Happy April and blossom-time🌸 (so beautiful!). These are my honest reflections about being human, creating meaningful connections and how to live a more intentional life. Experiencing a rich tapestry of colours this month has led to me take the time to write and re-write this letter. I invite you to find a delicious drink ☕, pause working and give yourself a full 5-ish minutes to read this. I hope it encourages you to think about what colours you’ve painted onto your life canvas right now 🎨 (see 1.) and sparks new thought or resonance. Would love to hear them in the comments below ✍️ or email me 📥.
👆Staying up all night and early morning in Vietnam to witness and capture this beautiful awe-inspiring moment with friends. Standing in the ocean, I felt like I was being caressed by the waves 🌊
👋 Hello Friends,
I’ve had an unusual landing back in the UK.
It feels like I have been away a long time in Asia 🇻🇳🇸🇬🇯🇵 (I was mostly travelling there for a community summit event). And whilst a month is long-ish, it feels like the end of summer and the beginning of a new exciting year ahead…
I think it’s to do with the intense range of experiences and feelings I’ve had over this time. When asked about my adventures, I’m finding it hard to encapsulate the range of colours I feel I’ve dipped into and ‘painted’ with - a metaphor my friend Juan used in an incredibly kind message he sent me recently (the kind that arrives in the moment you need to hear it, touches your heart ❤️ and stays with you forever 🙏):
“You paint in such a beautiful and expressive way. I admire how you pick the right words to meet people as they are and to always express your full self. Keep dancing with your curious spirit that builds bridges wherever you go. ”
It’s made me think a lot about our experiences as shades of colours on a canvas🎨.
Vivid joyful yellows💛, ecstatic purple tones 💜, to the nuances of the differing greys 🩶 if you really look. We swim in them all, all the time. And they keep changing. The tapestry of life is rich 🖼️.
Since getting back, I’ve had some beautifully rich moments of pride and of joy. I have also had some quite melancholic moments which I have allowed myself to sit as my heart melts. And then there have been challenging moments where I notice my thoughts go to challenging places whilst not letting myself be pulled into the stories. And then I look around expecting to see the music change 🎵, the clouds go grey💨 and plants wilter.
But the world does not stop and adapt to our pain.
Instead, I look and see blossoms spring everywhere 🌸, birds flying in unison 🕊️, the sun glowing on the water and shines through the trees 🌞. And small kinds acts from strangers spark profound moments of connection 🤗.
It is still unashamedly and miraculously beautiful.
All the colours of life are there on the canvas in every moment. We need only notice to be lured in.
From this reflection, I thought it would be fun to identify our experiences and feelings through the lens colours. See (1) below!
👉I’m curious what your colours and connected feelings and experiences would be? Would love to hear👈
I’ve also written a section (2) sharing human connectivity design insights on what made my and others’ Vietnam community summit experience so rich in connection🥰. And the normal bits on things you can consume (3) and a thought to ponder (4). Enjoy!
Sending (Virtual) Hugs, Love & A Warm Smile,
Georgie 🤗💜
Painting the Tapestry of Life 🎨
If your recent experiences could be painted on a canvas, what colours would they be? Here are some of the colours that appeared in my last month.
💛 Strong Yellow Appreciation to the Sandbox summit team for an incredible experience they created.
💙 Royal Blue Routine. Coming home and feeling into the solidity and familiarity of gym sessions, getting up and working at the same time, dinner with friends. When the boat feels rocky, routine is a great safety net.
❤️🩹 Silvery Grey with Pink Grief. Feeling the rawness of endings, the death of fantasy and adventure, and the immense presence that is created when we are invited to be here now and feel the fullness of our feelings.
💚 Emerald Green Pride and Joy. Seeing my new landing page for Transformational Conversations go live after 3 years of avoiding this task! Feeling relief, pride and excitement about the momentum it brings (I now feel ready to do the rest of the website and re-brand!). Thanks to Taylor for helping me design and build this and Haneen for finding her! 🙏
💜 Purple of Power Yet to be Fully Owned. I ended up facilitating a lot at the summit, and received many extremely beautiful words about authenticity, presence, and leadership. I’m still trying to feel into how to let it all in.
🤍 White Dreamy Feeling of our Insignificance in Life. A recent experience of this helped me find a liberating message in what can be a challenging idea - your live today matters.
❤️ Magenta of Frustration. I felt annoyed by weeks of illness and unusual bodily pain, and the sense that life just isn’t fair all the time. Learning to face the pain of disappointment with self-love and equanimity is the work.
🧡 Piercing Orange Sunrise. Being struck with awe and a sense of the ineffable witnessing the very beginning of a new day, as the moment vanishes forever (see the sunrise image 👆).
💚 Cool Green of Friendship Love. I was recently reminded how warming and expanding it feels to both give and receive help 🥰. Friends enjoy being there for each other.
🩵 Cool Blue of Silent Solidarity. Sitting in silence with friends is a remarkably beautiful way to feel a sense of togetherness but without having to sacrifice the connection to the depth of your own experience. I experienced this whilst engaged in a beautiful sunrise tea 🫖 ceremony (🙏 Kim) and a Japanese Onsen 🛀.
2. Human Connection Design Insights from a Community Summit 🪄
One of the things I love about attending these annual summits for my community is how well designed they are for human connection 🥰, even though they can be such a large events (170 humans!). I think the ‘how’ behind this is worthy of a whole article, but until then, here are few insights to share:
👩🏻💻 What is your pre-event strategy? The pre-event experience is just as important as the event for setting up expectations and norms for how to show up and be a great participant. e.g. 😆 Playful group intros - the organisers invited 4 people each week in the months leading up to the event to introduce themselves in the whatsapp chat with 1-3 photos and a series of prompts: Name, Where you are based, Something you do "professionally", Something you love doing that you're not paid for, Something about your photo, Three ways you enjoy connecting with others. It was a beautiful way to spark feelings of curiosity & connection in the lead up to the gathering.
⛺️ Design Spaces with Specific Purposes. Not everyone wants the same experience. In the same way as designing an event schedule or flow to meet the differing desires and energies of individuals, you can also do this through creating smaller boundary spaces that invite people to ‘be’ and connect in a unique way. The beauty of this is that you can show up to the space at any time of the day and night, and you might even find a fellow human or two there to connect with in a meaningful way. My friend Joachim and I co-created two introverted spaces at the summit that were designed to create intimacy, gratitude and reflection - SandLove ❤️ and TeaBox🫖 (see below for our posters and thanks to VectoriaDesigns for the design).
✨Invite Co-Creator not Consumer Roles. The summit has an unconference format. The organising team design the structures (space, event flow) and invite everyone to play an active role in creating experiences for each other. Almost everything was participant led - workshops 👩🏫, opening and closing ceremonies ⭕️, tea drinking ceremonies 🫖, music jams and performances🎶, DJing 🎛️, dance performances💃, dinner conversation menu design, make-up stands for the big party, even bus captains 🚌 to get us all to the venue. Not only does this cut the cost down for staff and speakers, it also invites everyone to share and be seen in their gifts and skills and to co-create a more expansive and rich vision than a single team of organisers could.
🥰 Curation is important. Exclusivity is often given a bad rep, but when you design something it is never for everyone. Getting the right people in the room - with enough shared values and interests - is what makes gatherings so meaningful, full of connection and a feeling of belonging. You find the people you never knew you were seeking, who connect with you in ways that perhaps the rest of the world doesn’t.
🙏 Invite Gratitude. Especially when no is getting paid to contribute (our organising team worked on making the summit happen for over 1.5 years), appreciating volunteers is an absolutely necessary ingredient in a gathering’s success and sustainability. Create moments at the beginning and end of the gathering especially - and throughout - for people to show appreciation by naming those who were involved in creation. We also created opportunities to show appreciation to everyone for the way they show up in the world; their qualities of being. I was fortunate enough to co-facilitate the closing circle with my friend Joachim where we invited everyone (in groups of 40) to stand silent with their eyes closed as ‘trees’ 🌳 and be ‘watered’ by the whispers of appreciation from others ❤️. It was an incredibly moving experience - many people cried, including myself - and ended the summit on an expansive note.
3. Consumable Delights 😋
📖 i. Article - You can't hoard life (The Imperfectionist newsletter by Oliver Burkeman) ‘‘This is amazing! This is the kind of experience I love, so I want to make sure I’m getting the most from it, and I especially want to make sure that I keep on having this sort of experience repeatedly for the rest of my life!”
We all know the feeling of enjoying an experience so much that we want to have more of them. But that kind of grasping or holding onto a good experience prevents us from being able to connect with the experience we are currently having. As a maximizer in life, I have to remind myself not to fall subject to the agenda of trying to get experiences “under my belt” and instead of holding onto an experience, just allow myself to feel into the poignancy of each moment that is vanishing forever.
📕 ii. Book - Hidden Potential by Adam Grant - I’ll be honest and say that I’m pretty early into this book, but I am going to recommend it anyway because I enjoy everything Adam Grant writes. He has a way of weaving research and storytelling as he challenges psychology topics. In this book he challenges our obsession with natural talent and shows that most success is depends less on how hard you work than how well you learn, and the distance we travel in our growth. Character development is key to growth - not innate genius or just focusing on cognitive skills. 🏫 When I look back at my early days at school, I somewhat grateful I didn’t find learning easy. Instead, it cultivated the conditions for me to learn how to learn playfully, and how to sustain motivation through hard work, discipline and determination 💪.
🎥 iii. Film - Dune: Part 2 - A great story - epic, world-building with beautiful music, and good acting. I highly recommend watching it on a big screen, which I did in Japan🇯🇵. Fun fact: the locals tend to stay in the cinema right until the end of the credits!
4. Catch Me Live 🏃♀️
🥶 How to Stay Connected While Receiving Triggering Feedback- 💻 Virtual 90 minute Workshop (Monday April 15th) - BOOK HERE
✨ Transformational Conversations Programme - Spring 2024 Edition (26th-28th April, London 🇬🇧) - NEW WEBSITE PAGE (only took me 3 years! 🤦♀️)
🔥 Transform Conflict into Connection Programme (10-12th May, London 🇬🇧)) - JUST LAUNCHED
🎓 DESIGN24 - 18th International Design Conference - 20-23rd May, Dubrovnik, Croatia 🇭🇷 - I’ll be presenting my recent study ‘Weak Ties Interactions in Networking: Five Types of Interaction Structures’
5. A Parting Thought 📝
“Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists.”
— the tagline of Kevin Kelly’s website (found via Tim Ferriss’ 5-Bullet Friday)