Belong

by Radha Agrawal

  When I did my three columns, the last column really opened my eyes to my own behaviors and patterns. I was attracting the wrong friends because I wasn’t fully showing up as myself. It all came down to the energy I was putting out into the world and what it was sending back to me.

  Please visit Workman.com to download this page featured in the print book.

  Let’s start with column one:

  This is where you write down every single quality you’re looking for in a friend or in your community. Pull some words from your Values circle. It can be any quality you want: funny, health-conscious, creative, passionate, kind, silly, creative, smart, likes the outdoors, exercises, loves dancing, talks about big ideas, asks questions, says “Yes!” with an exclamation point, likes electronic music, wears striped socks, enjoys avocados, watches documentaries. Write it ALL down. You can create this list for your romantic partner too, but let’s go through this exercise through the lens of what you want in a friend or community first. It’s not always the same! Even if you’re married or in a serious relationship, community is still vital for your happiness!

  On to column two:

  This is for listing all the qualities you’re NOT looking for in a friend or community. This could be: spends all weekend watching sports, is a couch potato, hurts people’s feelings, a shoulder-shrugger, shit-talker, negative Nelly, jealous, envious, angry person, binge-drinker, bad listener. It can also include things that aren’t necessarily bad, but just aren’t for you, such as someone who’s not self-aware, or wants to hang back and comment instead of participate.

  Column three is the one that can really change your life:

  This includes all the qualities you want to embody in order to attract the friends that you want. This is your time to be gently honest with yourself about how you’re showing up. Are you a shit-talker? A workaholic? A bad listener? Quick to anger? Do you troll the internet? Are you lazy or selfish or bossy? Do you hang out with the Mean Girls a lot? It’s OK! We’ve all been there. I didn’t realize how flaky I was until I was named “Most likely to triple book” at our annual holiday party. #wakeupcall

  Here are some examples for column three: “I want to be a better listener; I want to show up fully at get-togethers and not be on my phone; I want to relax on the booze because I get drunk too fast; I want to walk past the Mean Girls and be less negative and judgmental; I want to be less of a workaholic and not cancel on my friends; I want to be more empathetic; I want to be more patient; I want to add more value to my relationships; I want to work out more and feel better about myself.”

  Use “I want” statements when you’re writing your list down instead of “I need to.” These are qualities you’re intentionally seeking out. You don’t need to be this way. You’re choosing to go down this path—and you will be revisiting these qualities as your Values, Interests, and Abilities evolve too—what you’re interested in today may be totally different a few years from now. Give yourself room to grow!

  Sit with your VIA (Values, Interests, Abilities) and your three columns and gently observe how you feel about them. We will be coming back to this later on in the book. If you’re open to sharing (it can be anonymous), snap a pic and tag @love.radha and #belongbook.

  Once you truly understand that you are just beautiful energy wrapped in are just beautiful energy wrapped in human form, your fear and “otherness” will disappear and you will experience deep belonging and fellowship.

  chapter 4

  Energy

  Set the Temperature, Why FYFs Are Friend Magnets, and How to Release Your Natural D.O.S.E.

  I realized a long time ago that energy, enthusiasm, and excitement matter. Really matter. Good people want to hang out, work, travel, and do business with people who use exclamation points (literally or metaphorically) and who say “F*ck yeah! I’m IN!” to life. Positive energy is contagious. Shoulder-shruggers are often left behind.

  Every day of our lives we absorb, mirror, and emit energy all around us. As evolved animals, it’s our most potent form of communication. I spent my twenties unaware of how much I was mirroring and absorbing other people’s energies, and when I turned thirty, I looked at myself in the mirror and didn’t recognize the person I saw.My energy was muted, my fire was dim. Our energy defines us, and the people we surround ourselves with help shape our energy. Our romantic partners, work colleagues, and friends, and outside forces like the news and politics—even the barista down the street—can affect our energy every day. It’s either energizing or depleting. How we take care of our bodies, our incredible “human meat suits” (as my friend Mark likes to call our human form), including what we eat, how much we exercise, and how much we sleep, affects our energy levels too.

  Energy of Meeting for the First Time

  Energy is felt the moment we meet another person. Our eyes and our demeanor do the talking for us. It’s our very first impression. How we look or dress matters far less than the energy we emit to the world.

  Over the last several years, I’ve sat down with leadership coaches, CEOs, psychologists, politicians, matchmakers, professors, yoga teachers, athletic coaches, energy healers, and musicians to learn about their practices, and each expert said, unsolicited and with certainty, that the main characteristic they look for in any relationship is energy—they just had different words for it:

  Vibration Spark Spirit Attitude Presence

  All these conversations confirmed for me that energy is the most potent human attribute available to us, and we need to pay close attention to it. As a Community Architect, understanding and curating energy is my most valuable skill.

  Energy defines how we feel and how others perceive us more than any other quality. It powerfully shapes community and our sense of belonging. My Indian father calls it “wibes” (“vibes”). The first thing he would always say when he met any new love interest that my sisters and I brought home was “he has good wibes” or “bad wibes.” Then his eyes would flash in either a friendly or scary way and we knew immediately how the weekend was going to go. Begrudgingly, I’ll admit he was most often right.

  Energy is the invisible backbone of our lives. It controls the way we see the world, and how others perceive us. It quietly shapes our daily existence. It also controls our physical health—when we’re stressed, hurt, or angry we often become physically rigid; we forget to breathe and heal more slowly compared to when our energy is positive and happy, our muscles are relaxed, and we breathe easily.

  Most days we fluctuate between high energy and low energy based on a host of variables—physical conditions (health, fitness, nutrition, sleep), emotional conditions (our current relationships, how we were raised), seasonal and weather conditions, or time of day.

  Take a moment to gently recognize how much your Energy Meter fluctuates throughout your day.

  Do you wish you had more energy? Do you wish you could relax more? How are you taking care of yourself? Are you exercising? Are you eating well?

  Take some time to think about how full or empty your tank is most days and what you’re doing to energize yourself.

  Energy is our most important internal and external force field to monitor every single day. It starts from deep within our cells and radiates out through our eyes, our pores, our gestures, our speech, our smile, our yells, screams, and every expression and emotion in between. Energy comes in all shapes.

  Your energy is felt by those around you, and it is within your power to control and change it at any given moment with your thoughts and actions.

  Lame Energy

  While our energy is in our control, it takes awareness to change it. Every day we are pushed and tricked by marketers and advertisers to pour our energy toward what I call the Look-at-Me-Economy, or LAME (let’s call a spade a spade, folks), where we’re taught that “likes” and “followers” are more valuable than human-to-human interactions. Billions of dollars are spent every yea
r to understand human psychology and ways to keep us glued to our devices.

  Cycle of Ding Addiction

  Road to Isolation

  We’ve become addicted to the dopamine rush that fires from our brains every time we get a new “like” or notification.

  Dopamine is one of the “happy” brain chemicals that releases when you feel pleasure due to a reward—imagine a slot machine in Vegas and the excitement you feel when you’re pulling the handle in anticipation of three sevens. It’s the same brain chemical that gets released when you hear a ding from your phone or an app in anticipation of a new message—and boy is it addictive. Because we’re becoming increasingly addicted to the dopamine hits we get from our phones, we’re becoming less interested in pursuing deeper relationships (which ultimately make us happier) in favor of surface-level ones that help us gain more followers to feed our “ding addiction.” It’s a vicious cycle led by app developers, marketers, and advertisers, and one we have to actively (NOT gently!) get out of.

  Axis of Energy

  Now that you have a clear understanding of the vital importance of energy, write down a list of everyone you currently spend time with. Organize your list by school, work, family, friends, romantic relationships, sports teams, and anyone else you see frequently.

  We are going to assess your energy and the energy of those you surround yourself with on the graph on the following page. I call it your Axis of Energy. Once you’ve organized your list, go through each of the axes on the graph and start plotting your chart. I like using different colors for different groups (i.e., a red pen for work colleagues, a blue pen for friends, a green pen for family, etc.).

  Energy Awareness

  Doing this exercise will help you identify your energy patterns. You may realize, “Wow! Everyone I surround myself with is super inauthentic and low energy! No wonder I’m so negative and low energy too!” or “I haven’t been focusing on self-care, so my energy is low and it’s making me negative and stressed,” or “I really want to set a goal for myself to focus on being more high energy and positive.” Once you have your list of people, you can place them on the axis. Here’s how . . .

  Axis of Energy

  © 2017 Radha Agrawal

  The x-axis, which runs left to right, represents how people affect you when you are with them. There are people who affect you negatively (toward the left) and positively (toward the right). That may change from day to day, but we’re looking for an overall feeling you get when you’re with them. You know what it feels like to be with someone who makes you feel good. That’s positive energy. You also probably know what negative energy feels like. It’s not always mean or bad—it can also mean hurt or scared energy.

  The y-axis, running up and down, is High and Low energy. This represents the kind of liveliness or vitality that people transmit. You know when someone is generally enthusiastic, interested, excited, ready for anything. That would be high energy. We naturally associate the term “low energy” with sluggishness and lack of enthusiasm, and that’s true to a degree. But in this case, it can also mean relaxed.

  For instance, you may have a friend you can always talk to, who will listen calmly, without interrupting, and thinks about her responses. She makes you feel calm and confident. You know she’s not “high energy,” so in this case, she’s low energy, but the good kind.

  Now, plot your people. Starting with the first name on your list, use the blue pen for friends (for example). One by one, think about whether this friend makes you feel positive or negative (and how much), and if they transmit high energy or low energy. When you’re trying to place someone, be conscious of your Red and Green Egos, and of the Mean Girls as well. Think about why you’re putting someone to the left or right of the center. No wrong answers, just conscious ones. Do this with different colors for different groups, each person represented by a colorful dot (use names if you’d like, but we’re looking for an overall impression, not one that’s people-specific). You should end up with a view of how your relationships fall on the spectrum of high and low, positive and negative.

  When you’re finished, you may realize, “My friends are the best, a mix of high and calm energy, all of them positive. I need to appreciate them more!” or “I really want to set a goal for myself to focus on being more high energy and positive, and I’m going to do that with the people who make it easier for me.” Regularly taking stock of your relationships and energy levels with this graph will allow you to be gently aware of who you’re spending your time with and how it’s affecting you. It’s a beautifully eye-opening exercise and will help you visualize your orbit of relationships as well as the energy you’re emitting and receiving.

  Plot your relationships on this graph using different colors for family, friends, and colleagues. Begin identifying a pattern. For example, do some of your friends bring you down while most of your colleagues bring you up? Vice versa? Ask yourself how the energy you surround yourself with affects you day to day and month to month.

  Please visit Workman.com to download this page featured in the print book.

  Emotional Frequency

  Have you ever met someone who checks all the boxes, who you should be best friends with, but you just don’t “click”? For so long I didn’t have the language for this, and as a result I was very black-and-white about all my relationships. Either we got along or we didn’t. If we didn’t “click,” that translated to “I don’t like this person” or “bad vibes.” Over the years, as I’ve worked on building communities, I’ve recognized that we need to pay close attention to what I call “emotional frequency.” A frequency is like a channel on a TV or radio station. Every human tunes in to different channels throughout their lives. Not everyone tunes in to the same channel at the same time. As I’m writing this, I’m on a plane flying from New York to LA, and I can see several screens; each seat with its own personal TV. I’m marveling at how every single screen has a different show, game, or movie on it. Kids are watching cartoons, moms are playing Candy Crush, teens are watching ESPN, and dozens of different movies are playing. Seeing all the diverse selections is a tangible reminder that everyone is tuned in to different frequencies. I like to picture everyone with a little antenna sticking out above their heads, tuning in to different channels. If we could see that we are all tuned to different channels, based on what’s in our backpacks, we would feel more understood and would judge one another less negatively. These days when I don’t click with someone, instead of going to a negative place, I can confidently say, “She’s a nice person. Super energetic and friendly! We’re just not on the same frequency!” It’s freeing.

  The expression “You are as good as the five closest friends you keep” is real, y’all.

  Refresh

  Now imagine that at every moment of every day, you can choose to reset and refresh your energy and start from a neutral place at the center of the graph. Before we drift into the negative quadrants, we can actively make a choice at any moment to refresh and reset our energy. I say refresh because when I think of that word I think of a nice hot (or cold) shower and that “ahhhh” feeling I get from cleaning off the grime of the day and starting anew. Here’s the thing: Refreshing doesn’t just have to be physical; it can be energetic too. You can be angry in one moment and choose to reset and refresh. You can be sad and anxious in another moment and then make a conscious effort to refresh. You can feel lethargic and lazy and take a walk and refresh. You can get into arguments with friends or loved ones and ask, “Can we refresh?”

  Let’s remember: We are not bound to any energetic feeling. At any given moment, we can forgive, gently acknowledge, and give ourselves and others permission to refresh.

  When you’re feeling energetically disorganized—upset, anxious, angry, hurt, tired, depressed, scared—make a conscious effort to refresh. You have a choice. Ask yourself at any given moment, “Why is my energy here? Is this where I want to
be? What’s behind all of this? Can I gently acknowledge this energy and let it move through me?” Once you ask yourself these questions, you can reset your energy in any way that works. I like to find a doorway and just walk through it thinking “Energy reset!” the way we would say “Do over!” when we were kids.

  Energy Refresh Practice

  Please visit Workman.com to download this page featured in the print book.

  How to Release Your D.O.S.E.

  Understanding your brain chemistry is vital to understanding how to protect, reset, and increase your energy. There are four main brain chemicals responsible for your happiness and energy levels—Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, and Endorphins. When I discovered that the acronym for these happy brain chemicals spelled out the word D.O.S.E., I almost fell out of my chair. I mean, right?! The dictionary defines dose as “a quantity of a medicine or drug taken or recommended to be taken at a particular time.” But what if we learned to get our daily D.O.S.E. naturally? It would be a Star Wars Jedi kind of D.O.S.E., because it’s our mind naturally showing us what we are capable of achieving without drugs or alcohol if we just focus on it.

  D.O.S.E. Circuit Training

  D

  Dopamine

  Activated by pleasure and reward

  Put your gym shoes on, listen to happy music, and go! Just the act of getting out the door will release dopamine. You’re getting sh*t done!