Christina Wonders - by Christina Wunder

Over the last 33 days, we’ve reflected a lot on what our ideal communities could look like. We’ve spoken about the neurological, political and practical aspects of community building. Today I finish with my last invitation, which is a way to take this work further, and deeper. More infos in the audio. Reach out to me if you're interested. It has been a pleasure to do this with you, and I wish...

We’re almost finished with our time together, and before we part and you go on your community building path by yourself, I want to speak about how to create supportive accountability systems that can help make it easy for yourself to keep your connections alive. Invitation today: What are the things you find hardest about maintaining regular (e.g. weekly) connection with your people? Try to go bey...

Join me today for a quick, SOS nervous system reset in this audio. It's a short breathing exercise that helps me not lose my shit on busy days like today.

Today we begin putting all the separate pieces we spoke about together into a coherent community picture. Reflection invitation: do you see any connections emerging between your individual roles, interests and sore spots, and what the world needs right now and in the years to come?

Today, we are going to continue on the theme of conflict. Reflection invitation:  What is a thing that hurt your feelings lately? Did you share with the person that it hurt you?  Is there someone who you have hurt, and that you would like to apologise to? No pressure to do anything about it, just reflect.

Today we speak about tricky dynamics in relationships, boundaries and conflicts. Reflection invitation: - What are some things I would like to start saying no to a bit more often? - What are some things I want to ask for help about? Use the resources provided in today’s audio, and if you want to dive deeper, check out “Love in a F*cked-Up World” by Dean Spade, which I am referencing today.

Today, I have 2 invitations that you can take your pick from. 1. If you weren't quite sure what your roles, gifts or contributions to the collective are, message 3 friends. Send them the following: “Hi there, I'm currently taking part in a program on community building, and I was tasked with asking you this: Can you name 3 strengths or talents that you associate with me? Things that come n...

Today, we’ll speak about the things you enjoy doing, and the unique contributions you are bringing to the people in your life are receiving from you. Reflection invitation: What are the roles that you tend to fall into in your social circles, and do they overlap with the things you enjoy doing? What do you enjoy doing? How can you own that, and simultaneously let go of the things that you don’t li...

Today we continue on the concept of group health. We'll speak about some powerful examples of how to create the conditions for collective nervous system regulation and unity between people, which come from Robin Wall Kimmerer's book Braiding Sweetgrass. Reflection prompt: with all the people you interact with, what is your common ground? What beliefs, interpretations or visions do you shar...

Today we finish our nervous system regulation excursion by talking about community health. The reflection invitation for the next few days is a continuation of yesterday's: which people do you want in your life long term? (Whether they live close by or far away doesn't matter at this point). Try to write down as many as possible. Bonus points if you reach out to them over the next few days...

Today we speak about activities that can boost oxytocin - individually and collectively - and the benefits that can bring to our bodies and groups. Reflection invitation: Are there any people that you can aim to see regularly, i.e. once a week? What kinds of activities would be supportive to have another person (or several) join? How can you create consistency in a way that doesn't add mental...

Today we'll continue covering the nervous system, including differences between the female and male nervous system, and the vital role of oxytocin, as well as the vital role of oxytocin and how this impacts collective nervous system regulation. Reflection invitation: how does your body react when there's a stressful situation? How does it feel in your body (sweaty palms, racing heart, etc...

Strap in for today's Nervous System Science 101! This knowledge underpins everything I do in my community work. We'll cover how our body responds to different inputs and impulses, and how to create space for stress-recovery - which is the pre-condition for sustainable community building. Our nervous system is like a snow globe. It has two states: "shake up", where all the particl...

You're likely back in your day-to-day life after the holidays. Today I invite you to reflect on: What is the contrast between your holiday-life, and your day-to-day life? What are the benefits of both, and what emotional quality do you associate with each? (e.g. rushed vs relaxed; stable vs lost by having no routine, etc) I'll be back tomorrow - have a great day. PS: if you're based in...

Welcome to week 2! Here are this week’s reflection invitations: If you have any NY resolutions, how many of them are “I should” items - meaning things that you know you should be doing, but aren’t doing yet? What is the WANT behind the SHOULD? Put differently: Why do you want this thing? When you have successfully accomplished that, how do you want to feel as a result of that? How can your communi...

Welcome to week 1 of 33-Day Community Building Challenge! Today's reflection invitation is: 1. What does community mean for YOU? Be specific. 2. ⁠How would it FEEL to have that already in your life? 3. ⁠Are there any ways you can allow yourself to feel this way already NOW? And are there any opportunities to gift this feeling to someone? If you can, write these reflections down somewhere so yo...

It’s hardly a secret that fashion has a problem. Or rather, it has many: carbon emissions, water use, micro-plastic, chemicals, human exploitation, waste. How do brands get away with this? Kiki Boreel explains how models are complicit in  this, by selling us things we don’t need and won’t like - by making ugly things look beautiful. In all this, Kiki is observing three worrying trends: First, movi...

To understand the carbon economy, we have to first… well, understand the economy. We must acknowledge that it’s run by human beings, who operate based on incentive structures and belief systems. Sevim Aktas, founder of the EU Green Deal Brief on Instagram, explains how she had to venture out of her bubble to learn to be less judgemental and gain new perspectives. She recounts an anecdote of how sh...

Tamara Makoni, award-winning diversity and inclusion specialist and CEO of Kazuri Consulting, knows for a fact: stories connect us all on a human level and help us empathise in a way that cold, hard facts and statistics don’t. And people always have a story. Each and every one of us. In this episode, she shares some learnings from her work - and how stories of inclusion and exclusion are something...

Aikaterini Liakopoulou is a business coach for "clean tech" and "deep tech" startups - these are businesses that want to advance clean tech, artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing and more to tackle global and environmental challenges. In her talk, Aikaterini explains why this space is not as new as some might think it is, what its particular challenges are, why it crashed in the pas...

One thing Tino Chibebe noticed upon entering the Venture Capital space was: none of the leaders and decision makers there looked like him. The consequence: businesses and solutions that work for only for a small, homogenous group of people - while neglecting large chunks of the population. What to do about this?  Tino's proposal is simple and effective: We need to invest in underrepresented f...

I am curious to learn about new and experimental ways to organise community work, local politics and nature restoration. Today’s guest Leen Schelfhout , who is a Freelance facilitator, deep democracy trainer, co-organiser of the Regens Unite conference , and Executive Director at AllForClimate - a collective of local climate projects. I wanted to know from Leen: How can we move from debating philo...

In this episode I present my new Peer Mentorship Space in Brussels. We're a community for people in tech, policy and sustainability, who are passionate about improving the communities around us. Here, mentorship is a decentralised concept: we all teach, influence and support each other - whether we notice it or not. While many of our community members identify as women, all genders are welcome - i...

This is a special English speaking edition of “Christina Wonders” - a Podcast where I ask: why is the world the way it is? Why is it so hard to change anything? And what can we all do to make our world a better place? In this episode, I am sharing a talk I gave at the women.code(be) community. I speak about why I believe we should all prioritise mentorship in our careers. And I share 9 life lesson...