Reset Your Life Day 23: Find a Community to Support Your Goals

This post is Day 23 of the 31 Days to Reset Your Life Challenge. Learn more and sign up for the program here.

As Motivated Sista points out, sometimes it can be difficult to share our goals and dreams with our friends and family, especially if they’re negative people. They may not mean to intentionally dash our hopes, but it can happen quite often. In those cases, it may be useful for you to turn to other communities of mutual support to help you along in your journey to reach certain milestones in your life. Today, I encourage you to find a community to support your goals.

Day 23: Find a Community to Support Your Goals

Today’s exercise requires you to explore different groups that you could join as part of your personal development journey. One thing you might do is to take a look at your Reset Project and think about what communities could support you in those specific goals.

Here are some examples of communities you might explore, depending on what area of your life you want to develop:

  • Professional Associations
  • Membership Organizations
  • Places of Worship
  • Meetup.com (type in a search topic related to your goal)
  • LinkedIn Groups (type in a search topic related to your goal)
  • Facebook Pages and Groups (type in a search topic related to your goal)

And here are some cool online networks that I’ve recently discovered:

The BOSS Network

The BOSS Network is a women empowerment alliance dedicated to highlighting women and creating opportunities for growth through networking beyond events. As a collective, The BOSS Network supports women initiatives in the journey to become independent and successful in their endeavors utilizing internet marketing. Working towards one simple goal BOSS® is “Bringing Out Successful Sisters ” to build relationships and networks to structure a foundation where women feel supported in their holistic lives. Membership is a one-time fee of $60.

Black Business Women Online

Black Business Women Online is an online network of almost 9,000 black women entrepreneurs. Once you become a member, you will have a great network of like-minded women who share ideas and resources about entrepreneurship, making money and marketing your business. Membership is a one-time fee of $30. Click here to view more details.

The Black Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss

The Black Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss Facebook Page is the Facebook community for the blog of the same name, a website devoted to sharing knowledge about the health of ALL women, while addressing concerns about our culture that affect the health of Black women. Always good info shared there, with a very active community of commenters sharing their own experiences and journeys.

B-Side Business Book Club

Hosted by Think and Grow Chick, the B-Side Bookclub is an online bookclub for women that meets monthly over the internet to discuss business books, personal development books, and relevant principles that can make your entrepreneurial endeavor a raging success. Membership is free.

When you’re done, please share your experience with us in the comments! Which community did you join? How will you stay active in it?

Note: If you blogged about today’s assignment, please post the link in the comments so we can read it!
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22 comments

  3. This post is the post that gives me the most pleasure to write because it includes a great update!!

    I’ll start by writing what i put in my journal at the time of doing it (April 17th) then will follow up with the update (obviously! where else would i put the update lol)

    _____
    April 17th

    So today I went one better than the task and instead of joining a Meet Up group, I set one up!

    2ShyLondon goes live in the next 3 days or so. Cost £27 for the priviledge too! But if i get a couple of good friends out of it, then it’s money well spent.

    I did look around at a few of the other groups and seriously considered joining, but at the end of the day i feel like I need to be around people who are of my personality type.

    I’m not really comfortable around outgoing, extrovert types and even if I was, I would always be the quiet boring one. truth is, i just take a bit of time to get to know.

    I am learning to open myself up. Making myself vulnerable.

    ______

    Update May 23rd

    So just a little over a month later, 2shy has 36 members and we have had 2 meet ups so far. After years of meeting no one (other than through work) I have met 13 great women.

    Our first meet up took place in a public park where we played some get to know you type games. it was a lil stilted at first (as you would imagine) but we went to a grocery store to buy some snacks for a picnic. When we got back to the park, we did some “testifying”(!) about why we were the way we were. At this point, i should probably mention that the group is for black women aged 21-45 who are shy, quiet, introverted, socially anxioues, awkward, reserved etc.

    After spending years of my life feeling like I was the only one, it was amazing to hear so many identical feelings and experiences and have a feeling of “me too!” There were 11 of us in total, which i think is kinda good for a first meet up!

    So just this past saturday i did another one. this time there were 6 of us (3 had cancelled or woulda been 9), 3 of which i hadn’t met before (they couldn’t make the last meet up). We met at this nice lounge type place, then went to get something to eat. we were having such a good time together that we went on to a bar where we played a hilarious game of “i never”. it really was a great night. i called it “Girlfriends and the City” (see what I did there!!)

    But seriously, that’s how it was. it was the exact kind of thing i was looking for when i started the group and i truly hope i am going to make some life long friends out of these ladies.

    One in particular i got on well with. I was taking out my purse in the restaurant to pay, when she spotted my cancerian key chain. She said she was too. So i said whens your birthday and she said july 18th. And i said get out because mines july 19th! (she’s ’77 and i’m ’78 though!)

    A little back ground to this – because of my social anxiety i have not had friends (proper friends, as opposed to just people i simply talk to) since i left secondary school. That’s sixteen friendless, lonely years. it made me so utterly depressed. I guess watching shows like Girlfriends, golden girls, sex and the city and friends didn’t help(!) and i always used to envy these people with their great groups of friends who were there for them no matter what.

    Now i finally feel like i am on the cusp of that myself and saturday night (i hope) was the start of that.

    Planning another one for sunday. i orignally wasn’t going to have one this weekend, or at least plan it and not attend, because it is my sis’s b day on saturday, but we all got on so well, we wanted to keep the momentum going, so we are meeting on sunday.

    that is 3 weekends in a row where i have had “plans” and my stay home ass NEVER has plans!! Even had to tell my sister i couldn’t babysit and in 11 years, that’s unheard of!!

    To understand the magnitude of this post, you really would need to know me.

    This is huger (is that a word?!) even than me starting the side hustle.

    And even if no one ever reads any of my other posts in this project, if someone were to pick a post at random to read, i would hope it would be this one.

    • Nadine – I so loved reading this post from you! I could literally FEEL the joy that starting this group has brought you so far. You really went outside of your comfort zone to take responsibility for your own happiness. Your courage inspires me!

    • oh my gosh….just reading this got me emotional…although i didn’t experience the same thing, i know what it feels like to finally satisfy that want/need you have been having for such a long time…keep up the good work! you have inspired me to do something similar here in my hometown….hopefully i can let go of the fear paralyzing me to achieve this…thank you for your testimony….
      *sending cyber hugs*

  4. This was a more difficult assignment than I thought it would be. Since the area that I am focusing on is “Work” and the new home-based business that I have started up is related to textile arts, it was very time consuming to find the right fit for organizations that would be supportive and helpful. The networking groups in my location are generally not suited to what my goals are. The women’s business associations in my location are oriented toward owners of high-end businesses that are quite large, and those organizations seem quite elitist. There are also no textile arts, commercial arts, or artisan/crafters association in my location. However, after spending hours online, I did find two different types of “support groups” and joined both of them. One was free – a small local “Women’s Prosperity Network,” which is a grass-roots social networking organization of women who are new entrepreneurs or have home-based businesses. The other, which required a paid membership that is somewhat expensive, is a nationwide professional organization, the “Surface Design Association,” that has chapters in each state, publishes a journal, has online blogs, and has links and information that will be useful to me as I develop my textile artistry into an income-generating business.

  5. I thought I was behind on the assingments, however I’ve been working on things that appear as assignment the next day :) have joined a few more communities as I am still fairly new to on line communites.
    I am very interested in the Boss Network will see if it in the budget :O)

  6. i will definitely be following up on these suggestions, rosetta! in the meantime, here’s where i am: http://www.amandamichellejones.com/?p=766.

    It’s funny… I call myself the Connector of People & Resources – and for good reason! But like so many other women, I sometimes forget the obvious: being intentional about building community for myself. I think this is also a hazard of being a Gemini: we just meet people without much effort. Being a social butterfly is very helpful, but the cultivation piece sometimes gets lost since I don’t generally have to plan my interactions. I think I need to carve out a part of each day or week to reach out to/reconnect with the people I’ve met so that I can build up my intentionality in this area.

  7. In terms of my spiritual life, I have a incredibly supportive church family. Because of this, I’m a few steps ahead in Day 23. I recently joined a group founded at my job for Adventist, Black (mostly, but other minorities are welcome to attend), employees of the Florida Hospital community. I feel like growth and promotion is 50% about networking, and that is certainly what I plan to do! I am also waiting for approval to join 20 Something Bloggers.

    Other groups I will look for to join:
    - A book club. Could be local or online.
    - Something like a group of young (21-35) Black people in the Orlando area that are in the psychology field.

    For more, read: http://keikokaveri.tumblr.com/post/2478376238

  9. I’ve been a part of a few great communities for several years and have met some absolutely amazing women. I’ve started to join meetup groups in the past year that are related to my career goals or interest that I want to be a part of

    I’ve also joined a few online running and weight loss communities and the information there has really been great and I’m looking forward to connecting.

    I’m also looking to join a good book club because I love reading and great conversation (so if any of you know any in the DC area do share).

    http://wp.me/pBR3E-AZ

  10. I recently joined 20 Something Bloggers, a free network for bloggers in their twenties. In the past, I’ve joined a ton of these blogrings, but I want to take an honest shot at this one. I started friending people on the network and even initiated a thread in one of the forums. So far, I’ve gotten a ton of responses back on the forum (my question had to do with whether or not to tell my significant other about my blog) and it was extremely helpful and introduced me to some new bloggers. So not only did I get advice and new eyes on my blog, I made some new contacts and found some other cool blogs to check out.

    I’m hoping to use the network to grow my blog readership even more.

    • Its cool that you’ve decided to re-energize your networking efforts. I’ve joined groups in the past but realized that my heart was never fully committed thus I would constantly have scheduling conflicts, too-tired type of excuses to participate. I am rededicating myself to a few groups (just a few, no mas!) and seeing where it goes from there. I am looking for groups interested in creative writing, anime, cooking and just general get togethers.

  11. Pingback: Reset Your Life Day 24: Ask for Help. Offer Help. | Happy Black Woman | Personal Development for Success in Life, Love & Business

  12. Recently I have joined a meetup group with my new fellow interns. Crystal Wright Dream Team. Can’t wait to get to know these fabulous women.

  13. Where has this month gone??? Time flys when you’re having fun :) Ok, yeah I know I’m corny lol Anyhoo..check out my blog for a list of my favorite fitness websites. I’m eager to hear what the Reset Crew has to offer on this one because I’m constantly on the look out for great websites (fitness related or otherwise).

    http://www.thecurlymisfit.blogspot.com

    P.S. Be safe wherever these next few days take you. Get lots of hugs, kisses, good food and naps. Happy Holidays!!

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