Top 9 reasons this photo melts my heart

This is the first installment of the Life of Yes! (LOY) Supper Club
None of these people knew each other before a few months ago; most hadn’t met IRL before this week
They met because they’ve all come to an offering of mine at some point over the years and because I thought they were deliciously awesome, I invited them into my Life of Yes! community, an online group that has deliciously become an offline group
The range of Mac & Cheese Productions offerings represented: Idea Potluck, Fear Experiment, Life of Yes! Sleepaway Camp, Life of Yes! Meetup, Minglers, Productivity Workshop, Life of Yes! Workshop
The range of the people: age, ethnicity, job, interests, marital status, introvert/extrovert, neighborhood…
The men! For ten years, my one challenge has been balancing the female to male ratio. It is always a bazillion to one, respectively. I consider this outing a success in that department. (PSA: Men! If you’re looking to meet ridiculously amazing women, for friendship, for romance-ship, for networking-ship, for whatever-ship, become a Cheese-It!)
Elyse! The gal in the red sweater lived in Jersey when we first met a year ago, when she came to the Midwest to attend LOY Camp. She was ready for a change and told us that she wanted to move to Chicago. The kind of big life decision where you smile and nod your head in support, but don’t put tons of stock in it actually happening. At least not right away. Well, here she is! With a new job and apartment, and seemingly becoming a Chicagoan with much ease. Though she said the Divvy Bikes are too tall for her, even with the seat all the way down.
While I brought them together initially, the LOY Supper Club was a member’s idea and she coordinated it all, from using Doodle (be still my beatting heart) to handle picking a date to selecting the eatery; I frickin’ love the combo of me using my superpower of connecting rockstar strangers and then someone else using his/her superpower of taking initiative and coordinating to bring the rockstars together
The smiles and the comfort level — does it look like they’re all meeting for the first time in what could be a really awkward situation of going by yourself to meet strangers whose only common bond is that they’ve heard some girl wax on at some point about hating networking events and how that life is too short not to be doing what you want to be doing?!

We’ve all seen smiles that are forced and “Good lord, get me out of here” tight-lipped grimaces. These are not those smiles. These are Life of Yes! smiles.