A Creative Community for Finding Your Love Wavelength
Alexia Adana / Executive Producer & Love Wavelength Founder
The Love Wavelength community is for ambitious creatives who are actively working on big goals. We are planning our next career move, launching a project, finding balance in our day jobs, and pushing our creative boundaries. We intend to design our life doing only what we love. We come together, open and vulnerable, to connect with like-minded individuals. Together we share our journey regardless of our background, gender, or creative discipline.
Love Wavelength is based on the notion that doing what is most harmonious to us will guide us towards achieving our goals. When we learn how to discern and trust our instincts, anything is possible.
Achieving an ambitious goal is challenging, though. It takes time, dedication to a purpose, and a strong support system. The Love Wavelength community was created so we don’t have to try growing on our own.
Three NYC creatives at the inaugural gathering
How We Connect
Once a month, a themed newsletter is sent to subscribers. The themes covers topics that we can all relate to, like navigating negative self-talk. Then a small group of creatives come together to discuss the theme in more detail. We recently created a Slack channel to continue the conversations from the gatherings.
On Sunday, May 19th, a group of seven creatives sat in a circle and discussed how to persevere through self-doubt. On Sunday, June 23rd, a group of eight creatives sat around a potluck and discussed what it means to be successful. On Sunday, July 28th, twelve creatives discussed how to find our Love Wavelength and visualized our ideal future.
Each gathering starts with an overview of the topic and a set of ground rules:
Everyone is here because you are awesome. Don’t feel pressured to prove yourself.
Do not offer advice or feedback to someone unless they ask for it. We want everyone to share openly in a non-judgemental environment.
Respect everyone’s time and presence by keeping your phone on silent and put away.
Creatives in attendance have been a fashion professional, an art director, designers, filmmakers, a poet, a software engineer, an IT company founder, an astrologer, a yoga instructor, musicians, photographers, and more. Guest speakers Dana Scruggs, Tündi Szász, Daniel Dorsa, and Nate Nichols have all shared inspiring stories that resonated with the gathering’s theme.
Photographer, Dana Scruggs, speaking to the group at the Inaugural Gathering on May 19th
How We Gather
At our first gathering, I made custom handmade notebooks for each guest and encouraged the room to draw or write how they’re approaching a current struggle in their life. Many creatives shared similar struggles like deciding a next move or learning new skills to evolve. We also acknowledged our individuality by writing and drawing what qualities we thought made us unique and awesome.
At our second gathering we got deep about how we define success. Art director, Jacqueline P. Banyon, defines success in terms of hitting her pillars; community, creativity, authenticity, collaboration, and growth. A musician quoted Ira Glass’ analogy of shortening the gap between your concept of what’s good and what you’re actually producing.
Creatives discussing how they define success over a potluck
“Agree to Disagree” discussion activity
The group discussing their perspectives
Inspired by the innovative YouTube channel, Jubilee, we then facilitated an “Agree to Disagree” activity. The rules for this activity were simple. Four columns were outlined on the floor. Each column represented “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” After hearing a statement, each creative would step into the column they most aligned with. We then discussed our stance in more detail.
The open-ended statements were:
Part of being successful is making a lot of money
Fake it till you make it works
I feel pressured to look, dress, or act a certain way to be deemed successful
I act differently around people who appear to be really successful
Most creatives agreed to some degree that “fake it till you make it works.” Meanwhile the group was divided about the statement, “I act differently around people who appear to be really successful.” It was insightful to witness how creatives from different disciplines felt about these open-ended statements.
Breathing activity facilitated by Mallory Combemale
Founder and Creative Director Nate Nichols speaking to the group on July 28th
The third gathering was themed: “Finding Your Love Wavelength.” It was co-hosted by Mallory Combemale, a professional facilitator and yogi. Alexia and Mallory collaborated to combine meaningful discussions with breath-work and visualization techniques.
We started with a discussion around what makes us feel energized and connected to ourselves. This was followed by a more challenging discussion about what we were afraid of. Afterwards, Mallory facilitated breathing to ground everyone in the room. She then guided us in a visualization activity that helped us see our ideal future more clearly.
As with each gathering, we ended with a round of reflection. This segment is inspired by Working Not Working‘s monthly discussion gathering, Talking Not Talking. A common reflection at every gathering has been gratefulness and motivation to just go for it.
Let’s Grow Together
The Love Wavelength community wants to continue providing a platform for meaningful, intimate gatherings. We are looking for collaborators to help the community serve its purpose in the best way. If you’re passionate about bringing people together and have a knack for organization or management, please contact us at hello@lovewavelength.com. If you’d like to join the community, subscribe here.