Collective effervescence is an eye-catching name for the magic of shared experience and moving in unison. As described by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim, it picks out those times when people come together in synchrony for an experience that's different and often greater than those you can have alone.

It might be gathering and singing at a music festival, swaying to the music as one being at a concert, experiencing the wonder of nature together, when the crowd erupts together as a goal goes in and hugging the person next to you, taking a yoga or spinning class, worshipping together, the pilgrimage to Mecca, or that magical Shawshank Redemption moment listening to the duet from The Marriage of Figaro as one. Despite my feeble clarinet skills, I remember a brief goosebump feeling when the school orchestra played it all correctly. And I remember my hair standing up when Twickenham Stadium carried Swing Low, Sweet Chariot in unison.

Collective effervescence is something we missed during the pandemic. It was identified in Dacher Keltner's book Awe as one of the 8 Wonders of Life.

Also see: forest bathing, notice when you're happy, 5 ways to wellbeing

Collective effervescence

A lot of us may have felt pressure at times to find our purpose — to find our one true cause, our personal mission, what we personally should be doing and where we fit in. I really liked this framework and approach from Priya Singh who suggests that we don’t have one singular ‘why’ — that our why may change often and it’s not a pot of gold or treasure to be found and that if we haven’t found it we’re failing.

She shares a framework of 3 types of work:

work that feeds you and those that depend on you

Any work you do may fit into one or more of these, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking that your work needs to overlap all three. We’re each capable of many different projects in our lives and work that fits into just one or two of these is plenty. Rather than aim for the trap of the one elusive dream job consider diversifying and satisfying each of these with different activities or at different times.

When presented with an opportunity or an idea, instead of asking why do it, try asking why not — practice not rejecting yourself before you’ve even started.

Framework and wise ideas: Priya Singh. Any misinterpretation or inaccuracy is due to me.

Find your why not

In Dan Pink’s book Drive, he looks at scientific studies showing that the all too common approach to motivating people involving rewards and punishments, or the carrot and stick approach, ultimately doesn’t help motivate people for the tasks and work we have to do today.

Instead, we do our best work when driven by intrinsic motivation — motivation from inside us rather than imposed externally like rewards or punishments. And the 3 facets he highlights that help intrinsic motivation are:

Autonomy: being in control and able to guide both what we do and how we do it

Mastery: our desire to continually be improving and learning and bettering ourselves

Purpose: working towards something we think is worthwhile. Having a North Star to aim for and a reason it’s worth doing what we’re doing.

I find it a useful framework to think through whenever I’m not feeling motivated or when I want to help make sure the people I’m working with are motivated.

Also see: flow at work, Goldilocks tasks, the zone of proximal development, on parenting

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Category: purpose