I’ve mentioned this once before, but my career to this point has been devoted to helping build faith communities among college students. You’d be amazed by how many people reach adulthood and have very limited social skills.

In their childhood, they rarely ate a meal with a group and had a conversation around a table. They rarely had social interactions that weren’t hindered by phone use. They rarely, if ever, struck up a conversation with a stranger just because they were curious about their story.

That isn’t true of most, but more than you would think.

And I think this isn’t just a young person’s challenge. Our culture has become more fractured and polarized in the last 20-30 years, and it makes it really hard to build strong communities.

But what hope do we have to overcome such a huge problem?
Well, like most problems, we have to focus on what we can do about it.

I think a lot of good could come from more people focusing on these three simple ways to build a stronger community.

Kids are endlessly curious. But as we age, we have a tendency to get more and more rigid in our thinking. We become sure that we understand the world, we understand people, and we stop asking curious questions.

A lack of curiosity almost always results in a snap judgment. It’s really hard to build a relationship with your neighbor if you aren’t curious about them.

A few years ago, I wanted to grow in curiosity, so I made an unwritten rule that I would ask more questions than I talk in conversation. The goal was to get the other person talking about themselves.

The coolest part? People walk away from those conversations thinking that you were the interesting one. Even though they did most of the talking. People love to feel seen and heard.

When was the last time you asked your neighbor for a favor? This is a great indicator of the health of a relationship. We’re naturally reticent to ask people for help. It puts us in a position of need (which most people hate).

But think about it. The people you’re closest to are almost always those you depend on most. In our house, we have a simple test for how welcome someone feels in our home.

We call it Refrigerator Rights.

Here’s a definition you won’t find in Webster’s dictionary.

Refirgrator Rights: A state of close relationship where you know you have rights to anything in the refrigerator without asking.

You know we’re close if you come to our house and feel like you have Refrigrator Rights.

Maybe you don’t need that level of closeness with your neighbors or people in your community – but we can grow our closeness by asking for and returning favors for one another. Here are some quick favors you can ask for and offer.

Finally, just get out of your house more often. Many modern neighborhoods are designed in such a way that you could get into your car in the garage and then return without ever having to interact with anyone in your neighborhood. You could go weeks without bumping into a single person. It wouldn’t be too hard to imagine that you may never even know the person living right next to you. That’s kind of a scary thought.

But take an evening walk a couple of times a week, and you might have a chance to get to know your neighbors. Heck, you might even make a new friend.

We live in strange times. Because of the internet, we’re almost overwhelmed by parasocial relationships. We feel like we have all the connections we can handle. And yet, people report record levels of loneliness. Maybe what we have is all the information and simulation we can handle all the while we’re being starved of genuine human connection.

Get outside more and you might be pleasantly surprised by the people you find living next door.

That’s it! There are so many other great ideas that could work in the Palouse. Let’s keep growing the business community and supporting entrepreneurship.

If you have fun business ideas, share them with me. I’d love to hear what’s cooking in your head.

Here’s another quick thought. Host a party for your neighbors. Or, simply just say yes to that next invitation. Overstimulation at the party with real people is always better than overstimulation from endless Netflix and Tik Tok.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading my Ted Talk. If you have fun suggestions for ways to build community in the Palouse, reply to this email. I’d love to hear from you.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this, send it to some friends who might enjoy it, too. Let’s build our community together.

Until next Thursday,

Keep the Faith