60% of Americans feel alone.. Why do 60% of Americans feel alone? Do…
By: Pip Collective
Tags: Diversity And Inclusion, Diversity

We’ve all heard it. “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” While Jim Rohn, who spoke those words, was aiming to provide motivational gusto surrounding entrepreneurship and team, they actually hit a deeper chord.

Let’s consider the reciprocal of this.

Why am I not shaped and influenced by the other 10, 20, or 30 people in my life? What would happen if I were? I believe there is a fundamental disconnect between people in 2020, and this is growing by the day. While there are many valid reasons, like explicitly racist or hateful people, there is one facet that stands underemphasized.

Vulnerability.

I believe vulnerability is the richest form of courage. If so, why are many of us not swimming in gold? The reason is this: we’ve forgotten how to talk to each other. We’ve forgotten to go into conversations with a human-first acknowledgement. No, this is not another article advocating for one human race, or to grant hateful people a free pass in the name of learning.

This is about deepening and strengthening the ties with the people already in your life. I implore you to sit for a moment and wonder about who really knows you. Sure, your partner may know your favorite cereal, your best friends know your most memorable adventure… but do they know about your socioeconomic upbringing which has shaped your world views up until this point? Do they know about your anxiety triggers in a given situation, or in what they’re rooted? Have you ever asked your sibling about their experiences with gender, or race, or sexuality?

Why don’t people know this about you? It’s certainly not a blame game, so what is it? There are four critical factors to understanding, and investing in these four will increase understanding on all counts:

Humanity Vulnerability Questions Reciprocity

College Culture

In college, some could say I was living the dream. I earned good grades, rose to executive positions in various clubs, and always had a party I could attend on a Friday night if I wanted to. However, not many people would know I was contending with my gender, or struggling with crippling depression, because college isn’t the place for these struggles, right?

I’ve never been more glad to be wrong.

A friend of mine invited me to join a dialogue group, which was so farfetched to me that I scoffed. I did go, though, because I was curious what that even meant. In my family, if something was wrong, you swallowed it and went about your day. Expressing your feelings, much less knowing they’d be respected, was foreign to me.

Dialogue saved my life.

Dialogue is simple, really. A group of people come together around a set of principles they create to curate a space they’ll enjoy and maximize vulnerability. I-statements (speaking from personal experience only), confidentiality, assuming best intention while acknowledging impact, and sharing an equal amount of time speaking are some common principles. Then, trained facilitators/moderators engage the group with a hot-topic icebreaker, like a privilege walk or a spectrum activity soliciting everyone’s opinions. Finally, the majority of the time is spent discussing things most people haven’t had the opportunity to express, like sexual orientation, mental ability, and ethnicity.

A minuscule fraction of college campuses have dialogue programs. We at the Pip Collective seek to remedy this. We’ve been hard at work creating and perfecting our very own campus dialogue program: CORE. Standing for Cultivating Open minds, Relationships & Empathy, our driving force is to plant the seed of empathy across campuses, revolutionizing the way we connect with each other.

We assist campuses in beginning their very own body of moderators and will train them, remaining side-by-side for standalone trainings, dialogue curriculum planning, and other coaching.

My dear friend Drew Lytle, founder of Lumastic, once said, “Me vs. tiger? Tiger wins. Us vs. tiger? We win.” The tiger is the divide which damns most people into a life of fear, a life without vulnerability and intimacy, a life without dialogue. Let’s get that tiger, together. Let’s dialogue. Dialogue changed my life so much that I quit and traded my job to construct a dialogue program spanning the nation.

Let’s be the last generation contending with loneliness. If you or someone you know is interested in joining a dialogue group or running one, learn more about CORE here.