Belong

  Praise for Belong

  “If you want to belong, read this book.”

  —Deepak Chopra, MD

  “Radha wrote a book that’s fun to read, easy to digest, and embodies deep wisdom. I couldn’t wait to finish reading my copy so I could give it to one of my friends to read the same day.”

  —Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos and author of Delivering Happiness

  “This year America’s happiness dropped as healthcare costs continue to soar. Radha has a solution for both. Her engaging, high-energy approach to connecting people and helping them provide purpose and find their community is an antidote more powerful than any pharmaceutical. Belong combines engaging storytelling, solid research, and an easy prescription for finding your tribe and harnessing its incredible healing powers. Read it and live longer, better!”

  —Dan Buettner, National Geographic fellow and New York Times–bestselling author of the Blue Zones books

  “Few people know how to live life with such authentic expression as Radha does. In this book she shows us, in a clear and fun way, how and why this way of life can lead us all to the very thing we as humans desire the most: to belong.”

  —Alexander Ljung, Founder and Chairman, SoundCloud

  “Radha Agrawal is at the center of building one of the most important movements in America: the creation of deep community among a population of increasingly disconnected citizens. Belong takes the powerful lessons she’s learned through her remarkable entrepreneurial journey and creates an essential guidebook for anyone who wants to create or be part of a thriving community among any group or around any cause.”

  —Ben Rattray, Founder and CEO, Change.org

  “Radha was born to write this book. She has spent the last decade maniacally focused on figuring out the blueprint for community building, and this book cracks the code. Her illustrations make the book approachable and fun to read. I am so unbelievably proud of her achievement. It will help everyone find their tribe.”

  —Miki Agrawal, Founder, Tushy, THINX, Wild, and author of Disrupt-her and Do Cool Sh*t

  “When I was orbiting the earth every ninety minutes, I felt an incredible connection with the planet and all the earthlings living and working below. Reading Belong reminded me of that feeling of connectedness. I am certain this book will help readers reestablish meaning and purpose, together.”

  —Leland Melvin, astronaut, S.T.E.A.M. Explorer, and author of Chasing Space

  Find Your People, Create Community & Live a More Connected Life

  BELONG

  Radha Agrawal

  CEO & Co-founder Daybreaker & Co-founder THINX

  workman publishing • New York

  This book is dedicated to the courageous and generous souls—old and young—who wake up every day to create and serve their communities.Thank you for enjoying the process, not only the destination. And to my future children, I promise to create a world with you in which you feel a deep sense of belonging.

  You Have to Go In to Go Out

  Foreword by John Mackey

  Part I

  GOING IN

  1 My Epiphany

  How Community Changed My Life

  2 Gentle Self-Awareness

  How Are You Showing Up?

  3 Intention

  Write It Down and Dig Deep

  4 Energy

  Set the Temperature, Why FYFs Are Friend Magnets, and How to Release Your Natural D.O.S.E.

  Part II

  GOING OUT

  5 Where to Find Your People

  The Four Stages of Community

  6 The CRAWL Method

  How to Build Your Dream Community from Scratch1

  7 Nurture Your Community

  Ten Foolproof Ways to Keep Them Coming Back for More

  8 Reframe and Embrace Conflict

  Life Languages, the Friendship Cycle, Avoiding FOBLO, and Eradicating Gossip

  9 Belonging and Aging

  Live It Up as a Master Citizen

  10 The Future of Belonging

  What Happens Next?

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Foreword

  It hink I should start out by declaring my bias up front: I absolutely love this book! Radha Agrawal has written a book that is a reflection of who she is as a person—authentic, wise, adventuresome, and loving. Belong takes us on a journey to discover who we are, what we like and don’t like, our purpose in life, and what gives us joy and happiness. It is our guidebook for exploration, and it shows us how to genuinely connect with others and create communities that we will nurture and which, in turn, will nurture us.

  All of us were born into and grew up in various communities—our families, neighborhoods, schools, clubs, friends, religious groups, cities, our larger nation, and indeed the entire human race and perhaps even all sentient beings. We truly are tribal animals, and we can only fully flourish within communities where we truly belong. Despite our need and desire for authentic community, many of us no longer experience it in our lives. Many Americans are no longer close to their biological families, and the neighborhoods and communities that we grew up in may no longer be relevant to our lives. We all too frequently go forward on our life journey with little conscious understanding about the importance that belonging to various communities has for our health and happiness. Belong brilliantly shows us how to know ourselves better and find, create, and connect with the people and communities with whom we will find the greatest fulfillment. Belong is an incredibly empowering book because it puts the responsibility for finding and creating the communities that will fulfill us squarely on our own shoulders, while simultaneously teaching us the skills we need to do exactly that.

  One of things I like best about Belong is that Radha shares her own life journey with us, and she does so with genuine warmth. Far from boasting about her many accomplishments, Radha tells us about the mistakes she has made and the lessons she has learned, turning us into the beneficiaries of her hard-earned wisdom. Often I felt her saying, “This is who I am. This is what I love and care about. This is what I want to do. This universe is beautiful and amazing! I want to share it with you. Let’s create a fun and nurturing community together. Let’s create a better world together.”

  Belong is overflowing with great ideas, wonderful stories, memorable quotes, and a depth of wisdom. I could quote dozens of lines I loved, but I’ll limit myself to two of my favorite ideas, beautifully expressed here: “Energy is a great equalizer in life. It doesn’t matter what you do for a living or how much money you have—the energy you put out is the energy you get back. Negative energy breeds negative community. Positive energy breeds positive community. It’s that simple.” And I also loved this: “As with everything in life, nothing stays the same. All communities and relationships evolve and change. When you sense it happening, rather than thinking, ‘This isn’t what it used to be,’ consider this: It’s never supposed to be what ‘it used to be’! Everything evolves, including communities and relationships, and it’s a beautiful thing! Let’s learn to embrace that!”

  Belong is an extraordinary book by an extraordinary person. It can be read quickly, but it should be read slowly, and, above all, it should be practiced. It is a book that will change your life for the better if you allow it to. I believe it has already done that for me; it has inspired me to lead my life adventure with more intentionality, more courage, and more love. I hope it does the same for you.

  —John Mackey

  Co-founder & CEO Whole Foods Market

  “We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and
know the place for the first time.” —T. S. Eliot

  Part I

  Going In

  We are born in community—fully connected to another human. Without connection, we cannot survive. It’s in our DNA to belong.

  I didn't always understand the importance of community. My epiphany came at age thirty.

  Chapter 1

  My Epiphany

  How Community Changed My Life

  When I turned thirty, I realized I didn’t belong. I was in my bathroom on a snowy Saturday in January in New York City, brushing my perpetually knotted hair and getting ready to go out, when I had an epiphany while looking at myself in the mirror: I didn’t look happy.

  Other than with my identical twin sister, Miki, and a small group of friends whom I loved but rarely saw because they were scattered around the globe, I didn’t really feel a strong sense of belonging anywhere. I found myself stuck at the same sports bar every Saturday with friends who talked about stuff I didn’t care about, and I frequently drank until I blacked out. I had just broken off an engagement, and I was not respecting myself or my body. And I was about to go out and do it all over again that night.

  In that moment I knew something had to change. “What do I actually want?” I asked myself. “What matters to me? Is this what life’s all about? Am I just a weekend warrior getting drunk with people who don’t inspire me? Am I spending my time the way I want, or am I just numbing my loneliness and lack of deep connections?” I realized I was so tired of just c o a s t i n g.

  Growing up, community had been at the center of my family’s values. My parents immigrated to Canada in the 1970s—Dad is from India; Mom is from Japan. After meeting and falling in love in graduate school, they married and raised my sisters and me with little support from their families, who were thousands of miles away. Looking back, I now see how much they taught us about the importance of community, and how vulnerable and courageous they had to be to build their own community from scratch, especially with English as their second language.

  You could say I’ve been part of a community since I was in my mother’s womb, splishing and splashing around with my identical twin, Miki. My older sister, Yuri, was less than a year older than Miki and me (363 days older, to be exact), so from the very beginning I had two sisters to play with, learn from, fight against, and make up with every day. It was always exciting—traumatic when we ganged up on one another and empowering when we stuck together.

  Even when finances were tight, our parents threw the most amazing birthday celebrations and dinner parties, where we invented games for our friends and designed a signature fruit punch every year. I remember going downstairs to our basement during a party my dad threw for his engineering team and everyone was laughing at the dramatic poetry readings led by his British colleagues. All this stuck with me. Fun was very important in our family (once the copious amounts of chores and homework were completed, of course), and community organizing, including throwing events, has always been an integral way of life.

  So when did that all change? How did I end up at thirty feeling like I didn’t belong? I knew there had to be more to life.

  Thinking back, I realized that for the past decade, I had placed making friends in

  the “if I have time” category. Work always came first and canceling on friends

  became normal. I spent time with people who were fine but not inspiring,

  just because it was easier. I would often delay or avoid the opportunity

  for a deeper connection with someone in real life because I

  wanted to catch up on social media. With Facebook and

  Instagram, I thought the more “friends” and “followers”

  I had, the better and more full my life would be. But

  it was more of an addiction, a rush, driven by ego, with

  insecurities bubbling up everywhere and offering

  very little satisfaction in the end. I was too

  proud (aka insecure) to reach out to potential

  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!

  Maybe turning thirty woke me up, but it really wasn’t an “event” or a “low point” that I hit. It was a simple recognition. A realization. And I had to do something about it.

  That night at the sports bar, I looked around and realized that almost everyone was avoiding their feelings the same way I had been.

  People were looking around the room and not at one another. Half the bar was buried in their phones, and the other half was belligerently drunk and shouting at one another, grossly making out, or doing shots. I couldn’t believe I had been a part of this and let it go on for so many years! I had nothing in common with these people! What was I thinking? I left my untouched beer and ran home with my head spinning, determined to make a change once and for all.

  For the first time in my adult life, I was going to be intentional about my people.

  As I grew more passionate about creating a community, I learned that isolation and a lack of belonging were becoming A CRISIS:

  • One in four Americans report that they have ZERO friends to confide in and discuss important matters with; this number has tripled in the last thirty years, according to a 2006 study published in American Sociological Review.

  • One in three Americans over the age of sixty-five is socially isolated; for those over the age of eighty-five, the number increases to one in two. This was heartbreaking to learn. The people who worked so hard to create the world we currently live in are being shoved into isolation instead of being celebrated?! I couldn’t believe it!

  • 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.

  • Another study found that isolation sets off a cellular chain reaction that increases inflammation and suppresses the body’s autoimmune response to disease. We are sick from loneliness!

  • 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. They attribute their health and longevity to strong family ties, enjoyable social engagements, regular exercise, and eating mostly vegetables, usually in community.

  This was a huge wake-up call. I had never realized how vital community was for my health and happiness. . . .

  Becoming a social entrepreneur—a term used for people interested in creating a business that solves social, cultural, and environmental issues—is what ultimately opened my eyes to the importance of in-person communities. In 2010, I launched a children’s nutrition education media company (à la Sesame Street) called Super Sprowtz to inspire kids to eat their vegetables. I wrote four children’s books, produced fifty educational videos with the best puppeteers in the world, launched salad bar programs in underprivileged elementary schools across the country, and worked with some of the finest educators to create a comprehensive curriculum to make healthy eating fun, and we were impacting hundreds of thousands of kids around the world over the five years that I ran it. While we were making exciting strides, it was also the first time I saw how technology impacted the way kids connected with one another, as well as how it made them more sedentary and isolated.

  During that period, in 2013, Miki, our friend Antonia, and I also launched THINX, an underwear technology company, with the intention of disrupting the market for feminine hygiene products. Our mission was not only to invent a new way to deal with menstruation (and serve the planet and the women in develop
ing countries who lacked convenient solutions) but also to unify women and create a platform for women’s empowerment. We spent three years tinkering with and developing our first prototype, and since our Kickstarter campaign in 2013, we’ve amassed an incredible community of hundreds of thousands of women who support THINX and our mission—which in turn has helped to reinforce my belief in the strength and importance of relationships across every aspect of life.

  That same year (2013 was the year I kept saying YES!), my friend and coconspirator Matt and I came together over falafel late one night. Frustrated by how nightlife had become overrun by mean bouncers, too much alcohol, and digital divides, we wanted to get back to the basics of dancing and good, clean fun. What started out as a social experiment in which we gathered good friends in a basement lounge for early-morning yoga, dance, and merriment before going to work (several friends initially thought we were nuts!) has grown into Daybreaker, a mischievous movement that can now be found in twenty-five cities across the world and a dozen college campuses—with over 450,000 community members—and we’re just getting started.

  I now spend my days working as a Community Architect, a term I coined for myself and for all those who spend their days bringing humans together. The best architects think about materials, design, light and space, and Community Architects are no different. Communities are built, person by person, through thoughtful design and authentic, energetic connection points.

  I’ve traveled all around the country and the world to launch Daybreaker, and throughout these travels I’ve sought out all sorts of people to talk to—students, teachers, engineers, hair stylists, entrepreneurs, psychologists, retirees, kids, taxi drivers, CEOs, you name it—in order to learn from the different communities that exist. I learned that many people think it’s almost shameful to want to belong—they view it as “needy.” Of course it’s needy . . . it’s a fundamental human need! On Maslow’s hierarchy of basic human necessities, belonging sits right alongside the need for love.