WHAT I LEARNED IN 2017 THAT MADE ME A BETTER CONNECTOR

2017 has been a year of leaps and out of my comfort zone activities. It has been intense going from post-cancer treatment recovery of the year before and savoring one’s energy levels to inviting more flow and aligned actions.

For the past 3 years, a yearly practice that I do at the start of the year is to meditate on a word that can serve as my guidepost. Last year’s word was FLOW and I saw it reflected in multiple ways specially on the connections that I formed and the people that I met. This year my word is FOCUS.

To get me focused on connections and community building for this year, I decided to review what worked best for me from 2017 to replicate and intensify my results.

Here are my biggest insights on what I learned in 2017 that made me a better connector.

1. People you look up to like influencers and thought leaders, they are humans too and connection is all about meeting them on a human level. In 2017 I became bolder in reaching out to people. I realized that these people who are my inspiration and people I look up to are also like me- wanting and seeking out genuine connections. An authentic connection that I personally strive for and bring in with my presence.
2. Be intentional in connecting. Before reaching out, reviving or sustaining any relationship, I practiced checking in with myself: Why am I connecting with this person? What can I bring in this person’s life? What can this person add value to my life? How can we mutually grow from this connection?
3. Follow your gut when bringing in someone to your fold. Lets face it, we all have limited time, energy and attention. We can’t keep on spreading our resources to every activity, event or person that we come across to. What I did practice though and have reminded myself countless of times is to follow my intuition on who to get into a deeper connection with. My friends and colleagues say I have the uncanny ability to message them at the right time and with the right questions. What I attribute this to is my practice of asking myself on a daily basis “who would I like to connect to for today?”.
4. Be systematic in reconnecting. Last year I went to various events that got me meeting different people and the best part of it is having not just great conversations but intuitively knowing who among these new connections I would like to create a deeper relationship with. I did learn though that the act of reconnecting after an event or meet-up is also crucial. It made me ask myself- “how can I invite this person to get to know me more or to be interested in continuing a connection with me?”. (Which led me to #5)
5. Provide value coming from a self-full mindset. Connection is about creating value in each other’s lives, business, network or community. It’s about enriching each other with one’s presence and cultivating a relationship that is a win-win for everyone involved. What my experiences in 2017 has taught me is to ask “how can I support you?”. From there I explore what I can bring in. Bearing in mind that I am agreeing or doing something only when I am self-full because saying yes to another means saying no to something else. This means carefully checking-in with myself — “ is this something I can contribute to this person? Is this something I am willing and enthusiastic to do? Do I have a full YES on this?”.

P.S. How about you? What insights did you get from 2017? And how are you growing as a Community Alchemist (not just a community builder but a community leader as well) for this year?