Connecting with Total Strangers
This is a post about how a random Zoom meeting with total strangers was the best birthday present I have ever given myself.
For the last week or so I’ve been interacting with a group of the world’s top transformational HR gurus who are leading the biggest people revolution on the planet. I saw they were having these amazing HumansFirst meetups, and just assumed that it was some kind of exclusive club.
Then all of a sudden on my birthday yesterday I noticed they posted a link to a Zoom meeting and decided to connect. The organizer was Kevin Monroe and you can see his post about it on Linkedin.
I’m not an HR professional, but consider myself a Human Relations professional since we have been doing physical and virtual Connection Workshops for many years with great success. I am usually the chief organizer of the event, and not really a participant.
“I told them they are a very advanced group of humans who are already on the next stage of our evolution before everyone else. Now all they have to do is figure out how to “pull” the rest of humanity up to their level of awareness about where things are headed.”
I headed into this zoom meeting with a group of total strangers with my ego leading the way, thinking how interesting it would be to see how other people do zoom workshops. Also thinking of course, that our method is probably a far superior method to theirs.
You can probably guess what happened. The #HumansFirst hangout workshop was identical to the Connection Workshops we do in every possible way. There was the fun warmup part where we synced the team, the workshop part where we all answered some questions, and the concluding part where we all talked about how we felt during the workshop. And even when it was all over, we were all feeling so connected and so buzzed from the powerful workshop we had gone through that we stayed on for another 15 minutes past the scheduled time.
I told them they are a very advanced group of humans who are already on the next stage of our evolution before everyone else. Now all they have to do is figure out how to “pull” the rest of humanity up to their level of awareness about where things are headed.
Why Does it Feel So Good?
When a group of people from diverse cultures, regions, and ethniticities connect with no agenda — but simply connect for the sake of connecting, you can expect amazing things to happen. Why is that?
Most of the things we do throughout our day are done for the sake of our ego, looking after our home and kids, furthering our career and making more money, investing in how we look and dress — it all serves the human ego.
#HumansFirst are a group of people who already realize that there is something far better around the corner — how simply reconnecting as human beings is the key to our happiness. You would expect all these professionals to speak from a place of superiority, but that’s not what happened at all. They are so advanced in their thinking that they are naturally wired for connection, for empathy, for inclusiveness, and for generating a great deal of positive energy in the world.
During the workshop we were talking about how we all felt a special ‘buzz’ inside the zoom. One participant was talking about how he literally felt the temperature going up as we interacted. For the entire time we were connected I felt a wonderful sense of excitement, as if there was new fuel being pumped into me directly from a new source.
I heard many beautiful thoughts, and learned some new concepts that I don’t normally deal with: inclusion, presence, intentionality, gratitude, and how people manage their energy. There was a discussion about how working with a group can “suck you dry”, how there are destructive forces at work and the need to restore balance. It was all very fascinating.
Impact on Brand & Marketing Communications
Enabling better human connection inside a company improves the health of every aspect of the business.
As a copywriter and marketing pro, I would like to see all this new terminology featured right on the brands we come into contact with on a daily basis. All the words we used in the warming up phase of the workshop are words that can be featured prominently on any product, along with a brief explanation of why it’s so important.
I believe that the time has come to fill our world with positive and uplifting messages, and there is no time like the present. So there are two sides to this — on the one hand we need to have these wonderful moments of connection to generate the positive energy in society. On the other hand we need to constantly remind ourselves of the importance of things such as love, connection and empathy. We need to promote an entirely new value system.
One of the great questions in the workshop given by Gary Turner was: “How actively did you go out of your way today to see people not like you?”. Imagine if that question was featured on milk cartons and cereal boxes, or on fast food trays and packaging — imagine how it would ‘program’ people to think in that direction.
How To Trick The Human Ego
And I leave you with that thought — how often do we go out of our way to interact with people who are different than us? Why does it make us uncomfortable and what can we do about it? The answer is simple — increase the love and acceptance everywhere.
The human ego will resist embracing this concept of inclusiveness right up until the last second. That is why we must constantly come up with new ways to override it. So I discovered a really great way to kickstart this process — hop on a zoom with total strangers!
Hopefully in the near future, we will have an app that instantly connects you with 10 total strangers from all over the world, where you can enjoy an incredible workshop together.
