Belly to Belly

What is belly-to-belly?

What is belly to belly?

Is it a contact sport?

Is it belly dancing?

Nope.

In essence, belly-to-belly is face-to-face interaction. Connection with the human touch, personal warmth and real

The Internet went supernova with the unveiling of the iPhone in 2007. Everything is just a tap away on our smart devices, leveling up global commerce by bridging gaps and crossing borders in a way that was not possible before. It also gives us a multitude of platforms to connect with one another, personally and professionally.

From Facebook to Twitter, Instagram and SnapChat, YouTube and Tumblr, we are spoiled for choice when it comes to social platforms to connect us to each other. When it comes to business, we are more likely to interact with our colleagues via email, our clients and providers through business-to-consumer platform (think Lazada), social media, and other e-commerce gateway.

The electronic umbilical cord gives us the illusion of connectivity. We can have hundreds and even thousands of friends in our social media account and feel lonely. Research has shown that human beings are wired for connectivity. Our brain and body perform better when we connect socially. We are shaped by our social environment and we suffer when our bonds to each other are damaged. In other words, we need belly-to-belly interaction to live in an optimum manner.

My other half works for the largest retail banker in the country. The pride and joy of the bank is the number of customers that they are able to service on daily basis, and their efficiency in catching up with the Queue Management Systems. By having frequent interaction with their customers, the bank is able to provide personalised value added services.

I know it is tough to keep the habit of staying connected when you are swamped with the rat race, stuck in traffic, housework, family time, and straining for the miracle of getting enough sleep. Frankly, I would like to say that I have a lot of friends, but in actual fact, most are only Facebook friends whom I stalk, and drop the occasional comments on their post. This was the trigger for me to include making new connections in my New Year resolution for 2017.

Sometime in December last year, a friend introduced me to MeetUp; an interesting app to locate people with common interest within a specified geographical location. Just select the area of interest (i.e. health, business, hiking, stress buster, wellness etc.), and the app will present you with a list of groups for you to choose from. It will also tell you the objectives of the group, location, time and date of the session, organiser contact and entrance fee, if any.

I selected a group of entrepreneurs Meet Up session in January; the meet up had 30 to 40 people from a variety of background. All were using the platform to meet other people to explore opportunity and gain ideas to step up the project(s) that they were working on. It was so engaging to meet people from various jobs openly sharing interesting life experiences and new business ideas.

I was connected to a Community Coordinator (interesting job title, right?) whose job is to facilitate the engagement of a business community operating in a shared office platform. I visited his shared office located in Damansara Heights, and learned a lot about how start-ups and microenterprises operate. To my surprise, only 30% of them are tech based; the rest are exploring various facets of the services and goods sector.

The session in March introduced me to a Scandinavian who was travelling through Kuala Lumpur for holiday. His reason for attending the Meet Up session was to meet with the locals, and check out the opportunities available. He shared that the day before, he joined a movie Meet Up session where they met at the ticket counter of the cinema, entered the theatre together and went on their separate ways after the movie. There are truly an amazing number of ways you can meet up with people who share interest with you whom you would not have met otherwise.

Even with the rise of automation and robotics, artificial intelligence cannot take over human warmth and connectivity. Belly-to-belly interaction adds value to your life, and business. So the next time your LinkedIn contact, or Facebook friend, or an old schoolmate send you an invite to meet, please consider saying yes. You’ll never know what or who you may find opposite of the coffee table, and how it can enrich your life.

Positive change for a better you!!

Suraya K A Rahman