How to find community
Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash
This week I spoke to a group of entrepreneurs and the particular talk I did - Making your Map: Navigating the journey from concept to launch - was my first time giving it. When this happens, my insecurities usually run high and so when I ended, I was of course hoping it would be to a standing ovation. Well, not really, it was a smaller room and while every seat was full and people were standing in the back, it wasn't a standing ovation kind of room. But still, I hoped people would follow me on social media, come up to me after the session, buy my book, and tell me how much their words helped them. These are things I always hope for, and it makes me feel so good when some of them happen, but this week someone else's words made me flip the script. This week instead of hoping for people to do that for me, I asked myself this question: when was the last time you did that for someone else?
This reaction that I am hoping for after people see me speak, is the same one we all tend to have when it comes to finding community and support. We want it to just happen to us. We sit back and secretly hope that our significant other will do spontaneous acts of kindness for us, or for a coworker to announce to the team all the good stuff we’ve done lately. We want that meaningless-yet-somehow-we-still-care-about-it shoutout in the company meeting or for someone to just send us a kind note because we did a good job.
It’s very easy to go through life and wish other people would support you, but the support and community others offer will always be out of our control. The thing that is in our control is what we are putting out into the world. I had these thoughts on Wednesday morning when I was sitting in one of the other sessions at Founded in FoCo. The session was called JoyFueled™ Entrepreneurship: Growing with Community, Connection, and Conviction, and the speaker M. Shannon Hernandez reminded all of us business owners that we are community made, and success is co-created.
“We are community made, and success is co-created.” - M. Shannon Hernandez
Since Wednesday morning I haven’t started anything revolutionary to create community, but I did give my excellent photographer several shoutouts on social media. I filled out the survey for any speaker that had one after their sessions, because I know it means a lot to me when people do that. I walked up to them after and asked the questions I had, and thanked them for their time. I told my waiter last night how he provided exceptional service. I followed other speakers on social media and sent a LinkedIn message to the speaker that inspired this starter; I thanked her for a great message and offered my help to support her community work in any way I could.
Do you want to know how to find community? Start with being the community.
This isn’t just about doing to others as you wish they would do to you; this is about goodness, and kindness, and community all being contagious. These are things we want to experience and so when we put them out into the world, we are contributing to the world we want to live in.
As Hernandez said to us on Wednesday, you need to start where you are, so to find the community you want to experience, start by creating it. Be the kindness you want to run into. Be the joy you want to see. Be the goodness you wish to feel. It’s not about doing it so you get something in return, but rather about being an active part of the life you want to live. We don’t find community by searching for it, we find community by creating it.
