Participation at Home
“Home” feels like home because we put so much effort into building our bookshelves, cooking our meals, making our bed, cleaning our bathroom, and doing our laundry. We are emotionally invested in spaces and communities when we wholeheartedly participate in creating and nurturing them. When we do chores around the house, it makes us feel more connected to our family and household. So let’s reframe “annoying chores” for “participation and belonging”!
Participation at the Office
When Eli started working at his first job out of college, he created a fun Friday afternoon activity to bring the office together. For a simple game that needed only the conference room, he created charts with everyone’s name and had tournament-style rounds where his coworkers competed against one another, with made-up prizes for the weekly winners. From there, he organized the office soccer team, lacrosse team, and poker night, and even had custom shorts and jerseys made. He included everyone in his office, from his sixty-year-old bosses and managers to entry-level twenty-year-olds. It created a strong office culture and community, and everyone who participated felt more connected to the office and team. The great thing is that you don’t have to be the one creating and organizing if that’s not your thing. Just participate with an FYF attitude. When everyone participates, bonds strengthen.
Organized religions, the military, sports teams, and political and philanthropic organizations have figured this out and inspire participation through service and ritual. This creates deep loyalty and connection among their members. To feel connected to anything in life, participation is KEY.
Staggering STAT: Alex Sheen, founder of Because I said I would—a nonprofit focused on accountability and keeping one’s word—discovered that 75 percent of Americans did not volunteer a SINGLE HOUR to a nonprofit or civic organization in 2016. While we spend millions of collective hours on the internet each week, three out of four Americans have not made any time for community service or volunteerism in their lives. What would the world look like if every human participated in one day of service per year?
7.5 billion adults
× 8 hours in one day of service
60 billion hours of community service per year
It would make a difference, don’t you think? So let’s take a day off from our internet participation and offer it to the world instead!
Simple Ways to Participate in Making Your Community Better
Here are a few simple examples of ways our friends contribute and participate in our community and add value to our collective experience. See if any of these sound like you. If not, refer back to Chapter 3, look at your Interests and Abilities, and start thinking of ways you can participate and contribute! If everyone took the time to do something, imagine how much more fun and meaningful life would be!
• Make a playlist and share it with friends—My brother-in-law Andrew makes amazing monthly playlists for our community and shares them for everyone’s enjoyment. He spends hours every month creating these playlists. He loves discovering new music, so it’s equally fun for him to create them!
• Ask thoughtful questions—Andrew is also known for his question-asking game. He has specially tailored questions that get right into your backpack. And he’s just as good at listening!
• Bring instruments—Matisse and Vic bring instruments to most gatherings they show up to. They’ll do a full-out performance, or just provide a little accompaniment to bring up the mood and share their instruments with friends.
• Enhance the ambiance of a room—Brooke loves to add candles, blankets, and incense to make any room where she’s hosting friends more cozy. She also dims the lighting to create a more inviting atmosphere.
• Massage—Elliott has magic hands and will massage friends’ backs and hands (in a nonsexual way!). He gives amazing hugs and really contributes friendly energy to any room he’s in.
• Cook a meal and invite people over for dinner to get to know them better—Eli and Lilly are master chefs and will spend hours cooking delicious meals for our community. In turn, our friends support their efforts by helping to serve, clean, and do the dishes.
• Give the community something it needs—Gio loves music and is passionate about getting his community together to dance and connect. He loves a party with a good speaker system, but since they’re expensive to rent, he built speakers from scratch and keeps them available for his Washington, DC, community to borrow free of charge. The community supports him in maintaining the equipment by giving small donations whenever they can.
• ENROLL IN A CONFERENCE ON A TOPIC THAT INTERESTS YOU—Years ago, Miki told me about a conference called Summit Series where thousands of young, curious entrepreneurs gather. I went the following year and made many of my closest, longest-lasting friends.
• VOLUNTEER FOR A COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION—Catherine Hoke started an organization called Defy Ventures that takes incarcerated men, women, and youth, and transforms their hustle by mentoring and teaching them entrepreneurial skills. Anyone can volunteer! #inspired
Participate in one thing outside of your normal routine for the next four weeks. Narrow down the list of things you explored in your Exploratory Stage to activities and communities that you loved—or think you could love. Get your hands dirty and SHOW UP! See how it feels to get physically involved in something! Have the courage to participate in whatever piques your curiosity. Think about bringing something relevant and enjoyable to share—music and food are often appreciated. Check in with your VIA chart and contribute!
List three to five ways in which you can participate and contribute to the communities you’re interested in.
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Stages 3 and 4: Outer Core and Inner Core
This is where the magic happens.
At this point in your Four Stages of Community, you’ve gotten intentional, explored, participated, given energy, and shown up. You know when you meet a new friend who fills up your Energy Tank and who provides an Equal Energy Exchange. You feel that exhale of “I’m home.” This is someone who embodies the qualities you wrote down in Chapter 3. Their energy really matches your energy. You’re genuinely curious about them and feel their authentic curiosity about you. Your values are aligned, your interests are aligned, and you feel truly “seen” for your entire colorful rainbow. These are the relationships to really invest in and spend time showing up for. And chances are, they have a few friends who are like you too and can be your portal to amazing Outer Core and Inner Core Communities. Energy is your essential guide to belonging. You have to protect it but also be generous with it if you want to find real happiness and community.
You can’t feel that exhale of “I’m home” if someone lives on the left side of the Axis of Energy or if you’re on different frequencies. I have an 80/20 Rule. If 80 percent of the time I feel that exhale of “I’m home” and 20 percent of the time we’re on different frequencies, the friendship is worth continuing to invest in. When I’m on different frequencies or arguing more often than not, I have an honest conversation with myself about whether this friendship or relationship is still feeding me.
I’ve separated your Outer Core and Inner Core Communities into two stages because Outer Core encompasses the larger group of friends or community (fifty to one hundred community members) whose values and interests are similar to yours, and Inner Core represents the three to ten friends who are the closest and make you feel the most secure. I informally polled hundreds of community members and discovered that everyone had at least three and at most ten Inner Core Community members they felt significantly connected to at any given time. Think about what number would make you happy. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed that humans can comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships (Outer Core) and go deep with five friends (Inner Core).
The Inner and the Ou
ter Core
The lines between Outer Core and Inner Core can become blurred as we move between cities and jobs. Almost fifty-five million Americans are freelancers—35 percent of our workforce—and that number is only going up.* We grow closer to the friends we have access to—which changes often in many people’s lives as they change jobs and addresses.
*Upwork and the Freelancers Union, “Freelancing in America: 2016,” https://www.upwork.com/i/freelancing-in-america/2016.
Getting to this stage of connection may take six months to a year. Maybe more. Online connections don’t count! Don’t get discouraged! It’s supposed to take time to go through the stages. Reframe your feelings from “Why is it taking so long to find my people?” to “They’re out there waiting to be found so I’ll keep going to spaces and places that pique my curiosity!” The longer it takes, the more intentional you will get, the more you will cherish those friendships, and the more you will learn about yourself in the process. It may happen quickly too! Just keep getting Vulnerable, Intentional, and Courageous. I call it “getting VIC”—it’s victorious to be able to access our powerful human traits and gently notice when we are wearing our protective masks.
Whenever we interview our Community Catalysts (the Local Lead Producers) for Daybreaker, we do a full exploration of the city we’re in and interview dozens of candidates before making a decision. We then fly them to New York City and invite them to participate in creating a Daybreaker with us to get to know them better. We can discern pretty quickly if this is someone with whom we feel an Equal Energy Exchange. We look for whether they hang out with their Red or Green Egos and Mean Girls or Soul Sisters. When we feel that exhale of “I’m home” with that person, we get excited because we know they will likely be our Portal to a like-minded community in their city.
Let’s get into Portals!
A Portal is your gateway to an authentic community that shares your values and interests. Portals are found offline and are often the influencer’s influencer. A Portal is a human you actually meet and connect with in your Exploratory and Participatory Stages who can help you find your Outer and Inner Core Communities. This is a magical human with whom you feel an Equal Energy Exchange and with whom time stands still. Portals are generous, they love to connect people, and they operate with little fear or insecurity. They help you find more like-minded people who are aligned with your VIA. Portals introduce you to other humans who make you think, “Wow! Where have you been all my life?” They are also thoughtful about who they bring into the community. They help to monitor the energy and make sure everyone fits and feels good.
Getting to Know a Portal
Portals are Five Sense Friends (FSFs) and are not just found online or on social media. You can explore online, but have to show up in person to connect with your Portal.
“I’ve been texting and calling my Portal with no response! When do I know to keep pushing or to back down and move on?” Remember, Portals are busy and already have a community they’re tending to—you’re the new kid on the block. Don’t take it personally! Rather than just asking to meet for coffee or “pick their brain” (ouch that hurts!), offer to support them by volunteering your time—help cook a meal or take the trash out. Get creative with how you can connect with your Portal. Keep following up courageously and vulnerably if you truly felt an Equal Energy Exchange. Remember, energy has to be felt on both sides!
Follow up with your Portal this week! Or go deep with one person this week with whom you feel an Equal Energy Exchange, and who’s not family or someone you’re dating. Get Vulnerable, Intentional, and Courageous and keep following up and offering support!
About close friends: We often silo our close relationships into different buckets—“this is my workout friend, this is my college friend, this is my party friend, this is my Harry Potter friend”—to protect ourselves, or because it’s just easier. The old paradigm was “Don’t introduce people to one another. They’ll leave you behind. Protect yourself!” or “What if they all start hanging out without me?” or “It’s just easier to have different friends for different interests. . . . ” I felt that in my twenties, and it was exhausting to juggle all these friendships that ultimately weren’t even feeding me. While it was sometimes fun to run around and I always had stories to tell, I didn’t feel a real commitment to anyone, which in the end made me feel empty.
When I started over at thirty, I was intentional about finding friends who I could do it all with and who could love one another as a collective.
Rather than being scared about connecting others, I was excited to try it without fear and with an open heart. There would be no competition and no juggling friend groups, and the rule was no shit-talking or sneaking around behind one another’s backs. We would all be respectful of one another and honor each other. Honesty, inclusivity, and transparency were our core tenets. If we had a problem, we would talk to the person we had a problem with, not someone else.
And wow, what a difference it made.
It took faith, as well as getting vulnerable, intentional, and courageous, but I gave it a shot, and my life became exponentially richer and more open. As I introduced people to one another, they introduced me to their people, and we created a culture of connection rather than of separation.
That said, my friend Cordelia shared that she excitedly introduced two friends who hit it off, but when she asked one of the friends a few weeks later what she was doing that night, her friend lied about hanging out with the other friend, which hurt Cordelia’s feelings when she later found out. Had her friend just said, “I’m hanging out with your friend and getting to know her better!
Thank you for the intro!” that would have been great and Cordelia would have been thrilled! But it was the omission of the truth that was unnecessary. While Cordelia’s friends probably just wanted to avoid an awkward moment, it wasn’t the respectful or kind approach. Again, honesty, inclusivity, and transparency are the keys here.
It took me many years to realize that I didn’t feel like myself in my twenties because I fell into friendships and relationships that made me feel insecure, and I allowed myself to spend time with people who hung out on the left side of the Axis of Energy, with their Red Egos and Mean Girls, more often than not. Until I turned thirty, I was swept up in “the scene” and never once stopped to do a deep dive into what I wanted out of this magical life. When I focused on radiating my authentic energy, being generous by making introductions, connecting people, and showing up with an FYF attitude, everything changed. Sometimes (OK, most of the time), we get in our own dang way.
I was talking with a fellow Community Architect living in Chattanooga recently over brunch. Sheldon and I got deep into the topic of Inner Core Community. He looked at me with earnest eyes and said, “For the last three years, I’ve been so busy building communities for everyone else. I realized that I didn’t have my own Inner Core Community and I had positioned myself on the outside of the communities I was helping to build.” When he realized this and began focusing on deepening his relationships, his whole life changed. After much persuasion, he went to a men’s retreat and met five amazing guys who were also starved for meaningful connection. “It definitely wasn’t an overnight thing. I had already met all those guys before the retreat. The retreat was where I felt compelled to begin spending more time investing seriously in those relationships. We meet every week now—a 5:30 a.m. meet-up every other Friday and 8 p.m. at a local brewery every other Wednesday. I knew that my heart longed for deeper, more meaningful fellowship with other guys, but I lacked the resolve and commitment to do what it takes to build those relationships. It’s really easy to make excuses—even valid ones!—about why you shouldn’t invest the time and energy. In my case these were things like: I need to spend more time with my family, I’m tired, I need to get to work early or stay late, I’d rather relax and watch Netflix, etc. The retreat created the space and time for me to reflect upon my
life and consider the things I should be prioritizing. When I started prioritizing these friendships, my relationship with my wife and three kids changed overnight. My relationship with my employees and business partners changed. As soon as I began investing in my personal relationships—making a commitment to see my group of friends once a week and going deeper with each of them—I became exponentially happier and I saw the power of what I was actually building.”
It was yet another reminder that even the best Community Architects still need help addressing their own sense of belonging. He is definitely not alone!
You’ll be going back to the Four Stages of Community all your life as you move places, change careers, and evolve as a human. You’ll also be going through the Four Stages for your business, organization, or new job. Spend real time cultivating your Outer and Inner Core relationships and truly make an effort to meet regularly, even if life gets busy. Every year, reassess your Outer and Inner Core Communities and ask yourself if these relationships are feeding you. Write your friends’ names down and get really honest with yourself as to how you’re showing up for them and how they’re showing up for you. I do this every year on my birthday. It’s been wonderfully eye-opening and cathartic. The years that I didn’t focus on relationships I was less happy (and healthy) and the years that I started getting intentional about them, my happiness and health were noticeably different. It’s not a coincidence.
Pro Tip:
When you hang out with an Outer or Inner Core Community member, before you say good-bye, schedule your next hang so you have something to look forward to. Be proactive about picking the next date together, on the spot! If you have to reschedule, that’s fine, but at least it’s on the calendar!
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