Growing a Mindfulness Community

Growing a mindfulness Community – The world has experienced a mental health crisis in the past few years. One resource that offers a place for everyone to come and find a bit of calm is the Mindful Living Collective, led by Elisha Goldstein.  

During this episode of the Community Strategy Podcast, Elisha Goldstein shares why he decided to open up the collective, his experience as a leader of a global community with over 7,000 members, and much more! Elisha’s energy is contagious; he can turn complicated information into easy-to-understand concepts. 

He shares practical applications of mindfulness and psychotherapy that event attendees can implement immediately. The Mindful Living Collective (MLC) is a safe space where everyone can learn from expert and collective knowledge, share their challenges, and access support in the collective effort to live more mindfully. 

“We’ve tried many things from volunteer-led to donation to free community structures, and we’ve found that sometimes the technology can create friction. How we’ve overcome these challenges was to keep it simplistic; we made it easy for everyone.” 

Episode Show Notes

2:28 Elisha shares the vision of the Mindful Living Collective, which he explains is a gathering place for those who want to practice mindfulness. He opened the MLC right before the pandemic and offered the community for free to those who needed support more intentionally. 

4:30 The community structure for the MLC has changed over the past two years, with groups and events. They also tried a volunteer-led structure but found managing volunteers at that level challenging. 

10:10 When there is friction (with the technology), it takes time and can be challenging for a community host to succeed. The software could be improved, and we discussed the difficulties on the backend. 

12:22 Deb shares the new book from Meetup CEO David Siegel, Decide and Conquer: 44 Decisions that Will Make or Break All Leaders. 

15:04 Elisha shares that the future of the MLC hasn’t been defined yet. For now, he’s offering bite-sized programs, including the 21-Day Challenges that he’s found have helped people create habit change. 

18:38 The Uncover the Power Within is a year-long program, and he’s realized, based on his experience, that this commitment works much better for the community members.

20:34 Elisha said, If this was a monthly program, I might have lost some people at the beginning who are so thankful now they didn’t have that option. Growth begins with the opportunity to work through the hard things with mentors. The reality is that when things get complicated, we bail, Elisha says. He says that if some of the members had the opportunity to “subscribe” month-to-month, he might have lost some members. 

29:30 Missy from our LIVE session asks questions about the UPW regarding structure and design within the Mighty Networks platform. Elisha explains that the UPW program participants also have access to the MLC programming and events. 

35:06 Elisha shares that a community leader’s skill creates engagement inside an online community. If a leader is passionate about the community, you can eventually make a nucleus of members to show up and connect consistently. We must meet everyone where they are; sometimes, we can “encourage too much.” 

41:02 It is essential for a leader to provide meaningful responses. That encourages members to want to return to the community, which is a challenge for so many community leaders and managers. 

46:35 Elisha says a well-structured program provides a bedrock foundation for learning and implementing the tools and strategies taught inside the space.