Who makes up your tribe?

Who comprises the group you surround yourself with, the group you “belong” to?

Does your tribe consist of the people you grew up with? The ones you went to school with?

Are they the people who live near you?

What ties you to your tribe? Do you have similar interests, play sport together or have kids who attend the same school?

Lots of factors determine who we spend our time with and who we identify with.

Quite often who we mix with are people who think like we do, who hold similar beliefs and opinions.

Sometimes what we like most about them is that they’re so much like us…..

Feeling that you belong is incredibly important to most of us. We have a basic need to feel liked and accepted. We long to “fit” somewhere, to find our place in the world.

Some people belong to the same tribe their entire lives. Others spend their lives flitting around the fringes looking desperately for a place to belong and never quite finding it. Some spend a lifetime trying to join a tribe that is never going to accept them into its fold.

And some of us find the need to change our tribe as we grow and change as human beings.

What happens when you wake up one day and realise that you don’t quite fit anymore? That you seem to be headed in a different direction maybe, or simply that your tribe is no longer a place where you can be who you really are?

Many of us try to hold on, afraid that if we leave our tribe we will be left alone forever…. (to wander lost and lonely as a cloud…) 🙂

That terror of being alone is pretty much up there with death on most people’s fear chart.

For that reason many people stay with their tribe long after it no longer feels right. When those people who surround us no longer reflect who we really are.

Transitioning between tribes can be a terrifying experience. Knowing that you no longer fit the old but having no idea how to find the new.

Knowing that there must be people out there like you.

People with similar beliefs and ideals.

People who think and feel like you.

People with fresh new ideas.

People willing to embrace you on a whole new level.

To make way for the new we have to be willing to let go of the old.

We need to be willing to stand in no-man’s land all alone…

It is only then that something remarkable starts to happen. It is then that you begin to notice that there are new people waiting there. Quite often they’ve been there on the edges of your world all along. They may have been the quiet ones at the back, unnoticed because you had been seduced by the noisy clamoring of those at the front. They may have seemed reserved or disinterested or may have appeared too busy or “out of your league.” They are quite often people you never considered as possible friends but by clearing away the noisy ones, they now have the chance to step forward….and so do you.

Stepping away from the old tribe allows you the opportunity to truly see others and to be seen by them. It gives you the opportunity to truly see yourself. To connect with those you really resonate with is what allows you to be more authentically you.

Finding your tribe is like coming home to yourself.

Have you found your tribe?