Category Archives: LIFESTYLE

Stay or Go Decisions

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What if you’re currently tolerating a situation you don’t want, but you’re unclear about where to go next? What if your current job, relationship, or lifestyle is a mismatch for you, but you feel hesitant to leave it behind?

Imagine being stuck on an island, but you don’t like it there. It’s too small. The weather is often bad. And it smells like rotting fish. And suppose that when you climb to the tallest point on this island and look around, all you can see is the vastness of the sea in every direction.

What do you do?

Well, you have two options. You can stay or you can leave.

If you stay you’ll survive, but you’ll be grudgingly tolerating an undesirable situation for the rest of your life. You’ll never be very happy there. You’ll always wonder what it would have been like to leave and if you could have found something better. And you’ll die on that island still wondering what could have been.

If you build a raft and try to sail away from the island, you may encounter different problems. How will you survive the journey? How will you navigate? What if you get lost at sea? What if you die of thirst or starvation or exposure? What if you run into a storm or get attacked by sharks? There’s no guarantee that you’ll survive. It may have been safer to stay.

This framing is similar to how many people approach tricky stay-or-go decisions. They frame it as something that requires a leap of faith into the risky unknown – an unknown filled with potential storms, sharks, scarce resources, and more. So of course when they use such framing, they stay on their original island. This framing keeps them stuck where they are.

But this framing is only a story. It may seem like a reasonable analogy because it matches up with how people sometimes feel about major life decisions. But it doesn’t match up with the actual risks in play. This type of framing packages up a bunch of limiting beliefs and makes them seem like genuine dangers.

If you quit your job, you’re unlikely to be eaten by sharks. Same goes for leaving an unfulfilling relationship. Same goes for moving to a new city. Yes, there are risks, but they’re manageable risks you can cope with. And in most of these transitions, the realistic worst case scenario really isn’t so bad. You’re probably looking at risks that certain professionals, such as divorce lawyers, deal with as a part of their daily routine without breaking a sweat. Your extraordinary transition is equivalent to a minor line item in someone else’s ordinary day.

While going through some transitions that seemed like a big deal to me at the time, such as a bankruptcy and a divorce, I was struck by just how ordinary these experiences were to those who had to process the paperwork. My life-altering experience was no more special than a cup of coffee to someone else. Even when I was arrested multiple times as a teenager, for the police officers and court officials who had to be involved, my situation wasn’t even close to memorable. I was just a few minutes of their time in a routine day.

Let’s consider a different analogy here. Let’s drop the extraordinary Castaway-style framing from our island scenario. And let’s replace it with something a bit more manageable.

You’re on the same starting island, and it’s still just as bad. But now when you go to the tallest point and look around, you can see a few other islands out there. If you built a raft, you could surely make it to some of them. But you can only carry so much on the raft, so you’ll have to leave most of your familiar possessions behind. You’ll have to abandon your precious hut that you worked so hard to build and repaired after so many storms. If you go to a new island, you’ll basically be starting over.

But so what? People start over all the time. It’s not such a big deal. You can make a big deal out of it, but it’s really just a normal part of life. We all experience it now and then. And we’re going to keep experiencing this sort of thing throughout our lives. Reboots happen.

You can still carry the skills you’ve learned from your old island to the new one. You’ve built a hut once, so you can do it again. Because of your experiences gained on the first island, it will be faster to create a new life somewhere else. And for anything new you encounter, you’ll adapt.

You might not like the journey though. It will be tiring. You’ll probably get sunburned. But it’s reasonable to expect that at least one of the new islands will be better than this stinky island. You know that you don’t like your current situation. You might as well go explore and look for something better.

One aspect that keeps you stuck on your current island is resisting the unpleasantness of the journey. You may dislike that the journey will be difficult, but you could surrender to the fatigue, surrender to the sunburn, and surrender to the challenge of rebuilding your life on the other side. Accept that this is the price you must pay.

If you’re facing a challenging transition, what’s the price to be paid? Will you need to pack up and move? Will you need to downgrade your lifestyle for a while? Will you need to deal with lots of extra paperwork? Could you navigate the transition if you accepted the price you must pay?

Sometimes we retreat from clarity because we don’t like the price of the transition before us. We don’t like the lifestyle downgrade. We don’t like the criticism or the embarrassment. We don’t like the paperwork. We don’t want to go through another reboot. But when a transition has a price tag, the clarity we need is already there. Pay the price and make the transition. Or don’t pay the price and stay where you are.

Don’t make the price any bigger than it is. If the price includes sleeping in your car, don’t turn it into a deadly storm. If the price includes having to apologize, don’t turn it into a shark. If the price includes lots of paperwork… well, that one really sucks. But still… you’ll survive. 😉

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‘I Can’t Smell Smoke Or Perfume’: The Reality Of Life Without Scent

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Lowering the Price of a Transition

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Why do so many transitions have annoyingly high price tags? Why can’t we just transition with ease whenever we want?

Imagine the opposite for a moment. Suppose that major transitions could always be made with grace and ease, and none required a price to be paid. Suppose you could make big changes whenever you wanted. Switch jobs. Switch cities. Switch relationships. Switch anything at the push of a button.

If transitions could be undertaken at little or no cost, it stands to reason that people would transition more often. There’d be less opportunity to delve deeply into stable experiences because reality wouldn’t be as stable. People and circumstances would shift around much more, so reality would be in a perpetual state of flux. It wouldn’t stay still.

This would rob us of the opportunity to experience the benefits of a more stable reality. We wouldn’t experience as much contrast because as soon as things began to get a little unpleasant, we’d immediately shift to something more pleasant. We’d miss out on those prolonged deep dives into unpleasant situations.

Why should this matter? Why should reality want us to remain stuck now and then? What’s the point? Is it sadistically trying to punish us?

Suppose this was by design. Imagine that we’re living in a simulator that was programmed to function this way. Why would the programmer code it like this?

One powerful reason is that the more we experience the darker side of life, the more we appreciate the lighter side. Scarcity helps us appreciate abundance. Loneliness helps us appreciate togetherness. Sickness helps us appreciate health.

Is it possible that when you stop appreciating the good things in life, you invite their opposites? Is it possible that when you stop appreciating abundance, you attract more scarcity? Or when you stop appreciating good health, that’s when you’re more likely to get sick? Or when you stop appreciating your relationship, that’s when you’re headed for a breakup? In each case the purpose could be that experiencing the darker side renews and restores your appreciation for the lighter side.

If there’s any truth to this, might it also be possible that this reality makes the transitions harder when we aren’t yet ready to transition? Perhaps the price we’d have to pay to transition seems high for a reason. On the one hand, a high price serves as a bit of a barrier, so we’ll have to keep experiencing the unpleasant situation for a while longer. On the other hand, the price also serves as a constant reminder that transition is possible; it may seem out of reach at the moment, but the possibility still dangles before us.

Now when we find ourselves stuck in such a situation, we could accept the price and resolve to pay it. That may require pursuing a long and difficult path though, which can be discouraging. So is there anything we can do to effectively lower the price and make the transition easier?

Yes, there is. We could appreciate the value that the unpleasant situation adds to our lives. Appreciate the scarcity. Appreciate the loneliness. Appreciate the sickness.

During the first five years of running my computer games business, I pursued success, but my efforts didn’t pan out. I sank into debt year after year and eventually went bankrupt. I don’t regret the debt or the bankruptcy, but I regret the stress I created by resisting my financial situation at the time. I regret the experiences I told myself I couldn’t have because I was so deep in debt. I regret that I failed to appreciate many of the little things because I was worried about money – or the lack thereof. I used to run along the beach regularly and not pay enough attention to the beauty all around me – which was free to enjoy – because I was concerned about money.

Going bankrupt really wasn’t that bad. It’s basically a lot of paperwork. The process actually relieves stress once you surrender to it. As part of going bankrupt, you have to document every possession you own. As I went through this process, compiling a list of my every possession and estimating its fair market value, I felt grateful for what I still had. I still had my clothes. I still had a car. I still had my furniture… well, some of it. I didn’t appreciate those possessions as much before the bankruptcy. Afterwards I began appreciating them a lot more.

I actually felt relieved after the bankruptcy. I felt relieved to finally be on the other side of the collapse instead of constantly resisting and fighting it. I felt grateful for the fresh chance to try again. I still had to move to a cheaper place to live. I had to sell many possessions. I had to downgrade my lifestyle. But after all of that, I felt mostly gratitude. The experience didn’t actually kill me. I wasn’t kicked off the planet.

Spending five years of my life resisting reality was enough for me. After that I decided to cultivate a new relationship with life, one that incorporated gratitude, appreciation, and playfulness. I learned to appreciate a long walk in the moonlight. I appreciated the opportunity to use a computer to express my creativity. I appreciated having friends and family to help me when I needed it. I appreciated smiles and hugs.

I’ve observed over the decades since then that life seems to repeatedly reward me for this attitude. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a simulator that’s programmed to reward such thoughts, feelings, and behaviors… and to discourage me from doing the opposite for too long.

Appreciate what you experience, and you’ll be given more to appreciate. Worry about what you’re experiencing, and you’ll be given more to worry about.

Moreover, I learned to say thank you for life’s various problems and challenges too. It was easy to appreciate the bankruptcy because of how it woke me up and sent me down a better path. So with that as a powerful reference experience, I learned to bring a similar mindset to other challenges. Sometimes this was difficult to do, and sometimes I was overly stubborn. But eventually I could see that my resistance wasn’t helping and was in fact only making things worse, and I reminded myself to shift back to gratitude and appreciation again and again.

This sense of appreciation turned everything around. My business began doing well, and every year since then has been pretty abundant. This current year has barely begun, and due to the recent Stature course launch, we’re already past $100K in revenue for 2020. I appreciate that too, just as I learned to appreciate my bankruptcy, and just as I can appreciate a nice walk in the moonlight. In fact, after I publish this, my wife and I are going out for a long moonlit walk together. We’ll appreciate spending time together and enjoying the cool night air.

There have been times where I’ve experienced a short dip towards scarcity, but I don’t perceive those dips as threatening. I accept them as reminders of how much this reality seems to value appreciation. I’ve learned that I can quickly steer back to abundance by remembering to appreciate the heck out of every little part of life, including appreciating the role of scarcity itself.

This is also how you reduce the price of a transition. You reduce the price by extracting every gram of appreciation you can from the experience. As long as you fail to appreciate your current reality, you’re actually holding it stable. When you begin to appreciate the heck out of a seemingly undesirable situation – when you can say a genuine, heartfelt “thank you” for the valuable lessons within that situation – then you can progress. Then life lowers the price of transitioning and makes it easier for you to shift over to new experiences, such as the flow of abundance.

If you’re bored at work, remember to appreciate small acts of fun. Appreciate laughter. Appreciate good coffee. (Except if your workplace serves bad coffee… then maybe pick up some hipster coffee on the way and appreciate that instead. But still notice that bad coffee helps you appreciate good coffee even more!)

If you feel like your current relationship is lifeless, then appreciate what little life there is. Appreciate the good memories. Appreciate a fleeting touch. Appreciate the love you once had. Can you still say “thank you” to your partner for the role they’ve played in your life? If you can’t say it directly, then say it indirectly. Write it down privately somewhere. No one else has to know.

Such mindset shifts lower the price of transitions. When you extract the lessons from seemingly unpleasant situations, and when you can genuinely thank life for these experiences, life tends to drastically lower the transitional barrier, so you can finally move through your transition with relative ease and lightness.

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More Than 300 Have Now Joined Stature

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Stature

So far 304 people have joined the new character sculpting deep dive since the start of the year, which is terrific to see.

You can see the real-time sign-up count at the top of the Stature page if you’re curious… at least during the initial launch. Since today is the last day of the launch discount, I’m sure we’ll see more people joining by the end of the day.

This is a truly unique, one-of-a-kind course, especially since we’re co-creating it with the people going through the experience right now.

Get the details and sign up here:

Stature: Character Sculpting Deep Dive Experience

Stature consists of several weeks of audio lessons (streamable or downloadable to any device). On average it’s about 15 minutes per lesson, so it’s easy to fit it in. And each day there’s an exercise to do afterwards, usually some form of journaling. The course guides you through the process of re-sculpting your character step by step.

Early Feedback on Stature

Since we opened the doors for Stature, many participants are well into the experience. Some have done 10+ lessons already. The feedback thus far has been very positive.

Here are some quotes from the public Facebook group:

1.5 was a great lesson for me in the present because I am creating my 5 Year Vision. In the past, I felt like my vision was based on what my ego desired and not so much what my higher self, or soul wants to express. Now I can have a different focus in planning the next 5 years!

The voice modality vs. just journaling was actually really cool. I felt like I was addressing my problems from a fresh angle. Of course the injection of humor is great too.

And from a Conscious Growth Club member going through the course (re-shared with permission from our private forum):

I did the first 3 today and I was laughing so much thinking about Festivus! When I talked to myself in the mirror I couldn’t take anything seriously, actually all my grievances seemed petty and lame! Loving it so far! Thanks Steve, Rachelle and CGC! 😄 ❤️

[… then some days later …]

I just completed 7 through 9. What beautiful flow, vulnerability, connection, humor, caring, so touching, I can feel myself expanding 😄 I am resonating particularly with releasing the resistance by shedding the misaligned at all costs. Been getting lots of practice with that lately. Thank you so much Steve, Rachelle and everyone in CGC! This is epic! 😄 ❤️❤️❤️

I also found this comment insightful:

I used to think stretching myself too much was creating imbalance in my life. But now I realize that not stretching myself equals avoidance, suppression, and neglect of my dreams and goals and that’s actually what’s creating a greater and more intolerable imbalance.

Here are some comments about the experience of stretching oneself to take action and join:

Wow, can’t believe I signed in…with my hand hiding my eyes. I’m in and very happy! Hi everyone 😍

All right! I’m joined in to Stature. Feels Terrific.

olá caballeros and caballeras!

I’m full in! Let’s get this party started!

Some people had interesting synchronicities encouraging them to participate as well:

Enjoying Stature – jump in if you’re not already… I’ve had a lot of synchs with numbers lately … comes up as I lean into more inspired actions. I think a very timely deep dive as we open up to a new decade & who we want to be.

Now that you mention it, yes. An unusual alignment of intentions and goals with my partner and reconnecting with your content just before the course became available. Thanks for beckoning us, Steve. 😄

I moved to USA for couple of months with an intention to build my character. And after couple of days of being here I am finding out that you are soon launching the course. Perfect timing!

After taking on the CGC creativity challenge, I started blogging every day and maintaining some healthy daily habits. This was (and still is) very encouraging, but I quickly felt ready to push my personal growth to some deeper work. It was right then that Stature popped up for me! It’s been a really aligned experience going through the lessons so far.

I thought it was serendipitous that I reached out after going through deep abundance feeling like I was missing some key character development and you were just getting ready to publish this course. Could not have been better timing for me and I think I was one of the first five or ten people to sign up.

I had an unusual sync related to the course as well. In the first Stature audio lesson, I mention looking up and seeing 11:11 AM on the clock just as I’m wrapping up the recording, which I found to be a nice little nod from the universe at the time. What I didn’t realize until someone pointed it out was that after editing the recording and splicing in the intro and outro music, my saying the words “eleven eleven” somehow occurs precisely at time index 11:11 in the recording.

That wasn’t planned. I’ve seen a lot of freaky syncs in my life, but this one is definitely up there.

Stature’s lessons have a modern, playful yet compassionate style, often using movie scenes or characters as examples to help you understand the ideas better (which still works even if you haven’t seen the movie):

Pop culture references are the BEST way to teach personal development as it helps people to create ‘shortcuts’ by making patterns easy to understand. Movie characters are great models for character sculpting too.

It makes the concepts easy to understand. In lesson 1.2, the Seinfeld reference really helped when I was doing the ‘Airing of Grivances’.

These truths you share are universal, as are Gandalf, Harry Potter, and Agent Smith. They are the flavor you throw into your work. Everybody’s got it and this is yours!

That’s it! Humor, lightness, and self-acceptance for the process. You’ve got it, Steve. Did you know our brains are wired to learn and change many times faster when something is fun? I’m sure you do. This is great! ❤️

Those impressions at the end of lesson 10 had me dying 👌😂

This also encourages requests for more fun references, such as:

I’d love a Twin Peaks reference 😃… 🕵️‍♂️☕️

I try to pick playful references that are very popular most of the time, so more people will have a chance to connect with them through prior experience. I also explain the scenes, characters, and themes directly for the benefit of those who aren’t familiar with them. It’s good to see that people like the richness and flavor this adds to the lessons, even if they aren’t familiar with some references.

Although I’ve lived here (in the US) almost my entire life I don’t get most of the references directly as I am not well-versed in that space. However I still appreciate them because it does have a light hearted energy to it and sometimes they even make me laugh out loud even though I haven’t seen the movies myself, I have enough context to piece things together

Stature is an intense course at times because we look at some deep, hidden parts of ourselves – especially parts that need healing, acknowledgement, appreciation, and re-integration. In the first lesson, I share that crying now and then as you go through the course is to be expected.

For a few days, I was like “what tears”? …. then 😭😭😭. 😝💜

I’m all-in with cultivating a long-term relationship with the people I serve through our courses, so we can all help each other grow and prosper.

I can also leave some feedback about the course, if needed, but I prefer to give full attention and dedication to follow it properly. For now I’m greatly enjoying the quality of the lessons. In this regard, it really feels like somehow a leap has been made from Submersion, which admittedly I didn’t expect, as it was already pretty darn good.

A friend of mine … asked me if Steve’s courses are worth it, I actually almost cried yesterday listening to a Submersion episode, so I had to admit I was biased 😀

I still can’t even really fathom who could I be if I didn’t choose to take that first DAI course. It’s been a transformation so huge that I frankly have moments where I feel I’m simply too grateful towards Steve and his work and I worry I may never be able to give something back 😅

Seriously though, course is absolutely solid ’till now. Again, almost unbelievably solid, as I trusted that it would have been good, but it was somehow very difficult to me to even imagine its quality.

“He asked me if Steve’s courses are worth it” 😉 I’m smiling because of how much Steve’s courses have changed the entire trajectory of my life!

Absolutely agree. DAI and Submersion both launched separate catapults of me into entirely new modes of living very quickly. And every time I begin to immerse myself in any of Steve’s work, this happens!

When I did DAI and submersion, things escalated very quickly for me. I didnt even complete submersion yet, only a few episodes in and my life skyrocketed (also skyrocketed during DAI too). Then just a couple months ago I tried doing DAI again in slow mo, skyrocketed again! I’m not even ready to begin stature. I’m still trying to maintain up here at the 50 million miles high marker 😆 but im getting there!

I was in Abundance Deep Dive as well as Submersion. Can’t wait for this one to happen. The wonderful thing is that the lessons inform each other, making them richer in meaning. Submersion/DAI is my go-to audio in my car!:-)

As people start thinking about and engaging with this group and this course, I thought this might be a helpful share:

I’ve been a member of Steve’s Conscious Growth Club for the last couple of years, so I’ve been able to watch the buildup to this course over a 2 year period (an earlier version of this course was almost created in February 2018, but Steve felt it wasn’t quite what he wanted it to be yet). I have to say that from what I’ve seen in CGC, I think this is quite likely (almost certain?) to be one of the best things Steve has ever created and shared with the world. I’m excited, and if it sounds interesting to you I would nudge you to be a part of it.

It’s super rewarding creating these in-depth courses, knowing that they really do change people’s lives for the better. I’m so looking forward to hearing about the ripples that Stature creates too.

Save $700 on Stature Today Only

Today is the final day of the Stature launch – so it’s also the last day of the launch discount. After today the price goes from $297 to $997.

From the time of posting this, there are about 14 hours left…

Going forward I want to direct the energy of the launch into creating more lessons and serving the hundreds of people who’ve signed up, as we invest in improving and upgrading our characters together.

Get the details, watch the invitation video, and join us here:

Stature: Character Sculpting Deep Dive Experience

I’ll see you inside! 😄 ❤️❤️❤️

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Does Your Muse Trust You?

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I just finished 14 days of daily blogging (15 if we include this post), publishing an article called Sculpting Your Character 7 minutes before midnight last night. That was fun piece to write. 🙂

The commitment of this one-year daily blogging challenge is energizing and motivating. And my writing is becoming faster, easier, and more flowing.

Previously I’d prefer to blog in the morning. I love the early morning hours and like to get up around 5am. But with the current Stature course launch happening (2 days left to go), my blogging time has shifted to later in the day sometimes, like starting at 9 or 10 pm or even later. I’d normally go to bed between 10-10:30pm, so that’s very late for me. Previously it would be highly unusual for me to write that late in the day.

Now two weeks into this challenge, I’m liking the flow of it so far. With the launch happening, I’m only getting 4-5 hours of sleep per night this week, but somehow I still feel energized. I am looking forward to when the launch is over since I haven’t had a day off since… I can’t even remember, but it was before Christmas. The best I’ve had since then has been a light day of only 10 hours of work. I am looking forward to making it through the final two days of the launch, so my schedule can become a bit more relaxed.

I often tell myself that I’ll just write a shorter piece this time, maybe 1000 words or so, and then go to bed. But then as I start writing, I feel increasingly inspired and engaged. Writing is fun and energizing, especially when I write in a playful way like last night’s 2700-word article, which flowed very easily. I started out tired but felt energized by the time I hit the publish button.

Sending Energy

It feels like people are sending me energy whenever they read my work. There’s always a surge of readers when a new article first gets published, perhaps since many people subscribe to my blog via email or RSS. I’m most sensitive to this energy during the first hour after I publish something new since that’s when the greatest number of people are reading it. If I publish late in the day, and people’s reactions are positive and energizing like they were last night, I can’t go to sleep right away because I don’t feel tired anymore. Hence my bedtimes have shifted till 1-2 am lately.

Clicking the publish button is like downing a double shot of espresso, not because I’m nervous about people’s potential reactions, but because the energy that flows through very shortly afterwards is usually very loving, enthusiastic, and happy.

I also notice major differences in the energy patterns based on the tone with which I write. If I feel nervous it’s because I wrote something that made people feel insecure. I’m becoming increasingly aligned with expressing caring and connection through my creative work, partly because the energetic feedback feels a lot better to me. If I share something that makes people feel bad about themselves, they transmit those feelings to me, and I’m soon feeling what they’re feeling, although in my case it’s more of an aggregate summation of many frequencies of energy, which isn’t always harmonious. Maybe it’s a form of writer’s karma. It’s very noticeable.

I realize that some people aren’t into the notion that we can somehow transmit energy and emotion to each other at a distance. I’m convinced it’s real though because it just happens so much, the sensations are so pronounced, and I’ve received (and continue to receive) ample validation that we’re energetically synching up. Plus I find it to be an empowering perspective, and I get better results from thinking this way.

On many of our Conscious Growth Club coaching calls, I’ll sometimes feel a surprisingly strong burst of energy or emotion that I can tell isn’t originating from me. I’ll often ask which person on the call just got triggered by the last sentence or phase I said, and someone (often multiple people) chime in to validate that what I was sensing was coming from them. As anyone can verify from the recordings, this also happened on the Deep Abundance Integration calls more than once.

It doesn’t matter if the other person is 10 timezones away. The feedback happens just as quickly at a distance, so apparently the planet doesn’t block such signals.

Honoring the Endless Creative Flow

I love being sensitive to people’s energy and emotional feedback because I think it’s part of the same channel that gives me an endless flow of ideas to write about. I think that because I write so much, this channel sends me more good ideas than most people because I honor the intentions of this energy flow, which is to share and broadcast the ideas and not keep them bottled up in my mind.

I never get writer’s block. I feel like there’s always beautiful waves of inspiration flowing towards me, and I can tune into these waves anytime, anywhere, whenever I want, and I’ll be gifted with new creative ideas to express through any medium I like. I believe this privilege is bestowed upon me because I honor this flow. I’m loyal to it, I cherish it, and I serve it well, even when it yanks me out of bed before dawn to get up and write.

This flow is very real-time, so it’s always best if I act on it immediately. This morning I woke up with an inspired idea for a new article called “Are You Bored with Your Character?” I told my wife who is not a space alien that I was getting up to write such a piece right away, even though I’d only had about 4.5 hours sleep. But then when I got downstairs, I felt like checking on some launch stats and the latest feedback to see how that was going. And then I realized I was hungry, so I had breakfast. That only delayed me an hour or so, but I sensed that the energy transmission for the original article idea was falling out of sync. I had waited a little too long, and I knew that if I tried to write it, it would be more difficult. There was a different idea coming through for writing at this present time. And that’s this article.

When I’m at my best and really in the flow of inspiration, I won’t write the same article at 8am than I would have written at 6am. Even if I’m certain of what I’m going to write about at 6am, if I wait a few hours, I know it’s best to tune in and pick up a fresh idea that’s appropriate for that new time. Ideas have a time signature, and they’re super sensitive to delay. When I postpone an idea, it may revisit me again, usually in an altered form, but much of the time it’s gone forever, never to return with the same inspiration. Only the mental shadow of the idea lingers once that initial wave of energy is left, and there’s little or no joy in trying to create from lifeless shadows (shadow puppetry excluded).

If you get an inspired idea, I recommend that you act on it immediately – as in the very same minute. Don’t wait. Don’t delay, not even by an hour. The energy is there, but it won’t stick around for long. The universe is offering you a tremendous gift. Open it!

If you delay then you slam that gift back in its face, and it will remember that slight. It will divert that beautiful and life-enhancing flow of ideas to someone else… perhaps someone like me who will act immediately.

Does Your Muse Trust You?

I’m not perfect about this of course, but I do take action consistently enough that my muse knows it can trust me. Does your muse trust you, or have you betrayed it so much that it has pretty much abandoned you? Don’t disrespect your muse – unless you want to spend the rest of your life barely squeaking by and always having to do boring or tedious work just to make ends meet. That’s on you. Your dance partner deserves better.

If your muse has abandoned you, it’s never too late to repair that relationship. Ask for an inspired idea today, and then act immediately when it shows up. Prove that you’ll honor this energy, and it will dance with you. Screw it over by getting stuck in your head and second-guessing yourself, and it will abandon you. The gifts that were meant for you will flow to someone else.

There’s more than enough of this creative energy flow for all of us, more than you could ever exhaust in a lifetime. This energy knows no scarcity. It can flood you with abundance across all areas of life if you’ll simply dance with it.

Dance playfully. Dance fearlessly. Dance fiercely. Sometimes slow-dance to “Careless Whisper.”

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It may feel awkward at first, but if you just keep showing up, you will get better and better at it. And that’s when dancing with this energy becomes life’s true delight.

Aligned Intentions

This energy is super sensitive to aligned intentions. If your intention is based on neediness, it won’t be kind to you. But if your intention stems from love, caring, creative expression, growth, expansion, contribution, and other energy signatures that light you up inside, then you can dance, dance, dance.

I love how the daily blogging challenge has enhanced and improved my relationship with this energy channel. It’s become louder and clearer. I think it recognizes the strength of my commitment on some level. It doesn’t just feed me endless ideas. It also feeds me energy, so that while I’m writing, I’m bestowed the energy to cross the finish line. Even if I’m tired when I start, I feel awake and alive when I’m done. It’s just like dancing. You can start out tired, but once you get moving and loosen up a bit, it can be fun and energizing.

I anticipated that something like this might happen when I began this challenge, but it’s even more delicious than I expected. I feel like this channel of inspired energy and I are dancing together like never before. Instead of wondering how I’ll make it another 360 days, I have this sense of knowing that because of this long-form dance, this is going to be the most beautiful year of my life so far.

Every day I’m also getting more emails from people, expressing gratitude and appreciation for the recent articles. A few have said that they’ve been reading my blog for 10+ years, and this is this is the first time they’ve sent me any kind of feedback ever, but they felt inspired by a recent piece to finally reach out and connect. I’m genuinely touched by that. I too can tell that something has shifted in a really beautiful direction this year.

I’m not the only one experiencing this type of shift. We’re seeing this energy being stirred up in many Conscious Growth Club members, and I’m seeing it in some friends who are amping up their creative output this year too – such beautiful ripples.

In the past I used to think I could only use this flow of inspiration for short-form content, but with practice and experimentation, I’ve learned to use it for long-form content, such as our courses. That was trickier than I thought due to my own limiting beliefs about how it would be different from short-form content, but I finally got out my way, and now I know how to do the long-form dance too, which is immensely rewarding on a whole new level. I’m pouring this same kind of inspired energy into creating Stature, which is now up to 147 sign-ups… make that 148 since another one came in just as I was typing this. I’m sure a lot more will join today or tomorrow to get the launch discount.

Let’s dance! 💃🕺

P.S. Here’s a fun sync… I actually started playing “Careless Whisper” on YouTube when I first posted the link to it above. YouTube continued streaming a couple more songs after that automatically as YouTube normally does, and just as I typed “Let’s Dance!” to close out this article, the song “Lady in Red” started playing – a song about dancing.

If you enjoy applying Subjective Reality interpretations to songs as we covered in lesson 9 of Submersion (“Listen to Reality”), maybe try interpreting the lyrics from “Lady in Red” to see if they have any special meaning for you right now. For me this was just beautiful, so I’m gonna listen to it again right after I post this.

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For some reason that song often makes me wanna cry. 😭

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Sculpting Your Character

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Obviously you’ve been through a lot of character sculpting already. You started as a baby, and you’ve grown into the person you are today. But much of that sculpting process was done to you, such as by your family upbringing, the culture you were raised in, and the education you received. Up to a certain point, you were sculpted by the world.

How well did the world do its job?

How do you feel about your character’s values, behaviors, habits, identity, lifestyle, and overall place in the world? How pleased are you with your internal state of being? How delighted are you with the results that are currently flowing into your life?

Do you feel like the world did a good job? Did it complete the task of fully sculpting your character, such that now you have a wonderful role to play for the rest of your life?

Some people might indeed feel the world did a great job on them. Others, myself included, would find these statements laughable, depending on when in our lives we ask them.

In my early years the world tried to sculpt me into a reverent, obedient Catholic. Nice try, world. Nice try.

Rebellion Phase

Of course I didn’t like where that was headed, so I rebelled against that fate and opted to take charge of my own path without the nuns and priests.

Actually I wish I had thought of it as sculpting my character, but I wasn’t that self-aware at the time. So it was mostly a phase of chaotic rebellion. That led to my getting arrested 4 times in 18 months… and almost going to prison for a year or two.

Eventually that situation scared me straight, and I abandoned the temporary dream of becoming a criminal mastermind. But I was still left hanging by the world. What now?

Personal Growth Phase

Eventually I stumbled upon personal growth, starting with a late night informercial to buy a memory improvement course. That seemed better than doing things that would get me arrested, albeit a bit tame relative to my previous lifestyle. The memory course was just okay, but it got me started on the long road of personal growth that I’ve been traveling ever since.

In the beginning I gobbled up random books and audio programs – whatever looked interesting to me. This material gradually taught me to think more consciously and deliberately about my life. In the beginning I consumed lots of material on goal setting, time management, and values. This led me to eventually set a really big goal for myself: graduate from college with two degrees in only three semesters. I succeeded and even won an award for being the top computer science student in my graduating class. That was a potent taste of what personal development could do for me. It was also my second attempt at university, my first run resulting in expulsion. Such a stark contrast in my results was enough to convince me that I should stick with personal growth work for many more years.

I was still being sculpted by the world in a way, but at least I had some say in how I was being sculpted. I could choose which books to read and which courses to buy. But I was still subjected to the values the authors injected into their work. Some of that was really good, and I liked being influenced and stretched, but I cringed whenever I heard someone utter the word God in their programs. I was an atheist at the time and wanted nothing more to do with religion.

This phase lasted for many years. I went through 1000+ books on various aspects of personal growth – relationships, health, business, spirituality, productivity, success, meditation, lifestyle, and more. I started going to workshops too. I hired a few different coaches.

The positive influence of this material definitely had an effect. I took a lot more growth-oriented action. I trained in martial arts for a few years. I got into distance running and ran the L.A. Marathon. I went vegan. I wrote an award-winning computer game. I bought and moved into a home that cost more than $1 million. I overcame my fear of public speaking. I started traveling. I got married (twice) and had kids (twice, but just with wife #1).

Conscious Character Sculpting

Being influenced by positive sources was really empowering, but I also felt that I could do better by engineering my own growth experiences. I sensed that there was yet another level I could progress to.

One method I used again and again was to do 30-day challenges. I did my first one in 1992, which was to go vegetarian for 30 days. It stuck and I never went back, even though I wasn’t intending to do it permanently. I used the same approach to go vegan 3.5 years later.

I’ve done so many of these challenges now that I lose track of them. I’ve probably done 6 or 7 of them in the past year alone. Even the more mundane ones, like learning chess for 30 days, added some delightful nuances to my character. Sometimes I do bigger challenges too, like my current challenge to blog every single day of 2020. Since I started on December 24 (why wait?), this is day 14. I still have 360 days to go after I publish this. It’s a leap year. 🙂

Long ago this type of challenge would have seemed unachievable. Now two weeks into it, I’m still enthusiastic about it. I know how good this will be for sculpting my character in the direction I want to go this year.

I saw the connection between the knowledge and experience I gained each year and the long-term effect on my character. Knowledge changed me. Experience changed me too.

Year after year of investing in personal growth had sculpted me into a different person. My past self who wasn’t yet into personal growth wouldn’t recognize me as I am today. He might even find me intimidating. I’d just hug him though, even though he’d probably cringe. Even though our scars are basically identical, he hadn’t yet repaired the damage related to being touched by humans.

I can still remember how I used to be in other decades of my life, so in that sense I’m the same person I was before. But I’ve added and shifted so much through gains in knowledge and experience that my dominant thoughts and feelings can be strikingly different each decade. I seem to become increasingly relaxed and confident in who I am as I get older. I find it easier and more effortless to express myself without worrying about being judged or criticized. Making money is easy and fun. And I get to enjoy a cool lifestyle. Later this month I’m going to visit the Panama Canal for the first time, and I’m heading back to Europe again this summer. I used to have a character that thought it must be a huge deal to leave the country, so he never did so. He’s really going to love his first trip to Paris.

Appreciating the World’s Role

I used to resent what my Catholic upbringing did to my character. Much of my early personal growth work involved repairing the damage. It’s so nice to live by my own well-formed sense of ethics instead of having some vapid nonsense like the Ten Commandments stuck in my head.

Today I feel differently about the world’s role in early character training – grateful actually. The religious “truths” I was taught early in life just seemed so ludicrous and nonsensical once I grew half a brain that it was a no-brainer (or half-brainer?) to reject that sooner or later.

The world handed me such a terribly misaligned character that clearly wasn’t going to work for me long-term. Self-pity wasn’t going to help. And doing heart-racing stuff that got me arrested, while often fun, clearly wasn’t sustainable unless I wanted to sculpt myself into a character who only wears orange pajamas.

The world gave me little choice but to try to fix the crappy ass NPC preset that it served up. But if not for that, I don’t think I’d have learned some of the most powerful self-development methods that are such an integral part of my life today. Life put me in a position where I had to put tons of work into my character if I wanted to have any chance at long-term happiness.

This kind of work is very difficult at times. It’s especially difficult to admit the truth that we aren’t as happy with our current characters as we’d like to be. So many of us pretend to be okay to fit in socially when we clearly aren’t inside. I have thousands of emails from people as evidence of that.

It’s hard to say yes to character sculpting work. It usually involves a lot of crying. But it does work, and it is worth it. And in the long run, it’s way, way better than denial.

I feel lucky that my starting point didn’t give me much room for denial. I felt like I slammed hard into the truth about myself shortly before I was even an adult. I think this road is more difficult for people who have the option of pretending that all is well with them. It’s harder for many other people to get started on this path because they aren’t ready to admit just how misaligned their characters have become. So they continue living those lives of quiet desperation, if only to remind the rest of us not to end up like that.

Fortunately a lot of us are ready and willing to admit that our characters need work. The challenge for us is figuring out how to do it effectively, so that we create clear signs of progress inside and out.

While my character sculpting journey began with damage repair mode, that’s no longer true today (and hasn’t been true for many years). Now I just want to take a character I really like and continue sculpting it into one that I really, really like. And when I get there, I’ll work on creating a character that I really, really, really like. It’s definitely possible to like who you’ve become yet still want to keep growing. When I go through some intense growth for a while, I often like to settle in for a bit, but eventually the promise of more growth always seduces me back into the game.

Conscious Character Sculpting

These days I really love the character I get to play each day. I like myself because I worked hard to turn my character into someone I’d like.

This requires figuring out what kind of character you’d like (not always easy) and then doing the work to actually become that character (pretty much never easy).

I’m happy that I developed my character into a creative entrepreneur who hasn’t been anyone’s employee since 1992. Would you enjoy playing a character who never needs to deal with job interviews, commuting, corporate politics, and bad coffee? I’m literally writing this article dressed like Arthur Dent.

I’m happy that I see money as something fun and flowing and playful, not as something to fret over.

I’m happy that I’m married to a woman who’s smart, funny, and yummy. She’s my best friend too. I love snuggle-sleeping with her every night. And I like working with her each day as well.

I’m happy I have a lifestyle that I like. I get to create and publish a lot, which I enjoy. I get to work with very growth-oriented people every day in Conscious Growth Club. I get to travel a nice amount. And I get to keep doing lots of stretchy personal growth experiments.

And I’m not stopping – ever! I know that my character will always be a work in progress, and it’s fun and rewarding to progress (once you learn how to get yourself to actually change). It’s also fun to keep dreaming up new ways I can train him and teach my character new tricks, like when I got him to go 40 days without food in 2017… or when I had him go to Disneyland for 30 days in a row in 2016. This year I’ve put him on a major training program for amping up his creative output, so he’ll create and publish more this year than any year before.

If you have to live with your character for the rest of your life, wouldn’t it be nice if the experience keeps getting better and better?

Let Me Help You Sculpt Your Character

If you wake up each day with a character you love to play, kudos to you, especially if you didn’t start out that way. We should compare notes.

If, however, your character needs work, then you have two options. Figure it out on your own like I did, which will take decades.

or…

Leverage my decades of acquiring knowledge and experience, including years of coaching people, and join us for the new character sculpting deep dive that we just launched at the beginning of this year. It’s called Stature, and its ultimate purpose is to help you sculpt your character into one that you love playing each day – taking it one day at a time with bite-sized lessons and exercises.

Character sculpting is truly a lifelong process, but if you learn these tools early enough in life, they’re going to save you so many years of false starts and dead ends. I know I can shave years off your learning curve here if you’ll let me.

More than 100 people have already joined in the first few days (135 last time I checked). You can see the current count at the top of the Stature page. How many do we have now? You can be our +1.

During the launch week, we’re offering Stature at a 70% discount from the long-term price, so this discount is only good for about 2 more days: Tuesday and Wednesday this week. It expires at midnight Pacific time at the end of Wednesday, January 8.

So far I’ve published the first 7 audio lessons, and we have full transcripts published for the first 4 of those. We’re co-creating this course together throughout January and February, during which time we’ll build the course to at least 42 lessons (probably more).

Here’s a screenshot of the lessons in our member portal, so you can see what we have so far. You can stream or download any lesson from your favorite device (the portal is mobile friendly). There’s also a workbook to accompany the lessons and bunch of other bonuses and supplementary material being created for this.

Stature Lessons

If you’re ready to dive in with 135+ other people and do some major character sculpting work to create not just an amazing 2020 but a happy and empowering life, you’d be wise to join us for the Stature course. You get to keep it for life and do the course as many times as you desire. My website is a long-term fixture in the personal growth community (operating continuously since 2004), so we have that stable longevity factor going for us.

Hopefully you have a character who’s empowered enough to say yes to this, but if you’re still on the fence, my tip is to go with your first gut instinct.

A recent study reported in the Washington Post today claimed that people make better decisions when they go with their first gut instinct instead of second-guessing themselves. I also asked growth-oriented friends on social media if they make better decisions from gut instinct or second-guessing analysis, and it was abundantly clear that gut instinct was the winner by far – many had regrets about second-guessing themselves and missing opportunities. So if your gut instinct is to join us, then join us.

I also trust my gut instinct, which told me that creating this course was one of the best projects I could do in my lifetime. I’m building a timeless course that will serve people for decades to come. This is just the beginning. I hope your character will join us in this special experience. The energy from the first group of people going through a course is just such a delight to behold.

We’re only 7 lessons in, and many people have told me they’ve cried a good bit already. Come share some tears with us if you’re brave enough. It’s part of the rebirthing process as we say goodbye to our old selves.

Seriously, please do join. Stature will do you a world of good.

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Creating a More Action-Oriented Character

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Do you ever feel that your character is too hesitant and self-censoring? Maybe you get an idea to take action or to share something, and then another voice pops in your head and talks you out of it.

Perhaps you straddle the fence for a while, pondering whether it’s wiser to take action or hold back, and much of the time you hold back. Perhaps you start to take action and then undo or delete what you’ve done because of that voice chiming with objections like these:

  • I don’t really need to share this.
  • This isn’t important.
  • Someone might not like what I have to say.
  • What if I’m wrong?
  • What if this doesn’t turn out well?

These are the voices of suppression, and we all have them to one degree or another. Unfortunately if we don’t train these neural subnets well enough, then we’ll end up suppressing too much and leaving a lot of potential value untapped. It’s hard to improve our results if we aren’t taking enough inspired action.

The Problem of Self-Censoring

Here’s the problem with self-censoring. While sometimes it may indeed be wise to hold our tongues, if we do it too often, then we strengthen the mental patterns related to suppression, and this training will spill over into other areas too.

When you suppress your ideas for self-expression, such suppression won’t be compartmentalized to just those few thoughts. You’ll be training your mind to get better at suppression all around. This can keep you trapped – in a job you dislike, a misaligned relationship, and habits that don’t serve you.

If your life isn’t awesome yet, one major cause is that you’re self-suppressing and self-censoring way too much. How are you supposed to improve your results when you hold back so much?

You may think about moving on and taking a risk. You may get an idea to stretch yourself and step into what feels more aligned. And then the voice of suppression kicks in and talks you out of it. And so you remain in your current situation, and another year of your life slips away. The passage of time isn’t kind when you overdo suppression.

Hesitation

The best intention of hesitation to prevent you from making a mistake. Hesitation aims to keep you safe. It tries to reduce the damage your character takes, especially physical, social, and financial damage.

But not all mistakes are equal. Some mistakes are fantastic learning experiences. Mistakes are very often stepping stones to successes. You’re really not going to succeed much unless you make a lot of mistakes.

Hesitation keeps us trapped in our comfort zones because sticking with the familiar seems like the safer bet. Exploring outside our comfort zones seems riskier.

Unfortunately hesitation lies to you. It tempts you with promises of a safe and comfortable life, but what it really delivers is stagnation and decline. And that’s because while you stand still, the world will keep changing faster and faster while you continue aging, eventually leaving you with the impression that you’ve fallen behind. You have indeed fallen behind because this is a world of action.

So many people enter their senior years with piles of regrets about the opportunities they missed. They allowed their inspired ideas to be overruled again and again by the voice of suppression. Don’t less than happen to you if you can prevent it.

Hesitation also lies when it promises that you can revisit an idea later, once you’ve had more time to think it over, research it, or discuss it. But in reality such delays will usually kill good ideas from being implemented at all. You’ll either end up trapped in circular thought about the idea, or you’ll eventually forget about the idea altogether. Either way you never make it through the committed action phase. Sound familiar?

Immediate Action

The best intention of immediate action is for you to capture a reward quickly. This impulse aims to increase your gains.

But something else happens when you lean towards action more and more. You get into the flow of acting on your ideas sooner and faster. You train your action pathways to become more dominant. You ride waves of massive creativity and self-expression as the voice of self-suppression fades into the background.

Living in action mode for extended periods is marvelous. It’s a feeling of being awake and alive. It’s stimulating and fun – if you get the balance right.

You can still take breaks and enjoy plenty of time off, and during your time off, you can make quick decisions regarding what to do for fun, relaxation, and renewal. You can enjoy the flow of action during work, rest, and play.

My favorite way to travel is to just pick a place and go. It’s super fun to have a destination pop into my mind one day and then to be in that new place within a day or two, sometimes within a matter of hours if I can get there fast enough.

One friend got off a plane at an airport, then used some method to pick a random destination to travel to next. It turned out to be the same city and country he just left, so he hopped on a flight back there and had more amazing adventures. That might sound a bit crazy, but ask yourself this: Which style of action will create the best memories?

Do you think that my friend is going to regret his airport bouncing when he’s older? I seriously doubt it. Today he has a cool story to tell. Years from now he’ll have a delightful collection of memories.

When was the last time you had an idea to go travel to a certain place? And what happened next? You probably told yourself that it would be cool someday. Why not go right now, as quickly as you can arrange transportation and a place to stay? You do realize that you could be there with a day or two most likely, right? Why not now? Ah yes… those pesky suppression subnets will offer up plenty of objections. And yet you could still make the trip happen right now, if only your action subnets were strong enough.

When you think about taking action, especially in big and meaningful ways, just ask yourself:

Do I want the memories of doing this? Or do I want the memory of skipping this?

These questions give me great clarity on some tricky decisions. To be honest sometimes the answer that pops out really pushes me outside of my comfort zone. Sometimes it becomes obvious that I’d treasure the memories that would flow from taking action, even when the journey looks a bit scary or uncomfortable. And then I have the thought: Damn… I think I need to do this.

Balanced Thinking

When you’re thinking about taking action, especially to express yourself in some way, initially you may get an emotional response – perhaps fear, worry, or anxiety – and those feelings can throw you off balance.

One thing I like to do when I feel unbalanced by emotion is to grab three sheets of blank paper and a pen, and then I write out my thoughts and feelings as they arise until all three pages are full. This takes about 45 minutes and is well worth the time investment. It helps to move the energy through the emotional brain into the logical brain. It processes the feelings well enough that I can think clearly about the problem, situation, or opportunity. Using pen and paper (instead of typing) slows me down and provides more thinking time as I write, so the processing feels more thorough. I recommend this method if you struggle with distracting thoughts or feelings and want to feel mentally clear and sharp again. It’s a nice way to restore balance.

I know that if I lean too far in the direction of self-suppression, it will lead to boredom and stagnation. I’ll end up feeling trapped or stuck because I’m not taking enough action. It’s a feeling of being stifled. Sometimes it feels like I’m falling behind, and the world is passing me by.

If I lean too far towards impulsivity though, which I’ve done before, it creates excessive stress because my actions are too random and chaotic. This was the kind of imbalance that got me arrested four times when I was 18-19 years old. I’d do or say whatever crazy idea popped into my mind, illegal or otherwise.

Eventually I learned to balance these modes of thinking more deliberately. I love the stimulation of being in the flow of action, but I don’t need random stimulation from chaotic action. What helps to create the right balance is setting ambitious goals, consciously choosing my own personal growth challenges, and aligning my life with core values and a sense of purpose. This provides a big picture compass for the action and suppression circuits.

To create the right long-term balance, you must deliberately invite discomfort by stretching beyond your comfort zone again and again. You have to keep encouraging the action circuits, so you don’t over-suppress yourself.

Suppressing Suppression

Here’s a recent example of how I mentally handled a situation by leaning into action when the self-suppression circuitry was also active.

Yesterday an idea popped into my mind, which was to create a Facebook group for the upcoming Stature course launch. I thought this might make the launch more fun and social for those who want to feel more connected to like-minded people who are deciding if they want to do this particular deep dive. Since hundreds of people signed up for each of our previous courses during their launches, I could expect that hundreds will also be interested in our newest deep dive course. And I have seen evidence that some of these people would love to connect with that launch energy more directly.

This wasn’t a new idea. It had also popped into my mind now and then over the previous weeks. But each time it came up, another part of my mind suppressed the idea. Not right now… I’m too busy… Maybe for the next launch… I’ll need to research this first… Many of my readers don’t like Facebook… We don’t really need this… I can add this to a list of ideas to think about later…

Suppression will usually come up with some logical sounding objections to an idea, and those objections will tend to halt further thinking. Objections let you off the hook and give you the impression that delaying is best. An objection is really a block to deeper rational thought though.

So I tabled that idea for a while. But this recurring suppression combined with some other recent suppressions may me feel like I was slipping too far into suppression mode, and I recognize the risk of being in that mode for too long. So I decided it was time to swing the pendulum the opposite way and to encourage my mind to take more action.

I want to play a more action-oriented character for 2020, so I need to calibrate my thinking to stimulate more action and to suppress suppression. This led me to commit to what I shared in the 365-Day Challenges article. I intend to blog every day of 2020.

Swinging the pendulum like this rewards and activates the action subnets and while suppressing the suppression subnets. Consequently, it makes me feel more action-oriented each day.

Since committing to this challenge, my days are even richer in inspired action. I’m doing a better job of acting on ideas immediately as they arise. I feel inspired and energized to keep taking more action, which is a great feeling to have as we head into a new launch.

Yesterday the same idea to create a Facebook group for the launch popped into my mind, but this time my thought patterns were different. Because I’d been stimulating my action circuits with the blogging commitment, I’d shifted my inner mental balance. I still heard those hesitant thoughts come up, but they weren’t nearly as present and powerful as the stimulating voice of action.

Think about how this works. Since I actually started my blogging challenge on December 24th, I’ve already gone a week down this path. Each day I still perceive the suppression circuits activating, but they can’t come up with a viable reason why I shouldn’t blog each day, certainly nothing strong enough to counteract the public commitment I’ve made. So now that voice of suppression sounds really weak feeble when it tries to object, and it surrenders quickly: Oh never mind… go ahead and write. This voice gets quieter and quieter each day while the voice is action is growing louder and crisper.

Consequently, within a very short time after having that idea popped into my head yesterday, I asked Rachelle if she could look into setting up such a group and make it happen that same day. She agreed. But then a short time later, I felt that this was still a trick of suppression. Was delegating this actually faster or just another delay tactic? I thought: How long could it take to create a Facebook group? I Googled how to do it and saw that it was pretty simple. Then I just did it immediately. The group was created and open within a few minutes. It was simpler than I expected.

Next I had the thought that I should began inviting people to join. And of course I still heard the suppressing thoughts arise in response: Should I carefully check over the group settings first? Shouldn’t Rachelle and I go over the admin stuff first to make sure we know what we’re doing?

But again, the voice of action was louder because I’d been training it to become so. It squashed suppression’s feeble delay tactics, and I immediately began inviting people to join the group, such as by announcing it in a News post.

It hasn’t even been 24 hours yet, and we already have 177 people in the group – with more joining every hour. So that’s great to see. If I had suppressed the idea, it would be zero since the group wouldn’t exist. Now we already have more than enough people to make it interesting and worthwhile.

Note that by taking immediate action instead of suppressing an idea, I’ve also gained a new skill. I now know how to create an administrate a Facebook group, which I didn’t know how to do 24 hours ago. If it goes well for this launch, we could create such groups for other launches as a way of making them more social.

I also intend to do some Facebook Lives (live interactive video chats) in the new group. I’ve never done this before either, despite having known about them for years. Why continue to suppress this idea when taking action would be more fun and growth-oriented?

You’re of course welcome to join our new Facebook group if you’re interested in the new character sculpting deep dive, which will launch on January 1st. You’ll find the group at facebook.com/groups/stature. How many members does it have now?

Balancing Action and Suppression

Balancing your action and suppression circuits is a lifelong challenge. It’s good to accept this, so you can consciously think about which way you need to train your character next. It’s pointless to beat yourself up for becoming imbalanced one way or the other. Imbalances will happen. See this as an invitation to retrain your character to create the balance you desire.

Look back on your past year. Did you take enough inspired action? Or did you feel that suppression was the main voice of that year? Were your decisions too impulsive and chaotic? Did you create enough cherished memories?

What do you want for 2020? Do you want a calmer, more controlled, and more suppressed year? Or do you want more bold action and self-expression? Do you want more introspection and reflection? Or do you want this to be a year of action and results?

From interacting with my readers recently, I learned that most of them felt that 2019 was too stunted relative to their desires. They want to shift the balance towards more action and bolder self-expression for 2020 and beyond. They want to step up and stretch beyond their comfort zones and censor themselves less. They want to sculpt themselves into more action-oriented characters.

Yet they also want to be gentler towards themselves and others. They like kindness and compassion and don’t want their self-expression to come across as overly harsh and judgmental. The idea of gentle fierceness resonates with many of them.

This is doable, but it isn’t easy. Hence the reason we’re taking this on in the form of a new deep dive together.

Realize that if your 2019 was disappointing, your 2020 will likely be disappointing too unless you deliberately step outside of your comfort zone. I’m doing this too because I want my 2020 to be a more action-oriented year. By the time Valentine’s Day comes up, I’ll already have written more articles for 2020 than I did for all of 2019. This year I expect to write, record, and publish more than I have in any year of my life. So I need to train myself to favor action over suppression. This is partly due to curiosity. I really want to know what it’s like to live for a full year as this kind of character. What will it be like to make creative expression a bigger part of my reality than ever before?

I think it sounds fun and stimulating, even though it isn’t comfortable. I’m deliberately setting myself up for a less comfortable year because I think the character sculpting effect will be worth it, not to mention all the ripples this creates for other people as well. Notice how this plugs back into values and purpose – that’s our compass here.

If you want to train yourself into a more action-oriented character as well, I invite you to do whatever it takes to commit yourself to that this year. Make a commitment that deliberately exits your comfort zone and enters the growth zone. Don’t let another year of self-suppression and self-censoring slip through your fingers. Find your voice this year.

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Investing in Your Core

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Which investments in your education, skills, work, and lifestyle will be most valuable to you in the long run?

A lot is going to change in the next 10 years for you, both personally and professionally. The problem is that you can’t accurately predict what will change and how it will change. This makes it difficult to know where to invest your time, energy, and money today. It’s hard to be sure what will pay off in the long run.

But now consider what isn’t likely to change. What can you say about yourself, the world, and other people that will likely remain essentially the same 10 years from now? What will be predictably stable?

Some years ago Amazon’s team pondered what wasn’t likely to change about their business over the next 10 years. They realized that customers are always going to want speedier delivery, so they opted to make a huge, multi-year investment in building the capabilities to deliver items faster. Other investments were more speculative or risky, but it was a safe bet that customers were going to value faster delivery for many years to come. Amazon’s team recognized that people are always going to want their items faster, which made it easier for Amazon to place really big bets on speedier delivery.

Future Proofing Your Career

What if you thought about your current work and lifestyle the way Amazon approaches its business?

Let’s start with your work and work-related skills. What about your work, your field, or the demand for certain skills will remain unchanged in the next 10 years? How could you invest more in the unchangeable aspects?

I can predict with high certainty is that many people will still be interested in personal growth in 10 years. I can predict that people will still have personal problems to solve. I can predict that people’s lives will become more complicated than they are today. I can predict that people will have even more distractions to deal with. I can predict that many people will want more clarity and certainty about their paths in life. I can predict that many people will feel disconnected and will want more love and connection in their lives.

Even if AI steps in to do more in this area, I can also predict that many people will still like working with other humans to improve their lives. I can predict that many people will value caring, compassion, and honesty.

I think you get the idea. Over the long run, there’s a lot about this field of work that’s stable and predictable, mainly because human beings have certain qualities that are remarkably stable.

One way I apply this realization is that as I develop new courses, I think about what will still matter to people in 10 or 20 years. I’m not developing a course on email efficiency since I don’t know if that will still be relevant enough in a decade or two. I prefer to develop courses where it’s a pretty sure bet that the topics will still be relevant decades from now. This affects the topics I choose as well as the individual lessons I record. When I design a lesson, I think about whether it will seem dated in 20 years. Sometimes I even think about whether it will be relevant in 100 years, 500 years, or 1000 years. To reflect upon this, I consider which books from 1000+ years ago that I found worth reading, such as The Iliad and The Odyssey. This helps me zero in on timeless qualities like courage and honor. And so my work is rich in such topics. I think that timeless topics help us go to connect more deeply than topics with shorter lifespans.

I even consider whether each course may be helpful to an AI that consumes the content. I think about whether the lessons are AI-relevant, not just human-centric. For instance, an AI has a relationship with its reality just as a human does, so it may find value in the Submersion course, which is about upgrading your relationship with reality. How can I develop a course today and expect it to be just as meaningful, relevant, and worthwhile for people in 20 years? I have to focus on those core aspects of people’s lives that are unlikely to change.

I encourage you to think a decade or two ahead as well, especially when it comes to skill-building. It takes years to build really strong skills. It would be a shame if your investment only has a short lifespan, and then you have to start over. It’s so nice to continue leveraging skills that took 10+ years to build, knowing that they aren’t going out of style anytime soon.

To figure out which skills to invest in, you can guess or try to predict how the future will be different, but it’s actually easier to predict how it won’t be different.

Predicting What You’ll Love

What will you still love, enjoy, and appreciate in 10 years?

Your answers to this question signal another good way to decide how to invest your time and energy in the years ahead.

Your tastes and preferences will change over time, but some interests will remain stable for decades. What are those stable parts of your character?

I can predict that I’ll still be into personal growth in 10 years. I’ll still like connecting with other growth-oriented people. I’ll still be vegan. I’ll still like writing and speaking. I’ll still like to exercise. I’ll still like to travel. I’ll still like doing growth challenges to stretch myself. I’ll still love hugs and cuddles. These are all long-term commitments that aren’t likely to change in the next decade. I may change how I express them, but the core patterns behind them will likely remain very stable.

Other aspects of my life could change though. Will I still be living in Las Vegas 10 years from now? That’s possible since I’ve lived here for 16 years, but I could see myself moving during that time, maybe to another country. Will I still be blogging in 10 years? That’s possible too, but I could shift to other modes of expression. Something new could arise that I like even better.

Investing in Your Core

When you understand the stable parts of your character, you can invest in them more deeply. You can make much bigger bets on those areas of your life that you know you’re still going to enjoy and appreciate many years ahead.

Now if you combine the stable parts of your character and lifestyle with the stable parts of your work and skills, that’s where you can make your biggest bets of all.

For me a pattern in both areas is personal growth. It’s part of my business and my personal life, and I can predict that these patterns will remain stable for at least another 10 or 20 years. So that’s where I can justify betting bigger – a lot bigger.

One way you can gauge your investments is to note where you’re spending your money. What we’re really looking for is your investment of energy, and money is a decent yet imperfect way to assess where energy is flowing. This is especially true when you spend enough money that it feels a bit edgy or scary to you, just like a stock or real estate investor who’s making a big bet on a company or property. If your investments don’t stir up some emotion, you’re probably investing too little, playing it safe, and staying too far inside your comfort zone. That edgy feeling is a sign that you care about what you’re doing. It wakes you up, keeps you stimulated, and ensures that you’ll do whatever it takes to help your investment succeed.

For the upcoming year, I’ve enrolled in a yearlong coaching program and renewed a couple of other memberships to private groups. I’m pre-committed to spending about $14,500 on personal growth expenses (not counting related travel), and the year hasn’t started yet. I’ll undoubtedly spend more as the year progresses. This feels good to me. It’s enough to feel moderately edgy and stimulated but not so much that it would make me feel paranoid. I know I’m making intelligent bets on stable, long-term areas of value. It’s essentially the same logic that convinced Amazon to pour billions into speedier delivery.

But if I were to take that same amount and invest it on tech for my business, such as buying a new Mac Pro, I wouldn’t feel good about it. It seems like a waste that’s unlikely to pay off as well. I love good tech, but spending thousands more for slightly better tools that I can fully leverage doesn’t sit well with me. My investment in tech hardware will only depreciate. I only have so much time to recoup my investment as my hardware’s market value goes to zero.

Investments in personal growth are very different because those investments don’t depreciate. In fact, they tend to appreciate. Due to the long-term stability of personal growth, I can recoup huge gains over time. What I spend for 2020 is likely to still be paying dividends 5 years, 10 years, 20 years out, and beyond. The payoff is just so wonderful.

So for this reason, each year I like to spend way more on personal growth than I do on tech, even in years when I upgrade every device I own to the newest, fully decked out version.

I was in Toastmasters for 6 years (2004 to 2010). I think it was $60 every 6 months to be a member, so $120 per year, so that’s $720 in total dues. Add in the cost of transportation to and from the meetings, buying extra clothes for doing more speeches, occasional conference fees and travel (like for the Toastmasters International Conference, which I attended twice, and some district level conferences), and miscellaneous related expenses, and it probably adds up to less than $5K total. Toastmasters was hugely helpful in enabling me to reach my goal of doing a 3-day workshop on the Las Vegas Strip. That first event made more than $50K in profit. And that’s also where my wife Rachelle and I first met. The ripples from that event are still paying dividends today, and we’ve done 15 other 3-day workshops since then as well. My 2020 plans include doing a new event in Vegas in the Fall as well.

So the ongoing ripples from my Toastmasters investment are still paying dividends year after year. It’s like receiving lifetime royalties for a book written many years ago. Being able to get on a stage, speak confidently, and have fun with it has greatly enhanced my lifestyle as well. Next month I’ll be emceeing the first day of a leadership conference at a hotel next to the Panama Canal. I don’t normally play the emcee role, but thanks to my prior Toastmasters experience, I know how to do it and make it fun.

Toastmasters is inexpensive, but it still takes a lot of time and energy to go to meetings; create, practice, and deliver speeches; and engage with the group. So initially it may seem like a big deal. But consider that you have your whole life to recoup that investment. I so wish I’d gotten into Toastmasters while in my 20s instead of my 30s.

Are you spending more on the unchangeable parts of your life (like personal growth or communication skills) than you do on the changeable parts (like tech)? If not, consider flipping that pattern around, and watch the long-term ROI from your investments soar.

Amping Up Your Core Investments

It’s easy to flow time, energy, and money into investments that don’t pay off. This is especially true when you chase after the latest technique- or method-based programs, the ones that promise you fast and easy results. I think of these as “game the system” programs, like ones that will teach you how to make money selling stuff on Amazon or how to rank higher on Google. It’s nice while it lasts, but will it endure for decades? How many times have you strayed away from your core to fall for such traps? I was guilty of that a lot in my 20s… till I finally found my footing and grew a bit wiser.

To make really good investments in yourself, your knowledge, your skills, and your lifestyle, seek to identify and understand the unchangeable core within you. What about you seems stable and isn’t likely to change much in the next 10 years? These are terrific areas for making big, bold bets on yourself.

By contrast, what’s really just a whim that you aren’t likely to care about in 10 years? Steer clear of plunking money down on those areas.

I challenge you to keep stretching your comfort zone when it comes to investing in your core. For many years I would spend less than $1K per year on personal growth, and it felt nice and cozy. I’d buy all the books I wanted and some audio programs too. Now and then I might attend a local workshop. I advanced little by little.

Then at some point I progressed to spending about $1-5K per year on personal growth: more books, more audio programs, nice seminars, club memberships, courses, conferences, and a little coaching here and there. That was still pretty cozy but stretched me more.

These days I like to spend somewhere in the $15-40K range per year on personal growth: lots of books and audiobooks, workshops, conferences, seminars, memberships, and coaching. This still feels cozy, but it also feels more powerful. Mostly I’d describe it as fun and stimulating. It feels more social and connected too since I now work on personal growth with other people every day, including as part of running Conscious Growth Club.

This also makes me wonder what it would be like to eventually spend $100K+ per year on personal growth and to have that feel normal. Right now I’m still getting so much value from the 5-figure level that I’d like to stay here a bit longer and keep soaking up the fun and stimulation that it provides. It’s not just the money to consider but also the time investment. Shoving more money into the pot isn’t the point. The money is just an indicator of energy flow, but it’s really the energy that matters. You can flow a lot of energy into an investment without spending much money, like I did with Toastmasters, but sometimes it’s also good to get plenty of money flowing towards your core. If you aren’t willing to spend your money on what truly matters to you, that’s a sign that you’re probably holding back due to fear, self-doubt, or some other internal misalignment. Be willing to bet bigger on yourself.

Don’t be so worried about making a mistake now and then. It happens. Even a fairly weak course or program might yield one good idea, and if it’s a fairly timeless idea, you still have decades to recoup the investment. Sometimes the best I can do is look back on a foolish investment and laugh at it, but somehow even the foolish ones really aren’t that regrettable in the long run.

Since I’ve been investing in personal growth for decades now, I notice that I am indeed still gaining from investments I made years ago, even from the smallest expenses like books and movies. A book I read 20 years ago may provide an insight that I share on a coaching call today. I often leverage the knowledge gained from personal growth investments I made during the 1990s in my work today. And I expect that today’s investments will still be paying dividends many years from now.

Enter the Dragon

On our quarterly planning review call in Conscious Growth Club yesterday, I anchored the call with a Bruce Lee quote about a finger pointing to the Moon. When I first watched Enter the Dragon as a teenager, I couldn’t have predicted that it would be useful professionally decades later. It’s a fun movie and will likely seem pretty dated today, but it does contain some nice personal growth lessons.

Here’s a 2-minute Bruce Lee clip that I think you’ll like, which contains the quote I referenced on yesterday’s call. It’s a fun clip to watch and may add some extra sparkle to your day.

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Enter the Dragon premiered in 1973, one month after Bruce Lee’s death at age 32. Rachelle and I once visited his grave in Seattle. Does Bruce Lee’s work still inspire people 46 years later? You bet!

Bruce Lee is a great example of someone who invested in his core. He trained hard, and then he turned that investment towards creating ripples for others – inspiring millions with his work ethic, skills, philosophy, and movies.

Investing in your core pays off so ridiculously well over time because you have a long timespan to make gains from your investment, Bruce Lee’s early departure notwithstanding.

Are you investing enough in your core? Are you expressing your core outwardly into the world? Have you been feeding your inner dragon and encouraging it to soar?

What would Bruce Lee think of your level of investment? Well, first he’d smack you for using the word think. Then he’d ask: How do you feel?

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5 Of The Best Fashion Steals To Shop In The January Sales

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NPC to Player

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Yesterday I shared a blog post about the 5 major characters transformations my readers want to experience as we transition from 2019 to 2020.

After extracting those original 5 transformations, I pondered whether they could be compressed a bit further. Could they be summed up as a single transformation?

Each time we compress, we lose some detail, so it’s not going to be perfect if we squish this down to a single transformation. But one answer that Rachelle and I came up with together is that the transformation is about shifting from NPC to player mode.

Let me ‘splain.

In a video game, an NPC is a non-player character, so this simply refers to a computer-controlled character in the game. Most often I associate the term with role-playing or adventure games, but other game genres may feature NPCs as well.

So you might wander across a village in a game world, and there are farmers, merchants, and townsfolk who’ve been mostly waiting around for you to show up and engage with them. You might interact with them to get information, buy weapons or supplies, or receive invitations to perform mini-quests. These characters are all computer-controlled, so no human player is directly in charge of them. They do whatever their pre-programmed algorithms direct them to do, and they respond to your actions according to their programming.

The NPC’s job is mainly to be part of the story experience for the main player (or players, if it’s a multi-player game). In more sophisticated games, the NPCs may follow daily routines, including sleeping in their beds at night and tending to their shops or fields during the day.

An NPC doesn’t get to experience the main story. They don’t get to face dragons and go on adventures. They do whatever their programming directs them to do, like serving up coffee at the local Starbucks until the real adventurer – the true player – walks in. I’m over-simplifying here a bit, but I think you get the idea.

In terms of our original five transformations, each one connects with a transition from living an NPC type of life to growing into a more empowered player role.

When you’re playing a game and wander into an NPC-rich area like a village or camp, the NPCs will often complain about something when you talk to them. They have problems they can’t solve, so they fret and worry till you solve those problems for them. Some of them may act as if they’re traumatized by their current state of affairs. They need you to rescue them, save them, help them.

Notice that difference in attitude. An NPC waits to be rescued. A hero does the rescuing. If you’re not actively rescuing yourself from your own problems, are you giving people the impression that you’re waiting to be rescued? Are you like a traumatized villager surrounded by a bunch of other traumatized villagers, all hoping that life will somehow get better with the passage of time? What if instead of wasting energy on judgment and resistance, you accepted whatever problems are showing up in your life and decided to face them head on? Imagine a village of NPCs who finally decide to go slay the dragon themselves instead of waiting for a hero to show up.

While the NPCs may spin themselves in circles fussing over their problems, you the player have to get busy solving them. Even in a game world with lots of misalignments, somehow you’re able to create your own alignment as the player. You do this by working on subgoals one by one and taking lots of action. You don’t have to be confused and internally conflicted because there’s always something interesting to work on. You just keep chipping away at one quest after another. Resisting what the game offers up is obviously a complete waste of time. You can’t possibly progress if you rail against the game’s unfairness, lameness, or ridiculousness. Real life is the same in that respect, isn’t it?

In a game world with enough flexibility (Zelda: Breath of the Wild being a good example), there are nice opportunities for self-expression as the player, opportunities that the NPCs lack. If you feel like exploring, you can wander off into new territories. If you’re feeling aggressive, you can run boldly into battle and fight, fight, fight. If you’re feeling more chill, you can talk to some NPCs, cook some food, or do some simple side quests. Different people can play the game with very different styles and still win.

When Rachelle and I have played Zelda: BOTW (which we finished twice together), our playing styles were very different, especially when it comes to attacking a group of enemies. I like to rush in like a berserker, maybe toss a bomb into the middle of the group to get everyone’s attention. Sometimes I’ll verbally taunt them (even though they can’t hear me). Then I go toe to toe with as many as I can, doing only offense and rarely defense, never using shields or dodging. I’ll frequently take out a whole group in less than a minute. Of course I may take some damage, sometimes major damage. If I die, I just try again, perhaps a little more cautiously the next time. I only go in stealthily or strategically when I really have to, especially in situations where overt aggression is heavily punished. I don’t mind dying a bunch. I’d rather die a few times and learn a little more from each assault. To me it’s just a form of probing to figure out what works. I love being in the thick of combat with lots of action, having to make fast decisions in real-time to survive. I favor this style because it’s the most fun for me.

Rachelle, on the other hand, never plays like this, even if I prod her to try it. She prefers to assess a situation strategically first. She’ll pick off enemies from a distance first, selecting her targets carefully and cautiously. She’ll optimize her armor and weapon choice to appropriately suit each battle. She plays a lot more defensively, valuing every heart. She seems to feel disappointed if she loses 2 hearts out of 20 in a battle, whereas I’d still feel victorious if I lost 18 hearts and was still standing at the end.

I feel perfectly okay walking through the game world with less than half my hearts, whereas Rachelle feels uncomfortable if her hearts aren’t nearly fully (preferably completely full). So we have different styles of play – i.e. self-expression – and yet we still enjoy the player role in our own ways. We each have our own version of what it takes to create relaxed confidence and have a chill yet fun experience. If I tried to play the game like Rachelle does, I’d be bored. And I think if she tried to play like I do, she’d feel stressed or frustrated.

The way you play the game of life will undoubtedly be uniquely your own as well. You have many options for how to express yourself. The key is to find the modes of expression that feel most aligned to you, so the game of life is fun and stimulating but not overwhelming or boring. If you live too much like an NPC, you’re probably going to feel bored or frustrated a lot because NPCs have persistent problems they can’t solve.

How does this NPC to player analogy resonate with you so far? I imagine that if you’re a gamer, you may like it more than most. But if not, that’s okay. You can focus on the original five transformations, or you can challenge yourself to come up with your own single compressed version.

Which way did you lean most often throughout 2019? Would you say that you lived primarily as an NPC? Or do you feel that you really owned this year like a true player character? Did you play scared? Or did you play fiercely? Did you have a fun and stimulating year overall, or did you spend too much time in the realm of frustration, the kingdom of worry, or the dungeon of boredom?

Rachelle and I are both eagerly looking forward to Zelda: BOTW2 by the way. Zelda: BOTW was among the most impressive games I’ve ever played. Now let’s make 2020 your most impressive year. Just try not to play it too much like Rachelle because it’s not as fun to watch. You can still fight even when you only have 3 hearts, okay!

My character may lose a few hearts when she reads this. 😉

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