That said, I think that that also with like anything, like any pendulum, it can swing too far to the extreme where we do become an island, where we decide like, well, I have to protect myself so much, you know, and we sort of make ourselves these really fragile things where I can't have anybody that disagrees with what I think or comments on the way that I live or gives any type of negative comment. And that makes it almost impossible to be a part of a community. And I want us to think about that. Like, what do we have to sort of accept, endure? I don't know what word you want to use, but what reality do I have to accept if I want to be a part of a community? I recently saw like a TikTok where somebody had made it and said, everybody wants a village, but nobody wants to be a villager. And I saw another tweet where somebody said something like, annoyance is the price of community. And both, they perfectly encapsulate what it actually means to be a part of community because everybody wants community. We all want to feel connected. We all want to feel loved. We all want to be supported, but we don't want to deal with the annoyance that comes with that. And so I want us to really think about if I'm really serious about wanting a community, what am I willing to put up with? What am I willing to do? Okay. The first thing that you have to understand if you want to be a part of community is that you have to help people. You have to also give. It's a give and take. And in order to create these natural connections, you have to give without expectation. It cannot be like a tit for tat. Like I drove you to the airport because I know I need a ride to the airport next week. It's simply caring about the people that you are in community with. It's doing it in order to show community care is to show like somebody is in need or need something. I'm willing to help. Okay. And oftentimes it may not even be quote unquote help. It may just be showing up. Right. You know, we see all those memes where we're all like hoping that people cancel plans. And I get it. I feel the same way. It feels so much more comfortable and enjoyable sometimes to just be at home. Half the time when I get invited to things, I don't want to go. And I'm like, I don't want to have these conversations. I don't want to be out there, whatnot. But that is the cost. Showing up for people when it's their, you know, baby shower or when they're opening their business and they're having a premiere or they're doing open mic night or whatnot. It's almost like depositing in a bank, right? Like you're depositing this goodwill that you show up for your people. And that requires you to be outside, which is a lot for a lot of us. A lot of people don't like being outside, which I get. But your community is not going to just be in your home. Again, when people tell me, even if they want to build a community, let's say for their job, right? Or they want to build a community, they say like, oh, I don't have any connection with my coworkers. I'm always curious of like, do you put an effort to make connection? Do you go out to, let's say, happy hours? You don't have to have a community with your co-workers, by the way. You can decide who your community is. But if you do want to build that, you have to look in the mirror and ask yourself, am I doing the things that cultivate a community, right? Am I connecting with people, right? Am I giving, helping, showing up for the people that I want in my life, even especially when I would say it is not in my benefit? Of course, it's easy when we want to go to something, when it's your best friend and it's a party you want to go to, or that's, you know, somebody puts together a book club and you love books and, you know, that's your cup of tea. Those are easy to show up with. But that's not going to be the case all the time. And that's okay. Right? It could be like, I know for me, I'm a part of very tight knit community with my family and family friends that I've grown up with. And there are tons of events that I quote unquote have to, I don't have to, but like, I'm sort of expected to go and I do feel obligated to go and I do. And there's some that I love. There's some with a lot of my favorite people and it's going to be my type of party or event. And it's, you know, at times that I like and it's great. And then there's tons that I don't, that it's just going to be a drag. And it's, you know, going to a graduation that I don't want to sit in the sun and listen to two hours of graduation or, you know, maybe a baby shower that's not that exciting. Or I don't know the person that well. And it's like the child of somebody that's close to my mother or whatnot. And yet all of those are also still part of community because I know that when I have something or when I need something, not everybody is super thrilled maybe to be there. Not to say that they're not happy, but like maybe it's not their favorite thing to do. And yet it's all a part of this kind of culture of give and take, right? And so you have to be willing to give. You have to be willing to inconvenience yourself. You have to be willing to do things that you don't want to do. The second part of that is you have to be willing to get help. This one seems a little counterintuitive. Like it seems like one of the reasons we all know, like the reason you want a community is because you want people to show up for you. But this hyper individualism, one of the worst things that it's done for us is that it has made so many people feel as though they should never inconvenience someone, right? That they would rather pay somebody else to solve their problems or that you just never want to be a burden on anyone. And I think that one of the things that you have to understand is one of the things that binds people together, I would say the thing that binds people together the fastest is vulnerability, right? And part of that is showing your humanness. And part of that is showing when you need help. And I think when you guard yourself to always never need somebody and never take help and never want to inconvenience someone, you limit how close you can be to that person. You limit the depth of that relationship. Because humans love helping. This is one thing that, I mean, it's been studied, and we know that, like, you know, helping people gives us dopamine releases, and this is why so many people really want to, like, whether it's charity work or volunteering work or just helping out a friend, it makes you feel good. It makes you feel needed. It makes you feel like you're a part of that community. And yet I think for a lot of us, we think we're doing people a favor by never asking for help. I think we think like, oh, I'm being a better friend because I'm not burdening my friend. I'm not asking my friend for that ride to the airport. Or I'm not asking if they could show up to this thing. Or, you know, I'm being like easy breezy about it. And the reality is, is I think a lot of us stunt the relationships that we could have. And so what's fascinating is I think for a lot of people listening to this podcast, a lot of my type A, overachieving, high performers, it's actually going to be harder to get help than give help. Like when I say the first part, you're like, yeah, I'm willing. You need help moving. I'll be there. You need this. Like I'm the person for you. I will solve your problem. But when I need it, am I willing to ask for it? Am I willing to be vulnerable and say like, hey, I'm feeling lonely and I would like, you know, you guys to come over or whatever the ask is for, right? Whether it's, you know, a task or whether it's just emotional, whether it's opening up and getting people's support, whatever it might be, if you're not willing to get help, you're not really in a community. That's where a lot of the, I think the people pleasing and the burnout comes in. Because like if you never get the support you need and you're just giving, then yeah, it is a burnout to have a big community. It is a burnout to be close to other people because you're just used to giving all the time. Where it becomes really ideal is when there can be this exchange. Again, not tit for tat. Some seasons you are going to help more. You don't need as much help. And then other seasons you do. And when you do need that help, it is incredible. It is an incredible gift to have. Historically, I think like for a lot of women, you have been sort of trained in this culture to not ask for help. So I think for a while I was that person and I have worked a lot on allowing people to be there for me or allowing people to help me. It still doesn't, certain things don't come easy, but I really think about like if I did not have my community of people, I don't know where I would be today because I think when I had children, both times, my community descended on me. Like that's just what it felt like. It was like this entire group of people descended on my house and me and did everything. Cooked, showed up and held my baby so I could, you know, go take a shower, bought me the things that I needed, brought things when I ran out of them so I didn't have to go to the store. I really got a good amount of time to heal, to be with my kid. Now, again, I needed to be able to accept that and I needed to be okay with that. And that is hard at times because I kept wanting to be like, no, I'm fine. You guys can leave and whatnot. And part of it was like allowing myself to be like, it's okay. It's okay to need help right now. It's okay that in this moment, in this vulnerable state, other people are coming to me. And then in return, I do the same. When my cousins have kids or when, you know, a family member gets sick, we all kind of descend on that family. But that only comes because there is this constant kind of give and take, you know? And part of this, this whole give and take, I would say the last thing, like, I already mentioned it, but I loved this tweet that somebody put out where it said, annoyance is the cost of being a part of community. I remember having this conversation with one of my cousins because he was really upset that people were all up in his business, that people were giving their unsolicited advice or unsolicited thoughts about his life and what he was doing. And he was really frustrated about it. And he was really frustrated at our culture, at a lot of the stuff within our culture, which fair enough, it's not to say that it's not beyond reproach or criticism, but he was sort of lashing out at people in our family about leaving him alone. And one of the conversations I had with him was, okay, that's fine. You can do that. You can set that boundary and you can decide that you don't want people in your life, but then you don't get to call them to come help you move, right? You don't get to have them there when you're sick because you want, you know, your mom or your aunt or whatever to make you soup. If you are willing to be a part of this community, part of it is that, like, if people are going to be there for you when you need them, if people are going to be there for the fun so that you aren't alone on Friday and Saturday nights and you have somewhere to go and people celebrate your birthday and you have all of these things that make, you know, life fun and worth living and create this level of like tribe, then they are also going to have opinions on your life. They're also going to voice those opinions. They're also going to get annoyed or have their own preferences or get offended. Like there is no way to have these dynamics with humans and not have that. And I think for a lot of us, one of the things that I've noticed with self-help, especially personal development in kind of the Western world is, you know, we talk a lot about how capitalism creates individualism, but I do really think that like personal development also adds to it because there is this narrative and these ideas of like setting boundaries and making sure nobody ever crosses your boundaries. And I remember reading memes where it says like, you know, if they drain your energy, they don't deserve access to you. And I remember even reading that. I'm like, have you met humans? Every human drains your energy. What does that even mean? Like if anybody drains my energy, I need to cut them off? That's wild. That's a wild take to take, right? Now, again, everything is nuanced. So I'm not saying if someone is abusing you or if somebody is regularly pushing boundaries and causing harm, emotional or physical or whatnot, yes, of course, we need boundaries. We need to be able to say no. I talk a lot about people pleasing and the resentment that comes up. And there is a time and place to say no. You get to still decide what you can and can't do. So it's not to say that it ever has to be all or nothing. But I think that those concepts have gone really far and have really hurt a lot of us because they've created this idea that everything has to be high vibes and I always have to feel good and everybody has to be on the same page. And if they ever say anything that I find annoying or disrespectful or whatever, then I have to cut them off and I have to speak my piece and I have to confront this or whatever it is, whatever it might be. And I think that that's just the antithesis of being in a community. Because, you know, it's like a million different grievances. Of course, it's like, well, you know, I feel a little slighted here because this person invited everybody over, but not me. And I feel, you know, whatever. And I just go back to like, that is the cost of being in a community. Of course, that's going to happen. Of course, there's things you don't want to do Of course people are going to have opinions about you and they're going to voice them and they're going to tell you. And you get to decide what to do with that. Now for me, one of the reasons I love thought work, one of the reasons I love doing the mindset work that I've had is because it has helped me manage my own mind so I don't have to change anybody else. I don't need other people to bite their tongue and not tell me what they think about what I need to do. I just don't let it rile me up. When my family, who still, by the way, to this day, 10 years later, makes comments about the fact that I should go back to law or they should like ask me questions, I don't get frustrated by it. It's laughable to me. Like I really do have the mantra of like, they don't need to understand me. I understand me. They don't need to accept what I'm doing in my everyday life. I accept it. I know what I'm doing. My husband gets it, right? Like, I don't need them to understand that. And that has helped me not need to put up boundaries, right? Not need to be like, you don't get to say that to me. Or what's it to you? Or like, blow up, right? It's like, okay, you can think whatever you want. You can have tons of thoughts. People can have thoughts about whether I should have another kid or not, or whether I should have had kids or if you do or don't. And a lot of us get so riled up and get so offended by whatever it is the conversation, like, why aren't you married by now? Or whatever bullshit people want to ask you. And I think that when you realize like part of it is this triggering insecurity that we have or don't within ourselves. And so we don't want to deal with it. When you deal with it yourself, when you deal with your own thoughts, it becomes easier to say, no, thank you. Or say like, yeah, I hear that that's what your experience is or what you think, but I don't want that. And move on and have the rest of the community still be a beneficial thing as opposed to getting all, you know, bent out of shape. And so I would just say like, there is the, you know, give and take, there is the help and accepting help. There is also knowing that part of it dealing with humans is some negative emotion of, you know, maybe a little bit of resentment, maybe some jealousy, maybe some annoyance, frustration. That is part of the deal. And that's okay. Because it also means that on the flip side of that, you get the connection and you get the love and you get the support. You cannot have one without the other. It just doesn't come. Nobody's going to get that. And so like, I say that to say like, don't be surprised when that's part of it. I think people want to be a part of a community and then they try to like enter in a community and then they're like, oh, it's too much. Like there was, you know, all this drama or these people, I don't know, whatever. People had all these opinions about me. And it's like, yeah, that is interacting with humans. Humans have a lot of thoughts. They have a lot of opinions. I have a lot of thoughts. I always say this, like, it's so funny doing this work, like people think like you're going to become this like nonjudgmental. I don't know. It's like Zen person. Like never met her. Don't know who she is. Because I have a lot of opinions about how other people should live their lives. Trust me. I keep most of it to myself. Sometimes I don't. And I get it. Sometimes that's probably annoying. I'm sure it's annoying. And yet that's what it means to be human. That's what it means to interact. That's what it means to like understand. And a lot of it comes from love. I obviously want those things for people because I want to help them and I don't want them to fall into certain, you know, pitfalls or whatnot. And when I think about it with people in my community, like that's all they're doing. They're trying to protect me. They think they know best. That's the way they were raised. Those are their beliefs. That's the paradigm they were a part of. And that's okay. They can give me their opinion and I can take it with a grain of salt. And so I just want you to expect that. I want you to know whatever community you are going to cultivate, it is going to be 50-50. There's going to be really amazing parts of it. There's going to be really great connection and support and this feeling of fulfillment and belonging, which is fantastic. And then there's going to be a lot of annoyance and pettiness and drama and whatever. And it's really like kind of figuring out how you navigate that, how you get involved with it, how much of it is worth it. Like I'm not saying maybe certain communities are not going to be worth it. The last thing I will say, and it sort of harkens back to what I was saying in the beginning, I was like, what are you doing to feel connected? What are you doing to not feel lonely? You know, when we go back to thought work, I think for a lot of us, when we want to feel this feeling of connection, I want you to really think about like, what else could I do to feel connected to someone? And stop worrying so much about what they're doing, right? I used to think like, well, if my friends liked me, they would text me more or they would make plans more. And then I realized, okay, what I want at the core of this is I want more plans with my friends. So why am I not reaching out and making plans, right? I'm stuck in my head with these thoughts of like, no, they'll probably get annoyed or they probably hate me. And what was interesting is the more I leaned into like, if I want to feel the feeling of connection, what are the actions I would take when I feel connected to someone, right? What would I have to think in order to feel connected? When I doubled down on that, it was wild when I saw the difference in relationships. Like the more I started pouring into them, all of a sudden that connection got stronger. That connection within me felt stronger. I love them regardless of what they were thinking or feeling. I was after my own feeling. And my feeling of love came from me thinking really good thoughts about them and thinking, I want to see this person. Let me message them and see if they want to have lunch. Let me see if they can have coffee. And the more I did that, the more I started creating the bonds that I wanted instead of sort of waiting and thinking, well, they don't ever reach out, which means they probably don't like me. Right. And so again, another plug for like why you need to manage your own mind. But I really think about this, like I think about this, even in communities that I'm'm in that's not within my family. I think about like, let's say if I'm in an online community. Yes, there's somebody that maybe is running it, but you make it what it is. I noticed so many people like I go into these some communities and you can always see that there's people that are active, people that are involved, people that are asking and getting help, people that are getting what they came for. They paid to be there or they didn't. And then there's people that are just wallflowers that are just kind of lurking. Now, I'm not, there's no shade. I do that too. There's a lot of groups that I don't necessarily want to be that involved in. I need a couple of things. So maybe I don't get involved. But I have been more conscious in certain groups where I do want to get a lot out of it, where I do want to, you know, get the results that I want from that thing. And I realize, like, I'm a part of this community. If I'm going to get the experience, then I also have to put into it. Right. I know it feels uncomfortable. It feels better to just lurk. It feels better to just scroll through like the community page and see what other people have written. But it doesn't work without me also being involved because if everybody thought that then nobody is actually being involved right and so i push myself to kind of think about like what is the type of community member i want to be what kind of community do i want to see if i want to see a thriving community where people are involved or answering questions or whatnot then i also have to be vulnerable and ask the stupid question or post the thing that i'm afraid people are going to judge me for even within that every community every group that I've gone into, I've gone into like masterminds or group programs or memberships. Every time when I do that, I get 10 times more than in programs that I don't kind of show up in, obviously, right? Like it's an obvious statement. And yet every time I do it, I'm like, oh, I'm so glad I showed up fully. I'm so glad I decided like I'm going to get the most out of this community, which means I have to decide how I'm going to show up in this community. And I show up fully and I reap the rewards and I actually get what I paid for. Right. So I say this regardless of whether it's like paid community, whether it's family, whether it's, you know, a hobbyist group that you're a part of. I want you to really just think about how do I want to show up as a community member? What makes me a good community member? The more you think about that, the easier it actually becomes to create and cultivate a community. When you are thinking of like, I just need to find some community that I can go be a part of, that I can kind of drop myself into, that energy rarely ever works because you're not willing to kind of put in the work that it actually requires to create those things. It's sort of like I want to be dropped into something that took a lot of time for that community to build, right? Like when I think about my friends or my family and the community we have, it's not like it was built in a month. It's years of give and take that like cultivate these relationships and so if you're willing to kind of put in that work and figure out like how do I want to show up as a community member what is my idea of a community member what is that going to require of me how much more vulnerable do I have to be you will get so much more out of any community that you join all right that was kind of long but I think that community is extremely important. I think that it is the basis for a lot of our happiness. And it just makes life so much more fun and so much easier. I really think about how having that support is night and day, but it does require a lot of work. It doesn't come easy. And so if you're willing to put in that work, it's absolutely worth it. All right, my friends, I hope this was helpful. And I will be back next week, hopefully, with another episode. Hey, if you're looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career, or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working, like perfectionism, people pleasing, imposter syndrome, and we start working on what does. And we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life and you will get the coaching tools and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitter club and get on the wait list. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.