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How to cool down this year’s family gatherings
If you, like millions of Americans, are traveling to spend time with an extended circle, you may be thinking more than usual about how to help the group connect (or just not blow up). Conflict resolution facilitators are taught to hold healthy heat. And sometimes that means turning the temperature down, while still maintaining connection.
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Feeling Disconnected? Your room setup might be at fault.
One of the biggest mistakes we make when we gather is we accept the physical setup we’re given, even when it doesn’t serve our needs. But by taking a second to help the room find the right physical formation, we can tighten the social contract and help remind our gatherers, after all, why they are there.
Wait, do we need a ceremony for this?
When we pay attention, we use ceremony to mark (or invent) notable transitions. We invite others to witness and partake and help us make something that can feel nebulous visible.
5 Ways to Quickly Build Belonging
In our gatherings, it’s easy to confuse “belonging” for “sameness.” Belonging is about more than just our shared connections or interests: it’s about feeling a part of the whole without having to all be the same.
Filling your gathering cup
Gathering with intention and care is a life-affirming practice. Whether navigating life changes, feeling the heaviness of the world, or breaking free from an uninspired rut, making time for community is vital.
Three things I’ve learned in 2023
As we wind down 2023, I wanted to take a moment to close out the year together. (Because, just as an artful gatherer spends time opening their gathering, they also take time to close it.)
Gathering in Tender Times
This season, especially in the midst of so much loss and grief in the world, I invite you to ask yourself how you might gather in ways that are nourishing for you and the people around you.
Meaning As Medicine
As we enter a season of end-of-year festivities, I invite you to reflect on the gatherings that have nourished you, and which you feel grateful to have attended. Why do we experience some gatherings as a balm, whereas others feel procedural?
3 Mistakes We Make When We Gather
As we enter fall, I wanted to share with you the three most common mistakes we keep making when we gather (myself included). And what to try instead.
And the Summer’s Gathering MVPs Are….
What do Taylor Swift, Greta Gerwig and Beyoncé have in common besides creating culture-defining work that has given the entire economy a post-pandemic boost? I’ll give you one guess
5 Ways to Bring Family Together this Summer
So often, when we get together for family reunions or barbecues or milestone birthdays, there's a lot of joy and milling around and chit chat, but it doesn’t always turn into something more.
The Power of a Good Rule
A digital community, like a gathering, is a temporary alternative universe created (and bound) by a set of agreed-upon rules. And it’s often only when those rules are changed do we start to see them, value them, and recognize how much work they were doing to create an experience we valued.
Why the More is Not Always the Merrier
Generous exclusion is the intentional drawing of a temporary line for the good of the guests and to help activate and fulfill a gathering's purpose. By closing the door, you create the room. Here are five reasons why.
5 Ways to Reinvent Traditions
I’ve been thinking a lot about weddings lately and wanted to share with you five questions to help figure out which traditions to copy-paste, which to edit, and which to cut altogether.
Phones and Gatherings
Here are five questions to cultivate a more intentional relationship to technology at every gathering:
The Magic of a Good Opening
Artful gatherers know: the first five minutes of a gathering — the opening — are an opportunity to shape the rest of the experience.
Become a Force for Better Gatherings
This month, I want to focus on how to start actually shifting the gathering culture of your communities, whether at work or with family and friends.
My Top 3 Gathering Lessons from 2022
I wish you and yours a little respite (hopefully) as we turn collectively inwards. But before I sign off for the year, I wanted to leave you with my top three gathering lessons from 2022.
The Art of Guesting During Festive Season
As we enter the rest of the holiday season, to help you navigate it all, I want to invite you to practice what I call intentional guesting. What is Intentional Guesting, you ask? It’s the act of choosing whether, why and how one attends a gathering.
What Stellar Dress Codes Have In Common
If gathering is about the navigation of power and connection in a group for a purpose, there’s no better learning site for us aspiring artful gatherers than dress codes.
Feeling Disconnected From Your Team? Tap into what you know.
Remote and flexible work seem here to stay for many teams. How do you create shared, enlivening experiences for teams and organizations when you don't share physical space? Read more on the joys of knowing your people and how one team used this to create a fun celebration.
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Plan with purpose for any occasion
Unlock new and creative ways to transform your next event. Rethink the traditional ways we come together and understand how to infuse meaning and connection when planning for any occasion.
Improve your virtual meetings
Design an effective and enjoyable virtual meeting. Seven simple ways you might inject connection and meaning into workplace meetings when you’re physically apart but virtually together.
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