Aligned Solutions

Posted on 24/05/2021 by Boris Clair

Aligning your life can be very challenging. By alignment I’m referring to harmonious interactions among your:

thoughts
feelings
frames / perspectives
lifestyle
living situation
relationships
values
desires
goals
intentions
work
finances
health
body
family
friendships
social life
personality

We all have misalignments to deal with in one of more areas of life. Are you actively engaged in correcting those misalignments to create greater harmony? Or do you let misalignments fester?

Misalignments have a tendency to multiply. They’re like clutter. Once we start tolerating a little bit, pretty soon we have a lot more to deal with. Letting this happen can make your life feel very burdensome after a while.

Fixing Misalignments

Sometimes I feel like the majority of my personal growth work (on the personal side, not the professional side) has been mainly about correcting misalignments in my life. Notice what areas of life aren’t working for me, and really fix them. A big step here is to define what a genuine fix looks like.

This began with misalignments like being raised Catholic and finding that totally wrong for me. It was a long journey to figure out my own philosophy of life that was honest and real for me – and that made me much happier.

I had to deal with a lot of misalignments between my desires and the kinds of results I was getting. I had to keep trying different frames and approaches to figure out how to connect the dots. The biggest challenge here was finding ways to take action that really fit my personality and natural motivations. This took me in some interesting directions. For instance, I initially thought that success would be a good motivator for me, but it really wasn’t. I actually get more motivational juice from caring, compassion, playfulness, fun, and creativity. I ended up experiencing more success when I gave myself permission to approach life and business with a lighter, more open, and more playful heart.

I was pretty bad at trying to earn money as a goal unto itself. I could never get my emotions to be that excited about it. I learned to be happy when I was broke, so I know that having more money won’t make me meaningfully happier. Hence it’s very hard to get myself to emotionally care about making more money. But I was able to increase my income by approaching this more like a game, whereby I focused on the creativity, the fun, the connection, and the playfulness.

Finding and Reducing Friction

I’d say that the heart is really the key to alignment. My biggest alignment mistakes happened when I tried to use my brain to go against my feelings. If my feelings aren’t aligned with what I’m trying to do, that kills my plans dead. Doing anything interesting in life requires sustainable motivation. So figuring out what gives you the most sustainable motivational juice can point you in the direction of increasing alignment too.

Life can easily fill up with friction that drains motivation. Many people in this field will advise you to push through that friction. Be tough. Discipline yourself. I used to think that way too, but not anymore. Discipline can be an okay short-term tool, but it’s not very sustainable. Pushing through friction is like repeatedly running a machine that’s making a grinding sound that isn’t supposed to be there. If you keep pushing through, you’ll cause some kind of damage. A better approach is to find what’s causing that friction, and solve that problem. Then run the machine smoothly and sustainably. Keep it well-maintained.

I’ve spent many years of my life looking at the friction in my life, which can be hard to face. I had friction in my relationships, my family life, my business, my income streams, and more. I think one of the best personal growth skills I’ve developed over the past few decades has been the willingness to look for friction and to really resolve it, even if it takes many years to do so.

I look at areas where my life isn’t working as well as I think it could. Then I start looking for sources of friction. What’s stopping me from experiencing the aligned flow I’d really like to experience in this part of life?

Just a machine with a friction problem may create excess heat or noise, you’re body will do something similar when you experience alignment problems. You won’t feel so good emotionally. Your heart will squawk at you.

Negative emotions are great pointers to sources of friction. Wherever you find negative feelings, you’ll find friction that’s getting in the way of greater alignment. That friction is also an invitation to solve a bigger problem.

Building Motivational Energy

I think the reason we’re so often hesitant to look in these places is that when we see the truth, it’s really hard to unsee it, and then we have to admit that we have a lot of work to do to fix these problems. But that attitude itself is a further symptom of being too tolerant of misalignments. It means we’ve let those misalignments drain us way too much, so now we lack the motivation and willingness to identify and fix problems that can be fixed. Just looking at our problems seems like it takes too much energy.

It’s not that the problems are so difficult. It’s that you’ve weakened yourself by letting the presence of these problems grind you down, like metal scraping on metal for too long inside a machine. So you aren’t functioning at your best, and that makes it harder to do repairs on your life.

I’ve noticed that as I correct major misalignments, I feel more motivated to fix even more of them. I feel more willing to look for resistance and to delve into the misalignments that cause friction. It is a lot of work to fix them sometimes, but it’s just so worth it. The more problems you fix, the more capable you become of solving even more problems.

There were times when I felt tremendously buried under a big pile of misalignments, and it took me a long time to dig my way out of them. It’s especially hard when the misalignments are sapping your motivation to want to deal with them. Sometimes you just have to chip away at them little by little with whatever motivation you do have. The key in those situations is to stop making the situation worse by allowing even more misalignments to pile up. And then start working on the most accessible problems that could free up some stuck energy when resolved. The more energy you can free up, the more you can leverage that extra energy to fix more misalignments.

The benefit of resolving misalignments is that then you have even more energy to create some wonderful alignments instead. It’s easier to pursue and create what you want when you aren’t so overburdened with sources of friction. It’s hard to take consistent forward action when you have so much energy bottled up in misalignments.

Lightening Up

Solving alignment problems can create a wonderful feeling of lightness.

My heart feels very light, open, and free-flowing these days. I don’t feel clogged with heaviness. Emotionally I feel like my life has been the equivalent of a gentle smile this year – pretty calm and peaceful but also content, happy, satisfied, and appreciative.

From this emotional state, it’s easy to be very productive too. I really enjoy the work I get to do. I like and appreciate the people I get to work with, especially in Conscious Growth Club. I like my business model, which feels very heart-aligned to me. I get paid for creating courses, coaching, and otherwise helping people improve their lives. It feels very win-win, very fair, and very abundant. But I had to say no to a lot of partial matches to reach this point, and partial matches can be very seductive sometimes.

I love and appreciate my relationship with Rachelle. It’s wonderful to spend so much time with a woman who’s my lover and my best friend. It’s nice to be in a relationship that includes an abundance of daily laughter, physical affection, and emotional support. Perhaps we have an unusual relationship, but it works for us.

I love being vegan since that works for me too. I must have eaten about 200 salads so far this year since I’m doing a year of raw, but somehow I haven’t gotten bored with them. I seem to have fallen in love with salads and look forward to at least one each day. I think that eating lighter foods has helped me feel emotionally lighter as well, but this way of eating also makes it extra difficult to tolerate misalignments. It’s very hard to feel good emotionally while eating raw if misalignments are allowed to fester because the emotional sensitivity is increased.

Unlearning Misaligned Solutions

A big part of this path has involved unloading from my mind the many misaligned ideas that I learned from other people.

A misaligned idea is a solution of sorts, but it’s not a very good solution. Misaligned solutions create negative side effects. Aligned solutions tend to create positive side effects.

I was taught that certain religious ideas are true, and then I discovered that they were neither true nor effective. Religion attempts to solve some problems, but it creates a lot of negative side effects as well. It’s a misaligned solution. It took some years, but I eventually replaced those ideas when a more truth-aligned and heart-aligned approach to life, the universe, and everything. And I don’t need to go to Church and sit through boring masses. I don’t need to kneel and eat wafers. I don’t need to turn frames into beliefs and wrap them into my identity.

I was taught that humans are superior to animals and therefore it’s okay to treat animal as products. We’re entitled to their bodies. We can just take their eggs and milk if we want. We can cage them, rape them, take their lives, and eat their flesh. It’s okay because we’re smarter and stronger. We’re special; they’re not. This is just how it’s supposed to be. Animals and meant to be sold at supermarkets and restaurants. Their flesh, milk, and eggs are part of our economy, just like any other commercial goods. We own them. They’re born as products, and they die as products.

Just typing those words regarding my old misaligned relationship with animals makes me feel nauseous. That way of thinking looks utterly wrong and ridiculous when I type it up, but how many people bother to type up these misalignments and take a real look at them? If you relate to animals as products – which you clearly do if you pay for their body parts, milk, or eggs – how does that sit with you? How does that mesh with your self-image and values? Does this feel aligned to you? Do you feel good about this relationship? Or is there friction in it?

I had so much trapped energy in that messed up relationship with animals in the past, but I wasn’t willing to look at it till I flowed towards a more aligned relationship with animals. I feel sad for how I treated them in the past. I was much too violent and too willfully ignorant, but I pretended I wasn’t. When I stopped relating to animals as products, I grew to appreciate them in a much more aligned way.

I grew up with the expectation that I was supposed to have a job and be loyal to some corporation. A boss was supposed to tell me what to do most days. I could have the weekends to recover and do some personal stuff. My obedience would be rewarded. I could never stomach going in that direction though – way too much friction. I still had to work through a lot of friction to go the independent creator path, but I saw a light at the end of that tunnel, and now I get to bask in that light on a daily basis. I didn’t see a light at the end of the corporate path other than eventually escaping from it to do something more free-flowing and creative.

It’s interesting that society gives us so many ready-made solutions – that suck. The pursuit of alignment is really about finding solutions that don’t suck. A misaligned solution sucks away your energy, your motivation, and your happiness. Aligned solutions give you energy, motivation, and happiness. Aligned solutions give you access to cleaner and more sustainable fuel sources, so they’re less expensive in the long run.

Choosing Alignment

To choose alignment it’s important to stop choosing misalignment. Stop going for the partial match; don’t be so easily seduced by it. Set your standards higher on the full match. Stop tolerating the sound of metal grinding on metal as the gears of your life are turning. When you hear that grinding sound, learn to stop immediately, find the source of the problem, and do what it takes to fix it. Then flip the switch back on.

It’s not enough to say that you’re choosing alignment while you’re still wallowing in partial matches. You can intend and ask for alignment all you want, but life is keen to observe when you’re still tolerating partial matches. Showing up to partial matches is a powerful expression of your intention too, and life hears that loud and clear, perhaps even more loudly than your stated intentions to outgrow those patterns.

You don’t just intend with your mind, your heart, and your spirit. You intend with your body as well. Whatever you show up to is part of your intention as well. If you really want to express a different intention in an aligned way, put your body into it as well. This means withdrawing your body’s presence from partial matches. Otherwise if your body keeps showing up for partial matches, it will drag your mind, heart, and spirit right along with it.

If you’re gonna say no to a partial match, make it a 4D no. Decline the partial match with your body, mind, heart, and spirit. That’s a real no – an aligned no. Any less than this, and you’re still saying yes to a partial match. Note that a 1D, 2D, or 3D no is equivalent to a 3D, 2D, or 1D yes, respectively.

You can’t fool or fake alignment. Either you’re saying a 4D yes to it, or you’re remaining in partial match land.

Your Relationship With Your Alarm Clock

Posted on 19/05/2021 by Boris Clair

If you use an alarm clock to wake up in the morning, think about relationship you’d like to create with your alarm clock. What would be the healthiest and happiest version of that relationship for you?

If you were an alarm clock, what kind of relationship would you want to have with your human?

For instance, maybe your alarm clock would appreciate it if you’d pat it on the head now and then and say, “Thanks for waking me up today. I appreciate you!”

How would your alarm clock feel about being put across the room and kept at a distance from you? How would it feel if you groaned when it sounded off?

How would your alarm clock feel if you kept using the snooze feature? Would it potentially lose respect for you?

Have you ever thought about the kind of relationship you’d like to have with your alarm clock? How would you like to feel towards it, and how would you like to imagine that it feels towards you?

I normally use an alarm clock to wake up in the morning, set for 5am. I never use the snooze alarm since that wouldn’t help me experience the kind of relationships I want to have – with my alarm clock, with myself, and with the start of my day.

I like relating to my alarm clock on the basis of mutual trust and mutual respect. My alarm clock is my buddy who helps me start the day at the time of my choosing. It’s very reliable. I like knowing that I can trust it to sound off when I tell it.

If my intention was to get up at a certain time, and I didn’t just leave the alarm set by mistake, then it’s important to get up to honor that relationship. If I can trust that my alarm will sound off, I also want my alarm to trust me too – to trust that I’ll get up when I intended to get up.

While it may sound odd to have a relationship with an inanimate object, you’re already doing that anyway. Some patch of neurons in your brain is already storing your associations to your alarm clock. Like it or not, that relationship exists in your mind, and it will continue to exist. So you already have some stored thoughts and feelings towards your alarm clock. Do those thoughts and feelings serve you well? Or could you modify how you’re framing that relationship make it better?

If you’re going to have a relationship with your alarm clock in your mind anyway, why not make it what you want it to be? Make it a relationship that serves you well. Make it a relationship that helps you get the results you want.

If your relationship with your alarm clock is dysfunctional, do you really think that will help you create and maintain highly functional habits? How is that going to be good for your day’s startup routine?

For me a good relationship with any device involves trust, respect, and appreciation. I don’t want to use devices that I don’t trust, respect, and appreciate. Especially if it’s the first device that connects me with my day, I really want that to be a positive and uplifting relationship. If the very first sound I hear to begin my day immediately links me with a negative emotion, a downer thought, or a corrupted relationship, well… that’s a stupid relationship then, isn’t it? How is that possibly going to do me any good, especially if I let that relationship wallow unfixed for years?

If you have a messed up relationship with your alarm clock – or with however you like to begin your day – I invite you to fix that relationship. Start by making a real decision about what kind of relationship you’d like to have. Then go have a little talk with your alarm clock to share your thoughts and feelings about the kind of relationship you’d like to create with it. Imagine that it’s listening to you attentively, and then listen internally for what it wants to see from you.

Imagine creating a truly win-win relationship here. Consider what kind of relationship your alarm clock would love to have with you. What does it want from you? What kinds of behaviors would it like to see from you? How would it like to be treated? You might think that this is taking the idea a bit far, but I encourage you to think along these lines anyway since it can help you get clarity about the right kind of relationship for you.

I have a very positive relationship with my alarm clock. I can get up right away when it goes off and leverage it for a good start to my day. I’ve never put it across the room. I’ve never used the snooze alarm. I like and respect my alarm clock. I honor its purpose in my life. I appreciate what it does for me. I don’t have to burden myself with a negative relationship that I might drag forward into all of my future years. This relationship is all in my mind anyway, so it’s my choice what to make of it. Why not assert your freedom of choice here as well?

If it helps you get up feeling a little happier and a little more enthusiastic to imagine that your alarm clock is proud of you… or to imagine that your alarm clock likes being appreciated by you… that’s all good. Feeling appreciation is wonderful, so why not give yourself any reason to begin your day with that sort of feeling? Use your imagination to help you here. Don’t let a lack of imagination cage you in a negative relationship.

What is your version of a golden relationship with your alarm clock? What would that look like? What thoughts and feelings would you like to bring to this relationship? Whatever it is, you can create that relationship. But it sure helps tremendously if you take a moment to consciously decide what that relationship is going to be.

Alignment and Diversity

Posted on 11/05/2021 by Boris Clair

For the annual launch of Conscious Growth Club last month, I mentioned before that I focused on alignment instead of growth. I deliberately avoided investing in obvious pathways to growth that might attract members who wouldn’t be so well aligned with CGC’s values and culture. Interestingly, CGC grew in size by about 20%, and CGC’s internal diversity increased as well. CGC has become more internationally diverse with members from 26 countries this year. It has become more diverse in terms of members of different ethnicities, colors, and cultures. And it has more LGBTQ members than ever before.

One thing I did differently this year was that I added this short qualification list to the CGC invitation page to help potential members decide if they’re a good fit for CGC.

To qualify for a CGC membership, you must:

Be able to get along with people in a diverse online community. Keep CGC free of personal attacks as well as racist, sexist, anti-LGBTQ, or otherwise demeaning communication.

Respect members’ privacy. The personal growth work we do inside CGC can involve discussing private and intimate details that members don’t want shared beyond CGC.

Accept members’ varied personal growth journeys. CGC includes many vegans, LGBTQ members, members exploring open relationships, and more. We welcome such diversity. It’s a CGC rule to give forum topics clear titles, so members who prefer to avoid certain topics can easily do so.

Not have been a Trump voter or supporter in the 2020 U.S. election. CGC is a Trump-free zone. The behavior of voting for Trump or supporting his platform (for any reason) is sufficient to disqualify someone from being a match for CGC’s values, culture, and diverse international membership. Moreover, I am unwilling to coach such people; it’s a personal boundary issue.

Out of curiosity, how many Trump supporters do you think complained about the last item above? The answer was actually zero, which didn’t surprise me. It doesn’t make much sense that any Trump supporters would want to join CGC anyway since their values are so divergent from ours. This statement isn’t really about them since they aren’t likely to be attracted to my work. The intent is to let qualified members know what they won’t have to deal with inside CGC, which is a benefit to some people.

Diversity is actually not one of CGC’s core values. Alignment is. For a group like CGC to function well, it’s good to have some diversity, but not at the cost of alignment. This is because members in the group tend to form strong relationships with each other, and for that to happen, we need a base level of strong compatibility around shared values.

Think of this like getting involved in any other kind of human relationship. Compatibility matters. Your compatibility with another person gives you a strong base of connection. Then it’s good to have lots of variety around that core compatibility. That keeps you interested and engaged in the relationship. Diversity provides ample opportunities to learn and grow together. So what you want is diversity within alignment, not diversity ahead of alignment.

To put diversity ahead of alignment would be like dating totally random people with no concerns about compatibility. That may be interesting as a temporary experience, but you’re unlikely to find a good match that way. You’ll probably end up with lots of blah or creepy experiences, or you may feel that you have to lower your alignment standards to have a good experience.

By putting alignment ahead of diversity, we can say that we welcome anti-racist but not racist behavior in CGC. We can say that we’ll maintain an LGBTQ-friendly and a vegan-friendly culture inside, which means we’re not going to permit an opposing culture to take root.

Would it be more pro-diversity to invite people with opposing values to join the club too? Perhaps, but it would also be a ridiculously bad idea – completely at odds with our purpose. In order to help each other grow, we need a strong enough base of compatibility to actually want to help each other. CGC works best when members help each other willingly, not grudgingly. We want to go for genuine caring, not tolerance (which is resistance to love). And interestingly, one thing that helps us align with this purpose is knowing that we’re also working against opposing forces elsewhere in the world.

Inside the club we can create a unique safe haven that’s strongly protected from those opposing societal influences. CGC is a unique cultural island in that sense. There are a lot of societal pressures that we don’t have to deal with inside. And that’s because we focus on maintaining a certain kind of alignment around shared values, and then we welcome diversity within that alignment (but not outside of it).

In this kind of environment, people thrive. They get to access and experience parts of themselves that had been previously suppressed. They can drop the masks that they no longer need. Internally they’re able to discover more diversity within themselves as well. Finding strong social alignment open the door to such inner diversity.

What’s also interesting is that when we have this core social base of high-alignment connections in our lives, we can handle a lot more diversity beyond our values. The rest of the world’s misalignments become less upsetting and aren’t so disempowering when we feel so empowered to invest in what matters to us.

I don’t think it’s necessary (or even wise) to reach out and build a bridge to people whose values are very misaligned with yours. I think that will just water down your experience of life, and it’s a distraction from going all-in with the rich alignment you could invest in instead. You may be surprised to see how many transformational ripples you create by investing fully in the values that matter to you and shedding links and anchors to opposing values. Keeping a foot in the world of misalignments doesn’t serve you, and it doesn’t actually help others. It just keeps you anchored to various forms of scarcity, and it keeps your inner diversity from fully expressing itself.

Conscious Growth Club Has 108 Members for Year 5

Posted on 04/05/2021 by Boris Clair

Conscious Growth Club had its best annual launch ever last week. We now have 108 members in the club for Year 5, including Rachelle and me. That a 20% increase from last year.

We only open for new members one week each year. We’ll open again for Year 6 in the last week of April 2022. From now till then, we’ll be serving and engaging with the CGCers who decided to share this journey together.

I love that each year in CGC is a different experience because there’s a different mix of people each year. CGC co-creatively adapts to the people who join. I think CGC Year 5 is likely to be our most co-creative and playful year since we started, especially since 45 people joined from the Amplify course on creativity.

There’s been a huge surge in activity in the CGC private member forums since we opened for new members from April 25th to May 1st. This is what the daily page views have looked like recently. Today (May 4) isn’t even halfway over yet, so that will probably end up closer to the bar for May 3rd by the end of the day. This is a normal pattern for the first week or two of a new CGC year as members introduce themselves and start engaging with the community.

This launch was very different from previous years. Last year I spent more than $6K on Facebook ads for CGC, and I actively promoted CGC on social media (Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube).

This year I didn’t even mention CGC on social media, and I didn’t advertise it at all. I had deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts in January. And even though I have thousands of YouTube followers, I decided not to mention CGC there this time.

This time I really wanted to focus on alignment. I wasn’t really trying to grow CGC in size, and I had no particular number goals for this launch. Growing CGC is nice, but it would have been fine if we ended up with a smaller group than last year. I just want to make sure we’re attracting people who strongly align with CGC’s values and culture.

This was also the simplest launch we’ve ever done. Not only were there no ads and social media to deal with, I also decided not to create an invitation video this time. The invitation web page was very straightforward. I also did a lot less blogging this year, and I sent fewer emails to invite people on my email list to join CGC this time.

So I approached this launch in a very chill way. Any parts of the launch process where I felt resistance to doing them, I simply skipped them this year.

What I noticed is that this freed up more emotional energy, and I was able to flow that energy elsewhere. I felt more relaxed than ever when inviting people to join CGC this year.

I really don’t think the launch would have gone this well if some of my energy was still wrapped up in social media. I’m really seeing that going for bigger reach isn’t what matters. This experience verifies what my intuition was telling me all along – that alignment is way more important than reach. Even if the numbers turned out smaller this time, I think I still would have feel that it was a wise decision to focus on improving the alignment by reducing the reach. All throughout the launch, it felt so nice not to being dealing with Facebook at all. That place is such a clutter of misaligned energies. I feel so much lighter without it. It’s pretty easy to compensate for the reduction in reach.

When I see the interactions that people are having in CGC now, as I’ve been reading the new member intros and welcoming people in, the vibe of the group feels different – as in better than ever. It’s pretty early in the new CGC year, so that vibe will surely shift along the way, but something just seems super promising about it. I feel like CGC Year 5 is likely to exceed my expectations, perhaps by a lot.

I thought that I’d be feeling pretty tired after finishing the Amplify course. I just published the 63rd and final lesson for it on Friday, April 30th. Even though I haven’t had a single day off in at least 10 weeks – lots of 12-16 hours days, 7 days a week – I don’t feel burned out. Quite the opposite – I feel energized and enthusiastic to dive right into more projects – and especially to engage with CGCers. I think this is because I’m picking up so much supportive energy from other people that it’s keeping my motivational batteries full. And I think that effect is extra strong because of the alignment of the group this year.

I just finished a major course and wasn’t intending to do another one till the first quarter of next year. But now I’m already starting to get a flow of ideas for a new course, coming from a direction I didn’t expect. I thought the Muse would give me some time off, but part of me just wants to keep dancing with her. I don’t think this is because of the ideas per se – I think it’s because of the super aligned people I get to co-create with.

When I reached out to attract future CGCers from social media in previous years, we did see some people joining from those services, but this included people who weren’t as familiar with my work or this community. They may never have done a course or a workshop with us. So they usually weren’t as aligned with CGC as the people who are more closely engaged with this community over a longer period of time.

Most CGCers have been familiar with my work for at least 10 years. Some have been reading my blog for 15+ years. Since those people share so many interests in common with me, they also have a lot in common with each other. Whatever I’ve blogged about in the past, you’ll find people with those interests in CGC – online business, Star Trek, veganism, non-monogamy, travel, sleep experiments, subjective reality, manifesting, productivity, Toastmasters, and more.

This year almost everyone who joined CGC has been through at least one of our 4 courses, and quite a few have gone through 3 or 4 of them. Many members have been to previous workshops as well. I can see why the courses attract so many people to eventually join CGC. If people like the courses and get value from them, they’re highly likely to find CGC worthwhile too. The Deep Abundance Integration and Amplify courses both had a social element, so people can get a much clearer sense of the community and what the people are like.

A lot of people in CGC are very intuitive and sensitive to energy flows, as am I (especially this year while I’m eating raw). I think it’s possible that by focusing on a more socially aligned launch for a course or CGC instead of trying to go for more reach, it helps to create a more focused energy pattern around the experience. I think some people in this community can pick up on that energy, at least subconsciously. This year in particular, they may have sensed a more aligned vibe than usual, like this was the perfect year for them to join.

When I eat raw like I’ve been doing this year, my intuition gets a significant boost. In some sense the signals are the same as before, but they’re much louder and clearer, so they grab my conscious attention more easily and more often. When I’m eating cooked food, I may have a background leaning or a suspicion that some particular direction might be worthwhile. Then after eating raw for several months, that same idea will seem closer to plain-as-day obvious, like it will surely work out. Consequently, I find it significantly easier to trust and act upon my intuition when I eat raw. Those decisions don’t seem nearly as risky because I can see that life is going to work out nicely just by following the energy flows.

I am not attached to growing CGC in size. It works wonderfully at or near its current size. I am willing to see it grow in future years, but not at the cost of alignment. I’m also willing to see it shrink, as long as the alignment of the group stays high. Alignment has been my priority from the beginning, but in past years I sensed that there might be a conflict between alignment and growth. Now it feels like this was an artificial conflict, and it’s evaporating. I think it may be very possible to do both, and that points to a different kind of path forward – one that remains free of social media and doesn’t involve going for more reach.

One unusual aspect of CGC is that we’re very much a Mile Wide, Mile Deep kind of group inside. We cover all aspects of personal growth – health, relationships, finances, work, etc – but this doesn’t water down the experience because we also go for depth in these areas too. Why settle for only breadth or depth? I see no conflict between these. By learning to go deep in one area, it’s easier to go deep into others. Otherwise it’s like saying to a scuba diver, “Because you went so deep in the Indian Ocean, you’ll have to stay on the surface when you visit other oceans.” Diving deep in one ocean just makes it easier to dive into others. The same goes for different personal growth investments. If you learn how to do a major transformation of your finances, for instance, you’ll actually get better at doing deep transformations in other areas of life too. Going deep into one area certainly doesn’t limit you to the surface of the others.

CGC has a bright future ahead. It’s a joy to be present to it each day and be part of its ongoing evolution. If you haven’t joined us for it yet, I invite you to keep CGC on your radar for future years. When the alignment is there for you, you’re welcome to join us in 2022 or beyond.

My Intentions for CGC Year 5

Posted on 27/04/2021 by Boris Clair

This is the one week during each year during which Conscious Growth Club opens for new members to join. We are open through May 1st. It’s an exciting time inside the group as current members who’ve been in the group for 1-4 years are actively welcoming new members who are just now beginning their CGC journey.

Every year at this time, some members renew for another year. Some members decide to leave or take a break from CGC. And many new members join. Also this year, some previous members who skipped Year 4 have already rejoined CGC for Year 5. I’m delighted to welcome them back.

So it’s a time of transition. Every year in CGC is a different experience because the people are different, and the group dynamics change. Year 5 is likely to be an especially creative year in the group due to many people from the Amplify course joining us. We launched Amplify on March 1st, starting with just 2 lessons, and today I’ll be publishing lesson #60. I’ve been creating and adding a new lesson every single day, 7 days a week, for the past two months. I expect we’ll close at about 62 lessons, so the main course will be complete this week, and then I’ll create some additional bonuses for it too. The feedback on this course and the interactions with the members have been deeply rewarding.

We’re having our 8th and final live group call for Amplify tomorrow (April 28th). CGC members get to attend that call too.

CGC’s Will and Consciousness

The lesson I recorded yesterday for Amplify is called “Stellar Nursery,” and one topic it covers is how big projects can take on a life of their own, as if they have their own will and consciousness. CGC is one of those star-like projects. In the beginning I felt like I had to give it tons of careful thought and nurturing, always going back to getting clear about the intention for it. Now I feel like it’s doing a good job of voicing its own intentions and summoning its own energy for where it wants to go and what it wants to explore and experience each year.

Many people have contributed their own intentions to what CGC is to become. In the past, some had conflicting views about which way CGC should go, and when the group zigged one way, they zagged and left. Others preferred to hang with the zig.

One thing I love about CGC is that it too is an explorer. There are so many explorer types like me in the group, and we’ve collectively given CGC a similar explorer consciousness. CGC has some nicely structured elements, but it has plenty of flexibility to move and dance in different directions throughout the year.

For instance, members often use the CGC Lounge (our 24/7 video hangout room, basically an open Zoom call that never ends) to mastermind together in various ways. Groups form, meet purposefully for a while, and then naturally dissolve when they energy is ready to flow somewhere else. CGC has a very wave-like nature internally, much like how I like to blog and create new courses with the flow of inspiration.

I feel there’s a part of CGC that absolutely resists being caged. It loves freedom. It loves to explore the possibility space. It does not want to be locked down into an overly rigid structure, but some structure is healthy for it as a base from which to explore. It loves to invite and encourage experimentation, spontaneity, and going with the flow of inspiration among its members.

CGC also loves abundance. It delights in inviting new people to the party, yet it’s unattached to who stays and who goes, knowing that it’s up to each individual to align or not. CGC doesn’t try to convince or chase after anyone to join. It offers no resistance when people leave. It simply basks in the energy and presence of being what it is and becoming what it wants to be. And it knows without a doubt that it’s going to be an incredible match for people who want to surf its waves and dance with it for some portion of their lives.

CGC loves compassion. It willingly accompanies people into the depths of their sorrow. It has no fear of pain or trauma. It welcomes transformational tears with love and hugs. It will stand in the Pit of Despair with members and do tequila shots with them while they’re there, occasionally pointing up at the stars.

No Advertising or Social Media This Year

Last year I spent over $6K on Facebook ads to promote CGC during its launch. This year the ad budget is zero.

This isn’t for financial reasons. The ads for previous launches were always profitable, bringing in 2-3x what was spent. But I haven’t spent a dime on advertising this whole year.

I’m not even mentioning CGC on social media this time. I deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts in January. I had thousands of followers on both services. I let that go.

Interestingly, CGC’s sign-up and renewal rates are even better than they were last time at this year. It’s still early in the launch week, so I can’t predict where we’ll land, but so far 38 people are already enrolled for Year 5 (40 if you count Rachelle and me). That’s a fantastic start. We’ll see where we end up after the May 1st deadline.

The Amplify launch was ad-free and social media-free as well, and 300+ people signed up for it during the first 2 weeks. That was a good test to verify that advertising and social media just aren’t needed.

I trust my intuition – a lot – and it tells me that it’s time to let go of some old frames, even frames that may have served me well in the past. So instead of thinking of a launch in terms of reaching out to more people, I’m focusing on alignment and depth. I’m deliberating inviting fewer people this time.

This year I’m only sharing the CGC invitation with the core community around my work, namely my blog readers, course customers, and email subscribers. It’s really this community that CGC is intended for. Reaching beyond this community just doesn’t seem necessary or wise.

I’ve noticed that a lot of CGCers don’t even have Facebook accounts anymore. CGC has become such a good and healthy online home for them, and I too see the potential to go even more all-in with this community. Facebook may have a lot of reach, but it terms of depth and intimacy, it’s nowhere close to what CGC offers. And Facebook has so many misalignments that CGC doesn’t have to deal with.

I feel like my own alignment with CGC has grown even stronger since letting go of Facebook and Instagram. I think it has something to do with letting go of the shallowness and misalignments of those services. My brain no longer has to maintain any circuitry for the Facebook-style interactions, so it can repurpose all of that mental and emotional energy for greater depth and engagement. I like how this has simplified my life too.

I especially notice that I’ve been feeling a lot more compassionate and caring towards people this year. I can really feel that as I record lessons for the Amplify course – there’s a depth of compassion there that feels very powerful to me. And I think letting go of social media misalignments helped. This kind of energy feels like it’s way more me. It’s nice that I no longer have to maladapt some part of my thinking and my energy to deal with social media interactions. It feels like my energy matrix is free to stretch into its proper dimensions now – no need to put so much energy into shielding anymore.

I’m just so used to engaging with people at great levels of depth and intimacy. It’s like being a submarine that doesn’t want to surface anymore because there’s so much beauty to explore below the surface.

Last year I was involved in other communities too, including a year-long coaching program. I wrapped all of that up in December, and I also wrapped up my 2020 daily blogging challenge. I feel that CGC is drawing me even further inward, which seems like a very aligned invitation to accept for Year 5.

Inviting Aligned Members

CGC has a very beautiful culture inside that took a while to evolve. There were some bumps along the way, which served as invitations to make clearer alignment decisions. I’ve especially loved how nicely it’s been flowing for the past several months. There’s been a core group of active members who’ve been holding a strong vibe of mutual caring and compersion. I really like how we’ve managed to merge mutual caring with goal-oriented pursuits and improving our results. Internally it feels like group has become more team-like than ever.

Compersion is a word you may not find in the dictionary. It’s adapted from non-monogamy circles. Compersion is the opposite of jealousy or envy. It means feeling happy for other people’s successes and happiness.

I’ve been flowing with a lot of compersion lately too. I really enjoy seeing people in CGC make their lives better. I like celebrating their wins with them. It’s an honor to connect with such growth-oriented people each day. I get to see how much they invest in moving their lives forward, especially when it comes to working through various misalignments. I really do feel good about their accomplishments, big and small, since I seen a lot of their journey to get there, making it feel like I’ve walked that path with them.

Same goes for connecting with people on the Amplify group calls. It’s been a joy to watch people advance their lives in so many ways.

I think one reason that I’m able to feel so much compersion for other people is that I’m really happy with my own life. The pandemic situation has made me feel luckier and more appreciative. In some ways I feel that the pandemic has been a gift. It helped me flow into a much-needed contraction phase, which helped me see how much there is to appreciate that’s right in front of me.

To help members see if they’re aligned with joining CGC, I’ve made some tweaks to the CGC Invitation Page, and I’ve also updated the CGC Frequently Asked Questions to provide even more answers and details about the club.

CGC Is a Trump-Free Zone

One specific thing I’ll share is that CGC isn’t a fit for Trump voters and supporters. This isn’t for political reasons, and it doesn’t actually matter what someone might state as their reasons for supporting Trump, such as their personal financial interests. It doesn’t matter if people made that choice out of ignorance or careful consideration. The behavior alone is enough to disqualify someone from being a match for CGC. That behavior and its effects are just too incompatible with CGC’s culture, values, and internationally diverse membership. This is stated plainly on the CGC Invitation Page too.

Additionally it would not feel good to be put in a position where I’d be expected to coach or help Trump supporters to achieve their goals, so I’m not willing to offer that service to them. That would be incompatible with my own values and ethics. If I invited such people to join, it would degrade my relationship with CGC, and I’m not willing to let that happen. It’s my intention to develop and even stronger relationship with CGC this year, and having Trump supporters in the group would be incompatible with that intention too.

For anyone who has a serious problem with this, I would ask them not to join CGC.

I think that for many people who are very well-aligned with CGC though, the fact that I’ll do my best to maintain CGC as a Trump-free zone may even bring some relief regarding what they will not have to see or deal with inside. This decision includes acknowledging how Trump supporters’ choices and behaviors negatively impact the lives of many members of this community.

Maybe there will come a time when ex-Trumpers have a place in CGC – and if so, I think it would be a very long road to get there – but this year CGC needs to stay Trump-free. If anyone doesn’t like this decision and wants to blame it on my personal shortcomings, it won’t change the decision. It’s my responsibility to make this call, and I think it’s the right call for where the energy flow is going for CGC Year 5. I’m just not seeing any kind of flow in a direction that could be compatible with having Trump supporters joining us this year. I don’t see a scenario where that could be a win-win situation, so I do think it’s wise to take that option off the table.

Public Q&A and “Meet the Members” Call for CGC

To help people who are thinking about joining CGC this year make a good decision, I’ll be hosting a Public Q&A and “Meet the Members” call this Thursday, April 29, 2021 at 11am Pacific time.

You’re welcome to attend if you’re interested in CGC, subject to the caveats I shared above. Just register for the call, and Zoom will send you the link to join.

I’ll answer people’s questions about CGC, and CGC members are also invited to join the call and share about their experiences and tips for new members. They can offer their own perspectives on what CGC is like and who’d be a good match for it.

So this is an opportunity for you to get a little more perspective on what CGC and the members are like.

We’ll record this call too, and I’ll share it on my blog afterwards, so if you can’t make the live call, you can still watch the recording.

My intention for this call isn’t to try to convince anyone to join, so it’s not going to be salesy. My intention is to help people make the right decision for themselves and for CGC. I know that each year, some people really sweat this decision. If someone really is a terrific match for CGC and would likely gain a lot from joining, then everyone is well-served by helping them to see that. And if someone really wouldn’t be a healthy match for CGC, then it’s also in everyone’s best interest that they see that too.

If you do feel aligned to join CGC already, then I invite you to visit the CGC Invitation Page and join us. The new CGC year runs through April 30, 2022, and your membership starts immediately when you join. So if you join now instead of waiting till May 1st to decide, you’ll get several extra days for your one-year membership (the rest of April 2021), and you can begin engaging with the community right away.

If you have other questions about CGC, you can also get in touch via my contact form. 😃

Join Conscious Growth Club by May 1st

Posted on 25/04/2021 by Boris Clair

Conscious Growth Club is now open for you to join, from now through May 1, 2021. First started in 2017, this is our most comprehensive personal growth program and support group.

We’re about to start our 5th year together, and you’re invited to join this week. This is the only week you can join CGC in 2021.

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 (87,000 posts so far). It’s ad-free, spam-free, and troll-free. Members share intentions and goals, update progress, help each other solve problems, and encourage the heck out of each other.
A 24/7 video chat channel – 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.
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 – 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.
Quarterly planning sessions – Every quarter we invite members to participate in a structured 5-day process to assess recent progress, refresh 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 a new self-development course to be co-created with our members in early 2022.
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. We all support and encourage each other as we go.
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.
Many extra bonuses – CGC includes lots of extra support material, including a 10-day creative challenge mini-course.

New for 2021: A 3-Day Halloween Online Workshop

This year we’re adding an all new CGC benefit: a 3-day online personal growth workshop for October 29-31, 2021 (Fri-Sun).

This workshop will be content-rich and will include plenty of interactive fun and connection with other members. The structure will be similar to one of our live in-person events but adapted for Zoom. This workshop will be recorded, and you’ll get the recordings too.

I will deliver most, if not all of the workshop content, but it’s possible that we may invite some CGCers to contribute too if there’s interest in that and if any CGCers want to stretch themselves.

Since the last day of the workshop lands on Halloween, we’ll invite everyone to wear costumes that day (totally optional, your choice) to make it even more fun and lively. 😃

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 will become a regular part of your social circle too since we’re active in the group every day.

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 1st

We’re opening enrollment for a 7-day window only, from now through Saturday, May 1st. This will be our only enrollment period for 2021. 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.

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

Amplify Inspiration

Posted on 12/04/2021 by Boris Clair

On a group call for the Amplify course last week, we did a two-part co-creative exercise. The first part involved connecting with our sorrow, and the second part was to see the invitation in that sorrow to discover a new place of joy. Then members co-created intentions for the world with the purpose of sharing those intentions publicly – with the hope that we may collectively inspire more positive ripples in the world.

I promised to share on my blog the intentions that people wanted to put out into the world. Every group was free to decide what medium to use to express their intentions, as long as it was something we could capture and share in a digital format.

Here are the intentions that people wanted to share with you. I hope you find this inspiring. 😃

Umbrella of Love

Respectful Co-creation
Nurtured by Love and Connection,
a Möbius strip, no beginning or end,
Embracing both result and process.
An umbrella of Love overarching,
Held aloft aloft by Connection

– Group 2

Healing Ripples

Through healing ourselves and taking personal responsibility for our authentic self-expression, we create ripples that heal the world.

– Group 7

A World of Connectedness

We intend a world of connectedness where everyone feels like a part of a community. A world where there’s freedom of speech and expression. A world where people feel deep empathy, recognize each other’s common humanity and find ways to relate to each other irrespective of their backgrounds. A world where they feel safe and a sense of belonging.

– Group 3: Gianfranco, Benjamin, Sean, Christine, and Ranjana

Waking Up Abundance

To combat indifference, apathy and cruelty in the world, let go of scarcity, wake up to abundance, empathy and the power within you.

– Group 5

Feeling Deeply

Lead by example, in this moment, by being open to have our heart broken today. We’ll be able to feel connected to each other, experience profound joy and create change because we feel deeply.

When you have a powerful enough “why”, you’ll find the “how”. Leave space for infinite how’s.

Additionally, eat ice cream every day!

– Group 1: Ellie, Randy, JR, JQ, Théo, Thorsten

On behalf of Group 1, Ellie sings about being the change you want to see in the world.

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Embracing Individual Uniqueness

On behalf of Group 6, Sean shares the intention to connect based on our uniqueness rather than our sameness.

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Elevating Empathy and Compassion

Compassion…there is no “other.” We are interconnected…but what’s it like to be the other?

– Group 4

Phil elaborates on Group 4’s intention to elevate empathy and compassion.

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Welcome Home

On behalf of the Welcome Home Group (Harriet, Bri, Nessy, Darryl, Artem, and Karine), Darryl shares intentions of belonging, wholeness, nurturing, and healing, encapsulated by the words “Welcome home.”

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Celebrating Existence

On behalf of Group 9 (aka “The Dandelions”), Manuel celebrates the fact that we’re alive and that you may contribute a verse to the powerful play of life.

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Here’s the poem “O Me! O Life!” that Manuel mentioned in the video.

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

by Walt Whitman (from Leaves of Grass, 1892)

And by the way, Broderick… Walt Whitman isn’t the guy from Breaking Bad. 😉

Here’s an image of a dandelion growing in a sidewalk that Manuel mentioned in the video, drawn by Harriet Knight.

A Community of Higher Selves

Build a community to help us connect to our higher selves. It will require investment from participants (not necessarily money) to join.

– Group 10

On behalf of Group 10, Richad envisions a community of people who want to embrace their higher selves.

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Welcome Home – The Song

This exercise has been inspiring some further creative ripples among Amplify members. In particular, Bri Harris felt inspired to write and sing this beautiful song called “Welcome Home,” shared with her permission.

I have a dream
that one day every being
will feel nurtured, loved, accepted, safe
and welcomed on this earth

And they will know
that they are home
and they belong
yeah, they belong

Standing at the mirror
the young girl does not compare
herself to flawless images
or fear judgmental stares

The voice in her own head
is a kind and caring friend, it says
your body is beautiful
your body is your home

Welcome home
welcome home
you belong
Oh you belong

Playing in the yard
the boy falls down and cries
his tears are not a weakness
he ever has to hide

The feelings in his chest
are openly expressed
holding space for his friends,
he makes them feel at home

Welcome home
welcome home
you belong
you belong

Stepping off the plane
in an unfamiliar place
the woman doesn’t recognize
a single face

But the people in the crowd
wrap their loving arms around her
and say—
Welcome home!

Welcome home
Welcome home
You belong
You belong

Walking through the doors
head bowed down in shame
the man is scared he won’t be forgiven
for all of his mistakes

But the world is there
with its heart open wide
ready to heal
and to welcome him home

Welcome home
welcome home
you belong
you belong

Girl or boy
he, she, they or them
No matter your identity
or the color of your skin

You are welcome here
You always fit in
You are home
And you belong

I have a dream
that one day every being
will feel nurtured, loved, accepted, safe
and welcomed on this earth

And we’ll know
This is our home
and we belong
yeah, we belong

Final Thoughts

Even though each group did this exercise independently (in groups of 5-6 people), it’s fascinating that there’s so much commonality in the themes, especially regarding belongingness and welcoming. Several people noted this during the call as well. There was even a suggestion of getting “Welcome home” tattoos.

I wonder how universal this intention is – to create a world where everyone feels like this is truly their home and that they belong here.

It’s interesting how many spiritual beliefs suggest that there’s a better place after this one, or that we came from a better place before this one. What if we intend to make this world the most welcoming place to be, while we’re here right now?

After 80 Years Of Marriage, This Couple Have The Best Love Advice

Posted on 01/02/2021 by Boris Clair

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Relational Goals

Posted on 31/12/2020 by Boris Clair

A nice way to identify goals, especially for the New Year, is to clarify how you’d like to upgrade your relationships with different aspects of life. Then identify and commit to action-based goals that you expect would improve these relationships.

For example, you have a relationship with:

money
your body
each key person in your life
your work
your habits
your daily routine
your exercise routine
your diet
sleep
life
reality
your skills
your emotions
your past self
your future self
your website
your home
your workspace
your lifestyle

You could start by rating each of these relationships on a scale of 1-10. Which of your most important relationships are getting relatively low ratings? These are areas where your current way of relating isn’t working for you. So accept the obvious truth that you must stop relating to these low-rated areas in the same ways you’ve been doing in the past.

Now go another step and describe your existing relationships with the weaker areas. Then contrast this with how you like these relationships to be. You may find clues to your desired relationships within your stronger areas.

Suppose you rated your relationship with money as a 2 out of 10. Perhaps this relationship is full of tension, stress, worry, and anxiety. Clearly your current way of relating to money isn’t working for you. So accept that you must relate to money differently going forward. You must heal the broken relationship.

So where would you like to take this relationship? How would you like to see it improve? Suppose your answer is that you want to relate to money with feelings of ease, lightness, confidence, flow, abundance, playfulness, fun, and trust. Perhaps you want to enjoy and appreciate money and not fear it or stress out about it.

You can transform this relationship with money to make it the way you want it to be, but you have to pick the right kinds of goals that are aligned with this transformation. This means you have to pick different money-related goals than you did in the past. You can’t keep picking goals that stem from a broken relationship. You have to shift to goals that can heal, repair, and upgrade this relationship.

What sense does it make to set income goals such as to make a certain amount of money if you’re piling them on top of a broken relationship? That would be like adding more furniture to a house that’s on fire. If the relationship isn’t working, don’t add more. Set goals to turn that relationship in a more aligned direction.

Often when a relationship isn’t working well, it’s because you aren’t being very strong in your boundaries. It’s the same with relationships among human beings. Without good boundary management, you’ll likely end up miserable.

Targeting a goal like “make more money” is like saying you want to connect with more people – that only works if you’re already good at boundary management. It makes little sense to use this approach if you’re filling your life with abusive relationships. You’re just inviting more conflict and abuse then.

Using our money example, here are some sample goals that may help you transform the relationship in the direction you want it to go:

If your job isn’t aligned with ease, lightness, confidence, flow, abundance, playfulness, fun, and trust, quit the job. If the job is keeping you from creating your desired relationship with money, it has to go. Henceforth make sure that your approach to income generation is aligned with your desired relationship with money. Don’t settle for less.
Buy a small item or upgrade one of your possessions just because you’ll enjoy and appreciate it. Gift yourself with a joyful expenditure to remind yourself that you can enjoy money with ease and lightness. Each time your mind tries to stress over the minor expense, use this item to remind yourself to align with trust and abundance. Keep it around as a symbol of your pending transformation. Remind yourself that you never would have bought this item if you were stuck in stressful scarcity thinking.
Perform a small act of kindness for someone else. Give a small but playful gift. Do a little favor for someone. Lean into the feeling of having excess capacity. So this is another goal to do some specific action that’s incompatible with your old relationship with money. The key is to start taking actions that your old relationship style wouldn’t allow you to take but which are nicely compatible with your new relationship style.
Brainstorm a list of 100 different ways to generate income that are aligned with ease, lightness, confidence, flow, abundance, playfulness, fun, and trust. Review this list each day for 30 days in a row. After you review the full list each day, pick one item and let yourself daydream about actually doing it for five minutes. This will begin training your mind to start thinking in a direction that’s more aligned with your new relationship with money.
Do a modest-sized passive income project based on something you’ll enjoy. Create a new stream of income in a way that honors your desired relationship with money. For instance, one Conscious Growth Club member recently designed and published a new journal that she sells on Amazon, thereby creating her first passive income stream.

Note that these goals are specific and actionable, and they’re intended to shift the relationship from the undesirable to the desirable. When you focus on the relationship you want, you’ll set different kinds of goals. You won’t just be pushing yourself to go further down an old path with an old relational style that isn’t working for you anyway.

Getting the relationship right is the key to sustainable motivation. How will you motivate yourself to work on income generating projects if you’re relating to this area of life with stress and worry? You’ll probably procrastinate and do something else instead because it will make you feel better.

Remember that all of your relationships with different parts of life exist in your mind. Therefore you have the power to change them.

If you can elevate your relationships with different areas of life to a place of feeling good even when the circumstances look challenging, this creates an intelligent base for further investment. You’ll want to keep investing because it will feel good. The motivation is similar to being in love with someone. You naturally want to spend time together because it feels good to do so. And when a human relationship isn’t working well, you’re more likely to want to avoid each other.

This is a simple but powerful frame for setting goals that not only give you a sense of achievement, but they also improve your day-to-day quality of life. Moreover, this approach helps you gain access to bigger achievements and explorations that require more commitment, investment, and motivation – and to enjoy the process of working towards those goals.

Why Socialize at All?

Posted on 29/12/2020 by Boris Clair

How do you get motivated to reach out and connect with people? What gets you to overcome inertia? What makes you want to risk rejection? Is it worth it to keep sifting through so many mismatches and partial matches? What makes you exert the effort to engage with people socially? What’s your why?

I brainstormed the following list in Conscious Growth Club yesterday in a discussion thread about the motivation for doing anything of a social nature – like connecting with people online or offline, joining groups, maintaining friendships, and doing shared activities. I thought it would be worthwhile to share it here too.

Here’s a personal list of motivations for being social. See if any of these strike a chord with you.

because I think it will be fun and interesting
because the people in that group have abilities or understandings that I lack, and I’d like to learn from them
because I like the people (or think I might like the people) and want to spend more time with them
because I can often advance faster in a new direction with more social support (I’ll take more action)
because I want to keep in good practice with my social skills
because I enjoy the activities
because I often create more interesting memories with people than without
because I grew up shy and introverted, and I love stretching myself to explore extrovert mode
because I find great benefit in following the “embrace the new” heuristic, and connecting with new people is one way to do that
because even when I don’t connect so well with a group, I’ve processed that energy that made me wonder about them, and I can let it go and invite something more aligned, so I gain clarity either way
because there are a lot of interesting people in the world, and it’s a fun gamble to take a risk that I could meet someone who changes the course of my life
because I sometimes enjoy the experience of “hiding” in a new group and seeing how long it takes for someone to recognize me and call out something like, “Hey, wait a minute… you’re that blogger guy, aren’t you? I remember reading about that polywhatsit sleep experiment you did back in the day.”
because it will stretch me if I choose the right groups, and it’s not a big loss if I temporarily choose a mismatch
because women will be there, and they’re fun creatures to connect with
because I’ve noticed that I’m generally happier after hanging out with growth-oriented people, even if I don’t always feel motivated to do it beforehand
because I keep getting better at finding quality matches, like learning that paid groups are usually vastly better than free ones (free Facebook groups are mostly dreadful compared to their paid equivalents)
because socializing in positive ways is better for my health and the health of others, adding years to our lives and reducing many risks (COVID times are different though)
because I like the positive surprises, interesting invitations, and variety that friendships add to my life (such as going to Costa Rica for a week of ayahuasca ceremonies with about 15 friends)
because I like seeing my friends learn and grow, especially over 10+ years
because I tried the opposite, and that ran its course for me and became boring
because I want to enjoy rich and meaningful friendships during my later years as I get older
because I enjoy and appreciate my alone time even more when it’s balanced with social time
because I’m not the jealous or envious type, and I take pleasure in other people’s successes (compersion)
because I get to wear clothes from the other side of the closet
because interacting with people helps me sculpt my character
because I struggled in business for years before I reached out and got involved with a nonprofit association, and that decision really transformed my life and business for the better
because I went bankrupt trying to figure everything out on my own
because I learned from someone else how to quickly recover from bankruptcy (his advice worked)
because humans don’t thrive in isolation
because I wouldn’t have met either of my wives if I didn’t reach out socially (I met Erin on an online forum and Rachelle at the first Conscious Growth Workshop)
because I wouldn’t have gotten a book published by a major publisher so easily if I hadn’t stretched myself socially
because I would have far fewer hugs and cuddles in my life if I held back
because I wouldn’t have seen the opportunity to get into blogging as early as I did (I learned about it from a game developer friend that I connected with online and at in-person conferences – Thanks, Tom!)
because other people frequently challenge me to stretch in different ways, and I wouldn’t grow nearly as much without them
because this life journey is fun and rewarding to share
because investing in people has made me feel less fearful and more at home here
because interacting with people helps me explore, deepen, and improve my relationship with life
because I used to avoid and mistrust people a lot, and I like that I developed the ability to feel a lot more comfortable around them (it’s lovely to enjoy the fruits of this transformation)
because compassion and caring are strong motivators for me
because I’d much rather spend 30 days at Disneyland with my best friend, lover, and life partner than alone
because many experiences are so much richer and more memorable when shared with one or more people
because it’s wonderful to be married to a woman whose cooking skills greatly exceed my own (and who likes to cook, including making yummy raw food)
because this is a part of my reality that isn’t going away anytime soon, and if I didn’t accept the invitation to explore it, I’d always wonder if I should have invested in a deeper social explorations
because the influence of other people got me traveling internationally, which has enriched my life tremendously
because I wouldn’t have otherwise discovered that I really like Canadians
because I wouldn’t have otherwise discovered independent theater (I’ve see 200+ plays from independent performers)
because most of the value that I give and receive in life flows through people
because Conscious Growth Club wouldn’t exist otherwise
because I’d never have done any live events otherwise
because I’d still otherwise be wondering “What if I had invested in this?” during every remaining year of my life
because game developers still keep cranking out the same drivel, and people remain more interesting for now… except Zelda: Breath of the Wild… that game is a bit better than most human interactions, but at least it ends
because a common regret of the dying was that they let their friendships fade away
because this life and all of our lives are temporary experiences
because I like being in love, and I want to spend most of my years that way
because The Princess Bride was a labor of love, created by people who enjoyed working together and who had a lot of fun along the way (listen to Cary Elwes’ As You Wish audiobook for some delightful stories about the making of the movie)
because if I don’t let myself engage with people, despite the risks, I’ll regret it
because many people are socially scared or anxious, and a lot of them secretly appreciate when someone takes the initiative and reaches out to connect
because many people feel socially awkward, and it benefits them when someone reaches out to help them practice while accepting them as they are (they still want and need to connect)
because socializing teaches patience like nothing else does
because social risks add spice to life
because rejection isn’t such a big deal once you get used to it
because one juicy connection makes it all so worthwhile
because we can help each other
because the world is facing many problems we cannot solve individually but we can solve collectively
because it took me many years to learn how to get in touch with the part of myself that cares, and I’ve invested way too much in that to turn my back on it (it lights me up inside)
because I want a life rich in emotional depth, and dealing with growth-oriented people sure stirs up plenty of emotion
because if I didn’t invest in this part of life, I’d be living out my days in a much smaller reality without realizing just how small it was
and dozens more reasons if I want to keep writing…

Instead of looking for one big why, you could consider the totality of many different whys. See how those stack up against your objections.