Why Community Is Your Greatest Untapped Asset
Summary
Three lessons from three Wildest Dream community events on why taking time to connect with others doesn't slow your progress - it multiplies it.
Community is a performance multiplier: surrounding yourself with the right people elevates your output and lightens the load you carry.
Stepping outside the ordinary creates fresh insight: without pausing to reflect, you risk spending a lifetime climbing the wrong mountain.
Community increases your energy: by removing the quiet drains of self-doubt, comparison, and isolation, it frees energy for what matters.
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A friend of mine shared something with me the other day which has really stuck.
It is this idea that we set off in life thinking that it is all about the destination. Then, as we age, we begin to see that perhaps it is less about the destination and more about the journey.
Finally, as we sit in our armchair with our grandkids playing at our feet, we realise that life - in fact - is all about the company.
I personally believe that a great life is a blend of all three and community is uniquely powerful because it helps us level up all of them. Three Wildest Dream events in, here are the three key lessons we have been learning on the power of community.
Lesson 1: Community is a performance multiplier
Our amazing community members at our recent Q1 reflection event
High performers often treat community as something secondary. Something to “fit in” only once everything else is done. Because surely spending an extra hour in the office working is going to push us further forward in our career, than an evening spent connecting with other people?
A few more emails cleared might give you a small sense of achievement and a fleeting moment’s bliss, but you miss something far greater. When we take time to connect with other like-minded people who support, inspire and challenge us to grow, something powerful happens - it multiplies our performance.
Driven individuals are capable. They can hold a lot on their shoulders. So they do. But over time, carrying everything alone has a cost. Self-doubt creeps in more often, stress builds, energy drops, and a subtle sense of disconnection begins to grow - and with all of that - performance begins to dip.
But when we become connected and accountable to a group of people, it elevates our performance while also lightening the load we carry.
This shows up in simple ways. We become more consistent in our healthy habits. We procrastinate less. We stop putting the important things off until tomorrow. We show up with more intention. And the quality of our output improves.
And so, investing time in your community levels up your performance across all dimensions.
Lesson 2: Fresh insights come when we step outside of the ordinary
Life is busy. I get that, and I feel it too. “I don’t have time to spend an hour on a Thursday evening connecting with other people,” many driven individuals might think. “I have too much to do as it is.”
Community members at our talk around finding your purpose and reducing burnout
No judgement - I have been there before. We all have goals, professional and personal, and we want to use our time wisely in pursuit of them.
But what if those goals are not quite the right ones? And what if the path you are on is not actually your path? Sadly, people often don’t realise the answer to these questions until it's too late.
This is a common mistake so many before us have made, so many around us are making, and so many after us will make - which is to spend this one precious life we have, pursuing someone else’s version of success, only to arrive at the mountaintop and realise it was never what we wanted.
If we do not take the time to step off the treadmill, to pause and reflect on who we are, what we truly want and where we actually what to go, we find ourselves atop the mountain feeling empty - unable to reclaim the hours, days and years spent chasing something that promised so much, but delivered so little.
In the words of the Chinese proverb: “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”
Taking time to step into new environments, to reflect on the important questions and to connect with people who think differently, is what creates real insight. You leave conversations with ideas, clarity and perspective that simply would not have surfaced if you had stayed alone, staring at your laptop screen, responding to emails.
Lesson 3: Community increases energy
Embracing discomfort - enjoying a post-work ice bath and sauna
As driven people, we can become overly obsessed with the data - sleep scores, stress scores, HRV, training load. We focus on optimising inputs to improve measurable outputs.
And while all of that matters, there is a source of energy which cannot be tracked on a wearable device - as I have spoken about before. It comes from feeling part of something bigger than yourself.
When we feel connected to a community of others, we wake up with a new energy. An extra spring in the step. A sense of momentum. A quieter confidence in how we move through the day.
All through the energy boosting power of a community, but also through the way in which connection to a community reduces energy drain.
We stop comparing ourselves to others. We stop second-guessing every decision in isolation. We stop carrying the invisible weight of feeling like we are doing everything alone. And in doing so, energy is freed up.
Energy that was previously being drained by self-doubt, overthinking and disconnection gets reallocated into action, creativity and presence.
There is also something uniquely energising about shared ambition. Being around others who are striving - not in competition with you, but alongside you - creates a collective momentum which we simply cannot tap into if marching on alone.
And so, it is not just that community gives you energy. It is that it removes the quiet energy drains that most high performers don’t even realise they are experiencing.
Why we run events
Community then, should not be seen as a luxury to indulge in only when life calms down. Because life is unlikely to do that and community is one of the few things which makes everything else better.
And that is exactly why we run community events - to give the gift of community to others. And it is also why Jack and I feel so grateful to be able to spend our time with our community, who in turn make us better.
Deepen Your Learning
To understand why your brain is literally wired for connection, I'd recommend this episode from neuroscientist Andrew Huberman on the Huberman Lab. He breaks down the science of why community isn't just a “nice to have” - it's a biological need.
To explore why and how the people around us shape our lives more than we realise, I really enjoyed this episode of The Diary of a CEO with Harvard happiness expert Arthur Brooks.
