This podcast is with my sister Dr. Lateefah Collingwood.  We grew up together on the island of St. Croix in the USVI and I wanted to share our sense of belonging as family.

Dr. Dave:

What is the importance of belonging and why do we all need to belong somewhere? It is built into our human nature. Learn how the powerful philosophy of Ubuntu helps to deliver a simple roadmap to building positive teams and relationships, improving engagement and performance.

Get your copy of Belonging and Healing, creating awesomeness for yourself and others by Dr. Dave Cornelius on amazon.com.

Dr. Dave:

Well, hello and welcome to the Knolshare with Dr. Dave podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host.

You know what? My guest today is my sister, Dr. Lateefah Collingwood. Look, this is a historic moment because this is the first time ever, first time, that I'm officially interviewing my sister on the Knolshare with Dr. Dave podcast.

 

Hello, Sister. How are you?

Dr. Collingwood:

Hello, brother. I am well.

Dr. Dave:

So good to have you here. Hey, why don't you just-

Dr. Collingwood:

Thank you for having me.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. Why don't you just give our audience a simple elevator pitch about who you are? You could go up to a minute, you could go longer, but nice and sweet so everyone could know who Dr. Lateefah Collingwood really is.

Dr. Collingwood:

Nice and short and sweet.

Dr. Dave:

Something like that.

Dr. Collingwood:

Well, hello, Knolshare audience. I am Dr. Lateefah Collingwood and I am currently an assistant clinical professor at a university of nursing. I'm also a neonatal nurse practitioner maintaining my hands-on practice.

I'm here to just have this conversation with my big brother, Dave, about belonging and so I'm really excited to be here with you guys and we're just going to have some fun today.

 

Dr. Dave:

Yes, we are. Yes, we are. So tell me, why is it important to feel like you belong somewhere? What's up with that? Why do we always have that desire?

Dr. Collingwood:

I believe that we are created to be a part of something. We are all born into families. We're all born into people groups and so, by nature, we are created to be a part of something. So we, as people, or as living beings born into groups have this longing and this desire to really be a part of, to really feel like we belong somewhere, or to someone, or to something.

So I think it's important because of that innate mechanism that we have inside, that thing that drives us to want to be a part of, to want to be accepted, to want to feel like we are a part of something. So the importance comes from the internal drive, in my opinion.

Dr. Dave:

Well, it's a wonderful opinion and a wonderful perspective.

I know you've played sports and what was that like to belong as an individual, or part of a sports team?

Dr. Collingwood:

I see a sports team as I see any other team. It's a group of people coming together to pursue a common goal. In teams it's to win the game, to strategize, to practice and so I think it's just really important. Just being a part of a team helps with a lot of things. It helps with a lot of development. It helps us to learn to collaborate with people so it helps us to learn to deal with different personalities. Because whenever you have a group of people, we come from different backgrounds, different likes, different dislike and so it just prepares us to work together with different people. It challenges us as well to learn to overcome some potential personality obstacles that may present challenges for us as we try to achieve our goal.

But being a part of a sports team,