“We are communal beings by nature, and living in communities of any size helps us meet our physical, emotional, and spiritual needs, as well as providing us opportunities to lead healthy, joyous, and meaningful lives.

Because communities fill so many of our needs, it’s not surprising that they also provide a way for us to share our vision of a better world and what it takes to get there. I’ve known people who have devoted their entire adult lives to their own self-improvement. They’ve found the ways to heal the hurts of childhood; the abuse from unhealthy relationships; and even the health crises they face in later years that commonly accompany the issues of low self-esteem, poor diet, and loss of personal value. From early in life,they’ve done all of the work for themselves, yet wonder why the rest of the world doesn’t seem to reflect the healthy values they’ve arrived at in their own lives.

This is where the value and the power of community come in. While we can spend a lifetime improving ourselves—and this can be a very good thing—having a community around us gives us a way to carry our work to the next level. In a community, we can share the benefit of our lifetime of work with others who are interested yet have not had the same opportunities that we’ve had to discover the rich truths of personal power and resilience.

While it’s always been healthy in the past to find other people willing to learn together and share their innermost values as they pertain to everyday life, today it’s vital. In this time of extremes, the resilience that we develop as individuals becomes even more effective, powerful, and potent when it can be applied by our families, friends, and neighbors.

When we share our healing insights, we find the answer to the question of what it takes to create a way of life that reflects the values we’ve discovered through our personal journey.

In the foreseeable future, it will be the communities that choose to adapt to the extremes of the new normal that will fare better—meaning, they will be stronger and better able to help others transform their lives in our time of extremes.”

Excerpt From
Resilience from the Heart
Gregg Braden