Living with other people has many benefits: it can reduce loneliness, save costs, enable spontaneous collaboration and be a lot of fun. But living with other people, whether that means a partner, a few housemates, or an entire community, can also be very difficult. We know that roughly 50% of marriages end up in divorces nowadays and intentional communities fail at a rate slightly higher than that of most start-ups. So how can we find ways to address the challenges of living together in order to enable shared living to flourish and nourish us?
I began researching this topic several years ago and wrote up some of my findings in a blog piece “Reasons why Communities Fail.” Since then, I’ve been running workshops that guide participants through a set of tools that support the development of resilient and well-functioning shared living spaces. In this blog post, I want to share some of these tools for you to explore in your own living arrangements, whether present or future.
The content for this blog and the workshops pulls from a range of sources and wisdom-keepers including:
- Noah Walton, founder of EcoSoul Hostel
- residents of various communities I visited such as New Directions Homestay in New Zealand
- the book Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow EcoVillages and Intentional Communities
- my own coaching practice, which focuses on re-awakening deep human consciousness
- my colleagues at Conscious Coliving, an organization I co-founded that promotes and facilitates the development of shared living spaces that foster environmental sustainability, wellbeing, and authentic community building.
While quite basic, this set of tools, if properly used, can be incredibly powerful in supporting a harmonious shared living environment in which everyone can truly thrive. The tools includes actions around: values, vision, exposing unsaid needs, community glue, agreements, and communication.
Values
Knowing and articulating your values can help you understand what drives you, what you enjoy and what you would like more of. Building a lifestyle and environment around values can enable a life that is more satisfying and meaningful to you and everyone around you.
I often ask participants to use this values worksheet as a guiding framework to identify those values that most resonate with them. These values can then be incorporated into the next tool for harmonious shared living: the vision.
Vision
“Your vision is like a beam of energy leading your group from where you are to where you want to go.”
~Diana Leaf Christian
A vision is your shared image of the future you want to create. It is often expressed as the “who,” the “what” and the “why” of your shared living endeavor. Ideally it’s described in the present tense, as if it were happening now.
Your vision must be articulated in a way that others can understand easily: simple, clear, and authentic. It should also make clear what your idea of shared living does not intend to accomplish. Don’t try to create a one-size-fits-all vision. To be successful, a forming community, like a business, needs to hold a relatively narrow focus and sharply defined objectives.
Exposing Unsaid needs
All humans share basic core needs including love, belonging, growth, contribution, etc. However, the strategies which we use to meet them often vary and can lead to tension and conflict. For this reason, it is critical to create safe spaces for exposing unsaid needs.
One approach is a spectrum exercise in which co-inhabitants are guided through a series of needs-based questions. Answers can be represented along a line between two sides of a room. For instance, one end of the room would represent people who need extreme organization in their living environment, while the other end of the room could represent those who feel comfortable with disorder. Co-inhabitors can place themselves anywhere along the spectrum. A short conversation can follow each round of questions to flesh out contrasting needs and explore approaches to avoid conflict. This exercise can be carried out to expose unsaid needs related to a range of topics including:
- Alcohol and drugs
- Cleanliness
- Guests and partners
- Spiritual diligence
- Willingness to share
Community Glue
Sometimes when living with other people, we can find ourselves as passing ships, rarely interacting in a meaningful way. Critical to the success of shared living is identifying “community glue” that bonds you with the people or person with whom you are living.
Rudolf Steiner said that shared physical activities — when people move the body and vocal chords — bonds people at such deep levels that their connection tends to last. Some examples of community glue include:
- storytelling
- gardening
- social outings
- shared time in nature
- shared meals.
Research shows that eating together is one of the most powerful forms of community glue. Community activist Geoph Kozeny suggests counting up the number of days per week that a group shares meals. He says that, “when the frequency gets up to four meals a week or so, somehow the social glue gets stronger.”
Commitments and Structural Agreements
As mentioned before, clashing of unsaid needs can be a potential cause of conflict. Another thing to consider are commitments and structural procedures within the community. People have different expectations of what shared living means. This is completely normal but it is important to have clarity on commitments, especially regarding:
- procedures for moving in and out
- partners and guests
- tasks and chores
- cooking
Noah Walton, founder of EcoSoul Hostel, suggests having clear agreement on a few things that can be expected by cohabitors (e.g. cooking dinner once a week for the rest, taking out trash once a month), and then everything beyond that is freely given (so that baking a cake would not substitute cooking dinner). In this way, everyone can be on the same page about responsibilities and then relax into their own freedom about other things. Another tip is to schedule weekly communal time (e.g. for sharing meals, discussing issues, group meditation) to avoid wasting time on comparing diaries.
Finally, it is often a good idea to make a house agreement that sets expectations and can serve as a basis if someone is living divergently from the agreement. This agreement would ideally be created as a living document in something like Google Docs so that it can be updated and improved as needed.
Communication
Despite the best of intentions and clarity around vision and commitments for harmonious shared living, we are all imperfect humans with different backgrounds and journeys, meaning there will always be different ways people approach things, which can cause tension.
For this reason, it is important that cohabitors invest time and effort in learning ways to deal with interpersonal conflicts in a peaceful manner. Perhaps the most effective communication skills are those of Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication process, a form of communication which emphasizes deep listening, attentiveness, empathy, and engenders a mutual desire to give from the heart. It aims to replace patterns of defending, withdrawing, or attacking with focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt and needed. You can see an overview of the 4 Step NVC process in this infographic.
There are several resources to find out more about NVC including this one listing.
As the booking Creating a Life Together states, it takes energy and willingness to change the ways we habitually talk with people so that our conversations enhance, rather than diminish, our relationships. While these methods may feel “unnatural” at first, it can help to remember that all communication skills are learned behaviors, and we can always learn new ones.
Conclusion
In summary, you can help create the enabling conditions for a thriving shared living environment by:
- Striking a clear vision embedded with your values
- Creating safe spaces for exposing unsaid needs
- Identifying and nurturing the “glue” that bonds you together
- Creating flexible yet clear agreements and commitments
- Developing skills such as nonviolent communication for managing interpersonal conflict.
Living with other humans can be difficult. But adopting appropriate tools with good intentions and an attitude of resilience can go a long way in supporting you and your cohabitors to truly flourish together.