"My best tips on how to build community"

I had someone ask recently for my best tips on how to build community. And while I’ve been working on it for the last 7+ years, it’s been one of my biggest intentions and focuses for the last few and here’s why…

Because I believe more than anything, people want to feel like they belong. They want to feel like they matter. And even though we’re living in the most connected time in history, feelings of disconnection are more present than ever before.

And when I really started to wrap my head around this, it stopped being a passing idea and started becoming my obsession. How do I build something so strong that it becomes the fuel for people during times of insecurity, doubt, and fear. Because the truth is, we all experience those emotions and if our environment isn’t conducive to overcoming them, it’s pretty much the beginning of the end…

And so as airy fairy as it may sound, my first tip when people ask is to start by believing that you yourself belong. It took me a long time and a a lot of practice to believe in myself and it’s still something I commit to focusing on daily. I’m not joking when I say I work on self love constantly. Annoyingly often. Like I was actually just looking at PAGES of the things I’ve done over the last few years to grow that muscle in myself. But here’s the thing. I could never have taken on building community and culture the way I have had I not taken on myself in this way leading up to it. Because the way I show up now is so much more true to who I am. And the only way to begin creating from this space was to start living in it. — at Pacific City.