Category Archives: LIFESTYLE

Are You A Giver Or A Taker? There Are Two Types Of Talkers, Researcher Suggests

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We’ve all been stuck in conversations in which it feels like we’re talking to a wall.

“Why isn’t he asking me any questions?” we may grumble to ourselves. “Why are they forcing me to carry this conversation?” we may silently judge.

A recent essay from a researcher who studies conversations offers a fascinating possible answer as to why these frustrating interactions happen.

Post-doctoral research scholar Adam Mastroianni of Columbia Business School explained in an essay published on Substack that there are two types of conversationalists: You can be either a “giver” or a “taker,” and these types don’t always assume the best of each other.

“Givers think that conversations unfold as a series of invitations; takers think conversations unfold as a series of declarations. When giver meets giver or taker meets taker, all is well,” Mastroianni wrote. “When giver meets taker, however, giver gives, taker takes, and giver gets resentful (‘Why won’t he ask me a single question?’) while taker has a lovely time (‘She must really think I’m interesting!’) or gets annoyed (‘My job is so boring, why does she keep asking me about it?’).”

In other words, givers typically end up asking more questions in a conversation, because they believe that’s how to foster the best conversation, while takers believe it’s best to make more declarative statements to ramp up the conversation to its most interesting place.

How to really tell if you are a giver or a taker

Beyond the differences between inviting and declaring, there are other telltale signs that can help you determine if you are giving or taking.

One is how you feel when there are silences in a conversation, Mastroianni told HuffPost. “Givers feel like ‘Oh no, I’ve done something wrong,’” when there are conversational lulls, he said, while takers believe “someone should make something happen” and that that person is them.

Emily Rosado-Solomon, an assistant professor of management at Babson College who researches workplace communications, read the essay and said she buys Mastroianni’s explanation of givers and takers ― and whether or not you are a giver or taker could also be culturally specific, citing the late social psychologist Geert Hofstede’s research on individualism and collectivism.

“People from cultures with very low individualism are probably not going to be as likely to take the spotlight and talk about themselves; they are probably going to be more givers, whereas people from cultures with very high individualism are probably much more likely to talk about themselves,” she said.

Being a giver or a taker can matter a lot at your job

Once you start seeing conversations in terms of givers and takers, you can start to see how it matters in workplaces, too.

Rosado-Solomon said that because all of us carry different cultural perspectives, “What is most important in the workplace specifically is being ambidextrous so that you can communicate with people from different cultural backgrounds.” People have a universal need to feel seen.

She said she can switch between taking and giving styles at work depending on the needs of her conversation partner.

“If asking questions makes that person feel seen, then that is what I will do. I am genuinely curious about other people, which is why I spend my life studying people at work,” she said. “But at the same time, some people are uncomfortable with that, and it becomes an awkward interview inquisition and so I find that I try to switch then to more disclosure and sort of a taker style. And not necessarily intimate disclosure, just sort of taking the pressure off of them.”

Mastroianni said he also sees the giver-taker dynamic come into play when more junior employees are speaking with senior staff.

“Typically, if you’re in the low-power position, you’re going to have to be the one giving, because basically you have more of a reason to talk to the high-power person than the high-power person has to talk to you,” he said. “If you approach that interaction purely in the taking sense, then it might end very quickly. If you don’t invite their participation, they might go do something else, because it’s like, ‘OK we’re done here.’”

Of course, employees in positions of power should be aware of that dynamic and do more giving, too. That’s only fair.

Mastroianni said when he finds himself in the higher-status role, he knows “it’s very easy for me to just let them ask me questions.” He tries instead to take responsibility for keeping up the conversation by either asking the other person questions as well, or giving them something to respond to.

“Neither givers nor takers have it completely right.”

Mary Abbajay, president of Careerstone Group, a leadership development consultancy, agreed that it’s important for any leader to “learn to be a little bit more of a giver, which is really making sure that they are inviting conversation and then that they are listening.”

She noted that the givers-and-takers framework could also relate to how introverts and extroverts clash in the workplace.

“In meetings, the introverts tend to get talked over because the extroverts tend to be takers and they have rapid-fire conversation, but that doesn’t leave space for the introvert to respond,” she said. That’s why it’s important for work meetings to accommodate both styles and for leaders to be in charge of making that happen.

Could gender also play a role? When I asked Mastroianni, he noted he did not have empirical data on the question, but he said he would bet £100 that if people completed a giver-and-taker questionnaire, women would be more likely to be givers, and men would be takers.

“Part of that could be reflected in the power dynamics in society and part of that could be reflected in who do we take our cues from when we are growing up, and who do we learn from in terms of how to talk, who do we listen to.”

Abbajay said she believes women are more likely to be givers at their jobs as a survival mechanism to meet gendered giving expectations.

“Science and research shows that women are often talked over more in the workplace. They’re often mansplained. When you get mansplained, you’re not going to speak up very much,” she said. “I do think women tend to be more givers than takers, and I think a lot of that is based in gender bias in the workplace.”

Neither a giver or taker is inherently bad. But to be a more thoughtful speaker and listener, you need to be self-aware

Regardless of whether you think you have the heart of a giver or a taker, you can learn from the other side.

That’s because neither givers nor takers have it completely right. Takers misunderstand that their “declarations” aren’t guaranteed to be interesting, while givers misunderstand that asking questions is not always the most generous thing you can do in a conversation — and can, at times, be exhausting.

As Mastroianni put it in his essay, “It’s easy to remember how lonely it feels when a taker refuses to cede the spotlight to you, but easy to forget how lovely it feels when you don’t want the spotlight and a taker lets you recline on the mezzanine while they fill the stage.”

Both sides can learn to be aware of “conversational affordances,” he explained in the essay, which are opportunities to help keep the conversation moving forward in an exciting and engaging way.

In practice, for takers, this could mean they ask more questions that the other person would be actually interested to answer. That way, the conversation gets closer to the unexpected, interesting, fun and weird places of how someone really feels and thinks, he said.

And if you’re a giver who finds yourself being steamrolled by a taker, try toning down the questions and playing the taker’s game of responding, Mastroianni suggested. “Sometimes there are fun conversations that can be had that way, because you put less pressure on yourself to be like, ‘Oh, the conversation succeeds because I am pushing it.’”

Being a giver who starts to take more is a way to test the strength of your relationships, too.

“Give them the thing that they are giving. That’s what they deserve. Then you’ll be able to tell the difference between someone who intends to be a generous taker and someone who is a taker because they are selfish,” Mastroianni said.

And if a taker continuously keeps ignoring your cues to share, that may be your sign to leave the conversation “and speak to somebody else,” he added.

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The 8 Worst Things You Can Do At The Hairdressers Or Barbers

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While you may feel pretty comfortable at your regular salon or barbershop, sometimes clients can get a little too comfortable, and the professionals with the scissors just wish people would, well, cut it out.

There are certain actions people might not realise are rude, but they have a major impact on the hairstylist’s ability to perform their job or the experience of other customers and staff members in the salon. They can even negatively impact the rest of the stylist’s day long after you exit the premises.

To help everyone better understand the most respectful way to behave while getting their hair done, we interviewed six long-time hair pros from salons around the country to ask about the rudest behaviours they regularly witness from their clients.

1. Arriving Late

Among the stylists polled, the No. 1 complaint was customer tardiness. “A single late customer can create a domino effect on a whole day’s work schedule,” explained Viktor Holas, who has been a barber for eight years and currently works at San Diego’s Wise Barber.

“This means that other clients will be forced to wait despite being there on time. It also puts more pressure on the stylist to work as fast as possible to restore the original timeline.”

Furthermore, “lateness can end up denying your hairdresser their usual 5 to 10 minutes of much-deserved rest in between cuts,” Holas said.

If you’re unexpectedly running late, call your salon as soon as possible to let them know. And when you arrive, be mindful of helping the remainder of the appointment go as smoothly and quickly as possible to avoid a backlog.

2. Talking On Your Phone

“There are levels to this,” noted 12-year industry pro Yvey Valcin, who heads up Seattle’s Yvey Salon. If the call is important, such as regarding your children or work, try to make it quick and keep your voice low. “But if it’s just a casual conversation,” Valcin added, “that is not very respectful.”

If you do have to make a quick phone call during your appointment, don’t ignore your stylist in the process. “If [you are] asked questions about your cut or styling, reply right away” added Olya Iudina, a stylist for 15 years who is with New York City’s IGK NYC.

3. Wasting Time During The Appointment

“After arriving 15 minutes late, a client had a phone conversation for 10 minutes. When they hung up, I had to tell them I no longer had time to cut their hair and they were furious,” recalled hairstylist Andrea Cottin, who has 13 years of experience and works at Portland, Oregon’s Propaganda The Salon.

If you have to interrupt your service to step away for an emergency phone call, don’t expect to “resume full service as if nothing happened,” said Justin Kafando, a New York-based barber with the Barber Surgeons Guild who has over 20 years of experience. To avoid delaying subsequent clients’ appointments, your stylist may have to rush or might not be able to complete the same services as if there were an uninterrupted appointment.

Keep still and as quiet as you can if you have to use your phone during an appointment.

AleksandarGeorgiev via Getty Images

Keep still and as quiet as you can if you have to use your phone during an appointment.

4. Coming To Your Appointment Sick

Stylists agree they would rather a client call in sick than sit in their chair while spreading germs. In coming in contagious, you not only put your hairstylist at risk of getting sick, but the other stylists, clients and staff as well.

“If anyone contracts the same sickness, they’ll be forced to take a sick leave, and you’ll have unintentionally taken them out of business for a couple of days,” Holas said. “This also means canceling several days’ worth of appointments, which will be more inconvenient for us, and the clients affected by the cancellations.”

5. Disrespecting Salon Property

When you’re at a hair salon, you should behave as if you’re a guest in someone’s home, which means respecting their property. Ricardo Rojas, a hairstylist for 30 years who has owned four salons including Ricardo Rojas Salon in New York City, recalled a time shortly after the salon was redecorated with beautiful new chairs.

“[A client] was eating a piece of cake with her hands,” Rojas said. “She put the cake down directly on the silk chair so she could shake my hand. I was appalled.”

Another absolute no: Touching the stylist’s equipment without permission. “We take pride and really good care of our tools as they are expensive and must be in perfect shape to offer a perfect cut,” Kafando explained.

6. Moving Around And Not Sitting Still

The way you sit in the stylist’s chair can impact their ability to do their job. A major pet peeve for hair professionals is when clients are “getting up every two seconds to look in the mirror,” Kafando said. “We know your hair doesn’t look great unfinished. We are getting there!”

Furthermore, a client who is “sitting crooked or constantly having their head down can make it difficult to cut and colour the hair,” Cottin noted. If you’re looking down at your phone during your appointment, try to ensure that it doesn’t affect your posture in a way that’s detrimental to the stylist.

This isn't a hen party. Stylists prefer you to limit yourself to one of the complimentary alcoholic drinks.

Bill Sykes via Getty Images

This isn’t a hen party. Stylists prefer you to limit yourself to one of the complimentary alcoholic drinks.

7. Taking Advantage Of The Free Snacks And Drinks

Some salons provide complimentary refreshments such as coffee, tea, snacks or even alcoholic beverages. Of course, you may accept any refreshments you’re offered, but can you ask for refills? And is it OK to swing by the snack table more than once?

“More than one refill of alcoholic beverages is generally frowned upon,” Cottin advised.

“Refills aren’t usually on the initial budget and might end up being costly for your barber,” added Holas, who warned against “turning the refreshments corner into [your] own personal buffet.”

8. Not Being Prepared To Tip Everyone Who Served You

While cash tips are generally preferred, many salons offer alternatives if you don’t have bills handy such as money transfer apps, ATMs or tipping on a credit card. If you’re happy with the service you’ve received, the stylists polled agreed that 20% of the cost of service is an appropriate tip for your main stylist.

“You should tip your colourist, stylist and the assistants if they were helping wash or blow drying your hair,” noted Iudina.

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What It’s Like Being Me

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I love asking people this question: What is it really like being you?

We can see how people speak and behave on the outside, but what do we know of their interior perspective?

What I love about this question is that it invites real intimacy and empathy. It’s an invitation into trust. I feel honored when someone does their best to answer honestly. It’s fascinating to discover how someone frames and experiences their interior world, at least to the extent they can articulate it.

I thought it would be interesting to answer this question too, if only to see what comes through when I try to answer it.

Centeredness

I love being me and really enjoy my life, which feels rich and rewarding. I feel like I figured out the big rocks and put them in place many years ago. I feel very aligned with the work I get to do and the people I regularly connect with, especially in Conscious Growth Club and the Transformational Leadership Council.

I don’t experience any meaningful doubt about the path I’m on, at least not at the macro level. I like to think carefully about the projects I commit to, but I can’t say that I ever seriously feel like making a significant change in my career path or lifestyle at this point. I’m always interested in upgrades and improvements, but the overall trajectory of my life feels like it’s already perfect for me.

So on the inside, I normally feel very centered and engaged with whatever I’m doing and experiencing. I enjoy a beautiful sense of harmony with my work and life balance. I don’t feel like work and life are separate. It feels more like the work and non-work parts of life are always dancing with each other.

Energy & Enthusiasm

One of the main emotions I experience is enthusiasm.

I love to feel positively stimulated with emotion, not all the time to the maximum, but as nice accents throughout each day. I like to feel amped up and engaged with life.

Partly this is a decision to move away from boredom and dullness. When I feel that the energy of a situation is a bit low for my tastes, I’ll often do something to shift it. For instance, I frequently like to play music and dance around while making meals. I love it when Rachelle does that with me too.

Every day I find something to feel enthusiastic about, usually many times each day. It could be a new business idea, but I’ll also generate enthusiasm for everyday experiences like greeting Rachelle when she gets up, doing a Zoom call, or watching a show together. I’ll even generate excitement about running errands.

My mind has a strong tendency to want to bounce away from boredom and towards feelings of engagement, playfulness, and fun. For me this aspect of my inner reality is solidly implanted.

Raising Vibes

I think this is something I learned from watching movies when I was younger. There are so many movie scenes where a high-energy character walks in, and the whole vibe of the scene changes. Or maybe it’s an unusual character who shifts the vibe of whatever scene they’re in. One example is Bill Murray’s character in Ghostbusters. Another is Val Kilmer’s character in Real Genius. Such characters were basically my heroes when I was younger. You’ve probably seen countless examples of these characters too.

When I interact with people socially, I often think about how I can stimulate them vibrationally… like what I could say or do to help connect them with more enthusiasm for their lives, experiences, and opportunities. Sometimes I feel that my role has been to shake people awake if they’ve been sleeping through life in zombie mode.

I sense that a great key to life is how we manage our energy, which includes thought energy, physical energy, and emotional energy. I think you can include spiritual energy too. I pay serious attention to the flow of energy through myself and through interactions with others. If the energy flow feels off somehow, I do my best to shift it in a more positive and constructive direction.

I think that for much of my life, I’ve felt a strong attraction to certain vibes and a strong repulsion towards others. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better and better at centering my life around the vibes I like and defending myself from vibes I dislike. I’m attracted to vibes like abundance, playfulness, curiosity, and creativity. I’m repulsed by neediness, close-mindedness, defeatism, and depression.

Thinking Algorithmically

Probably because I learned computer programming when I was a kid, I tend to think of life in terms of interesting problems to be solved and challenges to work through. I live in a world of puzzles to be figured out, and I love chipping away at these. These puzzles could include business challenges, creative challenges, personal challenges, and more.

I don’t worry if problems are solvable. I tend to regard everything as solvable and figureoutable. I generally assume that every problem has multiple solutions, so my mind starts churning on various solution pathways instead of fussing over whether it’s solvable. I’m much more concerned by which pathways seem the most elegant to me. I love to discover shortcuts.

Some problems in my life took me a long time to solve, but I eventually figured them out. It doesn’t bother me if some problems take years or even decades to solve. The time is going to pass anyway, and since I love working on interesting problems and challenges, I enjoy the experience of continuing to chip away at them.

I’m always looking to improve my toolset of problem-solving skills. Tackling interesting problems and challenges helps me improve those tools and upgrade my models of reality.

Belongingness

Imagine receiving thank you messages and expressions of appreciation from people around the world every day of your life. That’s been my reality for the past 18+ years, ever since I started blogging in 2004. That’s probably going to continue for the rest of my life, even if I stopped working.

Recently my book Personal Development for Smart People came out in China, so I’ve been getting a surge in appreciative emails from Chinese readers.

What does this do to my interior perspective? It gives me an unshakeable feeling of belongingness.

When I was younger, I often felt isolated and disconnected, like I was an alien in this world who didn’t belong here. I haven’t felt that way in decades though. Today I feel solidly at home here. I have zero doubt that this is where I belong – on this planet and in this field. I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

I feel at home whenever I travel too. Foreign locations don’t feel foreign to me. I’m so used to communicating with people from all over the world that it feels like the whole world is home.

Appreciation

I feel like I’m immersed in a reality that’s filled with experiences, people, and items to appreciate. I can’t seem to help feeling lots of appreciation each day. I appreciate my work. I appreciate my home. I appreciate Rachelle. I appreciate living in Las Vegas. I appreciate this community.

I also appreciate the little things in life. I spent time interacting with various objects and tech each day, and I learned how important it is to fill my life with items that evoke appreciation. This week I’ve been working with a bunch of hand tools to hang acoustic panels, and using them makes me smile sometimes because I carefully selected and purchased tools that I’d appreciate – such as a drill, tape measure, level, etc.

For me practicing appreciation was a huge key in shifting from scarcity to abundance, so this attitude of appreciation is indelibly woven into my mindset. Almost always when I touch something physically, there’s a part of me saying “thank you” internally for the experience. This happens when I put my hands on the steering wheel in my car, when I open up my laptop, when I pick up a knife in the kitchen, etc. I sense that we only have so many experiences in life, and I want even the most mundane ones to be infused with appreciation.

It would also be unusual for me to go through a day without saying thank you to someone for something. I love to express appreciation, and I sense that people could always use more of it. I would love to see more people expressing genuine gratitude for all the wonders we get to experience in this life instead of taking so much for granted.

When I die I want my last words to be: Thank you for this life.

Love

A big part of my interior perspective is that I enjoy being in love every day. I know a lot of people probably see me as a more mental creature due to seeing that side of me from my writing, but internally I feel a lot of love energy flowing through me each day.

I really, really, really enjoy and appreciate my relationship with Rachelle. Every day I get to spend with her is sheer delight.

Our relationship doesn’t feel effortful. It feels like a wonderful gift. I think that’s because we’re so ridiculously compatible. I recognize that what we have is very special, and on the inside that makes me feel very lucky.

I feel doubly fortunate that I get to see sides of Rachelle that she doesn’t often share with others. To people who don’t know her well, she may seem shy or introverted, but with me she shares so much playfulness, fun, love, warmth, and affection.

I’ve never had an issue with loneliness. I love solitary time too and don’t feel any significant resistance towards being alone. But I’ve spent most of my adult life in long-term relationships. I think one reason I’ve attracted partners pretty easily is that I just don’t feel needy in this area. I love being in a relationship, but I also love the experience of being on my own. I feel equally comfortable in both worlds.

I think this has been a key to new growth experiences. Don’t try to invite new experiences by resisting where you are. Try to love and appreciate your present reality as well as what you’d like to invite next. Send appreciation in all directions.

That was also a big part of shifting from scarcity to abundance. I wasted so much energy on the frustration of resisting scarcity when I was in my 20s. When I finally let go and surrendered to it – and actually welcomed it into my life as if I’d always be in scarcity till I died – that’s when the floodgates of abundance opened up. Learning to appreciate scarcity was a powerful lesson.

Freedom & Creativity

I also really enjoy my freedom. I haven’t had a job or a boss in 30+ years, so I’ve been on an independent entrepreneurial path since the early 1990s. It was rough during the first several years, but I eventually figured it out.

I don’t normally think of myself as an entrepreneur or business owner though. Those frames feel a bit too dull and mental to me. On the inside I don’t really fuss about my identity.

I love to create all sorts of things, so most days I’m thinking about what I’m creating. I could label myself as a creator, but that feels a bit off too. I’m not particularly concerned with how I’m labeled by myself or others. I’m much more in tune with whatever I’m engaging with in the moment. In terms of my identity, it feels more like water or wind – very flexible and adapting to wherever it goes.

The term “content creator” turns my stomach a bit, like it’s trying to smoosh something beautifully expansive into a small-minded box. It’s like putting a bird in a cage.

For me creativity and freedom are the Wonder Twins of my life. I see both as being essential for my long-term happiness and fulfillment. These are gifts from reality, but they must be claimed and defended.

Some people would say that they need freedom in order to create. I don’t think like that. It’s too limiting, and it points back to neediness, which is something I always want to bounce away from.

I regard freedom as something I can and must create. Freedom is a choice. But freedom without creativity is unsustainable, boring, and meaningless. I feel that I’ve invested a lot in creating freedom and freeing myself to create. On the inside it feels wonderful to be in a place where I can create, share, and express so much. This includes maintaining the freedom to keep creating without interference.

I don’t just think of creativity as doing creative work like writing articles, making courses, or doing workshops. I think of creativity as being the core essence of conscious living. That includes creating freedom, creating a life I love, and co-creating experiences with the right people.

Curiosity

On the inside I’m incredibly curious. I love to learn, grow, explore, and discover. I’m always finding something interesting to delve into. I love the process of discovering what the interior perspective of an experience is like. I’m very open to new experiences, especially experiences that can upgrade my thinking and understanding of life and reality.

Even when I’m not actively writing about it, I’m often doing some kind of personal growth experiment. Or I’m studying and exploring something new. Frequently I’m exploring multiple overlapping curiosities.

I’m currently doing a new dietary experiment involving testing a different macro balance (carbs, fat, protein). My goal is to aim for a caloric distribution of 70% carbs (or more), 20% fat (or less), and 10% protein (or less). This is similar to the 80/10/10 diet I did in January 2008 but with higher fat. It’s going very well so far.

I also recently researched acoustic panels, and this week I’ve been installing them in my home office. I also have some panels to install in my studio and a few in the living room. This will help to improve the audio quality on some recordings, and it will make my studio look nicer since I can finally remove the old sound blankets. I like the look of the panels too. Rachelle helped me pick the colors, and we spent a lot of time working on this together.

Last month I invested in some plumbing upgrades, hiring a plumber to install a new tankless water heater, water softener, and whole house water filtration system. I also did a plant medicine journey with some friends.

Last year around this time, I was exploring home theater systems and invested in a major upgrade there. That was one of my favorite explorations because it totally transformed the experience of watching movies and shows with Rachelle, especially action movies. That gave me even more to appreciate.

One of my biggest challenges is that I can get too curious and open too many new doors simultaneously. I love saying yes to new experiences and explorations, but I also have to practice saying no a lot to avoid overextending myself.

Order

On the inside, my mind feels very sharp and orderly. I’m usually very adept at focusing and directing my mind to advance the projects that I want to work on.

I have many dozens of projects mapped out with action steps (I currently use the Things app for this). Realistically it may take me years to complete all the projects I’ve already identified. Week by week I keep chipping away at them.

I also maintain a quarterly completion log, whereby I document what I’ve gotten done or experienced each calendar quarter. I’ve been doing this for about 5 years consistently, and it’s really helpful for progress visibility. I can see where I moved projects across the finish line. Sometimes I may feel like I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked, but when I review those quarterly logs, I’m usually impressed with how much I actually finished.

My life is typically a mix of pre-planned work plus spontaneous action. I’ve gotten pretty good at taking action both inspirationally and methodically. I love having the flexibility to choose which tasks and projects I’ll work on each day without prescheduling them. Most days my calendar is blank. But I also keep track of many competing priorities to weave in when the timing is right.

I like keeping my physical environment neat and tidy. When clutter piles up, it’s very temporary. I feel a strong desire to keep moving towards greater order. When items and tasks are in order, it frees my mind to think more clearly, to be more creative, and to take more action. I think one reason that I embrace order is that disorder is very distracting for me.

Optimism

I don’t get depressed. Simply never. My mind stays focused on the positive – on inspiring ideas, engaging people, action steps, interesting projects, creative explorations, etc.

I used to get depressed sometimes when I was younger, but I put a stop to that.

I decided a long time ago that depression is a stupid waste of life and that it was critical to defend against the slime pit of depression, self-doubt, and other downer modes of experience. Otherwise it becomes a trap where one can lose years of precious life. I regard depression as a nasty neural pattern – a mental and emotional virus – so I did what was necessary to ensure that my mind just doesn’t go there anymore. I felt that was one of the early personal development battles where I had to win a decisive victory. So this is a virus to which I’ve built a very strong immunity.

There were lots of pieces to this – cleaning up my diet (zero animal products); regular exercise that I enjoy; dropping misaligned people; committing to meaningful and fulfilling creative work; saying no to partial matches; and creating a life rich in intimacy, warmth, and affection.

I really appreciate my past self for putting so much effort into upgrading his mindset and heartset. That was a real challenge for him, but he did a fabulous job of solving those problems one by one. He gifted me with sustainably constructive thoughts and feelings. That’s a huge gift since I no longer feel like I have to fight with myself internally. My mind and emotions feel very harmonious.

Thoughtfulness

I like to be very thoughtful and deliberate in making decisions, especially important ones. I use many tools and processes to work through decisions methodically. For instance, when designing a new course, I follow a step-by-step design template that I’ve developed over the years. It’s one of the bonuses in the Amplify course.

To really know that I can complete a project, especially a big one, I have to reach a point of strong commitment. When I was younger, I left too many creative projects unfinished because I started them impulsively, and I hadn’t put the right level of thought into them up front. Then I’d struggle partway through with thoughts like, What’s the point of finishing this? Or something else would distract me, and I’d lose focus on the previous project.

Today I’m way better at finishing projects. I look at them carefully and analyze them from different angles, often spending weeks or months in the pre-commitment phase. Some projects don’t converge on commitment, but when I’m able to commit, I’m really good at following through all the way to the end.

What this does for my inner experience is that I have super strong creative trust. I know what it takes to complete a sizable creative project. I know how to get myself to the point of commitment, and I’m able to trust myself to follow through and finish. I also know how to recognize when the alignment isn’t there yet, and I shouldn’t commit myself.

It took time to discover the right process for me such that I could make wise decisions intelligently while also avoiding analysis paralysis. Having a process that converges really helps.

Relationships

Internally I think about almost all aspects of life through the lens of relationships. This includes people, tasks, projects, goals, possessions, food, activities, locations, and more.

Instead of thinking so objectively about different aspects of life, I usually favor subjective thinking. I imagine how different decisions will affect my inner experience. I think more about the dynamic flow of events than about the static nature of situations.

You could say that I think in terms of verbs more than nouns. Where is the energy flowing? How is it changing? How do I want to engage with these energy patterns?

When I’m considering a new creative project, I pay a lot of attention to how I’m going to relate to that project while I’m working on it. I don’t just think about the end goal or result. At least 80% of my thinking is focused on what the journey will be like (probably more like 90%+). I want to make that journey beautiful and engaging.

I’ve invested a lot of thought and energy into creating a beautiful and harmonious relationship with my work and life. This includes how I relate to the people who engage with my work.

What I love about this relationship model of thinking about life is that it helped me get really honest with myself. It encourages me to be more forthright about expressing how I really think and feel. Can I share that I’d love to see Vladimir Putin slowly fed feet-first into a wood chipper, while being given frequent espresso breaks along the way? That’s actually one of my intentions.

Defending Against Misalignments

Some of my energy flows into defensive activities, which is a part of my life that many people don’t see. I have standards for the people I want to engage with, and I’m not interested in lowering them to build a larger but misaligned audience.

That’s one reason I tell Trump supporters to begone. I have no interest in serving racist idiots and assholes. That isn’t political. It’s personal. I find such people utterly loathsome, and I want nothing to do with them. I don’t want to invest my energy in dealing with people who disgust me, so I choose not to deal with them. Moreover, I will continue to staunchly defend this community against them, especially Conscious Growth Club. Such idiocy has no place here.

I have to deal with occasional stalker-types as well, including people who clearly aren’t right in the head. That doesn’t get me down. I just see as it part of the experience of working in this field.

If I wanted to be a mental health professional who regularly engages with such people, I’d have chosen that as my career path. I realized a long time ago that I must carefully defend the path that resonates with me, and that requires being very firm in saying no to people and situations that I’m not willing to deal with. We don’t automatically get what we desire. We get what we’re willing to tolerate.

When people fall out of resonance with me, I prefer to just let them go. If someone violates my trust, I drop them from my life, and I really never let them back in because when I did so in the past, they always gave me cause to regret it. “Fool me once” is enough for me. There are so many interesting people to interact with in this life that it seems foolhardy to bother dealing with misaligned scraps. I now realize just how needy and desperate that is. That said, I very easily forgive people and have no interest in holding grudges, but when I close the door on someone, it’s really closed. From my own perspective, I see this as returning their energy back to the Simulator, where it can be recycled. This keeps my energy from getting stuck where it doesn’t want to be stuck.

I’m committed to flowing my energy where it wants to go and engaging with people who want to explore and engage with me in a mutually supportive way. That takes a certain degree of alignment and compatibility. It’s exquisitely joyful and rewarding to serve people who meet that standard. And it’s disappointing at the very least to attempt this with people who don’t.

Some people and experiences are like the perfect puzzle pieces that interlock with us in just the right ways. Even when our interactions are temporary, that kind of alignment is beautiful to behold. In order to invite more of this, I found it crucial to say a hard and definitive no to the misaligned. Otherwise partial matches and mismatches will block so much beauty, wonder, and delight from flowing through.

High-Trust Relationships & Audience Engagement

Years ago I went through the experience of building up lots of followers on social media and being very active on those services daily. It can feel fun and stimulating having so much attention, especially if you enjoy being in the limelight. I also found those interactions too random and chaotic, and I was glad to delete Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and tighten up my social focus. Seeing what’s been happening on Twitter these days makes me even more grateful to have dumped it in 2014.

After that I went through a process of focusing more on audience alignment than on audience size. That shrunk my overall audience but also made me feel happier and more in tune with my work. It helped me go much deeper into explorations that inspire me and others – less blogging but more courses, workshops, and of course CGC itself. It’s like we become more courageous, more heart-centered, and more genuine when we’re surrounded by the right people.

I’ve gotten used to having an audience for my work since that’s been my daily reality for decades, all the way back to my computer games business. The people I serve are in my mind each day, and I interact with them every day in some way – through email, the CGC forums, Zoom calls, blogging, videos, in person, etc.

To me this doesn’t feel like a temporary situation. It feels permanent, at least as far as my lifespan is concerned. There are people in my audience in their 30s now who started reading my blog when they were teenagers. I know this because many of them have told me so. I expect that even decades from now, many of the same people who are engaging with my work today will still be engaging with it or with the community around this work.

That really makes me think about how to keep serving the people in this community for the long term. I know that the specific people in this community will fluctuate, but there’s clearly a core base of people that feel a sense of commitment and resonance, so I think we’ll be in each other’s lives for a long time to come.

I love engaging with people on the basis of mutual appreciation. I like having an audience that appreciates me and the work and I do, and I love engaging with people that I appreciate too. This is something I never take for granted. It’s something I always want to keep investing in.

High-trust relationships are very important to me. Trust empowers us to explore so much more together. That’s another reason that certain people have no place in this community. We can’t build high-trust relationships with people who serve as enablers of lying and deceit.

Caring

I think one reason I’ve enduring so long in this field is that I genuinely care about the people in this community. That’s an aspect of my interior perspective that I think a lot of people don’t see. Of all the items I’m sharing here, I’d say that the #1 insight I’d love people to know is that I really do care. I want to see the people in this community thrive and enjoy rich and fulfilling lives. Just writing this part makes me teary-eyed.

I work hard at figuring out how to help people grow and how to keep serving them year after year. For me this is a lifelong investment, and I want to keep getting better at it. Sharing ideas is just one piece to the puzzle. Another piece is having a stable community where people can invest in each other (Conscious Growth Club). And yet another piece is continuing to listen for where the latest needs, desires, and growth opportunities are.

The road ahead is going to bring so many fresh challenges and opportunities. I want to help the people in this community intelligently navigate those experiences. I love the challenge of playing that role and figuring out where I can be of service.

A big part of my motivation comes from the people I serve. I don’t write just to write. I always write for people. I create courses for people. I develop workshops for people. I coach people. And it’s not for people in general but specifically for the people in this community – past, present, and future.

Internally I often feel that it’s other people’s energies and intentions that summon me to do the work I do. Somehow they energetically invite me to help them. So I never feel like I’m writing or creating into an empty void. I always feel like I’m co-creating with the energy that invited me to the dance.

I also see an important connection between caring and defense. In order to feel safe expressing caring and building high-trust relationships, I think it’s critical to defend against the opposite. I don’t trust blindly. I test for trust, and when I see it, I keep investing. But when people abuse my trust, they get the sword and shield.

Support & Cooperation

Internally I feel very creatively supported, and I have a very cooperative relationship with life. Life has given me everything I need to do my best creative work. I wanted to be of service to people, and life said a big yes to that in response.

When I was younger, I tried to do a lot of work under pressure, especially financial pressure and time pressure. There was this sense of always trying to scramble to get enough done to make ends meet. That wasn’t a situation where I could do my best creative work.

Back then my mindset and heartset were more competitive than cooperative. I put too much attention on my individual success and accomplishments, even though that just created more stress and pressure for me. I tried to motivate myself with misaligned forms of motivation. I focused too much on end results, and I leaned too heavily on courage and discipline to try to push through difficulties. I wish I had known back then how much more effective it is to focus on the journey and on cultivating a beautiful relationship with it.

Today my life feels very much the opposite of stressful. It’s fun and engaging, but it’s also peaceful and relaxing when I want it to be. Life feels very spacious, welcoming, and encouraging.

I love that I get to spend so much time exploring the richness of life, relationships, creativity, and fresh possibilities. I feel very in tune with the journey I’m on, and I delight in how it’s unfolding each day.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but hopefully you found some value in one or more of these insights that may be useful to you in your own life or work.

Happy New Year! 🥳 🎉

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Frequencies of Experience

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I often think of life as a summation of different experiential frequencies, much like different musical instruments can combine to create a song. Some frequencies combine harmoniously while others would sound discordant if you tried to merge them.

What I find most interesting about this model is that it helps me discover when some frequencies are holding me back from having new experiences. I cannot always invite new frequencies into my life when pre-existing frequencies are anchoring me to a different range.

Usually I must detach myself – or at least loosen my grip – from some anchor frequencies, so I can float freely into the range of new experiences. Otherwise I’ll never have the opportunity to experience those new frequencies fully while I’m still shackled to the old ones.

If you try to stuff more and more tracks into a song without removing some old ones, you may end up with noise, not music. When the tracks play together, their frequencies interact, and the more tracks you add, the more complex the balancing act becomes.

In your own life, now and then you’ll need to do some frequency decluttering if you want to progress to new experiences.

Anchor Frequencies

When you want to flow into a new zone of experience, such as by pursuing and achieving an interesting goal, think about the old anchor frequencies that might interfere, and see if you can loosen your grip on them.

Do you have any anchor frequencies that would make you feel some resistance to your new path? Any worries about what other people would think? Any unwillingness to grow beyond your comfort zone? Any old habits you’d rather not release?

Whatever anchor issues you identify, it’s wise to start working on those now, mentally and emotionally. It’s important to start changing your relationship with the old frequencies, so you can create space to harmonize with new frequencies. Many people do a piss-poor job of this, which is why they remain stuck. They may be willing to embrace the new, but they’re not committed to relinquishing the old.

For example, if you’re contemplating a career change, start thinking about how you’ll say goodbye to the old career and how you’d like to frame those memories. Begin to align yourself with the goodbye experience before you leave.

When I moved on from game development and got into personal development in 2004, I framed my 10 years of professional game development as a nice phase of learning and growth but not one that I had to cling to for the rest of my life. I approached the transition like a graduation. This included declaring even unfinished projects over and done with. That wasn’t easy, but I knew I had to let go of the old, so I could fully embrace and explore the new.

This wasn’t a fast process, but before I could really focus on a career change, I had to spend months winding down my relationship with game development work.

Some of those old frequencies faded from my life. I stopped hosting a popular indie game developer forum and handed it off to some friends to keep it going. I stopped working on new games. I stopped doing any new marketing for my games. I let people know that I was closing up shop. I also had to mentally and emotionally let go of a lot of future plans and expectations along the old path.

Any anchor frequencies that might have kept me stuck in the old world had to be surrendered.

Crossover Frequencies

Some frequencies, however, were flexible enough to transition with me. I was able to bring some productivity habits along. I could still do some coding now and then. I brought my creativity, playfulness, community-building skills, entrepreneurial spirit, and explorer’s mindset into the new career.

Those compatible crossover frequencies served me well. They helped me retain some sense of stability while so much else in my life felt new and different. In the same year I started my blog, I also moved to a new city (from L.A. to Las Vegas) and joined Toastmasters to get into speaking. I had a new home, a new social circle, and a new business all in the same year – and a new child the year before.

One crossover frequency that I especially found helpful was growth. This is one of the ultimate crossover frequencies because we can always invest in learning and growth, regardless of how many transitions we go through. So you can also think about anchoring yourself to flexible frequencies – like growth – so you don’t feel so unhinged every time you go through an interesting transition.

Transitioning

When you’re facing a transition in life, see if you can identify some of your anchor frequencies and your crossover frequencies. Which aspects of your life will need to be released? Which can come along for the ride?

If you really look into this carefully, you may find some surprises. You’ll probably recognize some frequencies of experience that you didn’t realize were choices. You may spot areas where you’ve been clingy with anchor frequencies, but you didn’t recognize them as such. And you’ll see where you’ve gotten stuck when trying to transition.

When I wanted to transition from a scarcity experience with money to a more abundant relationship with money, I noticed that I was relating to money in a way that wouldn’t make sense on the abundance side. I had some habitual ways of interfacing with money that were serving as anchor frequencies and keeping me from progressing.

I might describe some of these anchor frequencies as stress and worry. Others involved making money such a high priority – giving so much thought to bills and rent each month. I thought about money pretty much every day. Another issue was focusing so much on my desire for more money. Would I be doing that if I were already in the abundance zone? Nope.

I realized that if I wanted to transition to a more abundant relationship with money, I wasn’t going to relate to it with frequencies like stress, worry, or intense desire. In fact, I realized that many days I wouldn’t even think about money. It would recede more into the background of my life, and it wouldn’t be such a foreground concern. Money would be like a reliable friend, and I’d also have a lot of fun with it – earning it and spending it. I’d have a chill, relaxed, and playful relationship with it. But worry about it, stress over it, or obsess over it? Nah… those were the old anchor frequencies that kept me in scarcity, so I had to let them go.

When I recognized that certain habits of thought and emotion were acting as anchors to scarcity, I realized that I had a choice to make. I had to put a stop to stressing, worrying, and over-thinking about money. I actually worked through the logic of that. Did those old frequencies help? Did they actually create more money? Were they effective? Reliable and consistent? Ha… nope.

These old frequencies sometimes got me to scramble to pull some extra resources together at the last minute, but that was an endless treadmill. There was no way that this way of thinking would lead to greater abundance. It was a foolish approach with no hope of success. Even if I did earn more money, I’d just have more to stress and obsess over, which seemed dreadful.

Once I understood the logic, I asked myself if I wanted to align with my best thinking or if I wanted to keep being illogical and foolish. I made a commitment to stop fretting and worrying about money, and I’ve done a solid job of honoring that commitment ever since. I do slip a little bit now and then, but barely. I’ve gotten really good at pulling my mind away from that old frequency zone and keeping it in the zone of abundance-aligned frequencies.

Abundance-Aligned Frequencies

What are some of the abundance-aligned frequencies then?

One of my favorites is service. Instead of fussing over my own sniveling problems, I think about what I can do that other people would appreciate. In my games business, I shifted my focus to creating experiences for people. That’s still a big part of how I think about my life and business today. I like crafting and delivering interesting experiences that people can appreciate – especially unique experiences they may not encounter elsewhere. I really resonate with the frequency range of investing in growth-oriented people. That connects to even more frequencies that I like, such as caring, mutual support, and co-creation. This range gets me taking a lot of action.

Can I share a simple observation with you? When I see people who are stuck in scarcity, they’re almost always expending way more thought and emotion in dealing with their own personal or family problems than they invest in thinking about serving other people in the world. They anchor their focus inward instead of outward. Is it any wonder that they’re anchoring themselves to scarcity frequencies? So don’t hide. Get out there and engage with the world.

Another favorite is creativity. I love, love, love the frequency zone of creative projects. This feels like a solid home base for me. I’ve created millions of words of published material, and I never get writer’s block. I know that I can always create, and many years of feedback tells me that there are always people who will appreciate these creations. I’ve been a professional creator of some form or another for about 30 years now, and I expect that to continue. Note that this is also a frequency range where lots of action happens.

Also note that actually creating is NOT the same frequency zone as thinking about creating, typing up to-do lists, or otherwise procrastinating on creating. I spend WAY more time writing and publishing than I spend thinking about writing or reading about writing. Some planning is good if it helps you get organized, but is your planning driving projects through to completion? How much of your creative work is getting into people’s hands? Appreciation and abundance are very compatible frequency zones, very often arising together.

Other favorites are exploration, playfulness, and fun. I’m one of the most fun-loving adults that I know, and so is Rachelle. Do you know any other couples who spent 30 days in a row going to Disneyland? We enjoyed every day of that experience. I love being married to a woman who makes me laugh so much, and I love to make her laugh as well. Living with her is immensely entertaining. Even when she’s not trying to be entertaining, she just is.

People who remain stuck in scarcity are so ridiculously tolerant of their old anchor frequencies. They remain clingy with frequencies that clearly aren’t compatible with abundance. Abundance-aligned people have decided not to be so tolerant of those incompatibilities.

Investment & Surrender

One of the most critical self-development concepts to grasp is that where you invest your energy is a choice. You don’t have to remain loyal to old anchor frequencies. You have the option of surrendering those old frequencies and moving into a new range.

To shift your frequencies often requires a real commitment. Don’t even think about trying to half-ass it.

I don’t see any way I could have flowed into such an abundant relationship with life if I was willing to tolerate a relationship with ongoing worry, stress, and obsessive thinking about money.

How do you really surrender the old frequencies that no longer serve you? You reframe them as something that you’ll never want to revisit.

I reframed my old frequencies as stupid, idiotic, dumb, pointless, moronic, foolish, and utterly ineffective. It was illogical through and through to align with those old frequencies. They don’t work. They never worked! Only a great fool would cling to them. Do I want to be a great fool? No, I don’t!

Whenever my mind catches itself backsliding, it generates a huge load of warning signals that prevents it from staying there. It’s like noticing a skull and crossbones on a bottle of poison that you’re about to drink. This makes the whole brain light up with a super strong, “HELL NO!” signal.

I recommend that you do something similar. Stop trying to have a cozy relationship with anchor frequencies that are keeping you stuck. Break up with them instead. And I mean really break up. Dump them for good. Kick them to the curb. Make a “never again” resolution not to engage with them.

Yes, you may slip now and then. Slipping is to be expected, but when you slip, don’t fall. Catch yourself. Remind yourself of your best reframes for the old frequencies. Tell yourself which frequencies you want to engage with instead. Work through the logic of how you’re going to relate to those old ranges henceforth. And then hold yourself to that logic. Remind yourself to honor your best thinking.

Your thoughts and feelings exist in certain frequency ranges. If you want to invite new experiences and results into your life, you almost certainly need to adjust your thoughts and feelings too. While it’s nice to imagine what you’re new reality will be like, it’s even more important to start boxing out your old reality by cordoning off the old anchor frequencies. Remove the old ropes that kept you docked, so you can set sail and float over to new destinations.

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How I Think About My Life and Work

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I often think about my life as a flow of experiential explorations.

I’ve found it overwhelming to consider the vast array of possibilities that life presents objectively. Traversing just a fraction of this space could occupy endless lifetimes, so that framing doesn’t bring much clarity and leaves me adrift.

Instead I create clarity by thinking of experiences as a summation of different vibes. A vibe is the inner, subjective flavor of an experience, similar to qualia. It’s what I experience internally when living through an outer experience. This includes my emotions and the thoughts I have along the way.

I typically find it much easier to create clarity regarding the inner experience I want. Even when I don’t have clarity about the outer experience, I can collapse the inner experience into something relatively crisp.

My inner desires are often reactive. If I’m over-stressed, I automatically want to feel more relaxed and at ease. If I’m bored, I want to experience more excitement and stimulation. If I feel happy and engaged with life or if I’m in a nice productive flow, I usually want more of the same – until my inner mood tells me I want to shift. When I take stock of any inner experience, I naturally think about what I’d like to experience next, like I’m laying out some kind of story progression.

Most of the time this is an unconscious process. The conscious part is simply paying attention to what’s arising. I notice whatever vibes I’m experiencing in the moment, especially the pervasive ones that have been with me for days. Once I clarify where I am, I tend sense a pulling sensation to move in a new direction.

Sometimes I feel pulled in multiple directions, but if I consciously list out the vibes that are pulling at me, it’s not hard to clarify my preferences. In those cases usually all of those vibes are correct, and I really want to experience a combo of them, such as a peaceful adventure or a cozy connection.

Guided by Inner Experience

So generally I like to think about life based on the inner quality of my experience. I like to make decisions about my human life as if it’s the same as my spiritual (or inner) life. I find that my life works better when I do that. By contrast when I make decisions that only seem reasonable on the physical plane but feel misaligned at the level of energy, emotions, and inner experiences, the results are usually poor. Not only do I not enjoy those experiences, but I usually fail to get the physical reality results I was aiming for.

However, when I flip this around and focus primarily on the inner experience – meaning that this inner world is where I set my true priorities – my outer world seems to flow along pretty well too. Where the outer world isn’t working so well for me, I normally sense that it’s because I haven’t assumed enough responsibility for the vibes I want to explore and express into that part of life. Or I’m still dealing with internally conflicted vibes in those areas, and I need to resolve those objections.

When choosing work and personal projects, I like to think about the vibes I want to explore. I think deeply about what the inner experience will be like from start to finish. I want to create interesting, varied, and meaningful inner explorations. Overall that approach keeps me feeling satisfied and fulfilled with life.

When I complete a major project, I like to do a postmortem on it. I’ve included a couple of those as bonuses with the Amplify course. I think about what went right and what could be improved for next time. I also journal a lot about the project, taking note of what I enjoyed and what I wish I’d done differently. I use those insights to make choices for future projects.

I think many people choose projects based on the external results they seek to gain. Or they get projects assigned to them by others. I like to choose projects mainly based on what the inner adventure will be like. I make those choices differently each time, which naturally infuses my projects with plenty of variety.

Beyond Happiness

Choosing to be happy is too vague for me. Happiness doesn’t have enough resolution. There are many different vibes that I enjoy and appreciate when I experience them, and they’re more specific than happiness.

Here’s how I think about my life purpose these days. I recently updated it to this:

Consistently invest my precious freedom to create, invite, attract, and enjoy the exploration of different vibrational combos, such as: abundance, wealth, intensity, coziness, lightness, relaxation, oneness, presence, optimism, fun, playfulness, vibrancy, sexiness, ease, comfort, power, order, love, warmth, nurturing, inspiration, wonder, beauty, awe, gracefulness, appreciation, caring, compassion, generosity, adventure, trust, honesty, stability, openness, curiosity, courage, wildness, boldness, pleasure, silliness, mischief, indulgence, excitement, naughtiness, freedom, immersion, imagination, connection, self-expression, creativity, cooperation, co-creation, service, simplifying, accessibility, accomplishment, achievement, speed, efficiency, intelligence, patience, reflection, and celebration. Expand my experiential range and abundantly serve the expansion of life’s range.

I think of my life as an exploration of different vibes. When I was younger, I often focused on vibes I could express with single words, such as abundance or courage. At this time in my life, I prefer mash-ups of different combos. I especially like exploring vibes that may seem a bit contradictory.

For instance, I enjoy caring about people while also challenging them. I love being honest and mischievous. Mixing coziness with wildness is a fun combo too.

You could say that I love being a vibrational mixologist. I love exploring the rich complexity of which vibes combine well, like complementary flavors in a drink.

It’s easy to use my inner purpose to as a basis for the purpose of my business and work as well:

Invite our community members (and other growth-oriented people) to explore different vibrational combos to expand their experiential range, such as: abundance, wealth, intensity, coziness, lightness, relaxation, oneness, presence, optimism, fun, playfulness, vibrancy, sexiness, ease, comfort, power, order, love, warmth, nurturing, inspiration, wonder, beauty, awe, gracefulness, appreciation, caring, compassion, generosity, adventure, trust, honesty, stability, openness, curiosity, courage, wildness, boldness, pleasure, silliness, mischief, indulgence, excitement, naughtiness, freedom, immersion, imagination, connection, self-expression, creativity, cooperation, co-creation, service, simplifying, accessibility, accomplishment, achievement, speed, efficiency, intelligence, patience, reflection, and celebration. Help them invest in growth explorations and meaningful upgrades they’ll treasure!

It takes time to get used to different vibes and to integrate them into our lives. Initially we may want to practice certain vibes individually, and then we can build upon that with endless combos.

Serving the Flow of Life

I feel that this kind of exploration is what life wants from me – and from all of us. When I look at life, I see the ongoing exploration of possibilities. I find that when I support this expansion by doing my part to contribute some interesting explorations, life seems to give me plenty of support as well. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t had a job in more than 30 years.

I consider freedom to be a precious gift because with sufficient freedom, I can access more of the possibility space. I can explore some aspect of life deeply for many weeks in a row. I can go on fun travel adventures. I can connect with a variety of different people. And I have lots of space for reflecting on experiences and considering next steps, especially through journaling.

A nice way to create value for people is to invite them into vibrational explorations together. This can be done in so many ways. Writing blog posts can have that effect by invite people to consider fresh possibilities. I also love doing this through speaking, workshops, coaching, courses, and Conscious Growth Club.

What surprised me was that just sharing more of my inner and outer journey also created a lot of value for people. As long as I keep having new growth experiences, I can share what I learn from them. People have expressed lots of appreciation for this type of sharing over the years. And these explorations have helped me clarify more vibrational combos that I love. For instance, I think of this writing session as inspired cozy reflection time.

Fresh Vibrational Combos Create Fresh Solutions

A key benefit of this type of exploration is that I discover solutions where I didn’t expect to find them. I think we have a tendency to mono-focus on some vibes to the point of stuckness.

For instance, I often see people trying to create more success, achievement, or efficiency in their lives, but they get stuck pretty easily with those vibes. I get more success by not focusing on success. Instead I like to move towards vibes like curiosity and playfulness and learning.

When I focused intensely on success and achievement, I went bankrupt. That made me feel humble enough to start looking at different vibrational directions, and I found that other vibes were much better for me. I eventually became a millionaire with that approach, and it happened with a nice easy flow and wasn’t a struggle to get there. Financial abundance showed up without trying to force it so directly. I got there by exploring other vibes like fun, curiosity, adventure, compassion, wonder, service, etc. I rekindled an adventurous spirit, which has served me well.

That makes sense to me because when I think of abundance, I think of spaciousness and freedom, and those vibes seem more proximate to playfulness and curiosity than they do to a hard-ass focus on success. If I’m vibing with abundance, how much do I really care about traditional business success? That kind of success usually seems boring, stressful, or shallow to me. It lacks nuance.

I think the reason that kind of success doesn’t appeal to me is because it’s too rooted in this physical reality and doesn’t translate well to the spiritual side. When I think of spiritual success, I imagine being able to float freely across a wide range of interesting vibes and having the ability to explore them adeptly in many diverse combinations. So it’s a much broader framing of success. It’s also more resilient because I can develop these skills with or without money. Money often seems to enjoy participating in these explorations, but money doesn’t fuel them. The vibes summon the experiences, including the experience of financial flow.

Vibrational Practice

A key skill is to deliberately practice experiencing vibes that seem interesting. I still like to do this by relaxing on a couch and just imagining scenes that encapsulate certain vibes. I try to go beyond overly simplistic vibes like happiness, and I like to imagine more sophisticated combos playing out. It’s the difference between visualizing a very on-the-nose scene from a straightforward action movie versus visualizing a multi-layered dialogue from a movie like Casablanca, where characters communicate a great deal through subtext and body language.

I realize now that my inner visualization skill was pretty weak when I was younger. I imagined my goals coming through very directly, like an action movie explosion or car chase. But I eventually realized that reality appreciates vibrational richness and complexity. People like this too. I think that most of us don’t want overly simplistic and routine lives. We want to explore many different subtleties with lots of variety.

I love to think about life and business in terms of vibrational range. When I see a part of the vibrational space that I haven’t explored yet, I feel drawn to go explore it sooner or later. This gradually expands my vibrational range.

It’s like training to be a chef and learning to work with a greater variety of ingredients, so many more delicious meals can be created, not just for oneself but for the benefit of others as well.

When I think about serving others, I figure that a good way to help people is to encourage and invite them to expand their vibrational range. Help them to explore areas of the possibility space where they haven’t explored very much yet. Show them where the open waters are. Play the role of tour guide for the areas that are familiar to me, and also encourage people to keep exploring beyond that, so they can serve the expansion of life as well.

Confidence Doesn’t Matter

In addition to the success vibe, another vibe that I consider to be overstretched is confidence. Many people seem to think they need more confidence to get what they want. I find this vibe overly blunt and shallow though. What’s actually interesting about it? Not much. I generally see confidence as a pretty lame and uninteresting vibe.

When I’m really engaged with life in ways that resonate with me, I’m not really vibing with confidence. If you told me I seemed confident when speaking, for instance, I might give you a confused look. I really don’t care about feeling confident or being seen as confident. For whatever reason that vibe just looks and feels really dorky to me.

Instead of confidence, I’d rather explore more interesting combos like curiosity, playfulness, and honesty. Confidence is a confusing vibe because when a person looks confident, that may not actually be what they’re experiencing on the inside. In situations where I might appear confident, like while coaching someone, I’m actually experiencing something quite different internally, such as curiosity or compassion. Or I’m tuning in to a flow of inspired ideas. Or I’m focused on co-creating solutions together. There’s no need for confidence there – that isn’t part of my framing.

Telling yourself to be confident is like eating bread for every meal. You can surely concoct more interesting vibrational meals. Even if you sense that some form of confidence is present, it’s probably the least interesting part of the experience.

Vibes can be funny that way. Some vibes that seem popular in the outer world just don’t align with my actual inner experiences. Paying too much attention to popular vibes tripped me up a lot. It took years to unload enough of that social conditioning, so I could figure out what actually worked for me and which vibrational combos I enjoy and appreciate.

Once I know which vibes I want to move towards, it becomes much easier to choose external experiences then. In those cases it’s mainly a matter of identifying accessible actions to shift my outer reality into alignment with those vibes. To do this I get into resonance with the vibes I want, and then I let them guide my actions. I pay attention to what I feel naturally inspired to do when I’m connecting with those vibes. This leads me to take a lot of action, and my reality gradually shifts.

Personalizing Vibes

I like the exploration process of personalizing vibes and figuring out how they best resonate with me. Consider a vibe like wealth. Do you want to feel wealthy? What does that vibe mean to you? I had mixed associations to that vibe for a while. I associated it with greed, unfairness, and injustice. So of course I couldn’t get into resonance with it. But I also liked some things about it, like how it could connect with freedom, abundance, and more possibilities. So I pulled this vibe away from the negative associations, and I framed my version of wealth as being about gaining more access to possibilities. So it’s not material wealth per se. It’s experiential wealth. My version of wealth isn’t about acquiring. It’s about living and experiencing.

I also like to pull my version of wealth further into the service side. I think about wealth as enriching people’s lives, sharing a wealth of ideas, and inviting people into worthwhile experiences together. This helps my mind explore this type of vibe within an appealing range, so it doesn’t conflict with other vibes I like.

Otherwise if I don’t personalize a vibe to strip out the unwanted bits, those mixed associations can block me from exploring it altogether. Then I have to take a deeper look at my objections to a vibe and resolve those objections. I see this as part of the personalization process, so I take my objections seriously and treat them as problems that need to be solved. I don’t try to ram a vibe into my life when I don’t feel aligned with it. I prefer to sculpt a misshapen vibe into one that looks beautiful to me, so it naturally harmonizes with other vibes that I like.

Productivity is another interesting vibe. My objections are that it can be boring, stressful, or overly routine. I might even associate it with being caged and losing freedom. So I have to pull this vibe to better align with fun, freedom, and exploration. That’s why I like to work in waves that align with motivation and inspiration as opposed to following a rigid routine. This approach works well for me. When I want to be lazy, I give myself full permission to be intensely lazy. When I crave adventure, I go out and explore. And when I’m inspired by fascinating creative ideas, I love to intensely focus on the creative process and see it all the way across the finish line.

Exploring Harmonious Co-Creation

One experience I really want to have next is to do this kind of exploration socially with other people who resonate with it. That’s why I’m hosting a fresh deep dive into the Submersion course soon. We’ll be starting on November 1st and running through December 30th, with weekly Zoom calls along the way. On those calls we can practice together, pooling our collective intentions to summon interesting vibrational combos to invite into our lives. If you’re signed up for my email newsletter or if you already bought the Submersion course, I’ll email you an invite for this between now and November 1st. It’s free for everyone who bought the course already, and for everyone else, all you need to do is get the course between now and November 1st, and you can participate in the social exploration for no extra cost. This is one of our most popular courses, so I imagine that a lot of people will want to explore it as a social experience.

I’m especially curious to see what effect it has if we focus our intentional energy for our good and for the highest good of all. Imagine lots of people holding the intention to help uplift each other. Imagine people sending you love and healing energy from all around the world. And let’s also send vibes of peace, healing, forgiveness, freedom, and positive transformation to the people on earth who most appear to need it right now. Let’s send more energy into the vision of a world we want to create and experience together. I’m really craving this kind of collective exploration right now.

On the inside I want immerse myself in the feeling of all of us stepping into our collective power and intentionality together. I want to mash-up the vibes of oneness, power, love, connection, abundance, and creativity. I want us to harmonize beautifully together. This is a really nice fit for going through the Submersion course together because the course is about upgrading your relationship with reality. I’d love to go through this upgrade process with a very aligned group who resonates with doing this together.

I want to have the experience of co-creating a renewed sense of hope and positive energy flow. I want to invite people to release misaligned vibes and to shift back into alignment with lightness, creativity, and optimism. Remember that we’re all powerful creators here.

So that’s how I’ve been thinking about my life and work lately. I see life as a flow of vibrational explorations. Reality offers a vast field of possibilities to navigate. When I create vibrational clarity – by understanding what kind of inner experience I want next – that level of clarity trickles down to all the low-level decisions and gets me into a lovely and sustainable flow of action.

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How to Win Against Your Favorite Distractions

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What can you do when you realize that you’ve been wasting a lot of time succumbing to distractions, like endless social media or consumption-based activities, and it’s making you feel empty, hollow, disappointed, or even ashamed of yourself? How can you reboot and get your life (and your character development) back on track?

A key here is to raise your awareness of how this behavior pattern is punishing you and what you’re missing out on. And that’s the truth – you’re missing out on tons that life has to offer when you stick with the low-hanging fruit of repetitive but unfulfilling actions.

One way I like to do this is to maintain a clear line of sight to goals that are compelling. The goals have to be a lot more fascinating and stimulating than the distractions, and my goals need to provide emotional endurance that won’t easily fade. Otherwise the distractions will win. Limp goals won’t work.

Keeping long-term goals in our awareness requires a lot of refreshing. For many people this means looking at our goals and thinking about them every day or even multiple times per day. That’s a good test to see if the goals remain interesting or compelling or if they only look good on paper but don’t actually motivate action consistently.

I like to engage with my goals every day, and I’m constantly tweaking, refactoring, and refreshing them to keep them aligned with strong and persistent motivation. When I feel a goal becoming too mental and not thrilling enough, I know it’s dying and that I won’t likely achieve it till I pull it back into the emotional space. This is where reframing skills are a godsend.

Then comes the realization that with enough action and persistence and learning from mistakes, those goals can actually be achieved. Those experiences can be had. Are they better than Facebooking and video games? If not then the goals are no good and ought to be changed because those services are competing for your attention these days.

The future will introduce even more compelling distraction invitations, so your future goals will need to be even more competitive with those other services. If your goals can’t even out-compete today’s offers, you’re really have no chance in the years ahead. So you’d better learn how to pull ahead – and stay ahead – of those distractions today.

For some this may seem disheartening. I actually see it as exciting though. Why is reality providing so much temptation? Is it to pull you away from your goals and make you feel like a loser? No! It’s to invite you to up your goal-setting game. Stop setting such bland and wimpy goals. Set goals that scare you, that will radically transform your life, that will sculpt your character beautifully. Leap into spaces that you’re never explored before.

Most importantly, your goals must be personal. You can’t just rip them off from other people and expect them to have much motivating power. My best goals feel like goals that no one would set but me because they fit me and my personality in such a unique way. If your goals are generic and other people could just as easily set them, they probably won’t motivate you consistently.

A good goal is like a personal mission. It’s for you and you alone. Even if a goal involves a team project, your contribution is uniquely personal. A good goal dives deep into your private space of personal meaning. It’s part of your story, not someone else’s.

So please please please dump those lame-ass goals that you could read anywhere else online, like the ones to lose weight, make a certain amount of money, etc. Video games provide way more compelling goals than those.

You can still do some of those distracting activities for variety if you truly value them. Rachelle and I love watching TV shows and movies together, and sometimes we play video games. But those are filler activities around other goals, and they do provide value in a way that doesn’t feel empty or hollow. I often find inspiration in fictional worlds. I probably wouldn’t even be doing what I’m doing today if not for Star Trek, for instance, since that inspired many of my lifestyle decisions. Watching certain shows together is a fun bonding experience for us too; we often discuss them afterwards, even pausing to discuss while we watch.

I don’t have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or many other social media accounts since I don’t feel those services add enough value to my life today. I did find it interesting to explore them, but not to the extent of having them pull me away from more interesting goals. I do have Netflix, Apple TV+, Audible, YouTube, and other accounts that I appreciate. This is guilt-free. This kind of engagement actually builds enthusiasm for other goals if done right.

A good question to ask is: Would I appreciate having this account for another year (or five)? If not, that’s a good reason to cancel it.

When you compare your goals to your distractions, do your goals rise above your distractions enough that you’re going to feel a sting if you don’t work on your goals for a month or so? Do your goals compel you to take action? Do you find it necessary to put off non-goal actions, so you can advance your goals?

It’s one thing to feel disappointed if you wasting some of your life spinning in circles, but that isn’t enough by itself. It’s vital to be aware of what specifically you’re sacrificing if you don’t invest in something more meaningful. With a vague feeling of disappointment, going back to the distractions will remain the go-to treatment.

With a more specific feeling of disappointment where you develop high awareness of the progress you could have made but didn’t, it will be harder to return to distractions and not work on your goals. You’ll see that you’re delaying experiences that matter to you. You’ll see that you’re holding your character back from what you could become. You’ll see more of the specifics that you’re missing.

Your challenge is to create a vision of how you want your life to be, and then keep evolving that vision to make it personal, meaningful, and incredibly compelling. Arnold Schwarzenegger used to put up pics of bodybuilders on his bedroom wall, so he’d stay connected to the vision of how he wanted his body to be. While other people inspired him, he evolved those socially inherited goals into his own personal vision that mattered to him, and he infused a lot of his own personality into his goals. When he tried to pursue goals that other people set for him, like while he was in the military in Austria, he failed miserably.

I really love setting and achieving interesting goals. It’s hard as hell sometimes, and there are occasional setbacks to deal with, but in the long run that just makes the journey more rewarding. I especially love the long-term character sculpting effects. Even for goals I didn’t achieve (or that took longer than I expected), I still appreciate the character gains. I love the creative challenge of figuring out what to do next with my life.

When your goals become compelling enough, distractions become boring by comparison. You can still engage with side hobbies and entertainment if you want – I definitely do – but let those pursuits serve the big picture of where you want to take your life and character. I love the added stimulation and inspiration that comes from a variety of input, but if I overdo that, I’m really going to feel the sting of not making progress on my goals. I’ll be very aware of what else I’m not experiencing.

You have a lot of power to sculpt your experience of life. You can let other people direct your experience, and that’s okay for a while, but the long-term invitation is to do your own conscious sculpting and directing. I really enjoy helping people with those efforts since it’s so rewarding to see people take charge of their lives and create the kinds of experiences they truly appreciate.

Mutual appreciation is what this game is all about. Consider that even those services that you denigrate as distractions were probably created by people who hoped you’d appreciate their efforts. What you call a distraction was someone else’s life’s work. I like this framing because it helps me see that when I’m ready to let go of a service that has run its course for me, I can let go with some appreciation and respect for the value it did provide. I can even thank those services for how they helped me discover what other kinds of experiences I really want to have.

So realize that your distractions are actually trying to help you. If your distractions are more compelling than your goals, look to your distractions for insights about how you could set goals that are more engaging and meaningful for you. Clarify what you don’t like about those distractions, and challenge yourself to design experiences that are better than what they offer. If you can’t beat what those services provide, then you know you have more to learn about how to consciously create better experiences. And then you can actually engage with those services on that basis. You can use them as learning tools and stepping stones to discover how to set better goals and to create better experiences.

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Why It’s Unwise to Be a Minimalist

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When I first heard about the concept of minimalism many years ago, I was intrigued but also a bit hesitant. As I looked into it, I found that my hesitation towards it was well-founded, and I don’t consider it a particularly intelligent strategy for life or business.

“Less is more” can be an interesting heuristic to use sometimes, but it doesn’t work well for many classes of problems and challenges. Sometimes it will point you away from opportunities and solutions instead of towards them.

Human beings have invented a wide variety of tools and services, and many of those can be useful and worthwhile under the right circumstances. The key is to evaluate and assess these tools and their costs and consequences to see which ones we can maintain a healthy, productive, and appreciative relationship with. That assessment is going to be different for each person.

Sometimes a good solution will look like minimalism, sometimes it will look like maximalism, and sometimes it will be elsewhere within the spectrum of possibilities.

The Standard of Appreciation

A better approach than minimalism is to use the standard of appreciation, especially long-term appreciation.

Ask yourself: How much will I likely appreciate this over the next 10 years? This question can really help you size up your relationship with a tool or service.

For example:

  • How much will I appreciate using a cell phone over the next 10 years?
  • How much will I appreciate being active of Facebook over the next 10 years?
  • How much will I appreciate my home office over the next 10 years?
  • How much will I appreciate my car over the next 10 years?

For some questions, you may realize that the appreciation is low and that you wouldn’t necessarily miss having something in your life if you dropped it. When I ask people the Facebook question above, no one says they appreciate it very much on a personal level, at least not enough to feel committed to it for another 10 years, although some people do appreciate it for business reasons.

For other areas you may realize that you could increase your appreciation not by downsizing but by upgrading. For instance, I upgraded my home recording studio earlier this year by adding even more to it. Now I like it so much that I keep wanting to do extra work in there, even when I’m not actively recording, partly because I like playing around with the lighting to create different moods.

Less isn’t always more. Sometimes more is more. Sometimes better is more. And sometimes different is more. Using any one of these heuristics as your gold standard for all classes of problems is a mistake. Reach for the standard of coming up with intelligent solutions that generate long-term appreciation. If you realize that your solution isn’t satisfying that standard, go back and refactor your solution.

Fitting the Solution to the Problem

This standard of appreciation encourages us to look at the big picture and think about how to solve problems intelligently instead of relying on oversimplified standards like minimalism. Minimalist solutions are simply unwise to use with certain classes of problems.

When it comes to social media, I may look like a minimalist since I deleted my accounts with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter a long time ago. But I made those choices based on appreciation, not on any commitment to minimalism. The long-term promise of appreciation with those services just wasn’t compelling enough.

I kept my YouTube account, however, because I saw a promising path to long-term appreciation with that service. I also click “like” on videos that I appreciate in order to train the algorithm to get better at serving me, which does indeed work very well. YouTube has been a fabulous educational platform for learning about certain topics quickly. I expect that I’ll continue to appreciate YouTube, however it evolves, over the next 10 years, and I intend to invest more in this platform as a creator too.

Many years ago, however, I did turn off my YouTube account, and I regretted it. That was overly minimalist. So I brought it back.

With Facebook I also went on and off the service at different times, which helped me see that I prefer not having a Facebook account. That decision frees up extra energy, and I’m happier for it too.

For email I like to maintain the standard of inbox zero. I appreciate email when I follow that standard. I never ever let my inbox fill up with unprocessed messages because that would ruin my appreciation of email as a communication tool. So I didn’t need to downsize email. I just needed to use the tool in such a way that it doesn’t become burdensome. If I ever get “too much” email, I just don’t reply to as much. I prefer to limit it to 15 minutes per day or less.

I see minimalism as misguided. It’s a cutesy standard that works for some limited range of problems, but it’s not at all difficult to find problems where a minimalist approach actually makes things worse.

Maximalism Works Better Sometimes

In some areas of life, it would be fair to say that I’m closer to a maximalism. I like having excess well beyond my immediate needs. I like having access to more of the possibility space.

Sometimes more doesn’t feel too complicated. Sometimes it feels rich and abundant.

One area where I appreciate a bit of maximalism is with creative tools. I appreciate good tech. I appreciate having lots of colored markers and index cards. I appreciate having lots of drawers and shelves. I love the feeling of having way more than I need because it removes barriers and distractions. I prefer creating from abundance rather than from scarcity. I like feeling that I have better tools and more support than I need.

Sometimes I buy extra redundancy, so I can keep what I need accessible in different locations. I have duplicates of some tools in the garage and the house… or upstairs versus downstairs. Each tool has an assigned home, so I always know where I can access the closest copy.

I learned that when buying running shoes, instead of having to research for a good pair every time my old pair runs out, it’s more efficient to buy a few pairs together. Then I have backups for when one pair runs out. So I’ll spend $500 on running shoes and then not have to worry about buying more for a while. Somehow it makes me feel more committed to running too when I see fresh pairs of shoes lined up and ready to use when I need them. It serves as a message to myself that I’m going to run through pair after pair with many more miles.

I also like overpaying for more web hosting capacity and faster servers, so our websites are fast and speedy for people accessing our courses and the Conscious Growth Club forums.

I can think of many situations where a maximalist approach works better in practice than a minimalist one. More exercise (and more variety of training) is often better than less. More income streams are better and more resilient than just one. More skills and more education can be better too.

* * *

Minimalism has its place, but be careful not to overplay it. You’ll be better served by intelligently considering how to match a solution to a problem or challenge, such that you create long-term appreciation. Sometimes you may appreciate a minimalist solution, and sometimes a non-minimalist solution will give you superior results.

Be especially careful not to self-identify as a minimalist because wrapping this narrow heuristic into your identity will constrain you to a limiting subset of the possibility space, guaranteeing that you won’t develop intelligent solutions for some classes of problems and challenges that you’ll surely encounter. Retain access to your full range of intelligence by regarding minimalism as one of many problem-solving tools in your toolkit. You are neither a minimalist nor a maximalist though. You are much more flexible.

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My Intentions for CGC Year 6

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Yesterday was the last day of our 5th year in Conscious Growth Club. Today we’re beginning our 6th year together. You still have about 2.5 more days if you want to join us since the deadline for opting in is May 3rd.

I thought I’d take a moment to share some thoughts and intentions for Year 6. Some of these are personal. Some are club-related. And some are a mix of both.

One thing I love about CGC is that it’s so supportive on the personal side, so even though I facilitate the group, I also engage with it much like any other member.

Fitness

One intention for this new CGC year is to refine my fitness routine. That’s been going pretty well for many years, but with all the possible ways to balance it – running, weight training, HIIT, gym workouts, group fitness classes, etc. – I’d like to give it more structure. The tricky part is that my body adapts to predictable routines very easily, and then it doesn’t feel like I’m improving as much. On the flip side, I also like the simplicity of predictable routines like running. I’d love to figure out how to merge structure with enough variety while doing this sustainably too. This may take some experimentation.

I’m not sure if it’s even possible to come up with a “one fitness routine to rule them all” or if the key is really to keep mixing it up with a lot of randomness. I love the variety and the social aspect of group classes. What I don’t like as much is the time investment, including travel time. I also don’t find group classes particularly good for strength training – I tend to improve in that area much more efficiently on my own. However, group classes can be great for cardio, yoga, and some other dimensions of fitness.

Starting today in CGC, many members are kicking off the new CGC year with a 30-day fitness challenge. Rachelle and I are doing that too. In fact Rachelle recently passed 950 consecutive days of closing her Apple Watch rings, so she’ll hit 1000 sometime in June.

Fasting Integration

I may do some dietary experiments as well, but I also feel drawn to testing some additional forms of intermittent fasting. I tried the 16-8 version previously (only eating in an 8-hour window each day, then not eating for 16 hours) and found it worthless – it didn’t make any difference as far as I could tell. But I might try 18-6 or 20-4 to see if those patterns are any better. I’ve decided to lean into this today by not eating anything till after 2pm.

YouTubing

Creatively I intend to get into YouTubing this year. I have about 55 videos on my YouTube channel so far, most of them recorded when doing a 40-day water fast in 2017. In CGC we formed a new YouTubers group a few months ago for members with similar goals, including streaming, TikTok videos, and really any kind of video expression.

I love engaging in this pursuit collaboratively. It’s great to share tips, insights, and encouragement with other members.

I would love it if more people who want to get into making videos (or who are already into it) would join CGC this year. It would be fabulous to support each other on this path. I intend to host more Zoom calls this year where we can mastermind together.

My YouTube channel is fairly modest in size compared to some. It currently has 8253 subscribers. I think it would be fun to build that up to 100K+, however long it takes.

I feel very comfortable on camera, but I have way more experience being recorded live on Zoom with only minimal editing. In April I did about 100 hours of live video calls (all recorded). I don’t think that’s a great format for YouTube though. Tighter, shorter videos would likely be better received there.

This year and beyond, I want to explore how to leverage the skills I have while also building new video skills. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun experimenting with different ways to share personal growth ideas and insights through video. It’s going to take a lot of patience as well, but I’m not in a rush. I like the long-term trajectory of this – the outlook seems pretty rosy to me.

Video Production Skills

Coming up with interesting content for videos is easy for me, but what always held me back was a lack of know-how on the production side. So I’ve been educating myself on this quite a bit this year. I can see myself doing a lot of divergent experimentation this year. I’m not going to focus on trying to create hit videos per se. Rather I want to explore the skill set on the production side, and I also want to see what kinds of videos I most enjoy making. I sense that if I raise up my production skills a lot more, I’ll likely discover more enjoyment in the process.

For some reason I love learning about video lighting. I bought a bunch of new lights this year, all from Aputure, including a Lightstorm 60X (bicolor), an Amaran 200X (bicolor), two Amaran P60C panel lights (RGBWW), and a 4-pack of MC lights (RGBWW). I love that these lights are all controllable via an app, so I can sit in one spot and change all of the lights (brightness, color, etc) from my phone. Working with LED lights is so nice because they’re energy efficient and don’t get very hot. I think I’m becoming a fanboy of Aputure since they keep coming up with new lights with great features at great prices. I could easily see myself investing in more lights from them over time. But for now I have plenty to get started with.

I also bought 4 C-stands and some other rigging pieces, and I watched a ton of gaffer videos, so now I know many different ways to rig lights. What I lack, however, is experience. It’s one thing to watch a video to learn what’s possible. It’s different when you have to actually apply the skills yourself.

I’m not sure why I like this so much. You’d think that being color blind, learning about lighting and especially investing in RGB ones wouldn’t be the best fit for me. But for some reason I’m really curious about it. There’s something undeniably enticing about playing around with lighting to see what I can do with it. I just have to accept that how the colors look to me won’t be the same as how other people see them. So maybe some of my videos may have unusual color choices. I can also lean on Rachelle for help since she’s experienced with lighting, given her background in theater, and she can see all the colors too. Amazing!

Learning about lighting adds more appreciation when I watch movies and shows now. I notice the lighting, especially on people’s faces, way more than I ever did before. I sometimes ponder why the cinematographer (or whoever else made those choices) lit a scene they way they did. I often watch cinematography videos while making lunch or while relaxing in the evening.

As I build better video skills, I may also want to explore how to apply them in other ways. It could be really interesting to create a structured video course that’s pre-recorded and nicely edited instead of always delivering it live like I’ve done in the past. I could do such a course that today, but it would take an inordinate amount of time since I’d be so slow at it. I’d like to build up a lot more practice and experience first, one micro-skill at a time, so I can get faster too.

This sort of thing can be outsourced, but I’m really enjoying exploring it as a personal growth adventure. I’m not 100% sure why, but I can tell that this is a path with a heart for me. It also seems like a very aligned opportunity and a delightful way to build upon my existing skills.

I would do this on my own anyway, but doing this as a social journey with other CGCers just makes it even sweeter. I feel more motivated to upgrade these skills because then I can immediately share what I’m learning with other members. I think it will be especially helpful to learn gear tips from each other (lighting, mics, cameras, etc). And there’s tons we can share with each other on the editing side as well.

Balancing Rhythms of Work and Personal Time

In the last CGC year, I was really good at focusing deeply on one project or another. Sometimes I put my all into a creative project. At other times of the year, I invested obsessively in personal projects. I definitely got a lot done, which was very satisfying. But I think that for the months ahead, I’d like to explore a more relaxed and balanced rhythm instead of spending so much time in deep focus mode for weeks at a stretch.

It’s been interesting to create new courses with an all-in strategy. For the recent Guild course, I probably averaged about 10-12 hours a day for 30 days straight, usually starting at 6am and going till around 6pm. I had short meal and rest breaks, but it was still a very obsessive experience, like going through a tunnel. Sometimes I didn’t finish till around 10pm if there was a CGC coaching call on a given day too. Plus there was a lot of advance prep for the course before it began. This intense strategy really does get the job done, but it requires putting so many other parts of life on pause.

I feel like my obsessive creative mode is really well developed now. The inspiration to create just never seems to run dry. I like taking breaks from it now and then, but I always know that it’s there for me when I want to engage with it.

This year I’d like to explore a different relationship with creativity. I think video creation will be part of that. But I also sense there’s more to it, something having to do with rhythm and balance. If my creative output across the span of a year is like a song, you could say that I want to explore different style of music this year, so I can learn how to align with different creative rhythms.

In terms of my working and personal rhythms, I’d like this upcoming CGC year to sound like a combo of Oh Yeah by Yello, She Blinded Me With Science by Thomas Dolby, One Night in Bangkok by Murray Head, and Down Under by Men at Work – playful, simple, and fun and without major spikes of intensity. Definitely 80s all the way. Maybe a splash of The B-52’s Loveshack here and there. 😁

I know that I can always fall back on the tried and true, but I’d like to see what other creative rhythms might emerge this year if I gently coax them to the surface. I can’t articulate what that’s going to look like, but my intention is to do a lot more divergent exploration this year.

Divergent Creative Exploration

For previous years in CGC, I would pre-announce the topic of a major course to be delivered during the year. This year I feel inclined to allow for more flexibility and adaptability. I intend to create and publish at least one new course this year. But I might create multiple smaller works instead of one giant new course each year like I’ve done for the past few years.

Whatever interesting forms I create this year, such as new courses or workshops, CGC members will have them included as part of their membership at no extra cost. I just say in advance what it will be.

I also want to see what emerges in CGC (and in my wider audience) this year in terms of what people want to upgrade in their lives. I love connecting the dots between people’s desires and my own explorations. That could lead to something like a course or workshop on life balance, for instance, if there seems to be some demand for it.

For now I feel it would be premature to lock onto a particular form or topic right now. I want to roll into the new CGC year first, engage with our members, and get a sense of where CGC’s energy wants to flow. I also want to explore video production and YouTubing with others in the group. I don’t know how the dots will connect up ahead. I just know that they will.

Join Us for CGC Year 6

I love how rewarding it is to engage with CGC each day, especially its playful side. It’s immensely gratifying to share this human journey with other growth-oriented people in such an intimate way. It’s wonderful to explore so much depth together while also having so much fun and sharing so many laughs. 😁

I hope you’ll join us for some part of this journey in Conscious Growth Club, if not this year then in some future year. The door is open. If it’s to be this year, you have till May 3rd to enroll.

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A Playful Conscious Growth Club Video

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Notorious Conscious Growth Club member Ruben recently posted a YouTube video about his experiences in CGC. As you can probably tell from the style of the video, we’re a pretty playful group inside. This one made me laugh out loud multiple times – I think Ruben has a bright future in video if he keeps at it. What do you think?

I have a short cameo in the video too. 🤣

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So far 31 spots have been claimed for CGC Year 6, so there are 94 spots left. We have 8 days to go in our 2022 opening (or less if we max out at 125 before then).

Learn more about Conscious Growth Club and join us for Year 6 by May 3, 2022. 🤣

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Join Conscious Growth Club by May 3rd

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Conscious Growth Club

Conscious Growth Club is now open for you to join, from now through May 3, 2022. First started in 2017, this is our most comprehensive personal growth program and support group.

We’re about to start our 6th year together, and you’re invited to join this week. This is the only window during which you can join CGC in 2022. We open for new members once a year, and that’s it!

What Is Conscious Growth Club?

Conscious Growth Club is a private online club and coaching program to help you make faster and more consistent progress. It turns personal growth into a team game.

The essential purpose of the group is simple: We help each other grow into smarter, stronger human beings, whatever it takes.

CGC is an annual membership that includes:

  • A private member forum – Our forum is active every day (118,000+ posts so far). Members share intentions and goals, update progress, help each other solve problems, and encourage the heck out of each other. It’s ad-free, spam-free, and troll-free.
  • A 24/7 video chat channel – We call this the CGC Lounge. Imagine a continuous group video call that never ends. Any member can connect immediately to talk live with other members at any time. Meaningful conversations with conscious, growth-oriented friends are always available. Members also regularly use the Lounge to mastermind with other members on specific topics.
  • Member progress logs – A popular feature for support and accountability, members can maintain progress logs to share their actions and results. I also record progress logs for my own creative projects such as the deep dive courses, so you can see how they’re developed. This is great for people who love seeing how goals are accomplished behind the scenes.
  • Group video coaching calls – Get help solving tricky personal and professional challenges. We do live group coaching calls 33 times per year – on different days and times to accommodate all timezones. I happily provide personal help and guidance to any members who want it. Calls are recorded, so you’ll have an accessible copy of your coaching session to review as well.
  • Quarterly planning sessions – Every quarter we invite members to participate in a structured 5-day process to assess recent progress, set fresh 90-day goals, define action steps, and build momentum going into each new quarter. These quarterly beats will help you stay on track towards your goals, as you align yourself with the ambitious energy of people who are committed to improvement.
  • Course library – Members get access to all deep dive courses past, present, and future, including Deep Abundance Integration, Submersion, Stature, Amplify, and our all new Guild course. We add a new self-development course each CGC year, included as part of your membership.
  • Monthly challenges – Similar to my well-known 30-day trial experiments, we invite members to do 12 different challenges (any or all) per year for exploration, skill building, and habit improvement. Then we support and encourage each other as we go and compare notes on what we learned or gained.
  • Club emails – We send a few emails per month to remind members of upcoming coaching calls, share forum highlights, and to keep everyone in the loop on upcoming happenings. We include the latest forum highlights, so you can keep up on recent activity with ease, even when you’re busy.
  • New for 2022 – This CGC year you also get the full recordings of our recent 3-day online workshop, The Octo Intensive: The 8 Keys to Self-Motivation.
  • Many extra bonuses – CGC includes lots of extra support material, including a 10-day creative challenge mini-course.

Consistency Is Key

Conscious Growth Club is a unique program that was carefully designed and tested to help growth-oriented people support and encourage each other to keep improving their lives. I know of nothing else like this anywhere.

This group serves a powerful need that many of my blog readers have expressed – the need for a strong, stable, conscious, and ambitious peer group to support and encourage them every day. People especially need help staying focused and making consistent progress. I realized that this was a problem I could realistically help people solve – a significant yet achievable goal. Hence Conscious Growth Club was created to serve this need.

I’ve done the heavy lifting for you, so you can instantly add a growth-oriented social circle to your life simply by joining us.

Rachelle and I are very active in the CGC community – especially the forums – every day. CGC is a huge part of our lives and lifestyle. We’ve met many people from this community in person too.

CGC isn’t one of those outsourced operations where the founders barely engage at all. As anyone who’s been in CGC can easily attest, we’re super present and engaged in CGC daily. So if you join and participate actively, you’ll surely get a chance to interact with us a lot.

Most people who join CGC are long-term readers of my blog, some going all the way back to 2004 when I started. What we have in common is a keen interest in exploring personal growth and living more consciously. This means you’re likely to have a huge amount in common with other CGC members already, and that can lead to some delightful syncs and surprises as you get to know other members.

Learn More and Join CGC

Here’s a web page to learn all about Conscious Growth Club, so you can decide if you’re a match for joining us:

Enrollment Is Open Through May 3rd

We’re opening enrollment for a short window only (about 8 days), from now through Tuesday, May 3rd. This will be our only enrollment period for 2022. So if you want to join this year, now is the time. Visit the Conscious Growth Club page to learn the details.

The reason for opening just once for the year is so we can welcome new members all at once. Then we can focus on serving them well for the rest of the year.

CGC Capped at 125 Members for Year 6

Please note that we’re capping CGC membership at 125 members maximum for Year 6. That’s so we can provide abundant coaching and attention to all members who want to use those resources. The tech-based aspects of CGC (like the forums and courses) are scalable, but my personal attention and coaching aren’t scalable beyond a certain point. Last year we grew in membership by 20%, and for quality reasons I want to make sure we don’t grow too quickly in any single year.

At the time of this posting, we have 95 spots left and still more than 8 days to go. So please join soon if you want to be in CGC this year. If all the spots go early, we may need to close for the year before May 3rd.

I invite you to join us. It’s fun inside. 😃

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