap a ribbon around your toothbrush to remind yourself to be grateful for three things each time you brush your teeth.
Let’s Talk About Labels
As humans, we are natural storytellers. We especially tell ourselves stories.
We have spent thousands of years organizing ourselves into simple labels so we can better understand the wildly complex environment we live in. We have figured out how to view one another by seeing nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, political orientation, education, religion, age group, and on and on.
We have also labeled ourselves and others through our behaviors and attitudes—social, antisocial, honest, kind, liar, manipulative, gentle, aggressive, funny, serious, etc.
Labels work best when we use them to better understand ourselves as we relate to one another. For example, when my friend Amber told me that she connects better one-on-one than in larger groups, she wasn’t separating herself—she was giving me clues in order to better connect with her. Knowing this, I didn’t label her as antisocial. In fact, just the opposite! But too often we use labels not to connect, but to separate. We misunderstand them, and they make us more isolated, anxious, and stressed than before we took on the label.
When I hear terms like “introvert” and “extrovert” (Jung, I’m looking at you!), I cringe. It’s such an oversimplification of who we are—it feels like a one-size-fits-all statement. We subscribe to these labels as truths without any further inquiry and then simply “band together” under one label and stop actually listening to one another (hello, politics and religion). We are far more complex and interesting than any label!
Here’s what I do know: Every single human is uniquely different, and at each moment we feel something different. It’s unfair to label ourselves as one certain type of person, because it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. I may be feeling annoyed or happy or irrational on the day I take a personality test, and then I’m forever labeled as that kind of person, so I become that person. In addition, I may have some behaviors and triggers that only come out under certain circumstances and are not present in many, or even most, parts of my life.
The important thing to note here is that if you do feel compelled to label yourself as a certain “type” of person, remember that the goals for labeling are to better understand ourselves as we relate to one another—not to better represent yourself, not to better understand someone else, and not to give yourself an “out” because there’s something you just don’t like doing.
Let’s label to connect with one another, not label to separate!
Jung himself said that “there is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in a lunatic asylum.”
All this is to say we all exist on a spectrum between the two polarities. I call this spectrum Metavert. We are all Metaverts.
Remember: Life is not as absolute as we often make it.
Be gently aware of your self-labeling and your labeling of others and ask yourself if it's separating or connecting you to others.
Let’s Talk About Bingeing
As animals, humans are wired to binge when given the opportunity. “Consume as much as you can in case there’s no more tomorrow!” Marketers and advertisers have quickly figured this out and push us to binge as often and as much as possible. We binge eat sugar, meat, fat, and carbs, taxing our bodies and shortening our lives; we binge drink alcohol, causing both physical and emotional repercussions; we binge on the internet, spending an average of ten hours per day on screens swiping and scrolling*; we binge shop for “more stuff!” polluting our planet; and binge watch eight episodes in a row—and then wonder why we are so stressed, anxious, lethargic, or depressed!
When I was in college, I really felt the pressure to drink. I hated it and loved it at the same time. Drinking made me feel less insecure, but I was often out of control, on edge, and overly emotional the next day. Then getting drunk became what we did almost every weekend. Why did everything have to revolve around alcohol? I became a different version of myself and attracted the wrong friends.
Ultimately, bingeing never feels good.
It never ends well.
It’s numbing and anxiety inducing.
*Nielsen Total Audience Report, Q1 2016.
Have you heard about the “Attention Economy”? It’s where companies fight for our attention. The more content we binge on, the more money these companies make, so they’re motivated to keep us glued to our phones and computers. The ethos of the “greater whole” and “community first” is trumped by profit interests and wanting us to watch more videos, click on more baity headlines, and share it with our friends. Bingeing is profitable!
Let’s Talk About Your Human Machine
Now let’s consider our amazing human machines (aka our bodies), which work so hard to keep us alive, yet we don’t always pay attention to them. Sometimes when you’re feeling all the emotional things, it’s really nothing more than you’re hungry, you haven’t slept, you have seasonal affective disorder and need some vitamin D, you’re PMS-ing, you’re cold, you’re stressed at work with too much on your plate, etc. We are different people every day based on a host of variables, and our emotional well-being is deeply intertwined with our physical body. Let’s notice how our magical machine is feeling and how we’re treating it before we start calling ourselves names, telling stories, and labeling and isolating ourselves.
Be gently aware of how bingeing plays a role in your life and write down all the areas in which you think you may binge. Ask yourself how it’s affecting your emotional well-being and your relationships.
Be gently aware of how your magical human machine is doing and make a habit of checking in with your physical self.
Sleepy
Hungry
PMS-ing
Stressing
Feeling cold/hot
other
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What’s in Your Backpack?
Now imagine your colorful rainbow—your history, Egos, Mean Girls, Soul Sisters, labels, bingeing—all tucked into an imaginary backpack that you wear every day. Then imagine that every person walking down the street has their own backpack filled with their history, their emotional stuff that makes them uniquely them. What if, when someone is mean or comes across as harsh or abrasive, we considered “What’s in their backpack?” We could learn about their colorful rainbow instead of judging them and getting upset or frustrated. I believe we would be more loving, more empathetic, and more gently aware.
Our Gentle Awareness Prepares Us to Be Intentional
All the exercises we’ve done so far on Gentle Self-Awareness and observing our colorful spectrum are helping us learn about ourselves so that we become more comfortable and confident with who we are. Our gentle recognition makes us more Intentional. Intention is about being thoughtful and purposeful about what you want.
Take your time with this chapter and all the things you’re discovering about yourself. When you see and interact with others this week, imagine that they all have Green and Red Egos sitting on their shoulders talking to them and that they’re trying to decide whether to sit with the Mean Girls or the Soul Sisters in their mind’s cafeteria. Our gentle awareness makes us more empathetic to ourselves and to each other.
Gently process it, observe it, and then let’s move on.
When you are intentional, the world unlocks in your favor.
chapter 3
Intention
Write It Down and Dig Deep
Now that we are gently self-aware of our colorful rainbow, we’re going to dig deep and get i
ntentional.
Intention is about being thoughtful and purposeful about what we want.
Once we become more clear about what we’re really interested in and actually want, we can Go OUT and create our dream community.
First Let’s Assess Our Values, Interests, and Abilities (VIA)
Typically we do this kind of “assessment” around our Values, Interests, and Abilities (VIA) for our professional lives. When I first graduated from college and moved to New York City in 2001 (two months before 9/11), I got a job as an analyst at an investment bank on Wall Street. When I went through the interview process (and bought the only pantsuit I would ever own), I had to answer so many questionnaires and go through nine grueling interviews over the course of several months. They asked me brainteasers, probed about my life and my family, and asked what movies I liked to watch. We also went to many lunches and dinners with the other candidates to “get to know one another.” Before I got an offer, the human resources department did a full background check, and scrutinized me for culture fit, analytical thinking, and professionalism (boy, did I fool them on that one!). While it was both exhilarating and as invasive as a proctology exam, I was impressed by the thoroughness.
Then I began thinking: Why don’t we conduct similar HR practices for our personal lives?
Why don’t we ask ourselves if our friends are a “good fit” for us based on our personal values, interests, and abilities.
Radha’s VIA, 2017
And why not ask what VIAs we can offer our community? When I finally did this exercise through the lens of my friendships and community at age thirty, I realized that the friends I was hanging out with in my twenties did not align with my personal VIA. Their interests were beer, football, and dating (totally get it!), while mine were dancing, music festivals, dinner parties, painting, and dreaming up my next big idea. They liked to plan; I loved spontaneous adventures. They liked to go to the same place every weekend and have a “local joint,” while I wanted to explore and do something totally different every weekend. They loved the stability of their full-time jobs, and I wanted the excitement of starting my own business. As a result, I felt out of sync and didn’t feel a strong sense of belonging when I was with them. It was nobody’s fault! I was just going along for the ride and was never intentional about my community.
If we don’t take the time to do a Personal VIA assessment for ourselves, we may end up in relationships that deplete us and in misaligned communities that don’t serve us.
Fill out your Personal VIA. See the following pages for examples of values, interests, and abilities. Take your time with this. Knowing your true VIA is vital to finding and creating your dream community.
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Values
Dig deep and ask yourself what matters to you. What is truly important in your life? Are success, wealth, and recognition important to you? Love, trust, and leadership? Spirituality, balance, and autonomy? There are no wrong answers. Values are the lens through which you judge what’s important. They help you determine your “Personal Core Values,” or your non-negotiables in life, and how you want to spend your precious time.
Examples of values
Yours may not be on this list, so take your time and dig deep!
achievement
authenticity
boldness
compassion
creativity
curiosity
determination
fairness
faith
fame
fun
growth
happiness
humor
Inner Harmony
kindness
knowledge
leadership
learning
loyalty
meaningful work
patience
popularity
recognition
religion
reputation
respect
silliness
spirituality
stability
peace
thoughtfulness
wealth
wisdom
Interests
Values are more intrinsic—part of the nature of who you are as a person—whereas interests are more tangible. Think about everything that interests you. Here are some suggestions:
painting
hiking
yoga
video games
start-ups
stock market
traveling
learning new languages
food
working out
chess
designing
blogging
surfing
self-improvement
photography
documentaries
dancing
building things
watching Disney movies
knitting
cooking
filmmaking
scuba diving
marine biology
earth sciences
recycling
community service
faith/church
skill sharing
music festivals
adventure travel
poetry
glassblowing
reading
writing
taking baths
homemaking
hosting dinners
meditation
playing music
space exploration
technology
artificial intelligence
What are you interested in? What are you passionate about?
Write these things down in your Interests circle. Name at least five interests, fifteen at most. Some people like to go deep on a few interests, while others like to dabble in many things.
Abilities
There can be quite a bit of overlap between interests and abilities, but this circle stands for all the skills you can bring to your community. Can you cook like a champ? Do you excel at organizing people? Do you make others laugh? Are you good at getting someone to see another perspective? Do you enjoy cleaning? We often take all of our abilities as humans for granted. Grabbing things with your opposable thumbs is an ability! An ability is often a skill you don’t think of as a skill. I have a friend who has a green thumb—every plant she cares for survives and thrives. My partner, Eli, loves cooking and always creates elaborate meals for our community, while I’d rather host (and eat!). My brother-in-law Andrew has spent years honing his conversation game. He’s candid about his social anxiety and believes that asking thoughtful questions opens people up and makes him and the other person feel more comfortable in a conversation. That’s a skill! What comes naturally to me is igniting new ideas, bringing people together, designing experiences, and connecting dots—but I didn’t realize these were “abilities” until I started my entrepreneurial journey.
So what are your skills and abilities? If you don’t think you have any, think again. Give it some thought. Consider the compliments or gratitude you’ve received for things you’ve done. It could be as simple as being prepared and showing up with something to share. Write them all down. Community is built on sharing our gifts and abilities with the greater whole. List what comes naturally to you as well as skills you’ve worked on over the years.
Every one of us has something to contribute, from emotional support to organizational skills and beyond.
The Three Columns
The morning after I left the sports bar that snowy January Saturday and decided to get intentional about my community, I sat down at my kitchen counter, hair disheveled, and grabbed my favorite Moleskine notebook
(you know, the one that makes you feel creative) and neatly drew out a three-column list. These three columns would become the beginning of my journey into a true community.
Column one became a list of everything I was looking for in a friend. I wanted friends who talked about ideas and not one another, who were ambitious game changers, who liked adventure and fun, who showed up and took care of one another, who went to the gym and took care of themselves, who were interesting and interested. I wanted friends who listened.
Column two featured all the qualities I didn’t want in a friend: shit-talkers, drama queens, negative Nancies, alcoholics, too-cool-for-schools, shoulder-shruggers, and lazies (you know what I mean!).
Column three, probably the most important column, was for all the qualities I needed to embody in order to attract the friends that I wanted—I needed to be a better listener, less of a workaholic, and more accountable, as well as less critical and more forgiving.
I had never done anything like this before—taken the time to write down what I was looking for in a friend. Who does that?! Up until then, I had stumbled into friend groups and fallen into communities. After all, that’s how it worked when we were in elementary school and high school. The person in our homeroom became our best friend. Proximity was everything. Growing up, I had never experienced a world in which we could actually choose our own ideal friends who served and inspired us. Or was I just never taught to think this was a possibility?
The next week I brought my Moleskine with me everywhere I went. I refined my three-column list while riding the subway, in between meetings, and on the elliptical at the gym.
It was cathartic and SO exciting. I had finally taken my life into my own hands. I was going to seek out my community and build it myself.
Belong Page 3