S2:E3 Shape a Strong Sense of Belonging
What Do You Meme?
Welcome to the Serenity in Motion podcast.
I’m Jill Williams and we are on the third of four episodes in our current series “what do you meme?”.
I’m talking through what I mean…or meme…by a phrase I use to describe the kind of thing that happens for you when you enroll in our memberships. If you read the website, you’ll read something like this:
“MettlEdge is an online strengths-driven performance coaching company on mission to inspire women shaped by college sports to shape their own unique Edge so they thrive and lead others to do the same.”
First things first, you may be someone who’s thinking…I was not shaped by college sports. While what we call our posse is most definitely women who were college athletes, men and women who are coaching college athletes or supporting them on a coaching staff in some way, what we’re talking about by being shaped by college sports is that they pursue excellence at all costs. They want to win and they are willing to work for the win. Their mindset that has been shaped to tell them they should.
They push through barriers. They support the people around them with passion. They care.
And sometimes too much. Eventually life catches up and this pursuit they may or may not love becomes a burden and they need to regroup to design a way to keep going strong, with excellence in their new season of life.
This kind of thing is definitely not limited to people who were shaped by college sports. If you resonate with it, you are posse.
Now, let me get back to what you’ll read on our marketing materials…
“MettlEdge is an online strengths-driven performance coaching company on mission to inspire women shaped by college sports to shape their own unique Edge so they thrive and lead others to do the same.”
You’ll read that we inspire women to shape their own unique Edge so they thrive and lead others to do the same. No mention of shaping a strong sense of self, belonging, and purpose. I was advised to soften the startup.
I was advised that the idea of shaping a strong sense of self, belonging, and purpose, while desired, is also vulnerable. So vulnerable that taking another step may be too much. I get that.
I’ve been wading in deep waters for some time now. My comfort level in talking about these things makes me forget sometimes just how deep the conversation may be for another.
But since you are listening to me talk on this podcast—or reading it—you are getting the deep dive. The meaning behind the more compelling thought of shaping your unique Edge. Which really means, shaping your strong sense of self, belonging, and purpose.
So, with that said, I want to get into what I meme by shaping a strong sense of belonging.
This morning as I was driving in to the office knowing I was heading in to write this episode, a song popped into my head.
I didn’t plan for it. One moment it wasn’t there, and now, nearly 45 minutes later, it’s still sounding off in my head. So, I’ll share what I’ve been hearing on repeat for almost an hour:
“One of these things is not like the other, one of these things doesn’t belong.”
That’s as far as the lyric goes for me. I know there is more, maybe you know the rest. And I’m so sorry if now you get to enjoy hearing it on repeat in your head for a while.
But that’s not the point of me bringing it up.
The reason I’m sharing this with you is because I think that lyric tells us something about belonging that is very different from what I mean by the word.
That lyric implies that to belong means to be the same. It associcates belonging with comparison.
It’s a good way to teach kids about categories of things, but a bad way to teach about belonging in the way I’m talking about it.
For example, if we take something from the previous episode on shaping a strong sense of self, let’s say this:
“knowing the natural ways that you think feel and behave. Now, that would be a sense of self. What I mean by a strong sense of self is not only knowing those natural ways of thinking feeling and behaving but owning them without demanding that others think feel and be behave the same way. Sharing them with others who do not share them with you. But who show up different from you.”
If we apply the song, we may conclude that to belong means to have the same natural ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving as those around us. That to have a strong sense of belonging means we have a lot in common with the people or places to which we claim we belong.
I’ve been told that people tend to move toward what is familiar. I personally like familiar. I naturally move toward it. It’s comfortable. And can be limiting.
Focus for a moment and sit with your thoughts. What is this stirring up inside you?
Making a choice to move towards the unfamiliar can open up possibilities.
Making a choice to see belonging as less of a comparison and conclusive match and more of a choice changes everything.
I’m reminded of two very different women who spent six months together in our MettlEdge SELECT cohort. They both agreed to walk through the leadership intensive with someone who they had never met. This is brave.
During the first meeting, after they both completed their Gallup CliftonStrengths assessment, it became clear just how very different they were from one another. According to the song, they didn’t belong together. And yet, there they were together for six months.
What happened?
By choosing to belong, they learned from one another in a powerful way how others receive them.
They learned that their assumptions about others who did not think, feel, and behave like them were sometimes far from right.
Their willingness to “belong” to one another through this cohort built their empathy and respect for others who they had previously judged as weak, less than, better than, arrogant. They developed a bond, despite their differences. They became better leaders, developing their differences.
When I say shaping a sense of belonging, it has something to do with personal choice.
With a willingness to believe in possibilities when things don’t feel familiar. These two women could have decided in that first meeting to not move forward together. But they choose to discover more.
Fuel: How do you respond to people who are not like you? In what ways do you think you want to choose to discover more? To experience a bond based on choice rather than comfort?
That’s convicting.
It’s interesting to me that that song filled my head on my way to write this episode.
I’ve been wondering all week what I would say about shaping a strong sense of belonging. Right now I’m even wondering if the order should be belonging, self, purpose rather than self, belonging, purpose.
Based on what I’ve shared so far, choosing to belong somewhere, while vulnerable, serves our understanding of who we are and how we can serve one another. Because it pulls us out of isolation and invites us to face ourselves and others. Which is perhaps why we struggle to satisfy our dep longing to belong.
What if we don’t bond? Because facts are that the experience the two women shared in our cohort membership didn’t have to go the way they did. In this case, two humans helped one another.
There have been cases, so I’ve heard, where the opposite happens, where humans hurt one another.
Making a choice to belong does not mean there will be a bond. Then what?
That’s when we get disappointed. We isolate. We protect. We move to the familiar. The comfortable.
What I say shaping a strong sense of belonging, it has something to do with personal choice.
And shaping a strong sense of belonging has something to do with choosing to belong to something beyond yourself.
Beyond the influence of others. Beyond the reach of disappointment.
What I mean when I say a strong sense of belonging is the kind of belonging that is bullet proof. That kind is only found in the choice to entrust ourselves to—to belong to--a source that is not of this world.
How will you fight to shape your strong sense of belonging?
What’s that thing popping into your mind and within your power that you can do?
When will you do it?
What difference will it make for you and for others when you do?
Who will you tell?
This has been the third episode in this 4-part What Do You Meme series. A series on what I mean when I say shape your strong sense of self, belonging, and purpose.
Our final episode of this series next week is on purpose. Shaping a strong sense of purpose.
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I hope you enjoyed this episode and that it gave you some good food for thought. Catch you next week where we’ll dive into what it memes, I mean means, to shape a strong sense of self.
I pray this podcast has been and continues to be a blessing.