The Art of Gathering How We Meet and Why It Matters

Her bestselling book, The Art of Gathering, is considered the most cited and renowned book on how to better come together with people around you.

And I want to read to you from your bestselling book, The Art of Gathering, How We Meet and Why It Matters. This is from the introduction.

Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Today, you and I are here with the bestselling author of The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker.

My motivation for this episode was a little bit more personal. One of my resolutions this year is to spend more time hosting, to make those gatherings more meaningful, to be a better member of my own community. And so the person I'd wanted to talk with about that is Priya Parker, who's the author of this beautiful book, The Art of Gathering, How We Meet and Why It Matters...

I actually don't think everybody assumes that the room or the house should be totally clean. And part of the beauty and the power of modern life is you get to decide.

Invitations are your opening salvo of your mini constitution. I'm serious. It's your opening salvo to say, I'm going to create this temporary alternative world.

Her book is called The Art of Gathering.

businesses tend to, quote, run on a cult of positivity.

And in many cases, I mean, it's gather less.

Priya Parker again. Her book is called The Art of Gathering.

So it's our Monday morning staff meeting. It's our Wednesday afternoon sales meeting. That is not a purpose. That is a category.

I'm a huge fan of Priya Parker's book, The Art of Gathering.

And I think her premise of making that gathering special is so vitally important, especially when we're not in the same space and we're not feeling each other's energy.

And I was thinking, I was remembering when I turned 60, my friend Priya Parker who writes about the art of gathering did a thing with all the guests that were there.

And basically we were all standing in a huge kind of circle.

And she just said, people who know Esther between zero and 10 years old, make a step into the circle.

And then everybody just said their name and where they knew me from.

Because I had people from all my lives, all the various countries I've lived in phases of my life, like you are going to have.

I am going to pick someone kind of out of the standard communication arena. And point to someone named Priya Parker, who some of you may know, others may not. She's the author of a book that is one of my all-time favorites called The Art of Gathering.

And her work focuses on reimagining how we spend our time together to create more meaning.

My first concert was Sweet Honey and the Rock... And it was my cool older stepsister who was 10 years older than me.

I was recently reading an amazing book called The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker.

I've given more copies of this book away than any other book.

I read it and I thought it was phenomenal.

I think it's pretty uncomfortable for a lot of people.

You have to decide who is it for.

We gather to solve problems we can't solve on our own. We gather to celebrate, to mourn and to mark transitions. We gather to make decisions. We gather because we need one another. We gather to show strength. We gather to honor and acknowledge. We gather to build companies and schools and neighborhoods. We gather to welcome and we gather to say goodbye.

The paperback came out April 2020, I mean, in the middle of a pandemic when gathering was illegal.

I wrote The Art of Gathering in 2018.

Why do we gather? We gather to solve problems we can't solve on our own. We gather to celebrate, to mourn and to mark transitions. We gather to make decisions. We gather because we need one another. We gather to show strength. We gather to honor and acknowledge. We gather to build companies and schools and neighborhoods. We gather to welcome and we gather to say goodbye.

The paperback came out April 2020, in the middle of a pandemic when gathering was illegal.

So I define a gathering as any time three or more people come together for a purpose with a beginning, middle and end.

I recently read this wonderful book called fault lines by Carl Pillmer.