Tag Archives: Abundance

Sculpting Your Character

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

How well did the world do its job?

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

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

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

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

Rebellion Phase

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

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

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

Personal Growth Phase

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

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

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

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

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

Conscious Character Sculpting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Appreciating the World’s Role

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conscious Character Sculpting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let Me Help You Sculpt Your Character

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

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

or…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stature Lessons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Investing in Your Core

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

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

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

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

Future Proofing Your Career

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Predicting What You’ll Love

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

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

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

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

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

Investing in Your Core

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amping Up Your Core Investments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enter the Dragon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Why Would 100+ People Pay $2K to Join Conscious Growth Club?

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For some people it seems unfathomable to invest such an amount on a one-year membership to an online personal growth program. Seriously… you should see some of the reactions people are having to the Facebook and Instagram ads I’ve been running for the past few days to promote the launch. Those ads are actually doing well, and we’ve gained many great members in the past few days, but sharing such an invitation with a wide audience sure does unearth a plethora of limiting beliefs and irrational assumptions. So I’d like to address that since I know the price is a sticking point for many people.

Of course the exterior perspective looking in is often very different than the interior perspective looking out. I actually see my past self in a lot of those limiting beliefs, back when I had no clue about what such groups were really like on the inside.

I’ve personally been a paid member of private groups that range in cost from $2K to $30K per year, and all of them have been worthwhile. The first one I joined was in 2009, and as you might imagine, it was a stretch experience to spend that kind of money. But having done this multiple times now, I always felt like I got my money’s worth and then some.

These experiences helped inspire me to create and launch Conscious Growth Club, which has been going since April 2017. We have more than 100 paying members, so there are indeed plenty of people who like the idea enough to join, more than enough to make the group viable, sustainable, and abundant on the inside. (You can see the current member count at the top of the invitation page if you’d like. It increases whenever someone joins.)

Let me share a bit of the interior perspective, in the simple form of a bullet list. By the time you read to the bottom, you should have a better idea of why people actually do this sort of thing, including me.

Why would 100+ people pay $2K per year to join Conscious Growth Club?

  • For accessible connections with other people willing to do the same (which is an unusual group of people)
  • To immediately immerse yourself in a strong peer group
  • Filling your social circle with smart, fascinating, wickedly creative people
  • For the energy, excitement, and enthusiasm
  • Because it stretches you as a person
  • It changes your self-image, makes you think more is possible
  • Because the payoff from such an investment is worth it, often hugely so
  • Getting results you otherwise wouldn’t have gotten
  • Getting results faster
  • For the increased accountability of putting your money where your mouth is
  • Feeling fully committed to growth and change
  • Feeling certain that you’re going to move forward and make progress
  • To shatter your old limitations
  • It’s highly motivating and stimulating
  • It gets you taking action in a way nothing else will
  • Becoming more ambitious and goal-oriented
  • Feeling compelled to step up to the level of peers you respect and admire
  • Being surrounded by people who take lots of action and getting swept up in their energy
  • Because it will turn out to be one of the best decisions of your life
  • Having tons of fun playfully achieving your goals
  • Channeling your powerful heart energy instead of being stuck in your head
  • Going after bigger goals that you wouldn’t dare to pursue before
  • Having to redefine how you relate to yourself because you’ve blown through so many limitations
  • Because initially you think you can’t afford it, and then you somehow observe yourself joining anyway
  • Because you’re at your best when you do things you don’t feel ready for
  • Because you like speed
  • Because you like pausing now and then to appreciate the opposite of speed
  • Because you want to be fully present
  • Because you realize that this is an invitation from your simulation
  • Because you can’t stop thinking about the possibility
  • Because you want to explore what’s on the other side of “What if?”
  • Because achieving big goals can be so much more fun if you share the journey with good friends
  • Because lots of people have to stretch their possibility space to join, and befriending people who can and will achieve their stretch goals is inspiring
  • Because it upgrades your relationship with reality
  • Because the alternative is to say yes to a limiting belief instead
  • Because you’re done taking the blue pill
  • To keep inviting you to refocus on action steps towards your goals when you might otherwise have a tendency to drift
  • Finally letting that unapologetic genius inside you come out and play
  • Getting more clarity about what you want than you ever had before
  • Seeing your spiritual side being fully expressed into the world
  • Bearing witness to positive ripples you’re creating
  • Feeding and fueling the very best parts of you
  • Surrounding yourself with “Yes, and…” people
  • Enjoying the company of health-conscious friends who don’t need alcohol to socialize playfully
  • Staying consistent as you make progress
  • Getting used to a faster rate of growth and change
  • Future-proofing your career path
  • Feeling that your life is finally aligned
  • Really discovering what your best looks like instead of knowing that you could be doing better
  • Watching your social circle sculpt and chisel you into your best self
  • Observing that you’re finally becoming the powerful person you’ve always dreamed of being
  • Belonging to a caring and generous tribe that supports you in being your best
  • Waking up each morning feeling excited by the progress you’re making
  • Working, living, and connecting in the space of deep meaning
  • Looking back on the past year and thinking, “Wow… how did I do all of that?”
  • Feeling super secure because you always have smart, caring friends who’ve got your back
  • Having smart people you can immediately turn to for help and advice
  • Finding the best creative flow of your life
  • Receiving some of the best invitations of your life, which flow through your frictionless social network
  • Meeting an outstanding relationship partner and falling in love
  • Solving long-term problems you’ve been stuck with for years
  • Actually having those experiences you almost gave up on
  • Having friends who will raise you up
  • Having close friends that you respect, admire, and find inspiring
  • Deeply appreciating what you have
  • Expecting your life to keep getting better year after year
  • Seeing clear evidence that your life really is getting better
  • Leveraging your social abundance to upgrade your financial abundance
  • Easily affording experiences that were previously out of reach
  • Knowing what it feels like to live in abundance
  • Tackling meaningful creative projects and finally getting them done and published
  • Proving your critics wrong and making them lose all their hair and cry
  • Creating a new normal for yourself
  • Because that $2K will soon seem ridiculously small to you

The exterior perspective is that you’d have to be crazy to do this. The interior perspective is that you’d have to be crazy not to. That’s basically why the border is hard to cross. The first time is the hardest, and after that it’s a lot easier because then you know what it’s like.

It’s not the price that matters per se. It’s the value derived from belonging to such a group, and that value can be tremendous.

What’s really interesting is that the objections to being in such a group are usually irrational. They’ll seem like rational objections at first, but it’s really your emotional brain fooling you.

Many people see the investment as an unfathomably big expense, yet they actually could afford it if they wanted to. And even if they couldn’t do so right away, the challenge of coming up with an extra $2K is an interesting one. It’s a solvable problem. It may take some creativity, but even children have been able to solve that type of problem if they’re motivated enough. If a highly motivated child could do it, why not an intelligent adult? In some ways it’s harder for the adult because their mental baggage makes it harder than necessary. It probably won’t surprise you to know that on the inside of such a group, you’ll find a lot of people who are willing to let go of their mental baggage and start blowing past their previous limitations. That’s how they were able to get themselves to join.

I share this from personal experience because I had much the same limiting beliefs about these types of experiences as anyone else. I had my financial comfort zone, and I stayed within its boundaries. But then I started getting some invitations that challenged me to question those boundaries.

People see that price tag as a big, scary risk. It feels unsafe. And yeah, it is a bit of a risk, but there’s an even bigger risk to assess. Considering the full breadth and depth of benefits that can (rather predictably) arise from belonging to a motivated and committed group of people, isn’t it a much bigger long-term risk to never test this? Wouldn’t it be wise to test it at least a few times, just to be sure? That’s how I framed it – what if a group like this is even more amazing and beneficial than I imagine on the inside, and I never allowed myself to have that experience in my entire life? I figured that if I took the risk and it didn’t pan out, oh well, I could always earn more money. It would be a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of my life. But what if it did pan out? What if the potential gain turned out to be one of the best bets and biggest wins of my whole life?

After all, it’s fairly predictable that if you were to join a group like this, you’re going to get lots of value out of it. And that’s because you’ll do your part to make damned well sure that you do. You wouldn’t let yourself waste that kind of money. You’ll push yourself to extract the value, if only because you don’t want to look like an idiot for making a bad decision. So you’re going to do what it takes to get your money’s worth. That’s always been true for me when I’ve joined such groups. I realized that if I’m going to do this, I’d better be all-in with it and do what it takes to extract the value. Otherwise I’m going to look really foolish. Believe it or not, this is actually good motivation for getting the value. We’ll often work harder to avoid looking like a fool than we will to look like a genius. In this case the risk of loss is your friend, as weird as that may seem.

I almost didn’t join an amazing group a few years ago because I thought it wouldn’t be good timing for me. But that was actually another irrational objection, as I soon realized after pondering it more deeply. When I was invited to join, the timing wasn’t great because I had a lot of things going on at the time, but beyond that the timing was actually decent because I could always dive into it when I was ready, and I could still get plenty of value from the one-year membership even if I was only going to get 10-11 months worth. I’m really glad I didn’t miss out on that whole year just because I wasn’t going to be as available for the first month.

When is the timing ever going to feel right when you’re making the decision to create a major discontinuity in your path? Joining a group like this can feel like taking a hard turn – most likely an amazingly beneficial one – but where on your calendar have you made space for such a thing? In other to really think about this rationally, you must recognize and accept that the timing for a decision of this nature is most likely never going to feel like it fits all that well. If it does fit perfectly into your life, that’s unusual. Most people have to do whatever it takes to make it fit, as opposed to having it feel like a natural fit as soon as the invitation comes up.

In terms of making the decision to join Conscious Growth Club, I encourage you to think about the decision rationally, especially when it comes to the cost-benefit calculation. For many people, the price really isn’t such a big deal as they initially make it out to be. It feels like a big deal emotionally at first – I get that – but how does it look when you consider the big picture from a more rational perspective? Is it really such a huge expense relative to the potential gains you’ll invite into your life? Could the value be worth it to you?

That’s how I made the decision to start buying into such groups. Initially my emotional brain exploded with objections, and I almost got stuck there. Then I actually wrote down those objections and began analyzing them with my best logical thinking. I realized that if I was in a group of 100+ people who’d all paid the same amount, it was highly likely I’d get my money’s worth and then some. I knew I’d participate and make an effort, and so would the other members most likely. I knew I’d be in a group of smart people who were willing to risk some cash for the chance to team up and help each other make real progress. We’d all be on the same side, all wanting to help each other get the value we were paying for. We’d be so committed that we’d co-create the experience. Even if the program itself was only so-so, the kinds of motivated people it attracted would step up and help each other get results. The math added up. And really when I joined and reached the other side, my calculations were validated. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised that I’d vastly underestimated the full range of benefits. Hence the bullet list I shared above, which covers a lot but not even all of them.

So I encourage you to do the same. This isn’t really an emotional choice. There’s actually a very rational assessment to be made in order to make an intelligent decision. And because of the rationality it takes to join this kind of group, what you’ll find on the inside of such a group are lots of very grounded, rationally minded people. They’re enthusiastic and motivated of course, but they’re also sharp, intelligent, and down-to-earth.

You see… the $2K price for Conscious Growth Club is actually something of a rationality filter. People who can’t get past their emotional blocks aren’t going to join. They’ll get hung up on some reflexive objection like I can’t afford it or it’s not good timing. But those who can calm themselves and look at the big picture are more likely to determine that joining a group like this is a good bet with a positive expected value.

Just look around at other forms of social media these days. Haven’t you noticed that there’s been a brain drain from these services since you first joined them?

I remember when Google+ first launched some years ago. I was an early adopter and signed up right away. I actually liked it because the people I encountered there seemed very bright, especially compared to what I saw on Facebook and Twitter. But the Google+ community gradually died off, and Google finally shut it down. In the rest of the social media world, it’s been feeling like we’re stuck in a race to the bottom. They’re good places for interacting in quantity, but are there lots of quality interactions focused on making real progress towards full self-actualization? Not so much…

More and more, what I’ve found is that the smart, successful, and ambitious people are flowing into paid, private communities to connect with each other away from the constant noise and drama of social media. It’s in these private communities that people genuinely help each other to make intelligent progress. Such communities favor quality over quantity, and this is perhaps the main reason they pay off so well.

I’m not saying there aren’t good free communities out there – we hosted a large one several years ago – but they seem increasingly rare these days. By pushing for quantity over quality, these services just don’t provide very good value for smart, ambitious, growth-oriented people. They’re more likely to distract you from focusing on your goals and making real progress. This is partly why I’ve been seen paid community participation on the rise – and also why I created one.

Conscious Growth Club can’t compete with what Facebook and Instagram provides in terms of quantity, but we can and do absolutely, positively blow them away in terms of quality. Seriously, even our cat pics are better. 😉

When I ask most reasonably intelligent people, “Do you still see yourself being active on Facebook 5 years from now?” I can never seem to get a yes. Well, those who use it for business will often say yes, but not those who use it on the personal side. If you’d rather not be on Facebook for the rest of your life, then what other doors are open to you. I can think of one…

Join us or don’t join us. There are no fence sitters inside the group.

Our enrollment period for 2019 ends at midnight Pacific time on May 1st, so if you’re going to join us, please do so soon. There’s something of a welcoming party for all the new members happening inside the group right now. 🙂

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