How to build a village

Many of us crave stronger community, especially in the areas we live. Imagine how nice it would be to know all of your neighbors, have third spaces you're a regular at and plan routine gatherings with a wide circle of friends. But how do you actually make this dream a reality? Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering, shares her best tips for building community at the local level. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekit https://www.instagram.com/nprlifekit/?hl=en Sign up for our newsletter here. https://www.npr.org/newsletter/life-kit Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Support the show and listen to it sponsor-free by signing up for Life Kit+ at plus.npr.org/lifekit http://plus.npr.org/lifekit See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/podcast.

• 0:15Marielle Segarra?

  You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

• 0:20Marielle Segarra?

  Hey, it's Marielle. There's this saying, everybody wants a village, but no one wants to be a villager. I saw Priya Parker post about this online. She's a conflict resolution facilitator and author of The Art of Gathering. So she thinks about community and relationships a lot.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  When I post on Instagram dozens of types of gatherings that other people are doing, in part to inspire people to host more gatherings because we have a loneliness crisis, the majority of the comments I get, the DMs I get are, oh, I wish I was invited to something like that.

• 1:02Marielle Segarra?

  One time, she posted the obituary of a man in New Orleans who hosted these Monday night dinners where he'd cook red beans and rice and invite neighbors, friends, and strangers to his table. He hosted thousands of people over many years. And this post, it went viral.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  And what's interesting to me about it going viral, the majority of the comments were, I wish I was invited to a dinner like that. And I'm thinking, host one. Host one. Host it, right? The best way to get a seat at the table is to host the table. And I think right now, everybody's longing for community. We long to be part of a village. We long to have people come over and help us. But when's the last time you've hosted something? When's the last time you have helped somebody move? When's the last time you picked somebody up at the airport? When's the last time you, if you don't have kids, offered to babysit your friend's kids so that they can go out on a date night? It's almost like community

• 2:02Speaker 02

  has become consumption instead of production.

• 2:05Marielle Segarra?

  It can also be hard to build community if you don't have places you go all the time besides your workplace, if you're geographically isolated, if your favorite people live far away. Hard, but not impossible. Hard, but worthwhile. On this episode of Life Kit, how to start building your village and being a villager. We'll talk about hosting events, choosing who to invite, joining community spaces, and helping people connect. That's after the break.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 2:49Speaker 00

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• 3:03Speaker 03

  This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the bestselling book, How to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, historians, authors, athletes, and more about how to make better decisions to help avoid costly mistakes. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/podcast or wherever you listen.

• 3:34Marielle Segarra?

  Okay, Priya, what's a good place to start when it comes to building community?

• 3:38Speaker 02

  One of the best ways to build a community first is to host something. And host something that you are excited by. It shouldn't be a should. Host a gathering you want to attend. And it can be super simple. It can be super silly. Actually, honestly, the sillier, the better. There was a woman who wrote in, I have a subset called Group Life, and she wrote in and shared this example. She saw a tomato tart she wanted to make. Like, you know, many of us see a recipe, you're like, oh, I want to make it that one day. She took the recipe, invited six friends to come over that week for dinner.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  She made the tomato tart. She had everyone dress up in red for the dinner. And then at the dinner, she asked, what made you feel like a tomato this week?

• 4:28Marielle Segarra?

  Oh.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  It was doing something that she deeply wanted to do. When you do something that's like exciting to you or energizes you, it's also contagious. So the first thing is like asking like, how do I want to spend my time? Or what's one activity I've been wanting to do? What is one thing I've been longing for? It could be simply like, I've been dying to go and check out the new bookshop across town. Maybe invite three friends to go and and come with me. Let's go for a little field trip to go check out the bookshop. So start with something that like you feel like, that sounds fun.

• 4:59Marielle Segarra?

  Takeaway one, to build a village, start by hosting something, anything. A group dinner, a clothing swap, tea time at your apartment. Tell people I'm making a pie and I need folks to come over and eat it. When it's tax time, invite everybody over to get their taxes done together and then celebrate your accomplishment. Just be creative. Think about what excites or delights you and start there. If you don't have a lot of people to invite, go small. One or two people, maybe a family member or a neighbor. You can also start meeting new people to invite to things at community events and institutions.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Attend things, like look in your community. Go to a institution, a third place in your community. Look at their calendar, start showing up, start becoming a regular. The idea of a regular is a really powerful idea. There's so many, first of all, third places that want to be this for people. So restaurants, bookshops, gyms, parks that are wanting to bring people together. So go to those, like find one place. It can be trivia night at a local pub. And you keep going every Tuesday night over and over again. Find ways to take small social risks. And also you can see if someone's not catching the vibe, that's fine.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Keep trying in different places, but put yourself in places where other people are also looking for community. And there's some amount of shared interest, which is why I keep saying like, go to something where you are interested in what the activity is. If you don't drink alcohol and it's like a whiskey tasting night, that's probably not a good match, you know?

• 6:34Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah. And I feel like a lot of folks, like you said, they'll say, well, none of my friends host anything like this. But then you can find these other spaces. And I feel like one way to find them is to follow the things that feel sparkly or glimmery for you, the things that feel warm. You might not know it off the bat, but you're like, hmm, softball, or hmm, drumming.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Yes. Stop thinking about what you think it should look like. And start noticing moments where you feel more alive. I was invited a few months ago by a friend of mine, who for like nine months, talked about what she most missed from childhood was kickball. Like literally, most missed from childhood. And all she longed to do was to get people together in a park and play a game of kickball. And she was talking about it, and talking about it, and talking about it. And I was finally like, do it, just do it, I'll come. And like 20 people showed up. They were so delighted, in part because she was so excited. And we like put up plastic chairs for the bases and cleared out a part of the park.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  And we played two hours of kickball. And it was so fun. And everyone thanked her after. And we met different people. And you actually didn't have to do anything but be part of one of the teams and cheer and chant and mess around.

• 7:54Marielle Segarra?

  I love that. I also have been thinking with hosting a regular routine event, I think it can really help to ask a friend or two who you know value community and are the kind of people who show up and commit, to do it with you.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Totally. I mean, what you're sort of getting into is what makes a healthy, vibrant group, right? What makes a group last? What's the infrastructure of groups that last over time? How often is the right rhythm for this group?

• 8:27Speaker 02

  I have a friend who just started a mahjong group and they're doing every Tuesday. For others, that feels, that may feel like, whoa, that's a huge time commitment, maybe once a month. So like, how often? Then who's hosting this? And is it actually helpful for that one person who has the space to host it? Very important part of group life is reciprocity. Is that that person carrying the weight of hosting and then other people are doing other things? Or do you rotate?

• 8:50Marielle Segarra?

  So I host a monthly community dinner with friends. There are five of us who are always there and then we invite a few plus ones every time. But one thing I love about it is the burden of hosting isn't entirely on any one of us, right? Like, we're co-hosting.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Yes. I mean, one of the things I often say to folks when particularly they're hosting something is, you know, what's the best way to lower my anxiety? And like, you know, breathing practices, all of that helps. But actually, the best way to lower your anxiety is to share the worry of hosting by having co-hosts. Or by having sometimes what I call even sub-hosts. So it's not that everyone even necessarily needs to help play the same role, but this is a great trick to also just get people having buy-in and sort of feeling like they're all rolling their sleeves up. Like, aside, I used to have a friend who would sign as people walked in, like, a minister of water. You tonight are the minister of water. Wow, what's that? Well, whenever you see anyone's cup empty, you get to fill it. Wow.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  And you, my darling, are the chief minister of wine. Ooh, right? And you are the distributor of big red gum. Wow, right? It's all of these tiny little sub-roles, sub-hosts. And also, like, we're not all raised the same way. We're not, we're not all raised in the same religious context, or community, or cultural context. And so, the core of my work, I'm a biracial, bicultural, conflict resolution facilitator, who wrote The Art of Gathering, and now are exploring these ideas through group life on my Substack. And so much of what I keep saying to myself as well, is in modern life, we're not raised the same way. We don't have the same traditions. We don't have the same norms. And so by doing things like assigning sub-hosts, you're also helping people understand how

• 10:35Speaker 02

  to participate when you don't all necessarily have the same mental model of what a quote-unquote "night" looks like.

• 10:44Marielle Segarra?

  Takeaway two: share the joy and responsibility of hosting with friends. You could co-host something like a community dinner, or just allow people to be of use when they show up. Give them some veggies to mince, or tell them, "You're responsible for tonight's playlist." Throw a baby shower where folks come over to the couple's house and help them set up their nursery.

• 11:06Marielle Segarra?

  I love the idea of making something together, especially because I don't drink alcohol and I think that a lot of activities, like in a lot of group gatherings, can become centered around alcohol by default. And it's just really nice to say, "Well, what else could we do?" Like, that's why I love playing sports, but it's also, you know, you can make art together. You could get some air-dried clay and be like, "We're just gonna make some stuff. We're just gonna use our hands together."

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Absolutely. We can make things together. We can sing songs together. We can tell jokes together. I recently saw a gathering where, I'm forgetting the name of the town, but they had a neighborhood service swap.

• 11:51Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  They got 18 neighbors together. They came together in like a community center from like 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on a Saturday. They had flyers all over the community and said, "Bring whatever's broken in your house and we'll fix it."

• 12:04Marielle Segarra?

  Mmm, I love that.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  And people came and they were like fixing laundry machines and tables with screwed-out legs and a sewing machine and a camera. And like, it was a swap.

• 12:17Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  But it was also this deeper thing happening. Be like, "Oh, I know my neighbors." And it allows people to have a shared context and a way in.

• 12:27Marielle Segarra?

  We'll have more Life Kit after the break.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the bestselling book, How to Change, Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, historians, authors, athletes, and more about how to make better decisions to help avoid costly mistakes. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/podcast or wherever you listen. This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini

• 13:34Speaker 03

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• 14:10Marielle Segarra?

  Coming back to this idea that we started with, let's say that you want to try hosting something that you can then invite newer people to, have that cornerstone friend, like one or two cornerstone friends that you, maybe you meet them through a group activity, like that's where you start, or you meet them at work, or you, wherever. And they are people who are reliable and who you love being around, who like you know will show up and you know are game to try something.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  Exactly. My husband and I have a term for these people. We call them yes friends. They're friends who always say, yes, yes, I'll do that thing with you. Yes, I'll come over. Yes, you know, I'm down. I love that. And I, the other thing I would say is if a group sounds scary or hosting something sounds scary, which I totally get. I think of, you know, I'm a conflict resolution facilitator of groups. And so so much of my work is thinking about how do you create meaningful connection in a group context despite obstacles? And one, and I almost visualize these groups, whether it's six people, eight, 20, as a spider web. And everyone has a link to everyone else, but I, as the facilitator, need to be trusted by all. And so in like high stakes facilitation, we never start by just entering the room

• 15:26Speaker 02

  and starting the conversation. It's months and months of preparation. And the first thing I do is make an individual connection with each participant. And then we start bringing people together. So if you want to bring together four people or six people, maybe start with like a one on one coffee, or a walk, or running errands with each one and kind of just like feel the vibe. It can sometimes feel less scary when you also are kind of the link between each person. And then you can also introduce them in ways that allow them to know more about each other.

• 15:52Marielle Segarra?

  Do you have any tips specifically for folks who are shy? Like how they can bridge that gap and try to connect with people in these spaces?

• 16:00Speaker 02

  When I wrote The Art of Gathering years ago, I interviewed over 100 types of gatherers who other people credited with consistently creating amazing gatherings of all types. And one of the things I thought was super interesting was how many of them identified as introverts. And I asked one of them why they thought that was. And she said, I don't know about others, but I know for me, I'm so uncomfortable at so many of the gatherings I go to. So I decided to host gatherings based on ones I would want to attend. And it's doing things like thinking about the structure or the design of the gathering rather than sort of winging it based on, you know, the, your sparkling personality.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  It's finding ways to have release valves or escape hatches, like, you know, little nooks with chess tables or game of cards or something on the side. It's understanding also things like noise and, and music and thinking intentionally about how loud or soft a space is. It's finding ways to give people ins to each other that don't feel totally awkward. It's finding ways to have shared meaning without having to have conversation be the only way through. Like so much of connection, it's, it's a skill and it's a learnable skill. The good news is these are learnable skills and the good news is we can practice.

• 17:19Marielle Segarra?

  Takeaway three, when you're planning a gathering, look for your yes friends, the ones who are game, who show up, who initiate and treat your shared time with reverence and respect. These are also great folks to start with if you're trying to build a group of friends. And you don't have to start with a big or routine event. Invite one or two of these friends to a low stakes hang and see how they vibe.

• 17:45Marielle Segarra?

  What's a way you could give people ins with each other? Like, help them connect?

• 17:52Speaker 02

  People love to argue and banter. I'm a conflict resolution facilitator. And like, one of the deep problems of so many of our gatherings is like, we vacillate between unhealthy peace and unhealthy conflict. Two weeks ago on Group Life, I did a webinar called, "How to Hold Healthy Heat at Your Family Gathering and When to Cool It Down." And one of my tips was, "Fight, but about other things."

• 18:16Marielle Segarra?

  Right.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  People love to banter, like, strong opinions about low-stake issues, right?

• 18:22Marielle Segarra?

  Low stakes, hot takes?

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Low stakes, hot takes. I know a manager who wanted to bond her team, didn't have much of a budget, so she hosted a hot takes party. And everyone had to bring a two-minute PowerPoint presentation. She had hot dog and beer. And they, like, presented their hot take to the group of eight. It's like, there should only be one type of pasta. Or like, winter is the best season. Or wireless headphones are the worst invention ever. And people defend their opinion and everyone's laughing. And then you're like, arguing with one another. But there's a lot of warmth and banter. And it creates a lot of stickiness and trust in a group.

• 19:03Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, I like that idea. It also seems important to me to consider building community with people who are different ages than you.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Yes, I was actually gonna say that earlier, 100%. The loss of intergenerational gatherings is a huge loss all around. I mean, even if you think about parenting groups. I remember when I first had a child and would go to parenting groups, someone pointed out to me, a European, older European friend was like, "Why do you think the best advice would be from eight other women?" Who gave birth the same month.

• 19:39Marielle Segarra?

  Right.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Who live in your zip code. Like, this makes no sense.

• 19:43Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  And that may be a good support group because you're all having a shared experience, but that shouldn't then collapse into the guidance group.

• 19:51Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Right? And so intergenerational gatherings, yes, yes, yes.

• 19:55Marielle Segarra?

  I even with some folks from my softball team, we went out to get pizza recently and we realized going around the table, there's four of us and it was like, one is 14, she's the daughter of the one of the other people who were there, 14, 23, 36, 45. And we had a great time.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I recently read on Substack, a woman who said, you know, it's my 12 year old recently, like someone brought over a two year old and it was the first time he'd spent time with a two year old and he was so delighted and it was, it gave him a chance to like be an elder, like it's good for everyone. And so, and yes, it can be awkward or you may have to negotiate, you have to figure out what time is bedtime or not bedtime. But we've privatized and individualized so deeply that we, it is very difficult to connect across generations.

• 20:49Marielle Segarra?

  Okay, Priya, what's your number one community building tip for folks in the coming year?

• 20:54Speaker 02

  Be a proactive, intentional, kind, thoughtful guest. That could be at a pub, that could be at a bookshop, that could be at a reading series, that could be at a friend's house. I'm a much better guest than I am host. I love being a guest. There's actually less pressure because the host is so delighted to have a great guest. And my number two is, to go back to the identity part of hosting is, host something. Host something in the next month. It can be tiny. It should scare you a little. Do something that at the essence of the activity, whatever it is, makes you giggle, makes you like, yeah, I want to spend time that way. Host one thing and think of it as an experiment.

• 21:38Marielle Segarra?

  Priya Parker, thank you so much.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 21:44Marielle Segarra?

  All right, time for a recap. Takeaway one, host something, anything. Think about what excites or delights you and start there. If you don't have a lot of people to invite, go small. One or two people, maybe a family member, a neighbor. You can also meet people to invite to things at community events in institutions. Takeaway two, share the joy and responsibility of hosting with your friends. You could co-host a community dinner or just allow people to be of use when they show up. Takeaway three, look for your yes friends, the ones who are game, who initiate, and who treat your shared time with reverence and with respect. All right, a couple other tips. Playlists are a fun way to help people connect.

• 22:28Marielle Segarra?

  You can ask everyone to send you a couple songs ahead of time and create a group playlist. Also, make friends with people of different ages and backgrounds. You want your village to include lots of different folks. As Priya says, "The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker." That's our show. If you liked this episode, do us a quick favor. Make sure to tap the follow button in your podcast app. That way, you'll never miss an episode. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan and our digital editor is Malika Gharib. Megan Kane is our senior supervising editor and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagel, Claire Marie Schneider, Lennon Sherburne,

• 23:13Marielle Segarra?

  and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Kwesi Lee. I'm Mary El Segarra. Thanks for listening.