Someone lights a candle in the center of the circle. As you do a check-in, each person names one thing they need this week and one thing they can offer. You mention your mother’s surgery on Tuesday, and before you’ve finished the sentence, someone says, “I’ve got your kids that afternoon.” Someone else needs a ride to the airport. You can do that.

No money is exchanged here, and everyone shares responsibilities equally. Last week two of you disagreed about how to run the volunteer project; tonight you’re laughing about it. Dishes pass around the circle as you listen to one another share your lives, and practice the art of truly hearing each other.

When the evening ends, someone blows out the candle, and the six of you pack up the extra lasagna and walk it down the street to the family with the new baby.

Notice what happens in your body as you picture it.

That’s what it feels like to be fed, not just by food, but by people who expect you, know you, and need what you bring.

For many of us, that circle is missing. Without it, life gets heavier. Ordinary days feel exhausting. There’s no one to call in a hard week. Asking for help feels like weakness.

In a 2025 Ipsos survey of 31 countries around the world, 56% of respondents said the society they live in is broken. In the United States, 66% of respondents felt the same way.

It’s true that something is breaking. But it’s not us. It’s a story that no longer serves us.

I learned firsthand about the power of story after serving six years as a military public affairs officer then studying for a business degree. I realized people were using slide software like pages of a book rather than frames of a storyboard, and I wrote a few articles about it.

The new concept quickly spread and turned into my first book Beyond Bullet Points, which granted me access to boardrooms and courtrooms where the highest-stakes decisions are made.

My big “aha” moment came as I sat with a group of successful lawyers in the war room on a hot July day in Houston.

We were brainstorming ways to explain to jurors the epic battle between a big company and our client whose husband had been killed by their actions.

Someone mentioned that jurors liked the detective show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Within seconds, I created a slide with the letters CSI on a black background and showed it to the team. Eyes went wide and furrowed brows turned into smiles.

Together we had stumbled on a new way to explain the case that went something like: “You in the jury get to be like detectives. You get to examine the evidence and figure out what killed Bob. Just follow the three big clues…”

The jurors awarded a $253 million verdict. They didn’t want to sit back and watch another predictable war story. They wanted to lean forward into an unexpected mystery they could participate in solving.

It took me 20 years of working on high-stakes cases to realize this wasn’t technically a new story, theme, or reframe.

CSI was a highly compressed piece of culture code: an abbreviation, word or phrase that automatically unzips certain types of story structures and scripts of behavior below our conscious awareness.

After years of a successful run as a popular television show, CSI offered a weekly experience of a mystery story sequence, the use of scientific investigation techniques, and a satisfying conclusion.

In the surprising context of that Texas courtroom, those three letters unzipped an entirely new world, transforming the way the jurors saw the case, interpreted the evidence and acted in deliberation.

Although the verdict was later reduced and reversed, it contributed to a $4.8 billion settlement by the defendant to resolve similar lawsuits.

We don’t usually think we can change our shared reality with just a few letters or words.

This is just one example that we can.

With that power in mind, it’s time to focus our attention on a root line of culture code that affects every one of us on the planet in our everyday lives, and question whether it is working for us anymore.

It’s the phrase, survival of the fittest.

The historical origin of the words doesn’t matter as much as how you personally use them in your everyday language to give meaning to something you’ve seen, felt or done.

The code tends to automatically unzip in specific phrases like:

“I’m on my own.” “If I don’t beat them, they’ll beat me.” “They got what they deserved.” “That’s the way the world works.”

These are more than words in our minds; when they arise they guide our thoughts and actions, and determine how we treat one another and ourselves.

The phrase rides silent and unquestioned through our local, national and global cultures, embedded in the way we view work, money and relationships.

Survival of the fittest is an implicit story everyone tells, but nobody consented to.

Through this familiar line of code, the same Thursday circle looks different:

Two people didn’t show up tonight because of the unresolved conflict from last week. Another is guarded because other groups broke their trust and it’s not easy to give or receive freely. The airport ride and the food are outsourced to paid apps. Nobody agrees to meet again next week, so the weekly circle falls off the calendar. The next Thursday evening, everyone is alone scrolling on their phones.

Notice how that feels in your body.

The measure of whether a story works or breaks is if it leaves you nourished or depleted.

Try the different phrase, survival of the closest.

It’s a new line of culture code I’ve edited to compress our current scientific understanding of human biology, which goes like this:

Humans are built to carry life together. Our brains count on a handful of close people the way our bodies count on food. When we are nourished by one another, we get things done more efficiently, effectively, and meaningfully.

The scripts of this new code unzip automatically in different phrases like:

“I’ve got you.” “We’re in this together.” “I can count on you and you can count on me.” “I’m curious how we can find common ground.” “We’re greater than the sum of our parts.”

If this new culture code works, it means our bodies can finally take a deep breath together. We can begin to put down some of what we’ve been carrying inside. And we can gain more capacity to see what’s been happening as the old story runs the show behind the scenes.

When those handful of people on Thursdays are missing in our lives, everything costs our bodies more. Survival of the fittest justifies this as normal, so we explain away the mismatch between the story and our exhaustion by blaming ourselves for not being stronger as we valiantly struggle to do a group job alone.

The worst part is, we begin to think there’s something wrong with us. But in fact there’s nothing wrong with us; we’re just following a culture code that puts us in a painful dilemma we can’t resolve: We are surrounded by people and price tags, yet starving for something money can’t buy.

How did we get so hungry, with no way to explain it?

In the Amazon, people who grew a nutritious root vegetable called bitter manioc developed a days-long recipe to remove its natural poison.

When the crop spread around the world, it often traveled without the full recipe, and the harm came slowly, years later.

Something similar may have happened to us.

Markets, money, and technology brought enormous gifts, and we came to rely on them for more of what neighbors once freely gave and received.

The goods arrived, and we happily paid for them. The recipe for carrying life together didn’t always come with the transaction.

No one is to blame. And you don’t need to know how you got hungry to start eating. The recipe isn’t gone.

Survival of the Closest is a practical recipe for gathering that circle again, starting with six people agreeing to meet once a week for six weeks.

The recipe has three parts, and in the next article we’ll gather around each one.

Fed people feed people.

The neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett said:

“Sometimes we are responsible for something not because we’re to blame but because we’re the only ones who can change it.”

I hope you join us here as we take responsibility for the most important words that shape our worlds.

Let’s choose the culture code that delivers the nourishing human connection we need, one circle at a time.

Subscribe now

You need some people, six dates and a willingness to try something together.

The Six is the current experiment: aim for six people, meet for 90 minutes once a week for six weeks, and use the same peer-led protocol each time.

Here is the shortest route from “this sounds interesting” to Meeting 1.

Step 1: Decide whether a Six would actually be useful

Start with something real.

• A decision.

• A transition.

• A conversation.

• A problem you’re stuck on.

• Something you want to practice.

• Something you keep carrying around in your own head.

Then ask:

Would it help to handle this myself, bring in one other person or work with a small group?

If a small group sounds useful, keep going.

You do not need six people with the same problem. The shared purpose is learning how to become useful to one another around real situations.

Step 2: Find your people

Aim for six.

You can begin with people you already know, or with people who are also looking for a Six.

The best early question is not:

“Who are my six closest friends?”

It is:

“Who would be willing to try six structured meetings with me and contribute to other people as well as receive help?”

You are looking for people willing to practice, not merely consume.

Need help finding people?

→ Join us at the next Find Your Six Fireside Chat

Step 3: Make the commitment concrete

Before Meeting 1, agree to the basic container:

• Six weekly meetings.

• 90 minutes each.

• Same people as consistently as possible.

• In person if practical.

• A clear start and end time.

The current experiment is free.

At the end of six weeks, nothing automatically continues. Your Six can continue, change what it does or end. All three are legitimate outcomes.

Step 4: Pick a host

Every Six needs a host, but not a facilitator.

The host handles the practical things: a reminder, setting up the meeting space and printing the cards.

The host does not need to be the group leader, teacher, therapist or person responsible for making everyone have a good experience.

Inside the meeting, responsibilities are distributed through the cards.

Different roles. Equal standing.

Step 5: Book all six meetings

Do this before motivation has time to evaporate.

Open everybody’s calendars and schedule all six meetings.

Choose somewhere comfortable enough to talk without interruption.

Do your best to meet in person.

Put the exact 90-minute start and finish time on the invitation.

Meeting 1 is your activation point.

Until the group actually meets, you have an interesting idea; not yet a Six.

Step 6: Get The Six materials

Before Meeting 1, send me a message and I’ll send the host the kit to get started.

It includes the Six Cards that carry the process so nobody has to memorize how to facilitate a group.

Each meeting follows the same three stages:

1. Open the Container
Arrive, establish the time boundary and create the conditions for working together.

2. Work on Something Real
Put a real problem, decision, conversation or challenge in the middle and use the Six around it.

3. Carry It Out and Close
Choose something small to try in ordinary life and close at the promised time.

Then next week:

Bring back what happened.

Step 7: Show up and learn by doing

You do not need to become an expert first.

That is intentional.

The Six is meant to be learned through repetition.

The structure stays mostly the same.

The real situations change.

And over six weeks we find out whether this group can become a useful social resource for its members.

Stuck before Meeting 1?

• Maybe you do not know whom to invite.

• Maybe three people said yes and three are avoiding the question.

• Maybe scheduling six adults feels harder than the rest of the experiment combined.

• Maybe you are interested but you still cannot picture what happens in the room.

Bring that problem to the next:

→ Form a Six Fireside Chat

I’ll help you figure out your next concrete step.

The goal isn’t to understand The Six.

The goal is to get your Six to Meeting 1.

And drop a note if you need any help or have questions:

My goal is to help you get your Six started.

Imagine you have an important conversation coming up.

• You’ve been thinking about it for three weeks.

• You rehearse it in the shower.

• You rewrite the email.

• You imagine what your boss will say.

• Then you imagine your response to that.

• You Google some advice.

• You decide you should be more confident.

• Then you postpone the conversation another week.

Nothing about this is unusual.

But notice the social structure around the problem:

One person.

You have accepted it as a Me Problem.

What would change if you deliberately put other people around it?

A Six is not simply six people in a room — it’s a new peer-to-peer social structure

Getting six people together is easy.

Creating a group that becomes reliably useful is a different problem.

That is what The Six is designed to explore.

A Six aims for six people who agree to meet for 90 minutes once a week for six weeks.

The group uses a simple repeatable protocol. Responsibilities are shared. The same people return. Meetings have a known beginning and ending. Members can pass. Advice is given by consent rather than automatically.

Most importantly, there is a job to do:

Work on something real.

That makes The Six different from networking, a weekly hangout, a class or a conventional support group.

Put the problem in the middle

Return to that important conversation you were imagining.

Instead of asking six people, “What should I do?”, you might begin with:

Here’s what’s happening. Here’s what would be useful from you.

Then the Six works around the situation:

• One person notices an assumption in your story.

• Someone asks a question you had not considered.

• Someone else role-plays so you can rehearse the conversation.

• Another helps you make the request more specific.

• Someone sees that you are solving a problem you were never actually asked to solve.

Nobody has to take over the problem.

You still decide what to do.

But you are no longer limited to what one brain can generate while sitting alone with itself.

And at the end, you might say:

Before next week, I’m going to have the first five minutes of the conversation.

Then you do it.

Next week, you come back and tell the group what happened.

That repeated loop matters:

Practice here → Take it out there → Bring back what happened.

Six is not the answer to everything

This part matters.

The goal is not to convert every Me problem into a Six problem.

Some problems are solved best in Solo Mode.

Some problems only need one other person.

The skill I’m interested in is more basic:

Notice the configuration before you automatically accept it:

• Would it be useful to handle this myself?

• Would one other person help?

• Would several people bring something different?

• And if a small peer group would help, do I know how to create one that can actually work together?

That last question is what Form a Six is about.

The underlying capability is the important part: consciously choose who belongs around a situation instead of letting “I’ll handle it” make the decision automatically.

What are we testing?

The first Sixes are helping answer very practical questions.

• Can peers use cards and agreements without needing a trained facilitator?

• Does the structure feel supportive—or merely technical?

• Will people actually come back for six weeks?

• Does working on real situations change what somebody does next?

• Do people begin using what they learn outside the group?

And, eventually, could someone who has experienced a Six easily create another one?

We don’t know yet.

That is why this is a public experiment rather than a finished program.

Ready to try?

If you already have people in mind, go to:

→ START HERE: Everything you need to Form Your Six and book your first meeting together

If you want help figuring out whom to invite, how to ask them or how to get from “interesting idea” to an actual first meeting:

→ Join the next Form a Six Fireside Chat

A Six does not begin when six people say the idea sounds interesting.

It begins when they put a date on the calendar and meet.

I hope you join us and try a Six yourself!