💡The Future of Community: Beyond Transaction, Towards Evolution
Weekly Lightbulb: Breaking Free from Transactional Living and intro Co-Evolution
Imagine waking up each morning, knowing you are deeply supported—not just by family or colleagues, but by a community that truly sees you, challenges you, and helps you grow. A community where your dreams are nurtured, your struggles are met with understanding, and your success is celebrated as if it were everyone’s success. This is possible, but it’s not easy path, its an arduous and fucking annoying path, but it’s a rewarding one at the end. When we rub as humans, we grow resilient.
I’ve spent the last 20 years exploring what authentic community really means and who I am in all of this. After all this time, I can humbly say—I still don’t fully know.
For years, I chased this ideal, believing it was something I had to build—a village to create, a structure to design, a strategy to execute through an event or retreat. But what I’ve found is that true community isn’t something you construct; it’s something you cultivate. It emerges through the way you show up, day-in and day-out, with others. It’s an authentic care for one another expressed through actions, not just words. And it’s a rigorous kind of love—one that challenges, nurtures, and transforms.
I learned this firsthand from Leap Forward and its founder, Ronit Herzfeld. Ronit introduced me to something beyond my wildest dreams: a community of people from all over the world—spanning races, socio-economic backgrounds, and religious beliefs—working together, supporting each other’s growth and evolution. The goal? To become free and potent in the world, to find meaning in our lives, and to create some positive impact that supports humanity or the easing of another human's suffering. This community is bound by a strong set of values and agreements, centered on radical honesty, deep transparency and authentic care for one another. You can learn more about the philosophy and methodology on our website: www.leapforward.us.
Breaking Free from Transactional Living
I learned that most people, including myself, are live in a world of transactional relationships. In business, in friendships, even in personal growth circles—there’s often an unspoken expectation of exchange. I’ll support you if you support me. I’ll help you if you help me. This way of relating creates an invisible pressure, a sense of constant negotiation, and ultimately, a lack of real belonging as everything is “in order to,” it’s always a means to some personal end goal.
For hundreds of thousands of years, human survival has depended on transactional exchanges—bartering, securing resources, and protecting one’s own. But the next step in our evolution is interdependence. Survival and transaction must give way to mutual care, support, and co-creation. The future of community isn’t about what we can get from one another—it’s about what we can build together. It gives us an opportunity to evolve together and support one another, without a need for reward or recognition, but because we care authentically for each other.
The Life You Design, Shapes the Community You Build
For years, I was stuck in the hustle—pushing toward something meaningful, but beneath it all was still the drive to “make it.” Every big idea I wanted to scale consumed time and energy that could have been poured into my own growth, my liberation, or into truly serving others. I ask myself daily, “where can I be useful…”
Nowadays, I help people scale down their busyness and scale up their life—to simplify, to reclaim time and energy for what truly matters.
I help people scale down, because physical and emotional burnout doesn’t always announce itself. It builds slowly, in the spaces between ambition and overcommitment. I learned this the hard way, after years of experiences, I hope to help others avoid. Asking critical questions of ourselves is important.
Where can you simplify your life today? And more importantly—are you willing to do it?
Burnout: The Silent Killer of Vision
Running my retreat center, managing global projects, and trying to nurture my marriage—everything felt aligned with a bigger mission. But in the process, I didn’t realize I was draining myself dry. The stress, the constant movement, the quiet fear around money—it all compounded. And then, one day, it all came crashing down.
They call it the dark night of the soul. But in hindsight, it was a gift—a sign to reset.
I shut down my project, walked away from the life I thought I wanted, and rebuilt from the inside out. I made self-care the foundation: yoga, meditation, nourishing food, and rest. Work fit into my life, not the other way around. With the support of Leap Forward and my team at Sacred Business, I learned to create a rhythm that sustains me rather than drains me. And within the care of my community, I evolved.
Because in the end, the foundation of a thriving community is the well-being of the individuals within it. And that starts with you and your wellbeing.
The Future of Collaboration: A New Model for Connection
This week, I’m excited to be hosting a workshop for the Land Steward Alliance with Zach Anderson, a visionary leader in decentralized collaboration. Zach’s career has been dedicated to fostering more coordinated and cooperative ways of working. He currently serves as Head of Community at Ecovilla San Mateo, an ecovillage project in Costa Rica, where he leads governance and culture design. He is also the co-founder of Coordinape, a platform designed to help teams incentivize, compensate, and appreciate one another.
In this session, Zach will share:
✅ Insights on designing regenerative communities
✅ Lessons from his work with decentralized teams
✅ Practical strategies for fostering collaboration and trust
This will be a unique opportunity to learn from someone at the forefront of innovative community and governance models - whether you’re building a land-based project, working in a collective, or simply curious about new ways of organizing humans.
If you’d like to join workshops like this, check out the Land Steward Alliance - where we meet monthly as a community to discuss our land projects and our lives with a collective of project founders, experts on the ground, and peers looking to not walk alone in this journey. We’re stronger together!
I’d also love to hear from you so reply to this email or schedule a chat!
To your growth and co-evolution,
Ed
