Belong: Find Your People, Create Community, and Live a More Connected Life

But then I learned about the “Blue Zones,” the communities that live the longest—Okinawans in Japan, Sardinians in Italy, Costa Ricans, and Seventh-Day Adventists.

Your Soul Sisters (or Soul Brothers or Soul Family) are Inspiration, Gratitude, and Curiosity. They sit two tables down from the Mean Girls. You’ll always have to walk past the Mean Girls’ table—and

Another study found that having weak social ties is as harmful to our health as being an alcoholic and twice as harmful as obesity. Sit with that for a second: Having poor social connections is as bad as being an alcoholic and twice as bad as being obese.

new friends to see if anyone wanted to hang out, for fear of rejection. And I know now that I’m not alone in feeling these things. Being a thinking, feeling human is challenging—especially in the digital age!

define [be•long•ing] as: a feeling of deep relatedness and acceptance; a feeling of “I would rather be here than anywhere else.”

Plot Your History. Use this page to list all the cities you’ve lived in, the schools you’ve attended, the jobs you’ve had, the relationships you’ve been in, even the smaller life moments that only you remember. Add musical artists and albums that changed your life, movies that you’ve seen ten times, books you’ve reread. Include people who have had

It’s a feeling of home, of “I can exhale here and be fully myself with no judgment or insecurity.” Belonging is about shared values and responsibility, and the desire to participate in making your community better. It’s about taking pride, showing up, and offering your unique gifts to others. You can’t belong if you only take.

Questions to ask yourself one by one AFTER you’ve plotted your life path: 1. Whom did you look up to? 2. Whom did you depend on? 3. Who kept you safe emotionally or physically? Who didn’t? 4. Who worried about you when you were feeling stressed? 5. Whom did you take for granted?

This exercise was instrumental in helping me see patterns in the choices I made. It also provided me with the clarity to recognize that it’s always been up to me to choose which road to take and who to spend my time with—and that I get to keep doing that.