What if.. people want to be actively engaged in their community.. and yet are not achieving that?
A study in the US that looked at what people privately share as their top personal priorities* and also to what degree do they subjectively feel they achieve against these. Below you see the top 10 results – source Populace, Success Index:
Misunderstanding the American Dream:
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Of the individuals reported top 10 priorities – active engagement in their community scores lowest in terms of their feeling if they are achieving it in their lives.
From my other research I know active engagement in our local communities is important for our wellbeing, for building peaceful connections across divides, and for engagement into looking after our local environment. It matters.
My personal experience with community engagement? My observation is for me getting involved in my local community requires space such as small regular chunks of time, free attention to look around myself, and consistency in being present. It’s about familiarity and micro-steps in building trust. It’s quiet, not loud. Sometimes it feels pointless and annoying. The rewards are not what mainstream culture rewards, they are connection, the satisfaction of living into your integrity and fulfilling that priority number 1 of having a positive impact on others in small, hardly noticeable ways.
And maybe it is simply knowing you matter because you feel part of a place. Your community. Where people know you and treat you as part of the community, irrespective of differences you may have.
A shoutout here. This makes me proud to be affiliated with the new initiative PIONIERQUARTIER – which is an amazing team of experts and initiative looking at how to create community spaces with a lower threshold for how to become and stay engaged. 💫
If anything these data are an invitation to question any judgement if people are not engaged because they do not care about their local community, and wonder what if rather there is something in the way of making it happen? What if..?
(*note: these top personal priorities are often not expressed publicly as we self-silence and follow what we believe are societal norms, there is more to this in this study – for example actively engaging in our community is ranked at nr26 for how important supposedly ‘others’ think it is)
Source: If you like reports and data and original sources as much as I do. This is all from the Populace research report on ‘Success index’ (2023) and the conversation by Todd Rose: Populace
Source: I also can highly recommend a listen to Todd Rose talk about his data and the findings in this episode of the Mel Robbins podcast. So much also on belonging, values, trust, and our personal agency.
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