It’s one of those January Sunday afternoons when the cold has wrapped around Milan, and the only thing I feel like doing is staying warm with a cup of tea in hand. In the background, Pearl Jam is playing, and as always, music helps me reflect—this time, in particular, a song by Eddie Vedder, Longing to Belong. It speaks of the desire to belong, in his case to his fortunate partner, but I like to think of it as a sentiment that can extend to a dream, a passion, a community, or even a business.
What does it mean to belong? I belong to my family, to the world of affection, to the society I have created… Belonging is a feeling; it’s not about facts or objectivity. It gives us a sense of meaning and purpose.
But what if belonging wasn’t just a feeling, but a skill we could cultivate?
Imagine being able to feel a deep sense of peace wherever you are—the sense of being safe and exactly in the right place at the right time. Whether you’re in a new city, sitting in front of a Board of Directors during a presentation, or walking down an unfamiliar street after taking the wrong turn, you still feel that you belong.
On my last business trip to Canada, I felt safe and exactly where I was supposed to be at that moment. It doesn’t happen often that I arrive in a foreign country, maybe for the first time, and feel calm, that I belong in that moment. And I asked myself—why?
When I set out on a trip and leave behind the familiarity of my world, I usually feel anxiety and tension. I’m not calm. Perhaps because my mind, like everyone’s, as Daniel Kahneman says, has evolved to naturally give heightened attention to negative stimuli—a sort of survival instinct, a trick the brain developed to make it through natural selection.
So what was different this time? What had changed?
The first thing I noticed was that my “way of being” was different. This was a business trip, where the goal was to present Wyde to a group of international managers, in this case Canadian ones. A dream imagined, designed, launched, and now consolidating. I was experiencing a sense of connection which, if you think about it, is the starting point for experiencing belonging.
It’s believing in being part of something meaningful and trusting that you are exactly where you should be.
It’s work that begins within us, because belonging, as Brené Brown says, is the opposite of fitting in. It doesn’t happen when you change how you look, or what you think or say. It happens when you make the decision to deeply accept who you are.
To experience the power of true belonging, you must train yourself to witness both your inner landscape and the world around you in a different way.
This requires courage: the second quality that helps cultivate this way of being. Courage allows you to put the lesson into practice and open yourself up to new positive connections. By daring to look further, to expose yourself, to say something uncomfortable, to step out of the familiar.
The third spark came from Ashley Thompson, with whom I shared this trip. Ashley’s most evident qualities are curiosity and a natural ability to connect with the people she meets. The idea is that no matter how small the interaction, you can always find at least one thing in common—even if it’s something as simple as having the same eye color or buying the same item in a shop. It might sound trivial, but it’s a very powerful recognition, because it makes us more present, enabling us to communicate better and gradually discover that our perspective starts to shift. Curiosity can become an enriching practice: if we are curious about ourselves, we are more likely to be curious about others too.
Recognizing that people experience the same emotions and the same basic struggles as we do—even if they manifest differently—is fundamental to fostering a sense of belonging.
Approaching the world this way is transformative, because it rewrites the story of belonging. From this perspective, it is no longer places that become familiar or groups of people that make us feel comfortable in the world: we can cultivate belonging as a personal skill that helps us overcome separations and strengthen connections with a wider community of people, anywhere, anytime.
