Category Archives: Relationships

Join Conscious Growth Club by May 3rd

Posted on by
Conscious Growth Club

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

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

What Is Conscious Growth Club?

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

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

CGC is an annual membership that includes:

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

Consistency Is Key

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learn More and Join CGC

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

Enrollment Is Open Through May 3rd

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

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

CGC Capped at 125 Members for Year 6

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

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

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

Share Button

Why Guild Has Such an Immersive Format

Posted on by

The new Guild course on creating an aligned and empowering social circle kicks off tomorrow, April 1, 2022 at 9am Pacific time… so about 21 hours from the time I’m posting this.

I’m really looking forward to the experience. A solid month of daily calls with the delightful members of this community is a real treat. 🙂

If you haven’t already seen the invitation video for Guild, I encourage you to watch it now. It’s only 22 minutes (11 minutes if you watch at double speed – click the gear icon to set the speed). It’s not a salesy video – rather it shares the intentions and purpose of the course and why certain decisions were made.

[embedded content]

Guild’s Intensive Format

Guild’s format is the most intensive format we’ve ever used for a course.

Isn’t it a bit over-the-top to be hosting 2-3 hour Zoom calls every day for a whole month, including weekends?

That’s 60-90 hours of time together – about 5x as much time as we’d normally spend together in a 3-day workshop. By comparison our audio courses are typically 15-25 hours of material.

I’m well aware that this format takes time, and I know that not everyone is willing to accept this kind of invitation. Even though the recordings are included for everyone too, this course is really intended as a live experience because of all the interactivity and practice we’ll be doing together.

Moreover, the price for this course is higher than the launch prices for previous courses, which will further reduce the number of people willing to sign up for it. But I think the bigger commitment for most people is going to be the time factor.

That means we’re likely to have a smaller group for this course than for our previous ones.

Our previous courses all had 300+ people in them. Guild has 52 signed up so far. There’s always a surge of last-day sign-ups, so it’s hard to guess where that will land. It wouldn’t surprise me if we double it, but size-wise my expectations are modest.

Why This Format?

I choose this format because I genuinely feel that it’s the right choice for the types of changes and upgrades people want to make in this area of their lives. I knew that it would likely mean fewer people enrolling, but I want the experience to be a match for the people who are really ready for it.

In reviewing people’s feedback about what they wanted, it became clear that helping people improve their social lives is going to take some real investment of time, energy, and focus. This is one of the hardest areas of life to upgrade, and many people have some entrenched stuckness.

I recognize this pattern all too well because I had some entrenched stuckness when I was in my first marriage. My social circle reinforced that stuckness. Even when I could see the situation for what it was, moving beyond it was extremely difficult – with repeated failed attempts. My social circle acted like glue, holding me in a place I didn’t want to be. If I shared what I actually wanted to experience, people would respond as if I was threatening the status quo.

During those years I read some books on relationship transitions such as Uncoupling and Coming Apart, which helped me understand why social transitions are so difficult. I also learned how these transitions actually happen when they succeed.

This might sound strange to say, but the truth is that usually people don’t succeed in transforming their social lives, even when they consciously try to do so.

When a significant social transformation does occur, it may be more accurate to say that people are rescued.

I’m not saying that some outside hero swoops in to save them per se. What normally happens when people undergo social transitions is that they start engaging with a different group of people on the side. Basically they form a new reference group – a group that gets a chance to know them as someone other than their old self.

This new reference group helps people construct a new self-image, especially an image that cannot fit into the old reality. And eventually the old reality breaks.

Here’s another simple truth. In order for people to significantly improve their social lives, they usually have to change jobs or businesses. If they aren’t experiencing what they want socially, their work relationships are almost certain to be part of the problem. This can be very hard for people to accept. From the outside looking in, this observation tends to be obvious because your work has a major effect on your social life. From the inside looking out, hardly anyone wants to acknowledge this.

Creating a New Social Reality

People don’t just transition out of a stuck social situation. Almost always they need something to transition to. They don’t just run away from what isn’t working. They don’t leap off a cliff. They leap to a new ledge.

Was it a coincidence that the same year I started doing in-person workshops was the same year that my first wife and I separated? No, those events were surely linked. Before that workshop we had no plans to break up. Three weeks after the 2009 workshop, we were living in different homes.

The need and the desire for change had been present for a long time. What was needed was the catalyst. Engaging with the workshop community was enough to provide a clear view of a new social reality. Once that new reality was seen, it couldn’t be unseen, and it wasn’t consistent with the old social reality.

Future workshops had similar effects on some people. Multiple people quit their jobs or broke off misaligned relationships during or immediately after attending such events.

These are exceptional cases though. For most people it takes more time to wedge them out of their stuckness.

The saddest part of doing transformational work is watching people have peak experiences that they love and then backslide into their old world of stuckness. Why do people backslide? Usually it’s because they return to the same old social reality.

Whenever I’ve had a nice leap forward in business or lifestyle, I can see that it was strongly linked with a change in my social circle. The same year I got into blogging and speaking and went through a career change, I also moved to a new city at the start of that year. I also joined Toastmasters about 6 months before I started my blog and made lots of new local friends. I completely changed my social circle, both in-person and online.

It’s fair to say that if you want to change your life, you must also change your social circle. Otherwise your old social circle will cement you right where you are. That includes your social media friends.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to eject all the people you know and start fresh. Sometimes you just need to reconfigure what you already have. But even in those cases, it’s normally an outside catalyst that initiates the reconfiguration.

Guild as a Catalyst

So the Guild course is partly intended to serve as a catalyst for people who need it to play that role for them. It’s an opportunity to experience a different social circle for a month. In that new social reality, you don’t have to be the same old self that you’ve been for years. You can explore showing up as someone closer to the person you want to be. You can even show up as a different person each day if you want and see what it’s like to engage with growth-oriented people as a new version of you.

Other people in your life may hold you fixed in the world of all your past baggage. But a new community has no need to cement you where you’ve been. We can help you return to exploration mode, reminding you that more is possible.

In fact, divergent exploration will be a big part of the Guild experience. It’s an invitation to stretch who you think you are by releasing your grip on how others expect you to be.

In this setting you no longer have to stay rooted to your old social world of expectations.

Guild is a space where you have the permission and the invitation to explore aspects of yourself that haven’t been getting enough expression.

I can tell you from many years of experience that this community is very encouraging and supportive of change. People tend to talk each other into (rather than out of) growth experiences. We question the status quo and lean into the winds of change.

What is it like to have a social circle like that? You’re invited to see for yourself what it’s like by exploring with us together for a full month.

Just be aware that accepting this kind of invitation may very well crack open the weak parts of your old social world. That includes a misaligned job or a misaligned relationship. It surely takes some strength of character to deliberately welcome such experiences. I know how hard it can be to have to tell someone that you care about, “This isn’t working for me anymore.” If you may be facing something similar, I feel for you. But on the other side of the transition, everyone says, “It was really tough, but it was worth it.”

That said, Guild isn’t meant to be a rough or scary experience. We’re going to make it as gentle, caring, and mutually supportive as we can. There will be a lot of CGC members going through the course too, and I know they’ll help us create a truly beautiful heartspace inside.

Trust

I would say that one of the greatest catalysts for change is trust.

In order to make a big change, you have to trust that something better awaits you on the other side.

So the main reason for this intensive 30-day format is actually because of trust. For many people it takes time to build up enough trust – in themselves, in other people, in life, etc – to feel ready to shift into a new reality.

This is doubly true when it comes to our social lives. People can’t just leave old relationships behind, even if those relationships are severely misaligned. Some people will even stay in abusive relationships for years if they don’t trust that something better awaits them.

In order to transition, people need to see enough of a new reality that they can trust. They need to see the new ledge they’re stepping onto.

A new social circle helps to build this trust. You could say that it helps to restore trust that was lost. When people no longer trust that their old social circles will support them in the ways they want to be supported, a new reference group must play that role for them.

And that’s the role that Guild is intended to play. It’s an invitation to restore your trust in life – that this is indeed a reality in which you have the freedom to reinvent yourself. And when you do undergo such a transition, you will land in a space of support, not abandonment.

So I invite you to think of the Guild course (and the community you’ll find inside) as your launch pad and your landing pad for the next phase of your life. Our role is to help you build trust and clarity with that next phase, so you can fully welcome it in.

We begin at 9am on Friday, April 1st. Will you join us? ❤️

Share Button

Guild Course Is Now Open for Enrollment

Posted on by

Our new Guild deep dive course on social alignment has launched, and many people have already signed up. I invite you to join if you’re interested in upgrading your social skills, social circle, and relationship life. You can watch the invitation video to learn about the course here:

Guild Course

The main purpose of Guild is to help you make major upgrades to your social life. There are 5 core transformations that we’ll be working on together:

  1. Enjoy rich and dynamic relationships with abundant growth-oriented friends.
  2. Upgrade from shallow or fragmented connections to deep, full-range friendships.
  3. Overcome outreach fatigue and social malaise to attract relationships that energize you.
  4. Merge your character growth and social growth with a personal guild that helps you advance.
  5. Build your social bandwidth and capacity to experience free-flowing social abundance.

So much of life’s abundance flows to us socially. Money… loving relationships… business opportunities… fun invitations… adventurous experiences… The more aligned your social circle is with the life you want to live, the more easily such invitations will flow to you.

If you aren’t already enjoying a nice flow of abundance in other areas of life, it’s probably because you have too much friction in your social circle. If that’s your situation, join us for Guild, and let’s work on correcting that together.

Here’s our group intention for Guild, which I invite you to hold with us:

In an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all, I intend and invite a beautifully aligned, growth-oriented, and mutually appreciative social circle to flow into my life. I intend positive results and prosperous journeys for the other participants of this deep dive as well – past, present, and future.

Delivered Live on Zoom April 1-30, 2022

We’re delivering the entire Guild course live in April 2022. Every day from April 1 to April 30 at 9am Pacific time, I’ll host a live Zoom call for all Guild course members. These calls will include direct instruction, small group exercises, open sharing and discussion, a co-creative segment, and Q&A. You’ll have the option – but not the obligation – to immediately practice what we teach on the calls.

I encourage you to treat this as a special 30-day challenge to identify and fix alignment problems in your social life. Day by day for 30 days straight, you’ll invest in practical upgrades and improvements to make your social and relationship life better and better.

This is a one-time opportunity. We’re doing this in April 2022, and we’re starting in less than 48 hours, so it’s now or never. Where else will you get the chance to invest in such a purposeful experience?

All of the calls will be recorded, and you’ll get the recordings too. Each recording will be published the same day as the live call, so if you miss any live calls, you can easily use the recorded version to keep pace.

If you’d like to learn more about the course, see the Guild invitation page, which will give you all the details. I’d recommend watching the invitation video on that page to see if the course interests you. That should give you a good idea of what the course is about, along with extra details about the changes we’ll be working on together.

I hope you’ll join us for this one – it’s going to be a fun, immersive, and rewarding deep dive into the world of social skills, social alignment, trust, friendship, intimacy, and more.

Hugs! ❤️

Share Button

Slap Or No Slap, Did Jada Really Need Will Smith To ‘Defend Her Honour’?

Posted on by
Reply

Just moments after it happened, Chris Rock knew his altercation with Will Smith at this year’s Oscars was going to make headlines, calling it “the greatest night in the history of television”.

For those yet to watch the clip, Rock made a joke at the expense of Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, when he said he was “looking forward to seeing GI Jane 2”.

Rock was apparently referencing the actress’ shaved head, which is a result of the hair loss condition, alopecia. Seconds later, Smith climbed onto the stage, slapped Rock and said: “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth.”

Some have excused Smith’s actions, saying he was simply “defending his wife’s honour” – but that phrase in itself has left others feeling uncomfortable.

Most of us will agree that there’s other ways to stand up for someone you love without resulting to physical violence. But it also raises the question: do women still need their “honour” defended by a man?

Plenty of people have praised the actor for stepping in to “defend” his wife.

But others have highlighted that Jada Pinkett Smith is a grown woman and perfectly capable of defending herself if she chooses to.

Jada Pinkett Smith arrives on the red carpet before the 2022 Oscars ceremony.

Future Publishing via Getty Images

Jada Pinkett Smith arrives on the red carpet before the 2022 Oscars ceremony.

Later in the evening, Smith won the Best Actor award for his portrayal of Richard Williams, the father of Venus and Serena Williams, in the biopic King Richard.

In his acceptance speech, he apologised to the Academy and his fellow nominees for his behaviour, adding: “I look like the crazy father, just like what they said about Richard Williams. But love will make you do crazy things.”

But his words only sparked further criticism.

A lot of people agree that both men were in the wrong in this scenario, calling out toxic masculinity on either side.

But one thing is clear: the headlines this morning are all focused on Chris Rock and Will Smith. The woman at the heart of this story, Jada Pinkett Smith, has been erased in all the drama.

Share Button

Guild Course Update

Posted on by

I finished working out the details for the upcoming Guild course on social alignment, so now I can give you a crisper update on that, including when we’ll get started.

We’ll be opening the doors for people to enroll early next week. I’d say by Tuesday. The course will officially begin one week from today, on Friday, April 1st, and it will run for 30 days straight.

Format-wise it’s a bit of a hybrid that combines the daily live lesson experience of Deep Abundance Integration with the social interactivity of the Amplify group calls. So it will be like an intensive 30-day challenge for anyone who wants to do it live.

Every day for 30 days in a row, from April 1 through April 30, I’ll be hosting a live Zoom call at 9am Pacific time. Each call will go for about 2-3 hours and will have a structured format that includes instruction, breakout rooms for interactive practice, Q&A, open sharing, and more.

The core theme of the course is creating and enjoying an aligned social circle. Each day we’ll chip off a piece of this to work on together, exploring a wide variety of subtopics.

Near the end of each call, we’ll have a co-creative segment to invite and consider suggestions for what to cover on the next day’s call. Then we’ll be able to pre-announce each day’s topic approximately 21 hours in advance. That way people who want to be selective can decide whether the next day’s topic appeals to them enough to attend live, or if they’d prefer to wait for the recording.

All of these calls (but not the breakout room segments) will be recorded, and each recording will be published the same day as the live lesson. Recordings will be streamable in your browser and also downloadable. We won’t be adding text transcripts of the lessons since those just don’t come out well for live calls; we’ve only included those for audio courses.

Every part of this experience is optional. You can choose to have an intense all-in experience by attending every call live. Lots of people did that with DAI and loved sharing the journey day by day – in fact I was impressed by how many people showed up live every day. I even grew a beard for those 30 days as some people may recall.

Alternatively, you can take your time and go through the recordings at whatever pacing you want since you get to keep those indefinitely. Or you can mix and match – do some calls live and enjoy the recordings for the rest.

All the breakout room practice portions are by consent. You can dive in and participate, or you can skip those parts and grab a snack instead. Totally your choice. Every session is an invitation, so nothing is forced, and there won’t be any pressure to do anything you don’t want to explore at this time.

Additionally there will be some extra bonuses to help you with ongoing practice and reinforcement.

The price for the full 30 days will be $497 USD. For Conscious Growth Club members, it’s included as part of their membership. There won’t be a launch discount for this course since the main incentive to sign up by April 1st is if people want to participate in the live experience. The long-term price for the recorded version will be the same.

I’m pricing this as low as I think would be sensible, so we attract people who are really committed to sharing in a major social exploration together. Since this will be a very social course, I want to make sure that we have a good base of very growth-oriented people who truly want to upgrade their social lives. I also don’t want to price it too high since I think it’s better if we have more people for you to engage with on the live calls. That’s better for the co-creative aspect. This price feels more than fair to me, especially for 60-90 hours of live engagement together.

Last year’s 3-day Octo Intensive workshop was also $497, and the Guild experience is going to be around 5-6x as long in terms of our time together. Guild is surely going to be rich in ideas and insights, but I also want to maintain an easy-going pacing that gives us lots of space to share, connect, crack jokes, and explore divergently too.

Like we did last year, I’ll be giving everyone the option to credit the full price of the course towards a CGC membership. CGC opens for new members once per year, always in the last week of April, and our CGC year begins on May 1st. We’ve got about a month to go in Year 5, so that will be the start of Year 6.

This year I expect we’ll open CGC for new members roughly from April 25 through May 1st. Since it started in 2017, CGC has always been $1997 per year, and we’re keeping that the same for 2022. So if you do the Guild course first, you’ll be able to join CGC this year for $1500 more. This type of offer was very popular last year, with dozens of people flowing into CGC from the Amplify course. We attracted some really great and active members, which is the main reason I want to do it again this year. I think such an interactive course is a good way to give people a preview of what the CGC community is like as well, especially since there will be many CGCers on the Guild calls.

I’m excited. This is going be a lot of fun for those who choose to engage with it. :grinning:

Here’s some extra info about how I make format choices for our courses, in case you’re curious about that.

With each course topic that we do, I like to stay in divergent space about the exact offer / invitation till the format crystallizes. I always get a signal from reality when it’s time to converge and flow into launch mode, and then everything progresses pretty quickly after that point. Before that point, I’m awash in pondering and synthesizing all the feedback I receive about what people want to work on together.

One thing I’ve noticed again and again is that I can’t effectively force reality to converge before it’s ready. I could try to converge at the personal level by my own volition, but it never feels right to do so until I receive that timing ping from reality. The greater floodgates of support from reality won’t be forthcoming unless we get synched up, and when that synching happens isn’t really up to me. I feel like it has more to do with some collective timing coordination that happens in the background, and I have to wait for reality to let me know when it’s ready. It’s like catching a wave on a surfboard. When I feel that rising wave of energy, I know it’s time to advance from private development mode to public invitation mode. And that wave showed up this week.

I don’t entirely feel that the format choices are made by me. It’s more like I bounce ideas off reality and wait for a very clear YES in response. I’ve explored different formats and creative forms over the years, so I’m very flexible format-wise. I like to just tune in to and listen for what kind of format wants to come through, especially as I get clearer about the themes and changes people want to explore.

Whenever I ponder different formats for a course, I get a feel for whether they’re truly right or not. I sometimes run through several different partial match ideas till I feel that the format really does fit the purpose. I’m basically asking, Is this a match for the collective intentional energy?

This 30-day format may seem intense to some. It does to me too – in a good and appealing way. But it really feels like it fits the collective intentional energy too. It makes sense to me that the transformations that people asked for would match up well with a socially immersive approach this time. Some people shared that they have some major social misalignments in their lives, so I think an immersive approach will serve them well. We may need to generate a lot of energy and mutual support to help people get unstuck.

I do feel there are other ways we could do this course, but they wouldn’t match up as well with that collective intentional energy. I did give serious consideration to doing this as another audio course, perhaps with a smaller number of live calls, but that just doesn’t fit the needs and desires that people expressed. I think we’ll be better served by diving into this experience together.

The COVID situation has apparently reduced many people’s social bandwidth and capacity. I just read an article about that this morning – how people who used to socialize a lot but contracted their social lives due the pandemic are trying to open up more this year, but they’re feeling really drained when they try. It’s like they have to start over to build up their social stamina again. It’s much like not exercising for a couple of years and then trying to get back into it. It may take several weeks to train back up again. So here’s the invitation to train up with a 30-day intensive. Consider this a timely invitation to get back into the social game.

There are a lot of people in my audience, outside of CGC, who have zero growth-oriented friends. They have contacts and colleagues, but those relationships lack depth and intimacy. Some are dealing with significant social trust wounds. A lot of people are experiencing some kind of social withdrawal, yet deep down they really want to change that. It just seems like it takes an extraordinary amount of energy to make these shifts alone. So don’t do it alone. Join us and let’s do this together. There’s power in aligning with likeminded people to do transformational work together.

With these kinds of transformations, there’s some strong inertia to overcome for many people. It’s going to take a lot of intention and energy and collective will to help people (who want to) to shift gears and experience what life could be like with more aligned social flow. There are a lot of thorny issues to collectively untangle.

I think this will be the most co-creative course we’ve ever done because, like with DAI, we’re going to come up with the subtopics day by day, always with the intention of helping people get what they want and need from the experience. It’s definitely not going to be a dogmatic course but rather an exploratory and experiential one. There will be lots of sharing and testing of ideas as people discover what works and what doesn’t work for them as social beings. Part of the big picture intention here is to create a psychologically safe space where people can test and explore and stretch themselves in ways that society never gave them the space or permission to do.

I also know that this format won’t be perfectly practical for some people. The timing, intensity, frequency, or duration may not be a fit for their lifestyles. I’m doing what I can to make it as adaptable as possible. This includes recording all the sessions and posting them the same day, like we did with DAI. If people are pressed for time, they can watch the recordings at 2X speed. Since the breakout rooms aren’t recorded, that shaves time off the recorded versions too.

We’ll also be publishing 1-page lesson summaries in an evolving Guild Summary Guild, also on the same days the live lessons occur. So if people just want to skim the key points on busy days, they can do that.

There’s the option for people to approach this as a 30-day challenge by attending every call live, and some 30-day challenges require significant but temporary lifestyle adjustments and possibly some family discussions. It’s up to each person to decide how much they want to prioritize the live session experience relative to potentially competing priorities. There’s no right or wrong choice there – just what’s right for you and the people you care about, right now.

I’m fully committed to facilitating this experience for those who would appreciate it. I’ll bring my best self to this physically, mentally, and emotionally. It feels like a beautiful time to explore this with you.

I’ll put up the official invitation page early next week, but for now I wanted to give you a heads up with the key details, so you can start thinking about whether you want to do this. The Guild course journey will begin at 9am sharp (Pacific time) on April 1, 2022. It’s going to be a fun ride. :grinning:

Share Button

5 Keys to Social Alignment

Posted on by

What is an aligned social circle? When people ponder improving their social lives, what do they actually want?

For the past two weeks, I’ve been reading and taking detailed notes on feedback from some questions that I posed to my email list. I asked people to tell me about their social circles, including what’s working and what isn’t working for them – and especially how they would like to improve or upgrade their social lives and friendship circles.

I spent days pulling out patterns and compressing the key issues to figure out what people really want in this area of life. Eventually I condensed it down to 5 core upgrades that people want to make, and I’m happy to share this now – because these are the changes we’ll be exploring together in the upcoming Guild course.

1. Growth-oriented friends

  • Enjoy dynamic relationships with people who actively seek growth opportunities.
  • Co-invest in helping each other grow, and celebrate your gains together.
  • Connect with people who care about you and who are willing and able to challenge you.
  • Build intimacy with a growth-oriented primary partner.
  • Embrace people who introduce you to fresh ideas and possibilities.
  • Mastermind with your friends on creative and business projects.

The most obvious change that people want to see is more close friendships (and romantic relationships) with others who are very growth-oriented. They want friends who are taking action and at least trying to upgrade their lives. This was so important that some people said they’d still appreciate more growth-oriented friends even if the values alignment wasn’t perfect in other areas.

People expressed disappointment with social circles that are too static, inflexible, and complacent. While some stability is appreciated, many people crave more flow, movement, and dynamism in their friendship circles. Otherwise they feel like they’re being sucked down into a fixed mindset by osmosis.

Multiple people also said they don’t want to be surrounded by those who always agree with them. They want people to challenge them, not necessarily confrontationally, but with exposure to new ideas and new ways of thinking. People want to see more boldness and courage in their friends, and they’re eager to receive some stimulating invites into mutual growth experiences.

2. Full range friendships

  • Replace shallowness with range and depth.
  • Replace mono-dimensional compatibility with multifaceted compatibility (more value per person).
  • Replace lukewarm relationships (“friendly but not friends”) with warm, heart-centered ones.
  • Enjoy holistic body-mind-heart-spirit connections (connect mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually).
  • Invest in like-minded people with similar priorities, values, and interests.
  • Enjoy multiple activities, experiences, and modes of connecting with the same people.

Many people reported struggling with overly compartmentalized relationships. They may have multiple social circles in different spheres such as work, family, online friends, and hobbies, but within each sphere they only connect on a few dimensions.

A common desire was to experience more range and depth in relationships. People don’t want to feel limited to some version of small talk in all of their interactions. They find it dull and tedious to be limited to surface-level communication.

People are busy, and they recognize that they only have time and energy to connect with so many friends and contacts. They don’t necessarily want more connections in terms of numbers, but they want richer and more satisfying connections.

People want friends with whom they can do co-creative projects; business and personal masterminding; and activities like movie nights, game nights, date nights, or travel adventures. And most would like for these to be the same people, so they can really invest in rich, juicy, multi-dimensional relationships.

3. Energizing and rewarding relationships

  • Feel restored and renewed from your social time, not drained.
  • Anticipate social time with enthusiasm and excitement.
  • Enjoy a low-maintenance, self-sustaining flow of desirable invitations.
  • Overcome social malaise and outreach fatigue.
  • Keep your social life fresh and pleasantly stimulating (not boring or overwhelming).
  • Replace a fatiguing invitation or coordination process with an aligned and motivating approach.
  • Enjoy camaraderie and fun with others as a normal part of your lifestyle.
  • Ensure that your social rewards amply justify your social investments.

Outreach or coordination fatigue was a big deal for some people. They’ve run through cycles where they would reach out to connect, and they get some nibbles and some basic interactions, but in the end it often didn’t feel like it was worth the effort. So then they spend more time alone because it’s easier and less draining. Rinse and repeat.

They still can’t help feeling that something is missing and that there must be a better way to create and maintain a vibrant social life that isn’t so taxing.

What people need are relationships and social activities that energize them. They also need more efficient and sustainable ways of managing their social lives. People recognize that a sporadic or half-hearted approach isn’t going to create the results they want. They’re willing to try different approaches, but they also want to see that there’s a reasonable path to success that won’t require an extraordinary investment of energy. There’s a real desire for more social efficiency with better energy flow.

4. Social and personal integration

  • Replace multiple masks with shameless self-expression.
  • Stop compromising to feign compatibility with partial matches or mismatches.
  • Practice discernment to build intimacy with aligned matches.
  • Avoid over-investing in partial matches.
  • Discover the hidden strengths behind social awkwardness.
  • Enjoy forgiving, resilient, anti-fragile relationships (not flakiness or skittishness).
  • Love who you are and who you’re becoming because of your friends.
  • Merge your character growth with your social growth.

People lament having to invest in social “skills” that feel misaligned or having to bend their personalities in different ways to connect with others. They wonder if they need to compromise more or if they just need to find different people to connect with.

What people want here is a more natural, easy-going way of connecting. Perhaps the word I saw people use most often to describe this desire was like-minded. They crave relationships with people who think similarly and who see reality similarly, so they can communicate effectively right out of the gate.

Some people blame their own social deficiencies while others blame the mismatches and partial matches they’ve had to deal with. Some don’t blame anyone and see this as a puzzle to be solved. They all want better solutions to bypass the unsatisfying parts of the social game, so they can get to the other side and experience a home base of like-minded friends and relationship partners. They want people in their lives that they can easily like, love, respect, and appreciate – without feeling like they must overstretch themselves to get there.

People especially want their personal pursuits and their social circles to be pointing in the same direction, so their friends are genuinely helping them grow.

People want friends that they can help as well. Some people noted that without the right friends, they’re missing out on the giving aspect of friendship too.

5. Free-flowing social abundance

  • Develop an abundant yet manageable social moat through which aligned connections bubble up with relative ease.
  • Accept that alignment is often temporary, especially among growth-oriented people.
  • Recognize that as one connection abates, another will soon arise.
  • Upgrade from a mismatch-rich environment to an alignment-rich environment.
  • Replace neediness and social scarcity with a heartset of social abundance.
  • Know how to satisfy your social needs without being needy.

Many people recognize that human relationships are dynamic and that from time to time, a disconnect may happen, and it needn’t be anyone’s fault. Sometimes people grow apart, and that’s okay.

While some people would love to settle into a social circle of 6-10 good friends and leave it at that, others also recognize that a wider moat of social connections will make their lives more active, vibrant, and socially secure. Many people want that home base of really tight friends while also recognizing that a wider circle beyond that has its benefits too. That blend of comfort and variety makes for a really nice combo.

About half of our romantic relationship partners in life flow to us through our network of friends, family, and co-workers. So if you want more social flow, it’s wise to upgrade your extended social network. This can help you move beyond social scarcity, neediness, and clinginess, knowing that you always have plenty of accessible options.

So what do you think? Do these social upgrades sound good to you? Is this something you’d like to explore together during the weeks ahead? Feel free to share any feedback you have about this. I want to make sure that the experience we offer aligns with how you want to grow in this area of life.

I’ll have more info to share about the upcoming Guild course soon. I can say that it’s going to be very interactive – lots of live Zoom calls like we did with Deep Abundance Integration – so you can connect and practice with growth-oriented people. Beyond that I’m still tweaking the format and the bonuses I’d like to include. I always find it best to figure out what kinds of improvements people want to make in their lives, and then I can design the form of a course to match its intended purpose.

For some people it will take courage to enroll in this experience. The feedback made it clear that some people have trust wounds wrapped up in past relationships, and that’s still affecting them today. Some have acknowledged to me that just answering the questions I posed brought up feelings of intense anxiety, fear, or dread. I felt some of that emotional feedback pretty strongly too, like people were broadcasting these emotional waves right into me.

I’ll do my best to facilitate this shared journey with caring, compassion, gentleness, and encouragement. It’s predictable, however, that it’s going to be emotionally intense for some people. As always, every part of it will be consensual – nothing forced and no undue pushing or pressure – so you’ll always get to decide how much to engage and when you may need to step back and regroup.

I think many of us are detecting the common signal, as if life is broadcasting it to us, that now is the right time to invest in upgrading our social lives. For many people this won’t be easy, but I also know that this will be a beautiful and rewarding challenge to undertake together.

Share Button

What Is a Deeper Relationship?

Posted on by

As I’ve been reading through recent feedback emails regarding the upcoming Guild course, I’ve seen various expressions of a desire for “deeper relationships.” What does that actually mean?

Many people shared that their current social circle feels too fragmented. They have their work associates, their family relationships, their online friends, and perhaps a few other networks like for hobbies or fitness. That by itself isn’t a problem, but what people perceive as problematic is that they’re only able to connect with each of these groups with a few limited aspects of their personalities and interests. They feel blocked from expressing their whole and complete selves with anyone.

A related desire that many people expressed was for more “growth-oriented friends.” One of the most common words I saw in people’s emails was the word “like-minded.” People crave social circles with others who have similar values and interests. They’re tired of investing in relationships with people who seem too dissimilar.

I’d say that many people are looking for what we might call full-range friendships. They find it tiresome and draining to have a wide array of relatively shallow connections. I think much of the time when people say they want more depth, what they actually want is more range within the people that they connect with most often. People are tired of investing in low-compatibility connections. They want to see much higher compatibility across multiple interests.

One thing that a lot of people want is a close-knit circle of friends, and within that friendship circle, they want to see a really good range of like-mindedness. Many people prefer not to have so much fragmentation in their social lives. They don’t want activity partners and professional colleagues and romantic connections and mastermind partners and travel buddies and online friends who are all different people. They’d ideally love to invest in people with whom they can connect with across multiple dimensions – like a travel buddy who’s also great at creative and business masterminding and who’s into having rich spiritual discussions and who can go out for a nice vegan meal and a movie together.

Some people would also prefer if their social circles served as a source of romantic and sexual connections too, either directly with one or more of their friends or by finding good matches through their friends’ referrals.

So people want their social circles to provide more value to them, and they especially want to see more value and engagement per person.

Some people said the ideal size of their primary social circles was relatively small, typically in the range of 6-10 people. Some also want to see a nice gender balance in their friendships, especially if their current social circles feel imbalanced.

Most people don’t really want large social circles. Some lamented that their social circles already feel too big and complex, and they have a hard time keeping up with everyone. Others shared that they have no meaningful social circle to speak of yet, and they don’t want to shift towards something huge and expansive. They’d simply love to have a tight-knit group of friends that they can connect with regularly.

Another factor I saw expressed was what someone described as outreach fatigue or coordination fatigue. Some people serve as the main hubs of their social circles, and if they don’t keep actively inviting people and planning activities, nothing happens. This becomes exhausting after a while. Many people would prefer to have more resilient, self-maintaining social circles. People also want the option to socially engage sometimes and disengage at other times, so they can enjoy some solo time as well when they need it.

So when people say that they want deeper relationships, it’s a whole package of desires. The specifics are different for each person, but there does seem to be a common core of people wanting high-efficiency, full-range relationships. This is better for people’s energy. It’s better for their happiness. And it’s better for fitting into people’s busy lives.

This makes a lot of sense to me, and it aligns nicely with my own social development path. The social expansiveness that came from blogging and speaking has been rewarding, but it can be tiring to keep up with so many casual connections if I overdo it. This made me want to compact my social circle, both online and offline, and spend more time connecting with people who have a lot in common. And I can tell you that this works very well. It’s more relaxing, peaceful, and chill, and it feels more heart-aligned too. That said, I still enjoy phases of meeting and connecting with a lot of different people, but I see that more as the frosting on top of the cake.

The good news is that if a close-knit group of friends is what you want, you can create that, and we’ll be working on this together in the upcoming Guild course. However, it should be obvious that if you’re not there yet, you’ll need to start making different decisions socially.

I’d say that a good place to start is to reflect upon what it means to have deeper relationships with people. What does that actually mean? Is depth really the best word to describe what you want, or are you really looking for more compatibility or more range or more efficiency or more resilience in your individual relationships? I can help you get more clarity about this during the course, but I encourage you to start thinking about this now. What kind of social circle would you love to experience as your personal friendship guild?

Share Button

101 Reframes for a Richer Social Life

Posted on by

Yesterday I brainstormed a list of reframes that I’ve found useful at various times for exploring a better social life. I shared this in the Conscious Growth Club forums and felt that it would be nice to share it here as well.

A frame (or reframe) is a way of looking at reality and assigning meaning to events and experiences, similar to an attitude or perspective.

A frame is not a belief. You don’t have to believe a frame to use it effectively. Much like any hardware tool such as a hammer or drill, you can use a frame for a short time and release it again when you’re done.

Here’s the list. Skim through it, and consider what testing some of these reframes could do for your relationships and social life. Feel free to modify them to better suit your situation and goals.

  1. I don’t need to break the ice with anyone since there is no ice.
  2. Treat people like we’re already friends, and we probably will become so.
  3. I’m holding an open and receptive vibe.
  4. Opportunities to connect are everywhere.
  5. Statements are often better than questions.
  6. People don’t need to fear a harsh rejection from me.
  7. If I’m not interested, I will let people down easy.
  8. I’m more socially comfortable than most people. I needn’t worry about my comfort. It’s better to focus on theirs.
  9. Most people want to have quality connections with others.
  10. We’re all a part of life.
  11. We’re a lot more alike than we are different.
  12. I have a lot to offer people intellectually, emotionally, conversationally, etc.
  13. I like it when people are friendly with me.
  14. All of this is temporary – this life, these people, these experiences, this planet – all of it.
  15. I’m here because all of my ancestors had sex.
  16. An approach that lands horribly with one person might absolutely delight another.
  17. [When speaking in front of a group] The audience and I are on the same side since we all want to have a good experience.
  18. Humor and music are great for helping people bond and harmonize.
  19. I laugh every day.
  20. What’s interesting about this person?
  21. If I satisfy people’s expectations, they won’t remember much. People remember the unexpected.
  22. What’s my intention for this interaction?
  23. My intentions are good.
  24. I like myself. What would be the point in not liking myself? That would only fragment my mind.
  25. I have many voices within me. One job of my conscious mind is to create harmony among them.
  26. It’s not my own nervousness or anxiety that I’m feeling. It’s coming from other people. How can I put them at ease?
  27. Sharing the parts I most want to hide can be the best way to connect with people.
  28. I’ll keep getting better with practice.
  29. My future self has already figured this out.
  30. My future self already has this skill.
  31. My future self is perfectly comfortable in this situation.
  32. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.
  33. If God made me and then objects to how I choose to live, God’s an ass and unworthy of my respect.
  34. I will never really know how this reality works at a base level.
  35. More is possible.
  36. I’m here to learn and grow.
  37. Women choose me first and drop clues if they’re interested. The best matches come when I recognize this.
  38. The easiest way to see if I have good physical chemistry with a woman is when we kiss.
  39. Many people tend to be very concerned about judgment. If I can put them at ease about that, they’ll be far more open and honest.
  40. I can trust my intuition.
  41. It’s easy for people to trust me.
  42. People love to tell me things they don’t feel comfortable telling anyone else, including their spouses, since they know I won’t judge them for it.
  43. My social path is invariably going to be unique and creative.
  44. The best models and frames are the ones I figure out for myself. I can learn bits and pieces from others, but I still have to personalize them to play to my strengths.
  45. The point of life is to appreciate the heck out of it.
  46. Whatever I do that leads to rejection from one direction also spins up fresh invitations from another direction.
  47. Make it easy for the misaligned to reject me.
  48. When people reject me, they’re doing me a favor, freeing up my energy to explore better sources of alignment.
  49. As long as I keep exploring and setting aligned intentions for connecting, I’m never really going to need to worry about being alone.
  50. The more honest I can be about my desires and intentions, the easier it is for good matches to recognize me.
  51. I like what I like.
  52. What’s stopping me from sharing this intention publicly?
  53. I want a social circle that’s richly abundant in mutual appreciation.
  54. Look for alignment at the level of intention first.
  55. One reason that non-procreative sex exists is that it’s good for communication pathways, which creates stronger and healthier communities. When people have sex, they’re more likely to talk to each other.
  56. I feel compersion for others when they get what they want.
  57. It feels amazing to help people surpass me. Then I can learn from them too. Isn’t that the basis of fabulous friendship and teamwork?
  58. It’s fun to make people feel good.
  59. Life is an endless flow of invitations.
  60. I feel right at home here.
  61. If someone is getting better or easier results, they’re likely using more effective frames than me. What are those frames? How could I learn them and then test them?
  62. I absolutely must avoid framing myself into a corner. It’s critical to keep the reframing pathways open and flexible.
  63. My long-term happiness and fulfillment must really piss off my critics.
  64. If I ever feel a bit disconnected or confused, an easy way to feel reintegrated into the positive flow of life is to share something with the purest of intentions, such as by writing a new article with the desire to help someone out there who might appreciate it.
  65. People have beauty within them that longs to be seen and acknowledged.
  66. There’s a lesson in every social experience.
  67. Fun is my birthright.
  68. People tend to gravitate toward people who are having fun since they know they’ll enjoy themselves too if bonded with similar people.
  69. Fun is directly proportional to learning.
  70. My highest destiny is to be myself, fully and completely.
  71. I am assembling my own social reality right here, right now. The quality of that reality depends on how much truth I can stand while creating it.
  72. I am beautiful in my own unique way, even when people disagree with me or don’t like what I do (or say) to them; therefore, their approval is not a prerequisite for living life the way that feels right and best to me.
  73. This moment is perfectly designed as it is right now, as all moments in the past and future are too. There’s nothing to fix or change, other than trying to stop resisting this moment.
  74. I don’t need to live up to anyone else’s standards (no matter how high they might be). All that matters is living up to my own values and standards that I’ve chosen for myself when it comes to me being true and genuine – that’s all the approval I’ll ever need because it’s self-approval and thus unconditional and limitless in scope.
  75. When I open up space for new things to enter into my life, I’m open to new opportunities that will benefit me in some way.
  76. Maintaining good boundaries is essential for allowing the best matches to continue showing up in my life.
  77. Abundance isn’t about how much stuff I have or how many people are chasing me; it’s about my energy level and willingness to explore new ideas and opportunities with others who share compatible levels of curiosity and enthusiasm.
  78. The world is filled with beautiful surprises just waiting to be discovered at every moment!
  79. I don’t have to waste my time on people if they don’t appreciate how awesome I am, because there are so many other people who would love to have me as their friend or companion, and they’re out there right now waiting for me to find them!
  80. The more clarity I have about who I really am and what I want, the more energy flows through this path toward its ultimate destination of an awesome life experience or manifestation in physical reality!
  81. The more fun I have, the easier everything gets!
  82. The more people can successfully talk about their goals and desires without encountering the usual knee-jerk shaming, the more likely they are to achieve them.
  83. I don’t really need anyone else’s permission to get what I want out of life.
  84. Any person who rejects me is simply an opportunity for me to learn how not to connect with that type in the future, which will make it far easier for me to connect with others instead.
  85. Negativity is a gift from the universe that tells me which intentions no longer serve my highest good at this time.
  86. I can always tell when something isn’t working by how much resistance I encounter doing it. If there’s lots of resistance then I know to stop and let go of that pattern immediately!
  87. When people are right for me, they really do show up as if by magic – and then disappear once their purpose has been completed too (after which point it doesn’t make sense to try to contact them). They’re right for me when they give me the experiences I’m looking to learn from – and then poof, they’re gone.
  88. We are all interconnected through invisible threads of social energy. When we create positive interactions with others, our own well-being is enhanced as well as theirs, because there is only one of us here!
  89. It feels fabulous to make an effort and know it’s appreciated by someone else. That appreciation returns back to me in a ripple effect called karma that often brings other people into my life who appreciate me too!
  90. The best way for an interaction to go poorly is for me to try and force something that just isn’t going to happen naturally or easily between us.
  91. The only way people are going to find out about my desires and intentions is if I tell them directly, clearly, and vulnerably up front, rather than expecting them somehow to read my mind weeks into the future.
  92. If I want to be liked, it means I’m not taking good enough care of myself.
  93. The more clearly defined / specific my desires and intentions, the easier time people will have understanding what they are and how to interact with me accordingly (and vice versa).
  94. People will only ever invite me into their lives if there’s something in it for them too.
  95. The more I can enjoy the moment, the more I’m able to give my full energy out into it and pick up on what other people want as well.
  96. I allow myself the freedom to be a dancing monkey and also a wise old sage according to what being a dancing monkey or being a wise old sage requires of me at any given time – because both are natural for me – and it takes zero energy away from either role to play the other as well.
  97. This person is already seeing parts of me they like.
  98. This person knows exactly what I am and isn’t sure what to do about it yet.
  99. The most important thing in life is love and connection among people who mutually respect one another, who like each other enough to be open with each other without fear of rejection or betrayal.
  100. Even if I don’t have much to say, I can still offer people energy.
  101. It’s okay to be weird!

In truth I only wrote up the first 65 reframes on the list above. Some of those I learned and adapted from other people, and some I figured out on my own.

I did not, however, write reframes 66-101. Those were all AI-generated. I fed my original list of 65 into an AI creative writing tool based on GPT-3, and I had it generate many more related reframes. Then I filtered out the weakest ones, keeping those I found most interesting. Did you notice a difference when you passed #65 on the list? One difference I noticed is that AI likes using exclamations marks a lot more than I do. It also seems a bit wordier in expressing itself.

I found some of the AI-generated reframes pretty interesting. For instance, #92 on the list is an interesting take on self-care, suggesting that if you’re concerned about being liked by others, maybe this points to a deficiency in your own self-care routine. Perhaps if you took better care of yourself, you’d be less concerned about being liked, and you’d probably come off as more naturally likable too.

Note that reframes are not truths; they’re just perspectives, so we can test and try them out to see what they do for us – no belief necessary.

Ponder some of the social reframes on this list, and pull out or highlight the ones that seem most interesting to you. Then give them a test next time you find yourself engaging in some type of social interaction. When you use a good reframe, you’ll find yourself behaving a bit differently, and that can shift the results you experience.

Share Button

Sad But True, Couples Who Meet Online Are More Likely To Divorce

Posted on by
Reply

How did you meet your partner? Chances may be, online. But if you’re planning to get married, there may be some bad news in store.

Couples who meet online are more likely to divorce in the first stages of marriage, according to a survey.

The charity Marriage Foundation found that divorce is six times more likely for those who met through dating apps and other online forms compared to people who met at university or through friends and family.

But don’t fret too much – the statistics for getting divorced are actually pretty low.

LeoPatrizi via Getty Images

The charity’s research of 2,000 married couples found that people who met online since the year 2000 had a 12% chance of getting divorced in the first year of marriage. In comparison, the figure was much lower for people who met socially – with a possibility of 2%.

But, just in case you were about to get cold feet, remember that a 12% chance of divorce isn’t particularly high – it’s just that others have a lower chance of separating.

The reason being for the vast difference may be our social connections, said The Marriage Foundation.

When people meet via friends and family, their social networks support them through the initial stages – your loved ones are likely to introduce you to people who have some interests and common ground.

In contrast, couples who meet online have relatively limited information about one another, and this may result in their later demise.

Harry Benson, the research director at Marriage Foundation, said the results are “troubling”.

“It suggests that in the early years of marriage, couples who meet this way might lack sufficient social capital or close support networks around them to deal with all the challenges they face when compared to those who met via friends, family or neighbours,” he said.

“Over time this disparity disappears, but the question is why does it exist in the first place?”

Savanta ComRes, the market research consultancy which carried out the survey, said online couples have a disadvantage as they have to start from scratch.

They said: “Our findings in no way undermines or diminishes the vital role of online dating. But it does highlight the greater risks and difficulties of getting to know a relative stranger where reliable sources of background information and subsequent social support are less readily available.”

Share Button

Enthusiastic Consent

Posted on by

When you invite someone to have a shared experience together, professionally or personally, and consent is given grudgingly, this tells you that the invitation isn’t very aligned. Even if you’re ostensibly getting a yes, there are probably some unresolved objections behind that yes, so you’re getting a compromised version of a yes.

This in itself is another layer of invitation for you to unpack. Do you want to move forward with the consent you received, or do you want to go for a more aligned form of consent?

This isn’t a trick question. Sometimes you may be fine with the consent you received, especially if the invitation is fairly simple. It may not be worth the effort to aim for a more aligned version, especially if the consequences are minor either way. A grudging yes may be good enough in some situations.

Sometimes, however, you may not want to settle for a compromised yes. You may want to aim for a higher standard and go for a true win-win, such as by changing the offer or by addressing and resolving objections. And if you can’t reach win-win, then you may prefer to declare “no deal” and withdraw the offer,

One nice indicator that you have a real yes from the other person is that consent is given not plainly but enthusiastically. This is a pretty good sign that the other person likes your invitation. Such a response or the lack thereof is not, however, a reflection on the quality or overall generosity of your offer. It’s just a reflection of the other person’s emotional alignment with your offer.

Some people aren’t very emotionally expressive, so the lack of expressed enthusiasm isn’t necessarily a sign that your invitation isn’t landing well. But the presence of an enthusiastic response is generally a good sign.

Enthusiasm as a Minimum Standard

Consider where it might be useful to look for enthusiastic consent as your minimum standard when it comes to following through with action in some areas. Consider where you might want to interpret resistant consent as a no.

You can apply this standard both to invitations you give, so you’re looking to see if other people respond enthusiastically, and to invitations you receive, so you’re gauging your own level of enthusiasm.

If you or someone else says yes to an invitation but without much enthusiasm, you’re probably looking at a partial match situation. While partial matches may provide some secondary gains now and then, they can also clutter your life and block full matches from coming through.

Are there any areas of life where it may be worthwhile to consider enthusiasm as a minimum standard rather than a nice-to-have?

One area is creative work. It’s easier to flow into action when the enthusiasm is there. If I get a creative idea, such as for a new article or course, but I’m not feeling much enthusiasm for it, I’m inclined to dismiss it as a partial match idea. The idea may still be good, but it’s not necessarily good for me at that time. I often get ideas that I reject due to a lack of personal enthusiasm, and this keeps the door open for more aligned ideas to come through. I find it better to keep my energy free and unattached instead of occupying it with partial matches.

Another area is doing anything romantic, playful, sexual, or adventurous with another person. Enthusiastic consent is a worthwhile standard to aim for, especially since the quality of the experience will probably depend on some mutual enthusiasm. You may even want to look for 4D consent, so there’s a positive response from the body, mind, heart, and spirit.

I’ve noticed that even if I’m initially enthusiastic about an invitation, but the other person clearly isn’t, their response effectively takes the wind out of my sails. Then I often feel it’s best to invite someone else, to make a different invitation, to invite something similar but at a later time, or to let the idea go.

Crafting Better Offers

If you raise your standard for the type of response you want to see, this challenges you to get better at crafting offers. This usually requires getting better at understanding people and making the offer more aligned for them.

One area where I see a lot of people fall flat is when they’re looking for a job. This is a form of invitation. You’re offering your services to a potential employer. Many people bemoan the unenthusiastic responses they receive, both as potential employers and employees. And many are willing to accept a grudging yes. Could that willingness to accept a grudging yes be part of the problem?

Consider that if you’ve already decided that a grudging yes is good enough, you probably won’t put as much effort into crafting a quality offer. But this also lowers your chances of getting any kind of yes.

Imagine how much better your offers might be if you held yourself to the standard of “enthusiastic consent or no deal.” Would you be more likely to land a good job if this is your minimum standard? I’d say yes.

I have received a lot of crappy and misaligned offers over the years, both personally and professionally, and I think one reason is that these offers have come from people who are willing to accept any kind of yes, even a very grudging or resistant yes. They aren’t even trying to meet the standard of win-win. If they were, they’d seek to craft a more personalized offer.

Personalizing Your Invitations

One of the best ways to aim for the higher standard of enthusiastic consent is to make less generic and more personalized invitations. Learn what would create a win for the other person before you think about crafting an invitation or offer.

For instance, before you show up for a job interview, do you already have a pretty good idea of what kind of candidate would receive an enthusiastic yes? Do you feel that what you’re able to offer has a decent likelihood of being met with enthusiastic consent? If not, then why are you wasting their time by showing up with a weak offer? At best you’ll get a partial match. Is that really what you want? Won’t it be easier to get hired if you aim for the standard of enthusiastic consent?

Enthusiastic consent may seem like a higher standard to meet, but it’s also an easier standard in a way. Aiming for this standard helps you elevate the quality of your offers and invitations, so you’re more likely to get an aligned yes in response. This standard helps you steer clear of the energy-sucking swamp of partial matches. It helps you craft better offers.

Share Button