Tag Archives: Relationships

Listening to Your Energy

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I often begin my days by asking: What wants to come through? What energy wants to be expressed?

Then I listen.

Sometimes I listen with my mind or body. Sometimes I listen with my heart. And sometimes it feels like I’m listening with my spirit.

I feel like there’s a collective idea space where thoughts and feelings are always flowing, like radio waves being constantly transmitted. When I tune into that space, I often get ideas for articles. Or I could pull out bigger ideas like for a new course or workshop.

But I don’t have to aim my internal beam-forming antenna in that direction, scanning the cloud of human needs and wants. I can also listen within. I can can scan my own personal energy field and see what wants to come through.

Then different inner voices get my attention to share their desires.

One inner voice would absolutely love to do more in-person workshops. We haven’t done one since 2016, and I was leaning towards doing one in October 2020, but that got nixed with the virus situation. I hear this voice and agree with it. It’s definitely something to look forward to when the timing is right. Zoom is great for the role it plays, and I use it every week, but there’s really no substitute for connecting face to face.

Another inner voice wants to have a more spiritual 2021. That’s the voice encouraging me to eat raw for the whole year since that way of eating makes me feel the most open, sensitive, and synchronized with life. This voice is pleased that I’m on board with the idea, so it waits patiently for me to begin at the start of the year. Meanwhile it seems to be working behind the scenes to prepare me for this shift.

I wonder if there’s some kind of energy linkage between my inner voices and the collective space of ideas. It feels like my internal energies can communicate with this larger field on their own in the background, such as to coordinate events or to arrange synchronicities. When I create certain harmonies with my inner voices, such as by agreeing with them, it feels like I grant them more privileges to take action on my behalf.

This is a mental model I sometimes use, not anything objectively provable, but it does align well with my personal experience. Do you ever feel like some energy-based or thought-based parts of you make arrangements with the rest of reality on your behalf? I’ve seen so many instances of external changes happening shortly after I make meaningful internal decisions, especially decisions that involve saying yes to some under-expressed part of myself.

One example was connecting with Rachelle. We lived 1300 miles away from each other, in different countries. I sometimes feel like our meeting was arranged, like some part of her energy and some part of my energy linked up behind the scenes and recognized our tremendous compatibility. Then they conspired to make us meet in person by removing obstacles and arranging synchronicities. Fortunately we each listened to those internal nudges that spiraled us into a beautiful connection.

I do feel there’s a sort of spiritual permission grant needed to unlock this type of experience. In my case I specifically recall inviting new connections to come into my life while I was still in my first marriage. That was also a time where I was eating a lot of raw foods, which made me extra sensitive to subtle shifts that I might not have noticed if I’d been eating cooked food. So I don’t think this is just a spiritual effect; I think it’s a physical one too.

It feels like the misaligned energies are continuing to move further away and receding into the background. Somehow the louder they scream, the fainter they sound. I feel like this is creating space for more aligned energies to flow through. It’s like how letting go of a partial match creates space for a much better match to flow through. If you’re sensitive to energy flows, you’ll feel this shifting well before you see it, and with experience you’ll trust your inner senses.

With the daily blogging challenge, 2020 was a deep dive into connecting with lots of personal growth ideas. It was also a year of boundary management and lifestyle adjustments. I feel like I had to be extra firm this year in saying “You shall not pass!” to attempted intrusions from stupidity and insanity. I think I did an excellent good job of defending and cleansing my space from such encroachments. It feels like I’ve relegated those energies to their own corral of idiocy, where they’re mostly harmless going forward, other than continuing to annoy those who care to visit. I’m content to steer clear indefinitely; it’s the smell.

Now I feel the energy shifting in a new direction, especially since the election. As I continue to listen within, another part of me says that it wants to have a caring and connected 2021. Whereas 2020 was predominantly a year of ideas, boundaries, and lifestyle adjustments, I sense that 2021 is setting itself up to be a year of people, relationships, friendships, and emotional depth.

This doesn’t feel like a personal need or desire though. I feel pretty content, satisfied, and non-needy in this area of life. It feels like I’m hearing a collective desire from the larger energy field. I can listen to that energy field directly, and the desire for more human connection and intimacy seems loud and chaotic, overflowing with unmet needs. But when I listen internally, I hear a softer and quieter part of me that wants to help with this.

I feel like the energy flow of 2020 was about testing, challenging, clarifying, releasing, and standing firm. It was a tremendous year of truth alignment.

For 2021 I sense a year of stronger love and oneness alignment, but only with very compatible people, not universally with everyone. I can’t say what form this will take, but it feels like different parts of my personal energy field are picking up on this larger signal, and so they’re offering up their own invitations on how to align with this “big energy” in motion.

I do not see 2021 as a year of healing and reconciliation. I sense that 2020 involved a split that was meant to happen, with some people going one way and some going another way. We’ve made some key energetic choices this year. We’ve said a firm yes to some types of invitations and a firm no to others, and we’ve seen other people make different choices. It’s been a polarizing year, hasn’t it?

This year I was challenged to decide whether I was going to be anti-racist or to continue clinging to the feeble non-racist label. I voted for first time ever. I made decisions that caused some people to reject me or to feel rejected by me, while other people sensed and expressed a stronger connection to me than ever (the feeling is mutual). I think it was important and necessary to go through this. It felt like a year of multiple tests, with answers that will determine the future direction of people’s lives and experiences for many years to come. Has it been that kind of year for you?

It feels like the testing part is essentially over, at least in terms of major alignment decisions. Soon it will be time to co-create something new, and now we’re in an incubation phase before that fresh energy really opens up.

I feel like I’ve released and corrected multiple misalignments this year, so I no longer need to carry those misalignments into 2021 and beyond. I don’t feel that this is for reasons of speed but for reasons of depth. It now seems possible to go deeper in certain directions where misaligned energies would create drag and friction, frustrating the most aligned people who aren’t in the mood for friction and just want to explore flow, abundance, and appreciation together. This year the misaligned have had to step aside so that certain high-alignment experiences can be made real for the people who are ready for them.

I think a key question asked of me this year was: Are you willing to put your energy where your intentions are?

And the companion question: Are you willing to withdraw your energy from the friction and drag?

Letting go of the friction and drag is especially difficult when it’s in human form… when someone you know firmly plants their flag in drag territory, and you have to let them have that experience without you. You have to choose forgiveness so you can lighten up your energy and go where you need to go next. Note that forgiveness isn’t the same as reconciliation or compromise (which could keep you stuck in the drag).

So these are some answers that come through when I ask the questions that I shared at the beginning of this post. Does any of this resonate with you?

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Your Relationship With Unreasonable Standards

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Here’s a simple rule of thumb that I learned at the start of the pandemic:

If you think you’re being reasonably cautious, you’re probably taking on too much risk. If you think you’re being unreasonably cautious, you’re probably doing it right.

This made sense to me, so I aimed to keep my COVID-prevention standards higher than I thought was reasonable. I sought to keep them at a level that made me wonder if I was overdoing it.

Since the start of the pandemic, Rachelle and I haven’t had friends or family over, we stopped doing in-person meetups, and we stopped all travel. We have groceries delivered, or we shop infrequently at late hours when stores are mostly empty. We wash our hands many times per day, including after handling any packages that have been delivered. We wear masks of course. We’ve been very hermit-like and cautious. We began shifting our lifestyles sooner than required. I also began writing blog posts in early March to warn people about what was predictably coming.

Some people wrote to me to say that I was being unreasonably alarmist. Good, I thought. That’s an indication I’m heading in the right direction. Later some people shared that my writings encouraged them to alter their behaviors in some specific situations, including in ways that may have saved some lives.

Under the circumstances, I think these standards have been reasonable, but it sometimes felt unreasonable, and sometimes other people said it was unreasonable. In this case this suggests that maybe it’s an adequate standard, not an excessive one.

In the USA we’re in the midst of the biggest surge of reported infections since this started, now around 200-250K new ones per day. My home state of Nevada just reported 3733 infections in one day, its biggest single day by far and about 10X what we were seeing during the summer. I know someone who is one of those 3733; he and I spoke at some events together in previous years. Now he’s very sick.

When people get diagnosed with COVID, they may seem surprised because they felt that their prevention standards were reasonable. They had already tightened up, It seems unfair that this wasn’t enough to prevent infection.

This strikes me as a pattern we see in so many other areas of life as well.

How could I get diabetes, heart disease, or cancer? I was eating a reasonable diet, surely better than most.

How could I be getting laid off? I’m one of the better employees.

How could my spouse be leaving? Our marriage was reasonably good.

If the reasonable standard is a little bit above average, you will probably still succumb to a major lifestyle disease like cancer or heart disease. You could still be laid off. Your partner could still leave.

In many areas of life, being above average isn’t a very good standard results-wise.

A reasonable standard for COVID prevention will probably seem unreasonably strict. A lot of people are being sloppy while thinking they’re doing just fine. A million people in the USA are being diagnosed with COVID infections every 4-5 days. How many of them thought that their prevention standards were reasonable?

Diet is one area where I wouldn’t want to go anywhere near the standards that other people consider reasonable. Eating what other people consider reasonably healthy means having a ridiculously low standard that invites physical, mental, and emotional degradation. It means living as a shadow of one’s true self, always hampered by unseen layers of mental and emotional sludge.

My relationship with Rachelle seems unreasonably good. Sometimes I feel like we’re unfairly blessed to have found each other. But then I wonder where I learned my old standard for comparison. I learned it from other relationships I’ve seen, including relationships that people felt were okay or pretty good. But given the status of most relationships, is it good enough to have a reasonably good relationship?

If your relationship seems unreasonably good, maybe you’re just doing it right. Perhaps it only seems special because the backdrop of society has a low baseline for what it considers decent. Lots of movies tell us how little compatibility is needed for a couple to fall in love and live happily ever after.

So perhaps I just have a reasonable relationship, and it only seems unreasonably good because I broke away from society’s weak standards for what’s “good enough.” I found someone that I really enjoy spending time with and who enjoys and appreciates me as much as I enjoy her. Is it reasonable or unreasonable to love spending time with your spouse? Even under months of relative isolation together, we still love and enjoy spending lots of time together.

Looking back on my life, I can see that when I broke away from what society taught me was reasonable, and I stepped into the unreasonable, I had a tremendous growth experience. This doesn’t always mean that my standards were higher, but they were different. Sometimes my choices would be labeled as weird or reckless, but in retrospect I was just doing what made sense under the circumstances.

It takes time to get used to a standard that people may find strange or unreasonable. Is it reasonable or unreasonable that I haven’t had a job in more than 28 years? That just seems like a normal and sensible way to live. Why would I want a boss telling me what to do each day? Why would I want someone else assigning me work? It seems reasonable to choose my own projects. But to other people this standard somehow seems unreasonable or odd.

Was it really unreasonable to observe during the early days of the Web in the mid-1990s that there was a pathway to generating income online? Was it unreasonable to conclude that that could be a more interesting and rewarding long-term investment than seeking traditional employment? That wasn’t unreasonable at all. It was actually quite a reasonable decision to make. Lots of people made similar decisions back then.

To follow your own path with a heart and to get better results than you otherwise would, you have to be willing to do what other people think is strange or unreasonable. Since some of society’s rules about reasonableness have surely infected your own thinking as well this means that you also have to sometimes do what you perceive to be unreasonable. You have to challenge your assessments of what’s really reasonable and right for you.

You may tell yourself that a certain path is reasonable, but how do you really feel about it on the inside? Do you think it might be an intelligent bet?

Do you ever feel that your job is dreadfully boring? Do you ever daydream about doing something more purposeful? Does doing purposeful and meaningful work seem reasonable to you? Or it that just a pipe dream? Of course it’s reasonable.

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be in a very loving, caring, affection, and rewarding relationship with a partner who loves and appreciates you too? If you told people what kind of relationship you really wanted, would they accuse you of being unreasonable? It’s actually very reasonable to want and to experience such a relationship. Why should you settle for less?

Consider this: If no one is accusing you of being unreasonable, you’re doing the game of life all wrong.

Standards that may seem unreasonable to other people can yield wonderful results.

I wouldn’t have the business, diet, lifestyle, relationship, or creative flow that I have now if I wasn’t willing to step into unreasonable territory again and again. This includes doing what I previously considered unreasonable too. I had to purge socially conditioned standards of reasonableness and unreasonableness from my thinking, so I could make more intelligent decisions. I invite you to challenge your own thinking here as well, so you can do what’s intelligent for you, regardless of how unreasonable it may seem.

Can you get yourself to do what seems unreasonable? Can you explore that space? That space is where so many juicy opportunities exist, just waiting for you to tap them.

Are your COVID-prevention efforts intelligent under the circumstances? Could you do more? Would raising your standards be intelligent, or would it really be excessive? What if your higher standards prevent just one more death? Imagine someone getting to live a significantly longer life because you took on a bit more inconvenience for several months.

Where else could you elevate your standards? Where else could you dance with the unreasonable?

Note that while some people will accuse you of going too far, you’ll also attract and encounter people who see the value in what you’re doing, and they’ll appreciate you for it. Do you want more people like this in your life? Step into unreasonable space, and they’ll show up.

Here’s another way to frame this: You have a relationship with whatever you (initially) consider to be unreasonable. What’s the nature of this relationship? Will you always shun the unreasonable? Will you always reject it?

I prefer to have a different relationship with the unreasonable. I like to notice it and acknowledge its presence. I like to be curious about it and to explore how I really feel about it. I like to poke it and study it, but it often feels like it’s poking and studying me. Then I may enjoy dating it or dancing with it, even as it continues to tease and seduce me. And if I like it, I may eventually enjoy a long-term, committed relationship with it.

It seems reasonable to go through these phases slowly and gradually. So there’s also the relationship with speed to consider. For certain opportunities, it’s riskier to move too slowly, and it’s more intelligent to go at a pacing that feels unreasonably fast.

How do you feel about your current calibration here? Do you see room for improvement in your relationship with the unreasonable? A good place to start is to simply decide that it’s time to upgrade this relationship. Maybe you’d benefit by developing an unreasonably good relationship with the unreasonable. 😉

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When You’re Right and Everyone Else Is Wrong

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What kind of relationship do you have with the judgmental and righteous part of yourself?

Some people may not know or acknowledge that you’re right, but you’re convinced of it.

On the outside you may have a calibration issue in terms of how much of your righteousness to share and express with the world. You can behave in a more humble way and keep those thoughts to yourself. Or you can promote your viewpoint and let people have their reactions.

But here I invite you to focus on your inner relationship with your righteousness. How do you relate to this part of you on the inside?

What is it like to believe that you’re right about something when large numbers of people are wrong about it?

While you could be succumbing to delusion, let’s simplify this and say for the moment that you actually have good reason to believe that you’re right. Suppose that the facts make sense. Suppose you’re a lot more educated about this topic than most.

How do you feel about these issues?

  • Sharing your true feelings openly and shamelessly
  • Being labeled as righteous, judgmental, or morally superior by other people
  • Potentially being proven wrong someday
  • Potentially being proven even more right someday
  • Having people unfriend you because they don’t agree with you
  • Acting in alignment with what you believe
  • Relating to people who feel the same as you and have come to similar conclusions but have chosen to hide their views and keep quiet about it

These aspects can all affect your relationship with this part of yourself. It’s not that difficult to end up with a strained relationship that makes you sometimes want to turn your back on truth, to keep quiet when you really ought to speak up, and to tolerate misalignments in your life that you could actually correct.

Here’s how many people might honestly assess their relationship with their righteous and judgmental side:

  • strained
  • confused
  • stunted
  • quiet
  • shy
  • timid
  • fearful
  • worried
  • sad
  • disempowered
  • voiceless
  • alone
  • bumbling
  • unsupported
  • frustrated
  • lonely
  • misunderstood
  • violated
  • compromising
  • suppressed

This points to a conflict between being right and having to deal with people who think the opposite. The facts may be on your side, but what if the social support isn’t there? That by itself isn’t a huge problem, but it may seem like one if you have a shaky relationship with the righteous part of you.

How do you actually want this relationship to be? How about:

  • powerful
  • courageous
  • bold
  • expressive
  • attractive
  • patient
  • grounding
  • confirming
  • reassuring
  • optimistic
  • stable
  • aligned
  • strong
  • ethical
  • compassionate
  • clear
  • reliable
  • trusting
  • successful

Or even:

  • happy
  • playful
  • purposeful
  • meaningful
  • inspiring
  • motivating
  • fun
  • uplifting
  • leadership
  • rewarding
  • growing
  • guidance

Do you want to suppress the righteous part of you? Give it a voice?

If you’re not clear about what kind of relationship you’d like to have here, you may end up doing an awkward dance, sometimes expressing yourself and sometimes hiding, depending on which way the social winds are blowing.

A Committed Relationship

Since this part of you isn’t going away anytime soon, you’re sort of stuck with it. So it may be wise to accept that you’re already in a long-term relationship with this part of you. Could you improve this relationship? What kind of relationship would give you better results?

Would you prefer to keep going the way you’re going? Do you want to keep doing the awkward dance? Is long-term suppression the right way to go?

If you’re right and a lot of other people think you’re wrong, what are you going to do? What you actually decide depends on how you relate to this part of yourself.

Trust

You have a lot of flexibility in how you choose to relate to this part of yourself. There’s something very powerful that happens when you make a real decision about where to take this relationship though.

For me some big shifts happened when I decided to relate to this part of me on the basis of trust. Initially that was really difficult though.

One of the first big decisions was when I started having doubts about the religious ideas I was taught growing up. I was a teenager starting to wake up to other ideas of life. But I was immersed in a very contained way of seeing the world with 12 years in a row of Catholic school. My teachers, classmates, friends, and family were all Catholic. To disagree with my religion meant disagreeing with everyone I connected with each day on a pretty fundamental level. It was sure to be an isolating path with no support from anyone. Questioning and doubting what I was taught wasn’t acceptable behavior.

So how could I relate to this part of me when I felt I was right and everyone around me was wrong? I was just a teenager. But it grew harder and harder to keep pretending that I agreed with ideas that didn’t make sense to me. I saw those ideas as unreasonable and false. I saw obvious contradictions, misalignments, and bullshit while people suggested filling in the gaps with “faith,” which really means ignorance.

At first I did the awkward dance. I extended myself a little by raising some issues. I probed here and there. I took a step forward and then backed off and surrendered when I ran into staunch resistance. I tried to preserve the peace while also aligning with truth.

I went through a wide range of emotions, including sadness and a sense of loss but also optimism about a new way of thinking. It was isolating though. No one in my life supported or encouraged me on this path.

Eventually I realized that I had to trust my own reason. I had to trust the part of me that felt that it had a stronger grasp on truth than most. I had to trust the very part of me that others would label as righteous, judgmental, arrogant, or lacking in humility. At the time that part of me could also be labeled evil, sinful, blasphemous, deviant, heretical, destructive, and all around anti-goodness. Nobody praised me for thinking for myself.

I saw the trap of self-doubt though. If I told myself that the world around me must be smarter than me, and I must be the deluded one, where was I supposed to take that? That seemed like an obvious dead-end. I’d only feel worse about the situation year after year.

So I stepped into trust, which at the time meant taking the evil exit. I let myself be the bad guy in everyone’s mind – the ultimate betrayer of all goodness. I stopped doubting myself. I stopped pretending. I let other people have their reactions. I accepted the aloneness of it.

That was 32 years ago, and I’ve been ex-Catholic ever since. I shudder to think what my life would be like if I didn’t choose to trust this part of myself. It was one of my best decisions ever – so very freeing.

How you relate to this part of yourself is a choice. You can trust it. You can suppress it. You can do an awkward dance with it.

What I like about trust is that it creates more internal harmony. It lets me act in the direction of what I think is correct. This attracts new experiences, which leads to more learning and more insights. It also attracts new people, which leads to more aligned friendships with co-explorers on similar journeys.

A big concern was that trusting this part of myself would lead to being too alone. There were short phases of that, but they didn’t last. Being more trusting of myself always flowed into more high-trust human relationships too. I wish I’d known that from the beginning.

The Benefits of a Healthy Inner Relationship

It makes sense that you’ll have a better life if you trust yourself when you strongly believe you’re right about something while lots of other people think you’re wrong. This includes trusting your reasoning, trusting your senses, trusting your intuition, trusting your feelings, and also trusting your ability to explore and adapt.

It doesn’t mean that you have to be 100% right all the time. It does mean that you’ll grow faster by leaning towards trust than you will by flailing around in self-doubt.

You don’t have to immediately bet the farm on self-trust. You can still probe and test to gather more intel. I often use 30-day challenges to do this. They’re like fact-finding missions.

A few years ago I researched fasting, for instance. I learned more about it than most people would ever want to know, mostly by reading about the experiences of people who’d done it. Then in 2016 I tested it for myself by doing a 17-day water fast, which went fine. In 2017 I did a 40-day water fast, sharing daily videos as I went. It wasn’t that difficult physically. It would have been a lot more difficult if I couldn’t bring myself to trust what I learned about it.

Because I learned such a powerful lesson when I was younger, I’ve had a relatively empowering relationship with this part of myself ever since. I learned to trust my own judgment when I felt I was right, even when I was the only one I knew who seemed to feel that way.

This helped me go vegan when none of my friends or family were vegan. Next month I’ll hit 24 years of a continuous vegan diet and lifestyle.

This helped me earn two college degrees in three semesters when I didn’t know of anyone else doing that.

This helped me start my computer games business right after college.

This helped me move from L.A. to Las Vegas, which has been a surprisingly good city for my home base.

This helped me get into blogging in 2004 and develop a successful business around it before most people even knew what blogging was.

This helped me explore an open relationship lifestyle (and not have to hide it from anyone).

This helped me shift my business model multiple times, including dumping a six-figure advertising income stream that didn’t feel aligned to me. I trusted those feelings, and I trusted that I could come up with more aligned revenue streams. This led to doing workshops, creating courses, and launching Conscious Growth Club – all way better than suckling the ads for another decade.

This helped me purge Trump supporters from my life and business. I trust my assessment that a person must be some kind of asshole or idiot to support Trump and his nonsense. I also trust the feelings of nausea that arise when I’m around such people. (This has been a great decision by the way, including openly sharing these thoughts and feelings.)

The more I trust my own judgment, the less I tolerate the clutter and nonsense of other people’s ignorance in my life. But then I also have to step into more action in the direction of what I believe is right.

If you let yourself wallow in self-doubt, might you be doing that to delay the bigger challenge of acting in alignment with truth?

Taking Action on Your Righteousness

A healthy relationship with your righteous self can empower you to take more action. With more action you gain experience and wisdom. With inaction you gain nothing.

Here’s the thing: You’re right about a great many things that you probably aren’t acting on.

You see opportunities, and you’re right about them. But then you talk yourself out of action.

You see misalignments in your life that you could correct. But then you let the status quo continue, even though the status quo isn’t working for you.

You feel misaligned with a job or a relationship, but you don’t act on those feelings, so you stay stuck.

You see people posting deplorable misinformation that could lead more people astray, and you pretend it’s okay by telling yourself that you want to keep the peace.

What if you finally trusted the part of you that knows you’re right? What if you stopped labeling it like other people do – as arrogant, judgmental, etc? What if you just labeled it as honest?

What if you could just say now and then: Fuck it! I’m right, and those people are wrong. I’m going to trust myself and act on this. If it turns out that I’m wrong, I can live with that, but I’m not wrong about this. I can’t keep pretending anymore. I have to let myself be judged for what I know to be true.

A great question to ask here is: Where is the path with a heart?

The path with a heart is the path of courage. It’s also the path of trust.

When you’re right, let yourself be righteous. Being righteous when you’re right is honest and truth-aligned. But even when you’re right, it still takes courage to act. That’s an invitation too – to develop a stronger and more intimate relationship with courage, which is inextricably linked with your relationship with truth.

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What Is a Spiritual Perspective?

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A spiritual perspective on some area of life asks questions like these:

  • What is my current relationship with this part of life?
  • How would I like my relationship with this part of life to be?

If you remove the physicality from life, what remains is energy. But energy alone is meaningless. What brings meaning to different energy patterns is how you relate to those patterns.

So these questions can pop you up to a spiritual perspective by helping you focus on the relationship you’re experiencing with any aspect of life. The spiritual perspective is the lens that gives you clarity about how you relate to different energy patterns. Everything in life can be seen as an energy pattern.

Another way to frame this is to note that everything you ever think about it is a thought pattern, which is also an energy pattern. Neurons in your brain fire in a certain way when you think any thoughts. And other parts of your brain have relationships with these patterns. So whenever you think a thought, other parts of your brain automatically activate their own neural firing patterns in response.

Hence the big picture “spiritual” perspective is also about how to change or improve the relationships among these different firing patterns. If everything you experience in outer reality is represented by a firing pattern in some part of your brain, then you can consider that all relationships have internal representations in your mind. So you could regard spiritual growth as an effort to change these patterns in some meaningful way. Do you want to make them more harmonious, more orderly, more playful, etc?

I find this perspective immensely useful on a practical level. I use it for making day-to-day decisions frequently. Just getting clear about what kind of relationship I want to have with some aspect of life helps me consider the long-term perspective and the core quality of life issues involved for myself and others.

These questions can also be asked repeatedly to create rewarding growth arcs in different areas of life.

Assessing Your Spiritual Relationships

A simple way to answer these questions is just to list a bunch of descriptive words and phrases that come to mind when you think about a particular part of life.

For instance, when I was growing up, here’s how I would have described my relationship with public speaking:

  • nervousness
  • anxiety
  • procrastination
  • fear
  • worry
  • shaking
  • sweating
  • embarrassment
  • unprepared
  • tedious practice
  • failure
  • too much attention
  • complicated
  • uncontrollable
  • disappointing
  • dread

So from a spiritual perspective, my personal energy and the energy of public speaking aren’t meshing well. Our energies are fighting and resisting each other. The alignment isn’t there.

Note that this relationship exists within my own mind. The relationship itself is a collection of neural firing patterns interacting. And since it exists within my mind, that gives me some power to change it over time. That may not be easy, but I can surely engage with these patterns and nudge them to change over time.

After years of Toastmasters and other speaking experiences, here’s how I’d have described my much improved relationship with public speaking:

  • confident
  • challenging
  • in control
  • structured
  • prepared
  • growth
  • skillful
  • readiness
  • excitement
  • positivity
  • rewarding
  • laughter
  • applause
  • encouraging
  • competitive
  • improving
  • motivating

So that relationship is much improved from where it was earlier. However, I can still see further room for improvement relative to where I really want this relationship to go.

Here’s where I’d say my relationship with public speaking is today:

  • relaxed
  • chill
  • spontaneous
  • connecting
  • playful
  • fun
  • curiosity
  • easy
  • light
  • flowing
  • occasionally silly
  • interactive
  • teasing
  • joking
  • simple
  • natural
  • pleasing
  • listening
  • exploring
  • social
  • present
  • aligned
  • purposeful
  • safe
  • conversation

So this relationship has lightened up a lot. It no longer strikes me as a situation where I need to feel confident or in control. Wanting to feel confident while speaking would be like saying that I need to feel confident while making breakfast. I could try to feel extra confident while making breakfast, but it would be an odd framing to use all the time. It would be like Tom Hanks reveling in his ability to make fire in the movie Castaway.

Clearing Space

Notice how an overly tense or controlling relationship with public speaking can get in the way of creating an aligned relationship with the people in the room. One misaligned relationship can block the full richness of another relationship from coming through. It’s hard to access the fun and playfulness of this connection if a complicated relationship with public speaking is getting in the way.

As I gradually transform misaligned relationships into more aligned ones, I notice that new relationships very often emerge.

It’s much like being in a human relationship with a mismatched partner. While your energy is tied up with that person, it’s hard to see the potential for a more aligned, loving, and joyful relationship to come into your life. Your current relationship can easily block better relationships from coming through.

Breaking up is also a way of transforming a relationship. Enforcing boundaries can help you get some distance from a misaligned relationship, so you can reassess what kind of relationship you want to have in this area.

Earlier this year I got clarity that I really didn’t want to have any personal or professional relationships with Trump supporters. It felt most aligned to kick them out of my space completely, so I adopted a policy of purging them from my life and work. They consistently violate my principles and values, and I realized I’d very much prefer not to have such people in my life at all, at least not at close range. When they’re too close I mostly feel disgust and contempt due to the boundary violations, like I’m being raped by red-hatted idiots. But when I do proper boundary management and keep their energy from violating my space, I feel that this relationship is much improved. I still have no desire to engage with them, but I no longer feel disgust and violation. Instead I notice gentler feelings like compassion and forgiveness starting to emerge.

I also notice, as you might expect, that with this misaligned energy out of the way, there’s a newfound invitation to explore the relationships that this energy was blocking. My connections with high-trust people have growth stronger, and I’ve been investing more in some of those relationships. For instance, I’ve been really enjoying my months-long involvement in the Transformational Leadership Council’s Diversity Committee. We’ve been having hard conversations about inclusiveness and anti-racism, and I’m loving it. It’s inspiring to connect with friends who are genuinely asking how we can do more to make a difference, and they’re investing extra time and energy month after month. I was initially concerned that this kind of group might fizzle out, but I’ve been seeing the opposite. The passion, energy, and honesty have been growing as we’ve continued to invest.

Being angry at Trump supporters is too easy. But getting wrapped up in that energy is mostly a distraction. It hides the calling to invest in something more deeply transformational that could actually move the needle forward.

Honesty

Asking yourself what kind of relationship you want to have with a certain area of life is a call to deeper honesty. This isn’t easy.

One trap is getting caught up in society’s expectations. You may start by wanting what you think you’re supposed to want. Society taught you how some relationship is supposed to be. You may buy into that model, but maybe in the long run it doesn’t really work for you.

I like to see society’s models as stepping stones. They aren’t really where I’m going to end up, but I can still make some progress if I aim for them, at least till I discover something better.

The tricky part is getting clear about what you really want and not getting sucked into society’s partial matches for too long.

The public speaking example shows how I initially aimed for confidence with speaking. Isn’t that the ultimate goal for a public speaker? Get up on a stage and speak with confidence? It’s fine to aim for this as a starter goal, at least until it feels hollow.

Again, it’s like feeling confident making breakfast. Once you see beyond the illusion of fear, it’s not so inspiring to think that you even need to be confident.

So then you pick a better relationship goal. Maybe it’s fun and playfulness. Maybe it’s presence. Maybe it’s creative flow. Maybe it’s inspiring people.

This is especially applicable in business, whether you’re an employee or entrepreneur or you like to just mess around. What’s your ideal relationship with work and business?

Here’s how I’d describe my relationship with my business today:

  • trusting
  • abundant
  • interesting
  • variety
  • growth-oriented
  • waves of work, play, and rest
  • balanced
  • playful
  • expressive
  • flow
  • creative
  • rewarding
  • flexible
  • surprising
  • unique
  • impactful
  • presence
  • enduring
  • openness
  • courage
  • purposeful
  • warm
  • intimate

I just made this list off the top of my head. It’s interesting to me that I didn’t describe my business as organized, productive, profitable, etc. The spiritual lens helps me focus on my personal relationship with it.

This isn’t where I started as an entrepreneur. Initially I cared about success and achievement. Now I think more about the experience of flow.

I also place a high value on flexibility and variety, which are more important to me than routine and structure. I like that I attract readers and customers with expansive and flexible interests who don’t need me to stick with just one niche topic year after year. Each day people communicate with me about different types of challenges and experiences. I like how this keeps the relationship with my readers fresh and growth-oriented. It keeps the door open for surprises and synchronicities.

Courage

Just as it’s difficult to discover the honest truth about the type of relationship you want, it’s also difficult to publicly admit how you feel. But if you can openly share your truth, it is easier to attract and enjoy the kind of relationship you really want. You also won’t have to waste so much time and energy dealing with partial matches.

It takes courage to make your own individual choice here. It takes courage to admit when you’re wrong. It takes courage to stand by your choice when you’re right. And it takes courage to stay with the flow of evolving relationships because they don’t remain static.

Courage helps you find and follow a path with a heart in your relationships with different parts of life. At some point you’ll need to break from society’s expectations, so you can explore the aspects of these relationships that don’t agree with society’s plans.

What’s really happening here is that your brain stores the patterns of society’s plans for you, and you’re also upgrading how you relate to these patterns. Initially you may obey them. Then you may rebel against them. And then you might frame them as stepping stones or intermediate lessons. This latter framing can create more harmony in your thinking.

When you consider the spiritual perspective, realize that it’s all about relationships. How are you relating to each part of life? Where are you experiencing flow and harmony? Where are you enduring resistance and struggle? Let each misaligned relationship point you towards deeper desires.

Be ambitious here. Keep asking for the impossible if it’s what you really want, and you may eventually get it. And you’ll realize that that’s not the end of the road either – the possibility space is vaster still.

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Being a Source of Pleasure

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To extend the topic of yesterday’s article on your relationship with pleasure, let’s flip that idea around and consider what it’s like for someone else to relate to you on the basis of pleasure.

How do you feel about playing the role of being a source of pleasure for someone else?

Such a relationship can be corrupted by weaving in manipulation, lying, abuse, victimization, etc. And just as with yesterday’s article, I encourage you to set aside those aspects because they aren’t endemic to pleasure-based connections.

Is it possible to connect with someone simply on the basis of giving and/or receiving pleasure without weaving in any negative aspects? Could you keep the pleasure aspects simple, clean, healthy, fun, and pure?

Of course. Many people connect this way very naturally. They’ve developed a healthy relationship with pleasure that’s good for them and for others.

It’s tempting to throw away the whole concept of sharing pleasure with someone when you’ve lost your childhood innocence about it and you’ve been subjected to abuse. Pleasure isn’t to blame for that though.

Abuse and pleasure don’t have to mix. Some people are adamantly opposed to mixing them. You can still engage with the purity and simplicity of pleasure-based connections without making them complicated.

Imagine having another person in your life who is willing and able to do things for you that feel really good. And suppose they enjoy playing that role for you. And suppose they’re honest about their intentions and you can trust them.

For some people it might seem like a monumental task to reach this point. For others it’s just their normal daily reality.

For me it’s been both. These days it seems totally natural as part of the daily flow of abundance, both to play this role for someone and to have someone in my life who enjoys playing this role for me. It’s delightful to enjoy pleasure abundance instead of pleasure scarcity.

But it’s so easy to push this kind of pleasure away, both in terms of giving and receiving, when you wrap negative aspects into it. It’s very easy to succumb to a dysfunctional relationship with pleasure.

For me the negative aspect I wrapped into it involved guilt and shame, mainly because that’s what I was taught from childhood. Pleasure was some kind of temptation from the devil and couldn’t be trusted. Many activities that felt good were deemed sinful and wrong. Sometimes I did things just for fun that I later had to confess to a priest as sins and ask for forgiveness. You can imagine what a messed-up relationship this creates with pleasure itself. It was confusing to grasp why some pleasure was wrong and some was okay when it didn’t align with my intuitive impressions.

It took a while to unload and release this corrupted mindset. Admittedly it’s still a part of me today, but I can at least see it for what it is and set it aside when it tries to rise up. It’s especially helpful to have reference experiences to remind me that sharing pleasure with people is actually really nice and that not every situation needs to be approached with suspicion and jadedness.

I also learned that some previous forms of pleasure do feel wrong to me, so I no longer engage in them. For instance, I don’t relate to animals’ bodies as products to be bought and consumed. I can never achieve a purity of pleasure there because this type of action always feels wrong and abusive to me. Trying to cultivate a pleasure-based relationship with animal abuse, as I was taught growing up, only pulled me out of touch with my deeper feelings.

Because of so many negative associations to pleasure, it’s hard to simply invite a pleasure-based experience, but the biggest blocks really are internal. When you transform and purify your relationship with pleasure, you’re much more likely to connect with others who feel similarly, and you’ll probably feel more compassion towards people who still wrap fear, guilt, or shame into it.

Another risk is that if you don’t come to terms with your relationship with pleasure, you may develop a distrusting and jaded relationship with this part of you that endures for years or decades. And that may make it hard to connect with people because a lot of human connection flows through the realm of pleasure. People will give you space instead of inviting you to share experiences with them because they’ll sense that you prefer to keep your distance.

What I found especially helpful here was to take a deep and honest look at my own intentions for pleasure-based connections and to consider how I really felt about them. Which intentions seemed good and honorable? What seemed problematic? Where were the right boundaries for me?

Is it wrong to want a hug? A make-out session? A massage? A sexual experience? A kinky sexual experience?

I had a lot of gunk in my mind that wrapped guilt, shame, or fear into many types of experiences that didn’t require those negative associations. Why feel guilty about receiving a massage from someone who willingly gives it? This guilt about receiving also corrupted the experience of giving, as if giving pleasure to someone automatically did them a disservice by potentially stirring up some negative feelings related to receiving pleasure. It was difficult to see that many people simply don’t have such negative associations to pleasure. That’s because these associations are learned, and we don’t all have the same learning experiences.

I found it especially helpful to journal about this to work through my thoughts and also to discuss this with people on similar journeys. It was eye-opening to connect with people who didn’t have negative associations to giving or receiving pleasure. For them it just seemed like a normal and natural thing to do… no big deal. They could still be cautious about risks and make careful choices regarding partners, but this caution didn’t devolve into suspicion of pleasure itself. They still trusted pleasure.

Take a look at your relationship with pleasure on the giving side. How do you feel about serving as a source of pleasure for someone else? Are you ever in the mood for that? Do you ever feel like it’s okay or even fun and rewarding to allow someone to enjoy you for their own pleasure? Could you do this without feeling resentful, abused, victimized, or used in a bad way?

Under the right conditions, I like playing this role. It’s nice to make someone feel good. It’s nice to be enjoyed and appreciated as a source of pleasure for someone. I like making people feel good. I love the simplicity and the purity of it. It’s a delightful way for humans to connect.

There are lots of ways to be a source of pleasure for someone. Maybe someone finds you intellectually stimulating. Maybe they want to do something physically or sexually pleasurable with you. Maybe they love your sense of humor or your positive attitude. Maybe they enjoy your beauty, they love hearing the sound of your voice, or they just feel delighted to be in your presence.

Do you ever feel this way towards other people? How do you feel about someone feeling this way towards you?

Could you even say to someone, “Enjoy my body. Have fun with me. Do whatever you like. I want you to feel good”? Does that seem exciting or threatening? Of course you can still specify any boundaries to define your limits.

How would you feel if someone said these things to you? Could you receive this happily and deservedly without feeling like you have to earn it? Could you say a “hell yes” to it? Or is it too much muchness?

This is an area where we can benefit tremendously from more honest and courageous communication. Instead of having to disguise pleasure-based intentions and sneak or manipulate your way into someone’s space, we could just be honest and upfront about what we’d actually like to share and explore together.

Suppose that what you really want is to explore a pleasure-based experience with someone. Could you invite or offer that when you realize that it’s what you want? Or do you need to disguise your intention and pretend you want something else?

My romantic relationship with Rachelle began with a mutual intention to share and explore pleasure together. We didn’t go on any dates first. We simply decided to play together. We wanted to enjoy each other. Co-creating and co-exploring fun and pleasure have been embedded in our relationship from the start, and this is still a significant part of our relationship today. We enjoy making each other feel good – physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I like being a source of pleasure for her, and she likes being a source of pleasure for me. As I noted in a previous article this week, we see each other as gifts.

If you’d told me 30 years ago that I could someday have a relationship like this, I wouldn’t have believed you. It was a long journey to recover from so many negative associations to pleasure. But I have to say that it’s been an immensely rewarding path. In fact, I think I enjoy pleasure even more because of how much work I had to do to clean up this relationship and restore it to a state of health, flow, and abundance.

How do you begin such a journey, especially if your concept of pleasure is wrapped up in negative past experiences or associations? You decide that it’s time to heal this relationship. That won’t happen overnight. It may in fact be a very long journey, but it begins with the decision to heal your relationship with pleasure.

You can have a lot of pleasure in your life – every day if you want. You can share pleasure with willing partners, free of fear, shame, or guilt. You can restore your relationship with pleasure to a pure and healthy state. You can have abundance instead of scarcity in this area of life.

Pleasure isn’t evil. It isn’t addictive. It isn’t dangerous. It isn’t abusive. It isn’t unsafe or unhealthy.

Pleasure is satisfaction. It’s smiling. It’s feeling good. It’s a hug from reality. It’s a gift.

How will you relate to this gift?

Healing this relationship is just one phase of the journey. Beyond that you can continue to explore and elevate this relationship, such as by weaving in caring, beauty, playfulness, and curiosity. Once you feel safe and secure in the space of pleasure, you can also do a bit more risk-taking to explore your boundaries and other people’s boundaries if they’re willing. You can map out more of the possibility space to discover where the most delightful gifts are.

Do you trust pleasure? Do you think it’s a curse that just messes people up? Or can you see it as an invitation? It really is an invitation to grow, to heal, to connect, to align with abundance, and to have more fun in life.

Your relationship with pleasure is a delicate one to get right. It may seem like it’s leading you astray now and then, and sometimes you may be tempted to swear it off completely, but the invitation to dance with it is always present, and pleasure is a very patient dance partner.

Here’s another key benefit of healing this relationship. As you go through this inner journey for yourself, you can also help others who also want to heal this relationship. That helps to put this challenge in context. You’re not just healing this relationship for yourself alone. This isn’t just about your own pleasure. Your healing journey will also influence and uplift others who want to heal this relationship too. This may help you see that this is a more meaningful and purposeful pursuit than you initially realized.

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How To Embrace Alone Time (And Even Start Enjoying It)

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The Spiritual Purpose of a Relationship

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Each relationship that you’ve had, whether short-term or long-term, can be interpreted through the lens of spiritual purpose.

Why are you and your partner in each other’s lives? What are you here to do for each other spiritually?

I’d learned of this concept during my 20s but just in a very limited way. The idea was that we’re all spiritual teachers for each other. A relationship is supposedly a spiritual growth experience.

I think that framing held me back because it doesn’t fully encompass what’s possible.

My first marriage to Erin did seem to have that purpose of being co-teachers to each other. In the early years of our 15-year relationship, Erin and I often noted that I was teaching her courage while she was teaching me compassion. We both learned a lot from each other, sometimes by example and something through direct help and advice.

That relationship was challenging at times, but it was also loving, supportive, and patient. We shared a long journey together, which eventually came to an end. When I look back upon that relationship, it feels like it fulfilled its purpose for us both. One friend said to me afterwards, “You completed your marriage.” That’s still how it feels today, now that more than 11 years have passed since we separated.

But is that the only possible purpose of a long-term relationship? Must we always be in a relationship where the main purpose is spiritual teaching?

Not at all. The spiritual purpose of a relationship can be a lot more flexible than that. It doesn’t have to go in a co-teaching direction.

My current (almost 11-year) relationship with Rachelle isn’t about co-teaching. While we can play those roles for each other if we want, this isn’t a big part of our relationship and never really was.

Last night we had a short discussion about the spiritual purpose of our relationship. Neither of us look upon each other as spiritual teachers. The way we actually see each other is more like spiritual gifts.

Rachelle said she feels like her role is to be my reward, and that’s how I see her as well. I enjoy and appreciate her so much that it feels very natural to just revel in that space of appreciation and enjoyment when we’re together.

She feels much the same about me – that I’m her reward. We aren’t co-teachers for each other. It’s more accurate to say that we’re co-playmates, co-lovers, life companions, and best friends.

Spending time with Rachelle is like watching my favorite movie, The Princess Bride. Even when it’s familiar, it’s still fun and enjoyable, and I always find something to appreciate in it.

I feel like the main role I play for Rachelle spiritually is to fully and deeply appreciate her as she is. I feel delighted to be in her presence each day, and I love that I see and appreciate so much beauty and wonder in her that other people might miss. I feel like she needs to be fully appreciated and that my role for her spiritually is basically to gush appreciation at her each day. I especially love to make her laugh and smile.

We fit together like puzzle pieces. What she offers in a relationship is what I naturally appreciate and enjoy, and vice versa.

Being spiritual teachers to each other doesn’t really describe us. But I can say that we do help each other to spiritually grow. This doesn’t have to do with challenging each other though. As much as we both love a good challenge, we’re both already very good at challenging ourselves in a variety of ways. So we don’t particularly need to push each other. When one of us suggests a new challenge, we’ll sometimes agree to do it together when it makes sense, and otherwise we won’t.

I’m doing a one-year blogging challenge this year. Rachelle just passed 440 days in a row of closing all of her Apple Watch rings, so she has 60 more days to reach her goal of 500. Last month we both did NaNoWriMo and successfully completed that challenge. This month she’s doing a 30-day decluttering challenge along with some other CGC members. I’m preparing for a one-year experience of eating all raw in 2021, so I’m spending some time each day re-familiarizing myself with raw meals and practicing various raw recipes. I’d also like an easier December since I’ll be working on a new deep dive course early next year, which can be an intense experience.

If we weren’t in a relationship together, Rachelle and I would still be working on our personal growth as individuals. So we don’t need the relationship to play that role for us. We share this part of our life together, but it doesn’t seem to connect with the purpose of our relationship.

In terms of spiritual growth, our relationship feels like the universe said to each of us, “You’re doing great. How about a nice reward that you’ll surely enjoy and appreciate? Here you go! Have fun!”

This is a very different framing to place upon a relationship instead of being co-teachers for each other. It’s especially different from the lens that says you should be in a relationship with someone who antagonizes you because it will help you grow.

Rachelle and I are already good at identifying and diving into new growth experiences. Neither of us really wants or needs to push each other to grow more than we’re already doing. We can simply trust that we’re both going to keep learning and growing no matter what, and there’s ample evidence to prove that to each other.

It feels to me that maybe these aspects are connected, like the reason I get to be in a relationship with a “reward” at this stage of life is that I’ve locked in a consistent and perpetual flow of growth experiences without feeling overwhelmed. I’ve figured out a flow that works for me, and Rachelle has found a flow that works for her.

We both spend a lot of time helping and serving others too, so that may be part of this as well.

I’m not sure about this aspect of the framing though. It could just be the ex-Catholic in me that feels that every reward must first be earned. It would be interesting to know if other people are in relationships that feel like spiritual rewards that they didn’t have to spiritually earn first.

What Rachelle and I love doing for each other is to be each others playmates and to share love, appreciation, affection, friendship, and encouragement.

We’re also co-adventurers. We love traveling together. We love having shared experiences. Our favorite type of “challenge” to do together would be to share in some new kind of adventure together. We’ve always had a good time exploring new cities together. We’ve been to dozens of different cities throughout our relationship, which began as a cross-border relationship where switching countries was necessary just to see each other.

Even under COVID conditions where we’re spending way more time at home than in a typical year, I never feel bored with her. As much time as we’ve already spent together, I still crave more. I love spending each day with her. Somehow this continues to feel fresh and new, even when the setting and circumstances are familiar. She’s a source of beauty that I enjoy each day without feeling like the enjoyment and appreciation could ever run out.

This relationship feels like it’s exactly what we both want and need. It’s wonderful to spend each day with a partner who feels like a gift and a reward. It’s fascinating to be in a relationship with a woman who sees me in the same light.

This kind of framing is relaxing and restorative. Neither of us feels like we must “work” on the relationship to fix problems or to improve it. We actually succeed in our relationship mainly by being, not by doing. Simply being present makes our relationship fulfill its purpose. Just cuddling each other on the couch feels very purposeful.

Remember that feeling you have when you buy a new piece of tech like the latest smart phone, and for a while you feel extra special because you have the latest and greatest? But then a year later, a new version comes out… and then another new version a year after that. And now you’re behind the times and wondering if you should upgrade. But what if you could have that new-tech feeling every day, so you felt that extra appreciation above the baseline, and it never went back down again? That’s similar to how my relationship with Rachelle feels each day.

Almost 11 years ago, a significant increase in appreciation, gratitude, and enjoyment came into my life, and it never went back down again. Those aspects of my life have remained elevated this whole time.

But what I find most interesting is that I never developed a tolerance for it. It’s like having coffee where every cup is as stimulating as the first one, and your body never adapts to higher caffeine levels and brings you back down again. So the same dosage remains very stimulating, and you don’t need to keep increasing the dosage to get the same effect.

Each day with Rachelle feels like it exists above my baseline. But somehow my old baseline hasn’t raised itself up to match my current day-to-day experiences. That seems very odd to me. Why hasn’t the baseline come up? Why doesn’t each day with her just feel okay and normal now? Why do I still experience delight and appreciation with her after all this time together? Why does she still seem like a gift?

I don’t know, but I do like it.

Before I experienced this relationship, I didn’t think it was possible for a real human relationship to have the spiritual purpose of being co-gifts, co-rewards, and co-playmates for each other. That seems too easy and too good to be true. I wondered if we must be in some realm of co-denial about all the real spiritual work and tough love we must surely engage in sooner or later. It took a while to get aligned with the co-reward idea.

Why share this? One reason is to let you know that a healthy and happy relationship doesn’t have to involve working on your partner or on the relationship to improve it. For some that may sound like heresy. While people can enter a relationship to directly help each other grow and improve, that doesn’t have to be the case. You could also be in a relationship with someone whose beingness you enjoy and appreciate.

I think the more challenging aspect is when you flip this around and ask: For which person could I be a gift that they’ll appreciate and enjoy each day, just by being myself as I am right now?

That’s another special aspect of my relationship with Rachelle that I don’t notice as often, but it is nice to acknowledge when I see it. I like looking at her and thinking, “I’m good for her. She’s lucky to have me in her life.” I can understand why she appreciates and enjoys me. I can see the value I add to her life. And this feeling is very much mutual. She can readily see how good she is for me too and how much value she adds to my life. It’s nice that neither of us have to wonder about that or question it. It’s plain as day to us both that we’re good for each other and that we enhance each other’s lives by being together.

You can attract a relationship that’s a lot of work, but you have other options too. What do you feel ready to experience spiritually at this time in your life? Do you want a co-working type of relationship? Do you want fun and adventure? Do you want grace, ease, and lightness? Do you want lust and passion?

If you’re in a current relationship now, is it still aligned with a spiritual purpose that feels aligned with who you are today? Is it what you want to experience at this stage of your life? Or do you feel called to explore and experience a new relationship with a different spiritual purpose?

Pay attention to that purpose alignment. If your relationship has lost its connection to such a purpose, consider that it’s also your purpose to fulfill a meaningful role for someone else – to be their teacher, their reward, and so on.

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Making Unpopular Decisions

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If you’re committed to learning and growing, you’ll need to get used to making decisions that others disagree with. It’s inevitable that you’ll eventually face decisions that are opposed by some social resistance.

Maybe you’d love to pursue the path of entrepreneurship, but your family thinks it’s a bad idea.

Maybe you’d like to upgrade your diet, but your friends keep trying to talk you out of it.

Maybe you’d like to explore an open relationship, but your partner keeps nudging you away from that.

If you’re in a situation like this, you’re not alone. This is one of the most common types of feedback I’ve received in the past 16 years that I’ve been working in this field.

People see this kind of social resistance as a real block that’s holding them back. But it’s really just a basic test of whether you can make growth-oriented decisions and follow through. Having people whine about your choices is hardly the biggest challenge you’ll face. It may seem like a major hurdle, but it’s a minor speed bump relative to more interesting challenges you’ll face.

This block doesn’t usually go away on its own. If you let it stop you today, it will still be there in the future. It’s a problem to solve in your mindset today, not in a month or two.

The (somewhat obvious) truth is that if you want to pursue interesting goals and experiences, you’ll need to get used to making decisions that some people oppose. This needn’t make you cold and callous. You can consider others’ opinions. But it’s your life that you’re living, and you’re responsible for your results.

While other people may be affected by the external effects of your decisions, no one else has to live in your mind each day, dealing with the internal consequences of inaction and stagnation.

Here’s a mindset framing that I’ve found helpful in these situations:

If I don’t do this, I’m still going to be thinking about doing it next year… and the year after… and the year after that. I know it’s risky, and I still want to explore it. Even if it doesn’t pan out, it’s still worth doing to satisfy my curiosity about it. Then I could let it go, and at least I’ll be letting it go from a place of some knowing and personal exploration, not from ignorance.

No matter what happens, I’ll surely learn something if I engage in this. It doesn’t matter that much if I fail. I can recover from failure, and I’ll be a little smarter and wiser on the other side. And besides, one failure doesn’t rule out the entire possibility space in that direction. I can always try again in a different way. There may be a lengthy learning process to go through.

But what if this does lead to a better life? I have to find out if that’s the case. Even if this first step doesn’t work for me, it could also be a stepping stone to something better. I can’t see past this idea till I test it, so I have to test it to at least get it out of the way and clear this from my mind.

If you don’t take action to explore what keeps churning in your mind year after year, you’re sentencing your future self to more of the same.

When you’re tempted to explore something, you’re not really present to what’s arising in your life right now. Part of you would rather be doing something else, living somewhere else, or connecting with different people. That isn’t likely to change. You’ll continue to be tempted and distracted until you do something about it.

When I dive into a new exploration – actually when I make a committed decision, even before I get into the active exploration part – I feel an immediate increase in presence. Life feels more real and vivid. I feel more engaged with reality on a day to day basis. I feel more energy and excitement flowing through me. Have you had similar experiences?

I might also feel a bit scared or trepidatious. I think: What am I getting myself into here? Am I really doing this?ˆWith action this kind of emotion flows into some early results that encourage me to keep going.

When you face these situations, be deeply honest with yourself. If other people want you to let go of your idea, can you really do that? Can you let it go and forget about it? Can you continue living in the world that others would have you live in? Can you be fully present to that world?

Or will you continue dreaming, wondering, pondering, and asking what if?

What do you predict will happen?

If you don’t honor this voice enough, you’re not honoring who you really are. You’re stamping out the person you’re capable of becoming, and if you keep doing that, it will lead to a hollow life of massive regret. You’ll be sitting on the sidelines watching everyone else explore… always wondering what might have been. You’ll be a non-player character in the game of life.

You can’t just dream. You have to act on those dreams. Otherwise your dreams will eventually abandon you, and they’ll go to someone else, but they will leave behind just enough energy to haunt you for decades. Someone else will get to experience the results of action. You’ll get to experience the results of if only.

Realize that it won’t get any easier to postpone your dreams and ideas. You’re only sentencing yourself to another year of non-presence. But of course people don’t usually sentence themselves to a year at a time. They do it a day at a time, an hour at a time, a minute at a time.

Why not make a different decision this minute? You can do that. Yes, it takes courage, so be a person of courage.

Make your choice. Explore your idea. Let people squawk about it.

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