I recorded a new video invitation for Conscious Growth Club Year 10.
Instead of walking through every feature or detail, I wanted to share more of the heart of CGC – what kind of space it is, why I continue tending it with so much care, and what I especially want to emphasize for this next year.
CGC is a high-trust, participatory self-development community for growth-oriented people who want more than ideas, insights, or solo reflection. It’s a place for turning inner growth into lived experience – with real support, honest connection, exploration, creativity, pleasure, belonging, and meaningful shifts in your actual life.
In the video, I talk about CGC as a collection of permission containers – spaces where people can open up more honestly, explore deeper layers of themselves, and receive caring human intelligence from others who genuinely want to help.
This year’s pulse is about landing more of that growth into life.
Less circling. More improvement.
Less forcing. More harmony and flow.
Less doing everything alone. More support, connection, and real human warmth.
I also share more about the heartspace of CGC – the intimacy, trust, friendship, encouragement, exploration, pleasure, creative flow, and identity expansion that can happen when growth is supported inside a caring community instead of being processed only in private.
If you’ve been considering CGC, this video should give you a clearer feel for the kind of space you’d be entering.
The deadline to join CGC Year 10 is tomorrow: Thursday, May 7 at 11:59 PM Pacific.
Your membership begins as soon as you join and continues through April 30, 2027.
Synchronize is our monthly orienting call where we check in with the current pulse of the group. What are people moving through? What kind of support would help this month?
Today’s call also gave me a clearer sense of what wants to happen in CGC this year – not as a rigid plan, but as an evolving direction.
Some of the words and themes that came up were:
connection belonging intimacy action momentum relationship ease rest integration calm openness experimentation wonder surprise courage trust devotion creative flow sharing the half-baked stuff sharing more of our real journeys
That provides some nice clarity about how the CGC Year 10 energy is opening for us.
It also helped clarify the kinds of people we’d love to invite into CGC this year.
Not everyone. CGC has never been meant for everyone.
But if this kind of space would genuinely support you, I’d love for you to recognize yourself more clearly in the invitation.
A Year of Connection and Belonging
One of the strongest intentions for CGC Year 10 is to help the group become an even stronger space for real connection and belonging.
A lot of people are doing plenty of inner work these days.
They’re reading. Journaling. Watching videos. Listening to podcasts. Thinking about their patterns. Trying to improve their habits. Trying to understand themselves.
That can all be useful.
But there’s a certain kind of growth that doesn’t really activate until you bring your actual self into relationship with other self-aware, growth-oriented, action-taking people.
Not your polished self. Not your “here’s my impressive update” self. Not your “I’ve already figured this out” self.
Your real self – the part of you that is still experimenting. Still sensing what wants to change. Still learning how to trust your own deeper signals.
That’s one of the things we want CGC to support more strongly this year: people being able to show up in a real way, while they’re still in motion.
You don’t have to arrive fully formed – it’s actually better if you don’t.
Fully formed people are usually either done growing or pretending.
More Action, Less Solo Circling
Another strong theme from today’s Synchronize call was action.
Not frantic action. Not grinding. Not chasing. Not hustling harder until your heart feels like it’s trapped in a cage.
More like: let’s stop circling the same things alone.
Let’s bring the stuck points into the room.
The decision you keep postponing. The relationship pattern that needs attention. The creative project that keeps almost becoming real. The part of life that feels cluttered, heavy, vague, or unfinished. The invitation you keep not sending. The body signal you keep ignoring. The truth you keep nibbling instead of claiming.
CGC works best when people bring what’s actually happening.
A decision. A desire. A transition. A stuck place. A longing. A half-baked idea. A request for support.
Then we can work with it together.
One intention for Year 10 is to help the club become a better bridge from insight to lived movement.
Not just more self-awareness.
More like:
I had the conversation. I made the request. I cleared the old thing. I rested to replenish my energy. I reached out. I started the project. I stopped pretending that old path still fits. I let myself be seen. I let life help me more. I completed. I cleared. I released.
That’s the kind of progress I love seeing in CGC.
Sometimes it’s big and dramatic. Sometimes it’s beautifully simple. Both count.
Creative, Open-Hearted, Relational People
We’d especially love to welcome more people this year who are creative, open-hearted, socially warm, and willing to experiment with life.
By creative, I don’t necessarily mean professional artists, although we always have some of those in CGC each year.
I mean people who relate to life as something they’re actively shaping.
Writers, artists, entrepreneurs, coaches, weirdly brilliant nerds, intuitive explorers, relationship builders, community-minded people, project starters, experience designers, sensitive humans with unusual inner worlds – yes, please… more of these people.
People who have ideas they haven’t fully landed yet.
People who want to publish something, build something, host something, heal something, explore something, simplify something, or open a new doorway in life.
People who are willing to say:
“This isn’t finished yet, but here’s where I am.”
That kind of honesty is powerful in our group, and the group energy is especially good at helping such people move into meaningful next steps.
This gives other people permission to be real too. One person’s progress often inspires others to move into action.
I’d rather be in a room with sincere half-baked liveliness than polished pretense. CGC is a club where energy loves to move into action, not just circulate in possibility space. And given the recent Spirit Airlines news, there’s a timely reminder here: spirit is wonderful, but the quality of the journey matters too – and eventually, the plane needs to land.
A Healthier Relationship With Support
A lot of thoughtful people are oddly bad at receiving support.
They can be very good at helping others. Very good at thinking. Very good at coping. Very good at being self-sufficient.
But self-sufficiency can quietly become isolation.
One of my intentions for CGC Year 10 is to normalize receiving more support.
Bring the thing you need help with.
Bring the part that feels unclear.
Bring the place where you’d love perspective, encouragement, mirroring, truth, warmth, or a nudge.
This doesn’t mean we turn CGC into a therapy space. It isn’t that.
It’s a growth club. A live, relational, participatory space. A place for adults who are willing to engage with honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and care.
But it does mean you don’t have to keep pretending that your life is a solo engineering project.
Humans need supportive rooms.
Humans need honest mirrors.
Humans need other humans who can say, “Yes, I get that,” or “Have you considered this?” or “That sounds like the old pattern talking,” or “I think you already know what you want here.”
That kind of support can change the direction of a whole month – and sometimes a whole life. People often become bolder and braver when they have a rock-solid base of social support. They take more action. They hesitate less. They trust themselves more.
Stretch, But Don’t Strain
Another intention for this year is to keep CGC stretchy but humane.
I want people to grow. I want people to experiment. I want people to become braver, warmer, more expressive, more honest, and more alive.
But I don’t want the group field to feel like pressure.
A good growth space should help people breathe.
This year I want CGC to hold a healthy range:
Support when life feels messy and you don’t want to sort through it alone.
Flow when your energy is scattered and you want to turn insight into forward motion.
Release when something is complete, stale, heavy, or ready to leave your life.
Embody when you’ve been too much in your head and your body wants a vote.
Touch when relationships, friendship, trust, or real human contact need more care.
Wonder when the world feels too narrow and possibility wants to open again.
Play when life has become too serious and delight needs a place to land.
Connect when you want warmth, belonging, laughter, and deeper connection with your fellow CGCers.
Synchronize when we want to sense the month together and choose a shared direction.
That’s the new rhythm of CGC Year 10.
It’s not a rigid curriculum. It’s a living structure.
We’ll keep listening to what people are actually moving through, and we’ll shape the flow accordingly.
Who Will Probably Feel at Home Here
You may be a strong match for CGC Year 10 if you want more connection, support, honesty, and aliveness in your life.
You’ll probably feel at home if you’re willing to show up live, be on camera, and participate in good faith.
You’ll probably fit well if you like thoughtful people, warm conversation, personal growth, experimentation, emotional honesty, practical movement, curiosity, and a bit of wonder.
You don’t have to be extroverted.
You don’t have to be perfectly confident.
You don’t have to have your life neatly arranged and color-coded.
But you do need to be willing to bring your real self into the room.
CGC is probably not a fit if you mainly want private content to consume in the background, if you prefer hiding, if you don’t want live interaction, or if you want a rigid step-by-step formula where someone else tells you exactly what to do with your life.
It’s also not a good match for cynical, contemptuous, cruel, or dehumanizing energy.
We’re creating a warm room together.
That means the quality of the people matters.
My Deeper Intention
My deeper intention for CGC Year 10 is simple:
I want CGC to help people stop growing alone and start living more fully – in motion, in connection, and in real life.
More honest conversations. More invitations. More warmth. More courage. More grounded action. More creative experiments. More relational aliveness. More support that actually fits what people are moving through now.
I want CGC to be a place where people can bring their lives into the room and feel something shift because they did.
Not every call needs to be profound.
Some calls may be playful. Some may be practical. Some may be tender. Some may be surprising. Some may be clarifying in a way that seems small at the time but creates powerful ripples.
That’s real growth.
Not always fireworks. Sometimes it’s a door finally opening because someone had the courage to touch the handle and ponder, “What if?”
Join Us for CGC Year 10
Enrollment for Conscious Growth Club Year 10 is open now, and it closes Thursday, May 7 at 11:59 PM Pacific.
This is our only opening for new members this year, so if CGC feels aligned, this is the window to join us. After enrollment closes, the next planned opening won’t be until April 2027.
This new CGC year runs from May 1, 2026 through April 30, 2027, and your membership begins as soon as you join.
If this feels like the kind of space you’ve been wanting – more honest, more alive, more connected, more supportive, and more worth showing up for – you’re warmly invited to join us.
If you’ve been craving a place where growth feels more relational, honest, and alive, this may be your year to join us inside.
The last thing that most of us want to deal with is an angry person in our face. But chances are, sooner or later, it’s going to happen.
So what do we do? And, maybe more importantly, what shouldn’t we do?
Those are some of the questions that Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, the co-hosts of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast, recently posed to Ryan Martin, better know as the Anger Professor, to find out how to “do anger better.”
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“You had a great tweet,” Michelson said during the conversation. “You said something like, ‘Never in the history of “calm downs’ has ‘calm down’ calmed down someone.’ So I’m guessing ‘calm down’ is not the thing you want to say.”
“I think ‘relax’ is even worse,” Punjabi added.
“No, ‘relax’ has never relaxed anyone,” agreed Martin, a psychology professor and an associate dean for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
“This is a case where … people are elevated and they’re not necessarily thinking as rationally, and they’re a little defensive. You’re not going to make as much progress with those sort of direct statements that you want to make,” he added. “Telling people to do things like ‘just breathe’ aren’t going to have much of an impact.”
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Instead, modelling those actions yourself is going to be more effective.
“But if you actually back up a little bit and you start speaking softer than normal, you start to communicate in a little more gentle tone, people will sort of inherently match that. This also is rooted in our evolutionary history, that we tend to match the people around us in tone.”
This can help take the edge off the situation without using those triggering phrases, which tend to make us even more irritated.
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“It’s, frankly, manipulative. … You’re actually decreasing that elevation,” Martin said. “So speaking in that more gentle voice, staying calm yourself, finding ways to ultimately, if they’re venting, [offer] some minimal encouragers to let them get through that.”
Once there’s less intensity, you’re more likely to have an opportunity to respond.
“I don’t think you want to agree with someone if you don’t agree with them,” said Martin. “But if you can frame a response that seems validating, to let them know ‘you’re obviously really upset about this, let’s talk through some solutions together’ — ways that you can validate their feelings without necessarily validating the cause of their feelings.”
We also discussed the three questions that you should ask yourself before you get angry, what you should do before you send an angry email, and much more.
Need some help with something you’ve been doing wrong? Email us at AmIDoingItWrong@HuffPost.com, and we might investigate the topic in an upcoming episode.
CGC is our private, growth-oriented community for people who want more honesty, courage, support, connection, and meaningful forward movement in their lives – not as some kind of self-improvement grind, but as a richer way to live.
We’re beginning our 10th CGC year on May 1st, and you’re warmly invited to join us.
If you’ve been craving a more grounded and supportive space for your personal growth journey, this may be a very good year to come in.
CGC is especially for people who want to keep growing, but who don’t want to do it alone or only through passive learning. It’s a live, interactive, human space where members bring real life into the room – goals, transitions, stuck points, creative projects, relationship challenges, lifestyle shifts, health intentions, business questions, emotional patterns, and those strange “I know something needs to change, but I don’t know what yet” moments.
That kind of growth is much easier when you have a room of thoughtful, caring, self-aware people to explore with.
A lot of people try to navigate their growth with too much isolation. They read books, watch videos, journal, think, plan, and chat with AI now and then. Those can all be useful, but at some point the inner work often needs a real human relational space to deepen and advance.
It helps to be seen and acknowledged by like-hearted people.
It helps to hear how other people are navigating similar challenges.
It helps to share what’s really going on without having to polish it first.
It helps to be welcomed and received as a vibrant member of a rich social community.
It helps to be in a space where growth is normal – where people aren’t shocked that you’re rethinking your work, your relationships, your habits, your identity, your emotional patterns, your lifestyle, or your whole relationship with life.
That’s a big part of what CGC provides. What’s unusual in the outside world – conscious growth – is totally normal in our space.
CGC is not a therapy group. It’s not a social media group. It’s not a pile of static content. It’s a live community and growth environment with a strong emphasis on participation, connection, honesty, and practical support.
During Year 10, we’ll have several dozen live Zoom calls together, mostly around 90 minutes each. These calls are designed to help members reflect, connect, get unstuck, clarify intentions, share progress, explore meaningful questions, and keep translating insight into real-life movement.
We’ll also continue using our private member forums and CGC portal, so you can stay connected between calls, access courses and resources, and participate at your own pace.
What I especially love about CGC is the range of what members bring into the space. One person may be navigating a career transition. Another may be working on health or fitness. Someone else may be deepening their relationship life, exploring a creative project, or trying to bring more courage and truth into their daily decisions.
The common thread is not that everyone has the same goals.
The common thread is willingness.
Willingness to tell the truth.
Willingness to keep growing.
Willingness to participate.
Willingness to be seen.
Willingness to support others while also receiving support.
That makes a big difference.
CGC tends to work best for people who already have some self-development experience and who are ready for a more interactive, higher-trust environment. You don’t need to be perfect, polished, or constantly productive. You don’t need to have your whole life figured out. But you do need to be willing to show up honestly and engage with the room.
This year we’re making CGC feel even more practical, relational, and alive – with more emphasis on translating meaningful intentions into daily life. More real support. More personalized engagement. More warmth. More meaningful connection. More growth that actually impacts daily life and results.
If that sounds good to you, please take a look at the invitation page here:
Enrollment is open now and closes May 7th at 11:59 PM Pacific time.
CGC Year 10 officially begins May 1st and runs through April 30, 2027. When you join, you’ll get access right away, so you can begin exploring the member portal and community space before the new CGC year begins.
The price is $3333 for new members and for returning past members.
If you’re a renewing member, your renewal price is $1111.
If you feel a clear yes, I’d love to welcome you into the room for Year 10.
And if you read the invitation page and sense that it’s not your space, that’s perfectly okay too. CGC is intentionally not for everyone. It works best when people self-select honestly. That honest self-selection has worked really well for us, helping to create a community of members who want the full, rich, consciously engaged experience.
If some part of you has been wanting a more alive, honest, supportive growth environment – a place where you can keep evolving with thoughtful people who actually care – then I encourage you to listen to that signal.
I recorded this new video today from the heart – one take, no cuts. If your life looks okay on the outside but feels off, hollow, uncertain, or disharmonious on the inside, this might speak to you.
If it resonates, you can learn more about Open here:
I invite you to ponder some inner reflective questions to help you sense how much harmony there is in your life. You can listen within for your answers. Another option is to use these as journaling prompts and write your answers.
Reflective Questions
Do you feel free? Do you enjoy enough freedom in your life?
Would you say that your life feels delightful? Do you have a lot pleasure and happiness in your life? Do you love and appreciate the life you get to live each day?
Do you feel supported by Life? Do you feel that Life takes really good care of you – like it meets all your needs and then some?
Do you feel at peace within yourself? Do you feel at peace with the world you inhabit?
Do you feel that your life fits your heart?
Are you in love?
Do you feel that you’re really good at receiving many different kinds of gifts from Life? Like there’s always something wonderful coming up.
Do you enjoy one or more close friendships – with people who see you, know you, and love you as you are?
Do you feel seen, loved, held, and cared for by Life?
Do you feel like you’re on a really devoted path through life? Do you feel positively engaged with how you’re living? Do you have the right level of stimulation and motivation to enjoy a nice sense of flow?
And… Do you trust Life? Do you trust this Reality? How strong is that trust?
So what came through as you reflected? Are you enjoying a delightfully harmonious flow in your relationship with life? Is there some room for improvement here? Or does it seem unrealistic to feel loved, delighted, happy, positively stimulated, and beautifully supported by Life?
What’s your current truth here?
Cooperating with Life’s Intelligence
To create a really harmonious life, you need Life’s cooperation, don’t you? It’s not really meant to be something you figure out and do all by yourself. Harmony is something you’re invited into – by Life – when Life signals that you’re ready for it.
To cooperate with Life in this way requires that you trust Life. It’s pretty hard to harmonize with something you don’t trust. What you’re really choosing to trust here is the intelligence that flows through Life and Reality.
So what you’re actually seeking to harmonize with is intelligence – more specifically the currents of intelligence that flow through the Reality around you. Creating a harmonious life is a matter of aligning your own best intelligence with the intelligence of the Reality that you inhabit. And this requires being sensitive to those currents of intelligence and paying careful attention to them.
Now when we reach a certain point in life, Life reaches out to invite us into a new level of harmony. Often this involves letting go of an old path that no longer feels harmonious. We feel a disconnect rising up, such as feelings of agitation to want to change something, even if we don’t know exactly what to change.
The Key Skill of Orienting
What actually wants to change here is our orientation towards Life.
Life is an evolving intelligence, and so are we as individuals, and now and then we may fall out of sync, much like two people can fall out of sync during a conversation. This is when an invitation can emerge to reorient ourselves and get back in sync. This kind of orienting is a skill set, and it can be learned, developed, and practiced. It’s a wickedly important skill set for a world that doesn’t sit still and keeps shifting. People who don’t consciously develop and practice these skills are likely to be in for a very rough ride, if they aren’t already succumbing to that now.
How can you assess your current Life orienting skills? Review the reflective questions above. These questions serve to reveal the quality of your orienting skills and how well you’re currently applying them. They help you get a more honest picture of how well you’re cooperating with Life… or if you’ve fallen out of sync. And if you have fallen out of sync, don’t panic. It happens.
Receiving Life’s Gifts
What I can tell you is that this is shift into greater harmony is very connected with a willingness and an openness to receive more from Life without feeling like we have to earn it with effort.
A telltale sign that we’re in harmony and in sync with Life is that Life is very generous with us. In this place of beingness, it feels like Life keeps showering us with gifts. It’s a place of feeling deliciously loved by Life.
Sometimes that shift comes from exhaustion or exasperation with over-stressing and over-working ourselves – like doing hustle culture for a while – until we finally conclude there’s a gotta be a better way to live.
Where this often starts is with a sense of Wonder, so that’s something I want to invite you into right now. I invite you to Wonder: Could it be possible that Life could take much better care of you and make your life feel a whole lot lighter, a whole lot freer, even a whole lot luckier, if you were able to let yourself receive more?
Will you let Life help you create more harmony? Could it be that simple?
Yeah, in a way…
But sometimes it’s hard to let go of old limits in our thinking and allow that help to flow through. That’s our challenge – to say yes when Life offers us a harmony upgrade. That’s a big part of the skill set of orienting – recognizing that yes there is a better way and letting that flow through without blocking, declining, or deflecting it.
Life checks in now and then to see if harmony is really important enough to us to receive it, and if Life sees that we’d rather prioritize something else, it just holds off till we’re ready. And Life is immensely patient with us, waiting and waiting till we’re ready to get back in sync.
Help Is Offered
My own Life has felt really harmonious lately, especially in the past few years. I just turned 55 on April 14, and I feel so light, lively, and energetic. I wouldn’t say that my relationship with Life is easy per se, but it is harmonious – in the sense that one can enjoy the thrill of riding a galloping Fire Horse. 😉
This year I sensed a really interesting invitation from Life flowing through, which was to host a space where I help people improve in this area together – where everyone arrives with the intention to make their lives more harmonious. So we’re on the same page because we all want more harmony. I knew this would be an awesome group energy to engage with, so I said yes to the assignment.
By taking this on, I’m learning a great deal more about harmony and how to sync with Life more consciously too. This has helped me significantly upgrade my own orientation skills and discover more nuances and subtleties within them.
We’re doing this in the form of a live, in person event. It’s called Open. Just that one word. Open.
We’re opening to receiving more. More flow. More freedom. More flexibility. More ease. More lightness. More friendship. More love. More cooperation.
We’re hosting this for three days in Las Vegas on April 28th through 30th, so it’s this month.
Open is an invitation to increase the level of harmony in your life, and to work with like-minded and like-hearted people who want the same. It’s a deep inner journey into a very personal reorientation process.
At Open I’ll guide you through a series of orientation containers, each with a different theme and different skills to practice within. These containers are very thoughtfully and lovingly crafted to help reorient to Wonder. To Intelligence. To Trust. To Freedom. To Embodiment. To Magnetism. To Love. To Friendship. To Pleasure. And more… I want to keep some of these delights a surprise.
So this is intended as an offer of help from Reality. It’s a chance to orient yourself to Life differently.
Not recorded. Not streamed. In-person. This month.
You’ve got to be in the room really feeling it. Your body has to come along. Note that Embodiment is one of our core containers. Open is an experience for your body too, not just your mind and heart.
A Preview – Come Inside the Room
Open is very experiential. It’s not content-based. NOT 3 days of lecture.
As the name suggests, Open is a space of opening into greater harmony – both within yourself and with Life. These arise as a package deal.
Open is a very deep inner journey. And this journey invites you to reorient yourself to Life, specifically to create a lighter and more harmonious relationship with Life where you get to receive a lot more. Think of it like Life offering you its hand and asking if you’d like to be best friends from now on.
You can expect a very warm and welcoming atmosphere. Very compassionate. Very human. Very intimate. Very accepting. We’re not using social pressure. Every exercise is by consent.
I hope you like handpan music because we’ll have some live music with a handpan while you’re doing some reflective exercises.
So we’re creating a very gentle, very yin space that encourages emergence – especially the emergence of new perspectives and new possibilities.
The energy of Open is very warm – but not tame. Open invites you to take a deep and honest look into yourself and your orientation towards Life – and to then translate that into new understanding and new decisions. So Open is also very grounded and practical because harmony is something you live within day to day. In the final segment we’ll spend a good bit of time on integration, so you can start putting into practice what you’ve discovered.
Hence, Open is designed to be a very supportive space to reexamine and then rebuild your overall orientation towards Life. That’s a big deal. It’s meant to be life-changing.
If you’re seeing this invitation, then as a representative of Life – some people have referred to me as the Emissary of the Simulation – I’m personally inviting you to come to Vegas. Let me guide you through this inner journey experience for 3 days at the end of this month.
Join Us in Las Vegas
Open is happening at the New York-New York Hotel in Las Vegas. That’s right on the Las Vegas Strip. It’s a 10-minute ride from the airport. It’s literally on the same street as the airport, right on Tropicana Avenue.
The price is $888. You can think of it as three vertical infinity signs.
I can’t predict how many people will go to Open, but based on our room size, we can accommodate up to about 150 people, so it ought to be a fairly intimate event.
And I want you to know that I’m really pouring my heart into this one – because getting to a place of better harmony with Life has so much to do with dropping into our hearts and getting our mental decisions to really respect our feelings.
If this sounds appealing to you, you can read the full invitation and sign up to join us in Las Vegas at StevePavlina.com/Open.
I hope to see you there. It’s this month, so it’s nearly here already. The close proximity is part of the invitation, so that the people who show up are the ones who feel the most ready to have this kind of experience together. The invitation and the actual experience are meant to be very close in time.
I can tell you it’s going to be a lot of fun too!
Do you want to get to a place of receiving more from life? Life is offering that. Tune in to yourself and see if you’re ready for more harmony and more receiving. I encourage you to trust whatever decision comes up for you.
This is a new, in-person, 3-day experience we’re hosting April 28–30, 2026 in Las Vegas. I’ve been sharing about this for the past few weeks, and now the doors are open, so you can see the full details and sign up if you feel called to join us.
Open isn’t a content-based experience. It’s a shared inner journey focused on harmonizing your relationship with yourself and with Life.
Open is in-person only – not recorded or streamed. We’re prioritizing intimacy.
Registration just opened, and the event begins in two weeks, so this is a short window. The reasons why are shared in the full invitation:
A healthy conversation has a natural rhythm, a give-and-take in which both people feel heard, understood and valued. But with some people, that balance never quite happens.
That’s the case with what experts call “conversational narcissism.”
“Conversational narcissism is a communication style wherein an individual centres themselves in conversations, engages in oneupmanship, fails to ask follow-up questions and has a difficult time maintaining interest in what other people have to say,” Natalie Moore, a licensed marriage and family therapist, told HuffPost.
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A conversational narcissist can leave you feeling drained and like you couldn’t get a word in edgewise. They tend to be inattentive and lack curiosity.
“Whatever you share is quickly met with a more extreme or more compelling version of their own experience,” said Tracy Ross, a licensed clinical social worker specializing in couples and family therapy. “Over time, the conversation stops feeling like an exchange and starts to feel one-sided. It results in leaving an interaction feeling unsatisfied and empty.”
Conversational narcissists don’t necessarily have narcissistic personality disorder, though some may fall somewhere on the narcissism spectrum.
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“It’s also important to note that many of us have been guilty of conversational narcissism from time to time,” said Lauren Maher, a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in anxiety, trauma and narcissistic abuse recovery. “If you notice that you’ve inadvertently done this, take a breath, make sure that you bring the conversation back to the original speaker and follow up by asking them questions about their experience.”
There are also best practices for those who find themselves interacting with a conversational narcissist. Below, experts break down ways you can navigate these situations while protecting your energy and reclaiming your voice.
Acknowledge your feelings ― but try not to take it personally.
“First, acknowledge any feelings that are arising for you ― such as frustration, indignation, anger, disappointment or loneliness,” Moore said. “Engaging in an interaction with someone who is a conversational narcissist can bring up lots of intense feelings, especially if you’re someone who spends effort maintaining balance in conversations who values reciprocity in relationships.”
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“
If I’m grabbing lunch with a friend who tends to over-talk, I might say right at the start, ‘I’ve had such a heavy week and I really need to vent for a few minutes ― is it OK if I go first?’
– Dr. Sue Varma, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at New York University Grossman School of Medicine
Try not to take someone’s conversational narcissism too personally.
“Know that what you’re experiencing has nothing to do with how interesting or valuable you are, but has more to do with the other person’s ability to take an interest in you,” Moore said.
Consider that a conversational narcissist might also be a kind and generous person in other ways.
“Is the person able to celebrate your wins and be happy for you and be there for you in your time of need? That to me is most important. If they are a true, solid, loyal friend, you can and should give them grace.”
Be direct about what you need.
“Keep in mind what your objective is in your communications with this individual,” Moore advised. “If your goal is to be seen, heard and understood, you will probably be frustrated and not get what you want. But if your goal is to communicate something specific, find a pause or an opportunity to interrupt and get straight to the point.”
Take a more efficient, practical approach. Adding a little structure to your conversation can ensure you achieve your goal. Being clear and direct about what you need is crucial.
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“Set the intention,” Varma said. “If I’m grabbing lunch with a friend who tends to over-talk, I might say right at the start, ‘I’ve had such a heavy week and I really need to vent for a few minutes ― is it OK if I go first?’”
Set limits.
“Protect your peace and walk away if the conversation doesn’t become two-sided or beneficial in any way,” said communications consultant and author Amelia Reigstad.
Setting limits around how much you engage and share can help keep intense emotions at bay.
“If you find that a person is not willing to take accountability for their behaviour, or you feel drained, resentful or even a bit ‘used’ after conversations with this person, then this may be a sign that you need to set much stronger boundaries with this person,” Maher said. “This may include excusing yourself from the conversation or setting a time limit for yourself on how long you will participate in the conversation.”
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Dealing with a conversational narcissist requires direct communication and boundaries.
If the conversational narcissist in question is also a fundamentally narcissistic person, you’re better off saving your energy than continuing to engage with them or falling under their control.
“Don’t ‘over-fuel,’” Varma said. “Sometimes, being a ‘great listener’ actually encourages the behaviour. If you’re giving 100% of your focus to someone who isn’t giving it back, it’s OK to lean back, give shorter responses, and politely wrap things up when you’ve hit your limit.”
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Adjust your expectations.
“If the pattern continues, it’s also important to adjust your expectations and protect your own energy,” Ross said. “Not every relationship will offer the kind of mutuality you’re looking for, and recognising that can help you engage more intentionally, rather than leaving interactions feeling depleted.”
Come to terms with what the a conversational narcissist can actually provide.
“Manage your expectations,” said therapist and “Disarming The Narcissist” author Wendy Behary. “You’re not going to get a whole lot back in the way of a real, reciprocal conversation ― the real give and take of ‘I see you, I feel you. I sense you. You see me, you feel me. You sense me.’”
Practice empathic confrontation.
“I think if it’s someone who’s really intimate in your life, you may want to use the beautiful strategy of empathic confrontation,” Behary said. “Say, ’I know you’re very excited about what you want to share with me, but I have to tell you, I’m feeling a little bit forgotten in what I just shared with you. I feel like we moved very quickly from my experience into your experience, and I just want to be honest with you because you’re my dear friend, or because you’re my husband or whoever.”
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With an acquaintance, you might choose to simply set limits or avoid them, but a more direct approach could be preferable for someone with whom you’re more intimately involved.
“Empathically confront them and hold them accountable for this very self-absorbed way of communicating,” Behary said.
Use gentle pivots to redirect the conversation.
“I’m a big fan of the ‘gentle pivot,’” Varma said. “You can say, ‘I love hearing about your trip, but before we move on, I really wanted to finish telling you about my new project.’ Believe it or not, the other person may genuinely be interested in hearing what you have to say and want to know what you’ve been up to.”
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A person who is not narcissistic will usually reflect on their behavior, take accountability, and try to make more space for you in future conversations.
– Lauren Maher, licensed marriage and family therapist
You can “reclaim the ball,” so to speak, in a way that still protects your energy.
“Re-direct the conversation back to you ― ‘Thanks for that, great point, however, I’d love to share my perspective,’” Reigstad said.
Humour is another way to get a word in edgewise. Make a playful comment or joke to ease the tension of this dynamic.
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“If you find yourself regularly interacting with a conversational narcissist, you can first try lightly interjecting with something along the lines of ‘Hang on… I’d love to finish that thought,’” Maher said.
“You can start by saying things like, ‘I’d like to talk about something else for a while,’ ‘Our conversations are starting to feel very unbalanced,’ or ‘I feel like when I’m speaking you’re not really listening. Can we talk about that?’”
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With time and accountability, the habit of conversational narcissism can shift.
“A person who is not narcissistic will usually reflect on their behaviour, take accountability, and try to make more space for you in future conversations,” Maher said.
The key is to be honest about your feelings and the patterns you’re noticing, but in a relational way.
“Rather than criticising, speak from your own experience,” Ross said. “‘I notice that when I share something important, I feel more supported when you stay with what I’m saying, rather than shifting to your own experience.’ Being clear about what you need ― more listening, more presence ― can sometimes create an opening for change, especially if the person isn’t aware of how they come across.”
I’ve advanced the design and shaping of the new Open event (April 28-30, 2026 in Las Vegas), so I can share more about it now. Let me tell you the event’s core focus and purpose.
The magnetic core of Open is very simple. It’s harmony.
Inner harmony within yourself. Outer harmony with your reality.
That’s a big ask in today’s world, is it not?
Harmony Made Real
During my 20s I discovered how easy it was to unbalance my life by elevating certain pursuits at the expense of others, such as by overworking and under-playing.
Freedom, growth, and creativity mattered to me a great deal, so I spent years figuring out how to live in alignment with these values. Now that I’m in my 50s (about to turn 55 this month), I feel very grateful that my younger self put in the effort to make this work on a practical level. It wasn’t easy but it was doable.
Another challenge was figuring out how to attune to abundance and resourcefulness. That was a nice success that harmonized well with my other priorities. Eventually I created the Deep Abundance Integration course to guide people through a 30-day deep dive on that. It’s been rewarding to watch people go through this kind of shift, which really isn’t about money – it’s about whether we’re ready to trust life more. Abundance is something we receive as a gift from life when we’re ready for it, not something we need to chase.
One of the most beautiful gains was infusing my life with lots of love. My wife Rachelle and I have been together 16+ years now, and we’re very much in love with each other. Our wedding anniversary is tomorrow. I’ve had the good fortune of spending most of my adult life in two very loving, long-term relationships. My first marriage ended many years ago, but I never stopped harmonizing with love.
Lately I’ve been practicing loving everyone. A powerful realization was that I don’t need anyone’s permission to love them. I can feel love in any direction I want, and it turns out that harmonizing with love in lots of different directions has been really good and healthy for me.
I also worked on harmonizing with growth, pleasure, play, wonder, embodiment, exploration, contribution, and more. Inviting everything to come in together was even more helpful than trying to do it piecemeal. Ask for it all.
This vibes-first approach has served me well for decades. To this day I still find it crucial to run my life by making vibrational decisions first, such as by choosing cooperation over competition or by choosing intelligence over disappointment. That works so well across all areas of life. The net result is a very satisfying, pleasing, and pleasurable life.
If this were impractical, I expect my life would have fallen apart many years ago, but it’s been the opposite. In recent years the harmony has grown even stronger and deeper. This wasn’t entirely of my doing on a personal level. Much of it came through as a series of gifts, each arriving when I was ready to receive it.
As I worked on harmonizing different areas of my life even more, I found that this harmonizing process began taking on a life of its own. I sensed a deeper intelligence working cooperatively with me. I created the Submersion course to help others explore this way of engaging with life too.
This isn’t about working harder or pushing more. My life is the opposite of hustle culture. I enjoy plenty of stimulating action, but this is harmoniously balanced with other vibes that support my best life as well. Rachelle and I started this week by getting massages first thing on Monday morning, so we began our workweek with relaxation and pleasure. Then we hosted a Zoom call together in Conscious Growth Club – about the intelligence of embodiment. See how nicely that fits?
What opens up the flow of such gifts from life? What invites greater harmony to surface? There are many answers to this, but one of those keys is trust.
In order to really trust this reality, we have to trust that reality is intelligent, not just random, chaotic, or rules-based. And then as we trust that reality is intelligent, another big question is how to engage with this intelligence and harmonize with it. That’s been a huge part of my life journey for many years. This awareness is infused into how I live every day now. Each day, multiple times a day, I seek to orient to this intelligence and engage with it cooperatively. And I dare say that it’s been taking really good care of me lately.
The Limits of Personal Effort
A while back I discovered that there’s a limit as to how harmonious my life could become through personal effort. I sense that’s because effort itself tends to be disharmonious. If we try too hard to harmonize with life, that eventually becomes counter-productive. Hence if we really want to create and live truly harmonious lives in cooperation with life’s intelligence, there comes a point where we must relinquish effort. This involves letting go and releasing whatever prevents us from receiving more gifts. I’ve had a lot of lessons about letting go of old limits.
At some point, greater harmony asks for relaxation, trust, receptivity, and surrender into a deeper organizing intelligence. I would not call this a leap of faith. For me it’s been a journey of sensing and attuning. The next steps reveal themselves as I’m ready for them.
In recent years I’ve especially been paying attention to when life seems to be inviting me to experience or explore something new or to engage with reality differently. And wow does it do that a lot. I just had to open myself to notice this more.
I couldn’t have engineered my relationship with Rachelle into being. I would not have asked for a long-distance, international relationship with a Canadian. No dating app would have brought this through. This relationship has been such a huge gift. Every day it’s a gift. We’re so very good for each other – so much love, caring, passion, fun, affection, adventure, laughter, and more. We are each other’s best friends too. I love being married to my best friend.
My life has been awash in daily “I love you’s” for many years now, not just literally but also energetically. I feel so richly supported by life. And I must admit that a lot of this wasn’t of my doing, at least not in terms of pursuing and achieving goals like you might see someone do in a movie.
So many of the great turning points in my life happened by way of invitation. I couldn’t always pinpoint what specifically triggered these invites to come through other than to acknowledge that they showed up when I was receptive enough and ready to receive them.
I see a spine of upgrades throughout my life taking the form of invitations coming through at the right times. An invitation to go to an event. To join a group. To do my first ayahuasca ceremony. Sometimes it took courage to say yes, and I was richly rewarded when I leaned in and trusted life more. Part of me could sense when an invitation was important for my life path.
Some invitations were internal. I felt an inner sense of wonder about something new, leaned in with some exploration, and gave it room to breathe. What would it be like to spend 30 days in a row going to Disneyland? To have loving sex every day for four months? To feel an urge to travel and be on a plane within a day or two? Such experiences are wonderful and also mind-blowing. They reveal so much.
Now I understand that I can simply let life say “I love you” without my having to earn it. That’s a frequency of beingness that we can allow to come into our lives when we’re ready for it. This is where much greater harmonies start to emerge, whereby each aspect of life begins to fit together like puzzle pieces.
Even when I see parts of the outer world delving into what looks chaotic, I still see the intelligence flowing through it. This life is a place of exploration and lots of lessons, and we’re all engaging with different aspects of it. It’s all meaningful.
As I see people exploring very different frequency ranges, I feel increasingly clear about my own – a path infused with love, harmony, intelligence, cooperation, and delight.
Your Invitation to Open
Open is a space designed to support the emergence of greater harmony in your life. It’s a space of inviting, allowing, and receiving. At Open you’ll be guided through a sequence of containers to help you open to the flow of life’s intelligent cooperation and support. Inside each of these containers, I’ll take you through a unique inner journey of reflective exercises and experiences to help you align your life with greater harmony and intelligence.
The field of Open is intentionally shaped to help you notice disharmonies, release friction, and come into a more harmonious relationship with yourself, with other people, and with life.
Imagine being in a room where everyone holds the intention and desire to make their lives – as well as the lives of everyone else there – more harmonious. It’s a really beautiful space to inhabit, a space of receptivity, positive anticipation, and delightful and intelligent gifts from the flow of life’s intelligence.
I feel very ready to serve as a guide into this way of engaging with life for those who are open to receiving it. I’ve been receiving clear signals that the time is right to put out this invitation. For now, sense what this awakens in you. Some doors don’t open through force. They open through readiness.
On April 28-30 we’re hosting our first live, in-person gathering in 10 years. Yes, it really has been that long.
I’ve been wanting to re-infuse live events back into this space for years now. We almost got back into this several years ago… then COVID. So I waited for the timing to feel right. I told Reality to let me know, and it did. Now I know the time is right to start sharing about this. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that today is the first day of Spring. It’s been a wondrous journey to reach this point.
The event is called Open.
Super simple. Just Open.
Open is a space where we gather in person, connect (or reconnect for those who’ve gathered before), and immerse ourselves in a deep inner journey over three days together.
Open is very yin. Gentle. Receptive. Warm. Loving. Kind. Generous. Rejuvenating. Spacious.
Open is where you come to open.
Open to new possibilities. To a new relationship with life. To new friends.
Open to a life of wonder, harmony, and intelligence. Open to centeredness. Open to flow. Open to balance. Open to pleasure. Open to delight. Open to ease.
Whether you come to Open from a place of desperation, perspiration, or inspiration, you’ll be met with open-hearted kindness.
Yintelligence
Open is a space of emergence, revelation, and discovery. It’s a fusion of many different energies with a common theme.
Open is where you birth your answer to this one simple question: What next?
What wants to arise next in your life? What wants to emerge into full bloom? What wants to loosen, ease, and release?
What energies want to circulate richly through your life? Which ones are ready to be flushed?
Who are you becoming? What’s your next chapter? What wants to crystallize? What is your life about now?
Open has many facets to it, all of them oriented toward deeper self-discovery and inner harmony. The core of Open is a field of intelligence that we create and work within together.
I’ll be your guide and host. Rachelle will be there too.
Open Energies
These are the main energies we’ll be working with at Open:
Wonder & Receive
Orient & Center
Sense & Open
Loosen & Ease
Circulate & Rejuvenate
Invite & Allow
Arise & Emerge
Clarify & Crystallize
Integrate & Advance
We’ll be working intimately with these energies throughout Open, stepping in and out of them as we go. They’re infused into Open in fractal ways.
Open is here to help you connect the dots from your highest vibrational decisions to your daily actions. Harmonize your human life with the vibes that are most you.
Some Details
Open is happening in Las Vegas, April 28-30, 2026. That’s Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
Open is entirely new. It has never existed before. It’s a one-of-a-kind experience.
Open is only in-person, not streaming or recorded. It’s meant to be a space of some intimacy.
Open welcomes all who feel called to attend. It’s $888 USD.
Once the venue agreement is settled and signed, I’ll happily share the specific location details. For now I’ll just say that we’ll be on the Las Vegas Strip.
In the days ahead, I’ll share more details and open sign-ups. I’ll also be writing and posting new articles and videos on themes we’ll be exploring together there. There’s plenty of time to decide, so for now just sit with this initial invitation and let yourself sense and feel out what wants to emerge next for you.
Open begins in 39 days. More than enough time to feel your way into it.
I invite you to open to the possibility of being in the room with us at Open. Let this fully emerge into your reality if it’s meant to be. You may have some surprises ahead.
