Community: Creating & Thriving in Support Circles (10 min. read)

Let’s talk about community

The people we surround ourselves with can have a huge impact on our lives in general, especially when we are working on personal growth or specific goals.

Existing in community is a powerful and natural part of the human experience. We are not designed to human alone. Communities are a primary way that we share stories, relate to each other, find belonging, learn, have experiences, and build bonds. It’s where we develop our values, priorities, norms, and goals. It’s how we gather resources and meet our physical and emotional needs, including safety and survival.

Being part of a community is essential to a thriving human experience. Without a sense of connection that comes from communing with others, we are often sicker, struggle more in life, and die earlier! 

A 2021 Harvard study shows that around 36% of Americans experience a sense of “serious loneliness”. That jumps to 51% for mothers with young children and to 61% for young Americans. Loneliness is a serious problem with huge impacts. It contributes to heart disease, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and more. Chronic loneliness and social isolation can shorten your life as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day!

How do you combat loneliness?

You create and participate in communities. You build meaningful relationships. You share yourself with the world – your gifts & talents, your needs and wants, your struggles and triumphs, your services and assistance.

One powerful kind of community is support circles. A circle is just a group of people that you choose to connect with in some way. It could be people who share your passions and interests. Maybe they have experience or expertise in an area you are focused on. Perhaps it’s a place you go to for counsel and advice. Or maybe it’s not about you getting help at all – maybe it’s a place that you can go to offer your guidance, advice, expertise, and support. Think of circles as a well-crafted mastermind of people with shared focus, goals, interests, and mindset, so you can all support each other and work toward individual progress while in the community.

What do support circles look like?

You can have one circle or many. They can be small or large sets of people and they can be completely separated or overlapping groups.  Circles can include people you have a deeply personal relationship with or simply a functional group of people that you don’t know well personally (yet) but that you trust and connect with in some meaningful way. They can evolve organically or intentionally.

Here are some examples…

• I have a circle of learning & development friends and we meet once a month over video conferencing. It started out as a way to share job leads, resources, design ideas, and support. We encouraged each other, provided recommendations, and helped solve work problems. But over the last two years, we’ve become close friends. We laugh a lot, support each other through life changes, and crave our calls as a moment of respite and connection. These days we talk very little about learning & development!
• I also have a circle of coaching friends who have all been trained in the same methods as me and with whom I shared a coach for many years.
• I have a small collection of individual accountability buddies that I connect with separately. To me they are a ‘circle’ but they don’t know each other, we never meet together, and it isn’t a ‘group’. But it is one of my circles.
• I have old work friends who I don’t see in person very often but who would be there in an instant for me if I were in need – and whom I easily connect to online in meaningful chats and texts every few months.
• I’m even a new member of a podcaster’s meetup in my town. I don’t know those podcasters at all really, but they are welcoming, helpful, happy people with whom I share a love of podcasting. It’s a purely functional relationship right now. But who knows how it might evolve.
  
  

So what's the common thread in all the circles? The people in my circles don’t know each other. The experiences and conversations I have with each circle vary wildly, as does the level of personal bonding. But they do have something in common -- they each offer some degree of trust, usefulness, shared purpose, connection, and meaning. And I’m grateful for every one of them.

Do a Self-Check.

Do you have support circles?  How do they help you? How did they evolve?

If you don't have the circles you need or want in life, that's OK. Here is the beautiful, powerful, fabulous truth about circles: we can create, enter, exit, and rearrange them as needed throughout our lives!  If you don’t have what you need now, go build or find it. Read the next bit for tips on how to do that!

Tips for Creating and Using Support Circles:

• Create your circles intentionally. Invite people into them. Make the first move. It can start with a simple coffee chat. Build it over time, by choice. Invest in creating and nurturing your circles.
• Be open to where you'll find circle members. Community connections can include friends, immediate or extended family, or people from social clubs, professional associations, or religious groups. They could be neighbors, colleagues friends of friends, or strangers you meet in learning programs, community events, local meet-ups, and so much more!
• Connect in a way that works for you all.  This could mean a phone call, texts, zoom chats, or in-person visits (yes, you may need to put a bra on and leave the house!). Push yourself out of your comfort zone to expand your horizons by being open to the new and the next. Just a little of this can make a huge difference!
• Allow for circles to form organically. Creating circles intentionally is good. But that doesn't always mean planning and managing things. It can mean choosing to listen to your intuition about who to welcome into your life. When you feel the desire to ask a colleague, old classmate, or a practical stranger for coffee or a Zoom chat, do it. Practice not second-guessing or dismissing your intuition. Be open to what’s possible even if it doesn’t always make sense logically. You never know where it could lead!
• Create multiple circles. It’s unlikely that one person or group of people can meet all your needs or speak to all your interests. Create a variety of circles and then, don’t be afraid to let them overlap like a giant Ven diagram! Mix up the topic, focus, or purpose across a variety of groups. Maybe your circles include coaches, mentors, specific friends, colleagues, teachers, or other entrepreneurs or professionals in your space. Maybe you are part of several different professional associations or an alumni circle. Perhaps it’s your neighborhood association, church study group, or a travel club!
• Let yourself change who is in your circles. That isn’t a personal rejection. It’s a reflection of the fact that our needs and interests change over time, especially as we are growing and pursuing goals. Also, not all relationships are meant to be 40-year friendships. People come in and out of our lives naturally and that’s ok. So, periodically reflect and consider who is in each circle. Why are they there? What do you offer each other? How long have you been in the circle? Do you need some fresh energy/perspective/input/experiences? Do you need a break? Does the circle still serve your needs for intentional SUPPORT circles? Could it be good for a circle to split into separate groups with a specialized focus or to invite in new people? You may make this decision on your own (say, if I leave the podcast group) or you may choose to invite other circle members to participate in this decision (say, if I were to leave my coaching circle).  There are no rules.

Creating and participating in circles is a powerful way to build community into your life. Science tells us that community, belonging, and connection are elements of a thriving, vibrant human experience. If you want to have the best life possible, I encourage you to invest in building communities… and then allow yourself to play with them and evolve them over time as you change and grow.  Happy communing!

Go on, Build Your Sparkable Life™!