(Our Sanghas, part 2)
I wrote about “tribes, cohorts and sanghas” in my last note. I’m digging further today to explore how I actually partner with specific practitioners within a larger aligned-community. I’ve started thinking of this sub-cohort as my Sangha-partners: people who are equally commited to their craft, at the same time, and show up repeatedly alongside to help feed the flames of effort within me so I stay the course despite turbulence. In return, I do the same for them. There is complete mutuality towards a specific goal.
But our Sangha-partners have a way of getting lost in the crowd. We might default to thinking that someone studying the same ideas as us or operating in the same professional space might be our partner practitioners; or that physical overlap and the ability to meet face to face are prerequisites for a strong partnership.
Over the last several months, I have consciously cultivated three aspects of myself that are important for the type of purposeful work I intend to do: 1) Exploring ideas that use technology and business in the service of human connection; 2) Writing publicly to get comfortable with putting my ideas out in the world, and; 3) Cultivating innate strength through yoga so I can better navigate currents of professional change while tending to personal trauma and grief. While it’s still early days of transformation, I am certain that my progress would have been slower and rougher without the presence of specific co-practitioners. They appeared with a resolve to build their own new world alongside me; to not only speak but act. While many practitioners within our larger tribes were weaving similar tapestries, my partners were threading similar needles as me at the same point in time and this overlap created a rich intellectual and emotional shorthand of mutuality and commitment. If they had been at this specific place in their journey say two years before me, they likely would have been mentors and if two years after me, they would have been mentees; both are valuable relationships but different than having a lockstep partner.
I’ll illustrate via specific examples from my life. My writing partner, Anna, lives in the Peruvian Amazon and writes her own version of Working Meditation. Our bi-weekly sessions help us exchange practical ideas and openhearted dreams while savoring the nuance and context in each other’s writing that others may miss. My meditation partner, Ava, practices her own flavor of Karma Yoga (a focus on selfless action) and her fire creates energy for a weekly meditation group that has become more cherished with every passing week. The momentum from our meditation sangha has shifted the timbre of my mornings even on days we don’t meet. My yoga-practice partner, Danielle, is a generous and joyful friend from business school who volunteered to be my test subject so I could learn how to teach yoga to others. She helped me create a practice space that beams with warmth, trust and happiness so that every Sunday, I show up with the excitement of sharing vs. the nervousness of perfection. My “impact-through-work” partner, Sumit, is a dear old friend who is equally driven by the need to create positive change through technology and business. His willingness to engage with me in the muddy act of innovation is allowing us to blend the sparks of imagination with the realities of development, recharging both of us for our independent work.
I don’t overlap with my Sangha-partners for every aspect of my growth, and vice versa. We show up for a specific practice, bring in relevant parts of our lives, tend to each other and then refocus on our individual practices. We may think of fire as an analogy here—the outcome of any effort is the heat, the flames represent the effort itself and the Sangha-partners are those who offer logs at the right time to keep the fire burning bright.
“When you’re surrounded by respected peers, it’s more likely you’ll do the work you set out to do. And if you’re not, consider finding some.
Find this cohort with intent. Don’t wait for it to happen to you.” ― Seth Godin
