Why do we believe what we believe? Because people around us believe and value it.
We were fortunate to have Prasanna, former CTO of Rippling among our mist to share his inspiring life story with us. He told us tons of stories out of which one idea of his struck a hard chord in me. It just struck me so hard, the minute I heard it I made a mental note to write a blog on this as it had a great deal to do with community.
He brought to us how the whole idea of money is a collective belief. Take a moment to look at why we believe that a piece of paper is valuable? Allow me to take you to a thought process, we believe that this piece of paper can save us, we believe that the money we have will provide us with the food we need for survival. We lay down our whole life to a piece of paper, that’s how much we are trained to believe that money has value and power.
I would also like to take you behind a few years… years back when paper currency did not come into existence we all put our beliefs into things like gold, silver, copper, and other metals. A few years back we put our belief in other types of currency… but here’s what makes this fascinating and special piece of paper (money got is super valued because people all over the world believe it has value, it’s a collective belief that makes it all-powerful and valuable.
And this is what struck me hard!
How a community can be all-powerful
A community tries to share beliefs, values, and more. Imagine a brand succeeds in making its members believe in a certain value so strongly that they try to incorporate all those in their day-to-day life. They don’t just educate, they start to influence and that contributes to a lifestyle. All things we believe have started small and the larger the collective belief it is able to cultivate the more it becomes part of our lives. The bigger in size the more powerful it can get. This is no new thing, religion for this instance; that’s one good example of a collective belief. This is what a community has to do to bring a change. It has to convince people around, that a particular value is important and encourage them to start believing in them, this becomes a very active mutative process. When this process is ignited people start to go hit an atom in the other people to follow the same.
But how to pitch people on our belief systems?
We all are born marketers. We all have been selling out ideas from when we were kids, and I’m sure we are super good at it. Do you remember the days when you use to pitch to our parents that our school trip to a theme park was super educational and how you can learn so much from that to make it to the trip, bring to life the days when you use to pitch to your brother that your chocolate is the best to exchange the better chocolate he has? We have this in our blood, this is one core trait in our DNA. We sell ideas in our everyday life, to be honest, we might be doing it every minute from making your friend choose a dish you like when you all go to eat, to convincing parents to get married to the person you like. We do it on a daily basis and are so good at it. It’s magic when a community manager realizes this magic quality and uses that to pitch ideas, goals, and the purpose of the community to people, there is no doubt that the community manager will fail to create a collective belief.
As community builders, we all have the responsibility to create a collective belief system in our community, where people in the community strongly believe in a few things of the community. And people who understand the power of this start utilizing their inbound talent to create something powerful and in the end succeed in doing it. Here’s a living successful testimony: a startup founder tries to bring a collective belief about the startup’s future with his/her first set of employees. When this collective belief is done right people start to vision the fruit and value of the company on their own and start multiplying that and in a course of time will become something really powerful ps: all successful companies have been a startup once. If you feel there is a void in your community, creating a collective belief is what you need to do. It is one medicine that cures so many wounds at the same time.
“Your future reality is your past strongest belief”