Wellness is Built Together: 4 Tips for Building Micro-Communities

Health and wellness is built through improving fitness levels, healthy habits and mental well-being.  However, true wellness means connecting those three with your social environment, your community.  In my experience, in order to move towards true health and wellness I needed to work on building healthy social relationships.  I rely on these relationships to help build a strong, enduring and healthy lifestyle.

One of the ways you can have your social environment support a healthier lifestyle is by building a micro-community.  A micro-community is a group of peers who are linked more than just the typical friends who hang out on occasion, but rather they gather because of a particular cause that the community is founded upon.  The easier way to think of it is a club, fraternity or organization without registration fees, board meetings and/or fundraising events.

Many of us tend to think that after we’ve finished up school these club days are over, but why should they be?  When I started mine a couple months ago, I realized that a small idea with a meaningful cause could gather friends to build a community of health positive and empowering lifestyles.  Check us out:  Men of Elegance NYC.  Not only has this micro-community (aka group of elegant empowering men) helped me live a healthier lifestyle, but I’ve had a lot of fun building it.

Here are a couple of tips on how to build a micro-community that supports wellness:

• Start small, but with big passion and ideas.  You don’t have to start off with a large group of people to create a micro-community (hence the micro-).  Sometimes, it’s better to start off with a small group of 2-3 friends, but with those that all share a strong passion for the cause and have great ideas.  Just having a few people to bounce off ideas with and fuel continued interest is essential to creating an enduring micro-community.

• Focus on a common theme or goal connected to wellness.  Whether it’s a goal of eating healthier, working out a couple times a week or achieving a healthier and fit lifestyle, it’s important that the group has a foundation on a wellness goal.  This is what drives the group forward.  Remember to come up with goals that can be measured or tracked so you know you’re heading in the right direction.

• Set-up a structure that you can gather around, consistently.  Whether it’s weekly or monthly meetings, you must set up a way for the micro-community to gather.  When a time, place and common cause is set, it creates a sense of accountability with all the community members that know that this time is shared and is a priority.

• Have fun!  Remember, this is your own micro-community.  Make sure your gatherings and activities are based on things that you have fun doing.  Without it, the community and its members will lack motivation to continue pushing forward.

So go ahead, go out and build a micro-community.  And if you already have one, continue building and have fun!

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