Tag Archives: productivity

Energy Wants to Flow

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One mindset challenge that plagues many of my readers is an almost obsessive focus on their own needs, problems, and challenges – when they aren’t successfully distracting themselves from it.

I also spent a lot of time stuck there. It’s a great mindset for generating lots of stress. But other results? Not so much.

One mental shift that helped me a lot was thinking of goals, plans, projects, and desires in terms of energy flows that are in motion. My previous tendency was to think in terms of end points and static states.

So instead of fussing over where I am and where I want to be (the end points), I prefer to observe where energy seems to be flowing well in my life and where it’s getting stuck and becoming stagnant. Then I work on getting the stagnant energy unstuck and getting it flowing again.

This is a key distinction. When people focus on getting from A to B, they often run into some problems, namely two main ones:

  1. What if the goal (endpoint B) isn’t clearly defined?
  2. What if the path to the goal (from A to B) isn’t clear?

Then what they tend to do (if they invest enough effort) is figure out what B is supposed to look like, and figure out what the path from A to B will be. But there’s a big problem with this approach because they’re trying to gain clarity while they still have all this stuck, stagnant energy swirling around at endpoint A and not really flowing. And while they don’t have enough clarity to tell themselves that it’s time to move, this stuck energy is causing problems for them.

People often spend years waiting for clarity on these two simple questions, telling themselves they cannot go full throttle till they have stable, believable answers. And that is a huge mistake.

Suppose point A is having a job you dislike and point B is having a job you love. People try to clearly define B and then plot a course from A to B before they start moving, and this rarely works well because the energy at A isn’t flowing. Such people often feel de-energized and demotivated by all the stuck, stagnant energy the job at A. How are they supposed to have the energy necessary to create clarity about B, let alone plot the full course from A to B? Of course what really happens is that they stay stuck at A, often for a very long time – till this energy finally demands release, and they get fired or laid off, quit out of desperation, or succumb to health problems and feel compelled to finally transition.

Feeling needy, stressed, or frustrated is a sign of stagnant energy. So if you notice yourself feeling needy and self-absorbed with your personal concerns and stresses, consider that this is a hint to look for areas of stuck energy.

When energy is flowing nicely, there’s a certain grace and ease to life – it feels more open, fun, playful, loving, and expansive. We feel more connected, supported, trusting, cooperative, and hopeful. We feel more courageous and confident.

Energy wants to flow. It likes being in motion. It isn’t even that particular about where it flows. It just wants to flow somewhere. And if it doesn’t have anywhere to go, it tries to move around in whatever space it has available. When it’s bottled up inside you, that energy goes into creating circular thinking much of the time. You may experience this as worry, confusion, stress, or anxiety. This stuck energy can also manifest as physical illness.

Note also that this idea of energy flows is just a model – a way of thinking about reality. You don’t have to believe in energy flows in order to use this model and benefit from it, much as I explained in the recent article Your Least Favorite Screwdriver. You also have some flexibility in how you frame this. You could imagine electrical currents flowing through your nervous system, spiritual energy flowing through your chakras and astral body, or thoughts and feelings flowing through your mind. I often merge the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual frames when I think about energy flows because this model helps me solve problems no matter how I frame it.

I sometimes find myself stuck trying to plot a course from A to B, especially when I’m not super clear about what B looks like. But when I’m trying to build clarity while my energy is still stuck at A, this can be frustrating. I start feeling impatient after a while. I sense that the stuck energy wants to move, but I’m keeping it bottled up waiting for clarity.

And you know what? This is okay sometimes. It’s okay to have some stuck energy now and then, as long as we’re aware of the stuckness and we’re working on getting it flowing again. It’s okay to keep it stuck for a few weeks while we work on some clarity – as long as we have good reason to believe that we can and will converge on enough clarity to get that energy moving.

If we’re moving towards mental clarity and making genuine progress, this is helping some of the energy to get flowing again. A good indicator that our clarity efforts are helping is that we start to feel a rising sense of hope and optimism. The little bit of energy that’s getting back into flow often generates some mild enthusiasm. We can feel that bigger changes feel increasingly inevitable. Negative stress starts going down, often replaced with feelings of relief or surrender to the unfolding transition.

For instance, I knew a couple of months ago that I wanted to shift up my exercise and social investments this year. I’ve been building towards such changes for a while. But I also felt that I had too much on my plate in December and January. I expected, however, that my schedule would lighten up a bit in February, and I’d have more capacity to make other changes without feeling overwhelmed. So I let the energy of these desired changes stay stuck for a while, knowing that I’d get the energy flowing again. And that’s exactly how it played out. Earlier this month, I joined a new meetup group and a new fitness studio, and I love how the energy is flowing again in new directions.

But I also tried to create a modest relief valve to let the stuck energy know my intention for getting it flowing again. I would visit or walk by the fitness studio before joining, and I’d browse through the classes on their website. Sometimes I imagined doing workouts there. I leaning into the meetup group in a similar manner, signaling an intention. I noticed the telltale signs of increasing optimism and enthusiasm as I did this, as if the stuck energy approved of my plans and was onboard with it. I think this helped the energy remain calm and relaxed instead of creating too much stress.

On the other hand, if you’ve been dealing with stuck energy for months or years, and you aren’t getting any closer to converging on enough clarity to see your path from A to B, then don’t keep waiting for clarity since your stuck energy isn’t going to like that. You have to give it some reasonable hope that it will get flowing again.

If you lack clarity and aren’t clearly converging on a solution, then get the energy unstuck and flowing in any direction. Get that energy back into motion, so you can use it. If the energy gets too stuck, you may feel chronically drained, stressed, anxious, or worried. If you’re already experiencing such states daily or close to it, then it’s time for change without fussing so much about where you’ll land. You’ll be amazed at just how much more becomes possible for you when chronically stuck energy suddenly becomes free and flowing again.

If you’re in a chronically stuck situation, what you may not see is just how stuck you truly are. Long-term stuckness starts to feel normal after a while. It is NOT normal or healthy though. When your energy is trapped for so long, it causes problems for you mentally, emotionally, and physically. It’s so important to just get out of the stuckness any way you can. Sometimes that means taking the evil exit – for your own health and sanity.

Simply using this model of energy flows has been super helpful on my path of growth. It’s helped me in pretty much every area of life. In fact, I often write articles by asking myself: Where does the energy want to flow today? When energy (especially creative energy) is flowing nicely through my life, I can co-create with it. I can summon and ride waves of inspiration instead of having to push myself. The energy carries me forward much of the time.

But when I allow this energy to get stuck, life becomes so much harder. It feels like I have to fuel everything with my own power, yet I lack the motivation and focus to do as much (because the energy is stuck instead of flowing), which leaves me feeling even more stuck.

Energy wants to flow. If you help it flow, it will help you even more.

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Replacing Mission Statements with Invitation Statements

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Google’s corporate mission is: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Facebook’s mission is: to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.

Microsoft’s mission statement is: to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

The mission statement of Amazon is: We strive to offer our customers the lowest possible prices, the best available selection, and the utmost convenience.

What I find interesting about these (and many other mission statements) is that they’re about empowerment. They’re about giving people greater abilities, access, and resources.

They’re also infinite in scope. There will always be more information to organize, more communities to build, more people and organizations to serve, and more selection and convenience to develop.

Moreover, these missions aren’t necessarily at odds with each other. They can all co-exist. They could cooperate with each other.

Imagine if we combined all four of these companies into one and gave them a singular mission statement. What would that look like?

Let’s pull out the key elements first:

  • organize information
  • provide useful access
  • empower people
  • build community
  • grow closer
  • achieve more
  • save money
  • expand options
  • improve accessibility

I think we can compress this a bit more since some items are related:

  • organize information
  • empower people
  • connect people
  • achieve more
  • expand options
  • improve accessibility

Ultimately I think we could compress this all the way to just one item: empower people.

I’d say this is pretty close to the mission of the Pakleds in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Samaritan Snare”:

We look for things that make us go.

Unfortunately, when the Enterprise crew tries to graciously help the Pakleds, the Pakleds kidnap the chief engineer and make him do their bidding without consent. The Pakleds don’t see a problem with this. They’re just following their normal mission.

I find it interesting that what’s missing from these mission statements (and countless others) is consent. If you think about it, there’s a certain aggressiveness and pushiness to them.

Organizing the world’s information requires capturing it. The world has a lot of information, much of it stored in people’s brains. Google’s mission as-is would require getting at these contents and making them accessible to all.

Facebook’s mission could be seen as pushing some people to connect in ways they may not want to. Does everyone want to be nudged closer together? What if some people don’t consent to that and would rather keep their distance? Communities empowered by Facebook are already impacting our lives in ways we didn’t consent to. That’s true even for people who’ve never directly participated in the service.

Where did we consent to achieving more? Not everyone wants that. Some are quite content achieving the same or less. Yet Microsoft’s mission is to give the gift of increased productivity to everyone “on the planet.” How does a child consent to this? Wouldn’t that mission eventually lead us to Borg implants from birth?

If you’re an Amazon customer, do you necessarily want the “lowest possible prices”? Is that even a good idea? What if you prefer higher quality at higher prices but with less waste, reduced environmental impact, and more sustainability? Non-customers have to endure the impacts of this mission without their consent.

Can anyone simply spin up a new global mission and foist it upon us without our consent? Yes, presently they can, and they do. And this will continue because Pakleds are abundant in the galaxy.

This non-consent aspect of corporate missions gives rise to much resistance though. Other people and organizations eventually start pushing back, especially when they’re being personally affected by missions they don’t agree with.

When someone else defines a mission whose impact will affect your life even if you never become a customer, isn’t there a part of you that wants to respond, “How dare you!” or “You arrogant bastard!” or something worse?

What’s the alternative though?

While I don’t think it’s realistic to predict all of the ripples a business may create over time, especially a big one, I do think we can at least consider the consent angle and develop less aggressive, more consent-based statements that still empower people.

At the very least, some common sense could be used. With billions of people on earth, there’s a good chance that someone will object no matter what mission statement you come up with, so it probably shouldn’t be about pushing some transformation for everyone on earth. You can limit it to those who’d accept and appreciate it.

So perhaps a better statement for Microsoft would be: to empower people and organizations who invite and appreciate Microsoft’s help and support to achieve more.

Now it’s an invitation, not something you’re forcefully ramming down my throat. I feel less resistance towards it. The revised statement would give me squishier feelings towards Microsoft. The old statement makes me feel inclined to object or at least to make jokes about it – mainly because the everyone-on-the-planet aspect is ridiculous and stupid. Maybe I’ll make it my mission to help everyone at Microsoft acknowledge this.

Here’s a thought – what if we did away with mission statements altogether? Where did those come from anyway? Don’t these trace back to religious missionaries who forcefully pushed their views on other people without consent? And military missions to fight and kill people? Why are we continuing this violent tradition?

How about if we replace mission statements with invitation statements instead? Invitations are much more agreeable. Invite people to participate in your vision to create a better future, but don’t push your vision on the whole world because people will fight you on that. If you force your mission onto people without consent, so much of your otherwise creative energy will be wasted on defending yourselves eventually, and you’ll deserve that kind of response.

Invite people to your party, but don’t make attendance mandatory, and show some respect for your neighbors who may be affected by the party.

You don’t have permission to change the whole world. Maybe you think you don’t need permission and you can do it anyway, and you can use that frame, but it will result in a rising resistance because that framing is violent. If you want to set yourself up for fight because you think it’s noble or something, that’s up to you, but then you have no right to be surprised, shocked, or outraged when people push back because that’s a predictable outcome of your framing.

It’s awesome to empower people, and kudos for doing that. But consider the benefits of inviting consent for where, when, and how you do this. If it’s a cool invitation, people will say yes and show up. And even when they decline, they may still appreciate being invited. This means less energy wasted on defending against rising resistance… and more energy you can invest in throwing bigger, better, and more interesting parties… parties that make us go. 🙂

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You Can Change Today

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Let’s consider four different variations on the title of this post, each emphasizing a different word.

YOU Can Change Today

You are the driving force of change in your life. You don’t have to wait for something external to happen first. You don’t need anyone else’s permission. If some part of your life is going to change, it’s up to you and you alone.

This is a reminder to take responsibility for your situation. It’s your life. You’ll need to initiate and propel any changes you wish to make. Be proactive about that, not passive.

Even if your current circumstances weren’t entirely of your choosing, you still have the ability to create change. You can influence and direct the path forward.

Change is personal.

You CAN Change Today

Even when you don’t see it, you still have the ability to create change. Change is always a possibility. You’re not stuck in a tunnel. There are exits all around you at every point. You can stop, leave, or change course.

Change is a choice. We don’t always see that option, but it’s there in each moment. When you want something different, you can choose to create change.

If you don’t choose change, you choose the status quo. If you’re happy with the status quo, showing up as usual may be a wise choice. Otherwise remind yourself that you can change the status quo, often by not showing up to it anymore.

There’s a way to change now.

You Can CHANGE Today

Living today the same as you did yesterday is optional. Today could be a little different. Today could be radically different.

Sometimes change happens to us. A big event occurs, and it grabs our attention and makes us focus elsewhere. The shift in focus creates change.

You can direct your attention consciously too. Rattle yourself today instead of waiting to be rattled. Look where you don’t normally look. Listen where you’d usually tune out. Take actions you’ve never taken.

What’s different about today? Today isn’t the same as any other day. It’s new. It’s fresh. It’s unique. It’s an opportunity to experience what you’ve never previously experienced.

Will you use today to repeat the sameness of the past? Will you use today to create something a little different? Will you make today wildly different?

What will you do today that you’ve never done before?

That idea that just popped into your head…

The one you just tried to suppress…

Yup, that one…

Yes, really….

What if you did it today?

You Can Change TODAY

Your power to create change exists now, in the present moment. Change doesn’t happen yesterday or tomorrow, only today. Every yesterday and every tomorrow exists beyond the realm of change. But today is always within that realm.

If you chose to do so, you could be in a new city within hours. You could begin a new job, career, or business today. You could exit or enter a relationship today. You could begin a new lifestyle today. You could invest in something new and different today.

Or you could make simpler changes. You could have that difficult conversation today. You could begin that new exercise program today. You could at least clean the bathroom.

It’s good to remind yourself direct action can make today a day of change.

What part of you wants to change today?

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Launch Principles

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In case you might find this interesting, these are the principles I use for designing course launches. I tweak this list for each new course, but overall it’s been pretty stable.

When I have a tricky design decision to make while developing the project design document (or during the launch itself), I consult this list. It’s a way of refreshing my alignment with the principles I want to follow. Careful thought went into coming up with this list, and they’ve already proven themselves to me, so I know that I can trust them.

Trust

Assume trust, and launch to people who trust me. Don’t chase low-trust people. Let people invest when they’re ready.

Encouragement

Encourage consumption of the pre-launch content. Encourage buying. Encourage consumption of the program.

Openness

Be open and up front about the offer. Don’t hide or obfuscate my desire for people to buy and appreciate what I’ve created.

Co-creativity

Stay flexible and adaptable throughout the launch. Invite feedback. Quickly incorporate worthwhile suggestions. Show that I’m listening and responding with action to improve our co-creative alignment.

Enthusiasm

Share enthusiasm for the co-creative experience. Help people feel proud of their investment.

Groundedness

Share logical reasons why participating and saying yes to the offer is a good idea for those who are aligned with it. Also point out the potential shortcomings of the offer and how that may affect people. Be straight with people, and don’t overplay the benefits. Building long-term trust is more important than a one-time sale.

Caring

Express genuine caring for people throughout the launch process, the delivery of the program, and beyond. Don’t stoop to tactics that amount to “pretending to care.”

Playfulness

Embrace light-hearted humor and fun, especially when it’s spontaneous.

Honor

Hold myself and others accountable to a high standard of honor. Hold people accountable to doing their part once they accept the offer.

Gentleness

Gently invite people to participate and invest. Open the door, and let them be free to walk through it.

Safety

Keep the process psychologically safe for participants. Don’t use tactics to trigger people emotionally. Connect with compassion, not forceful persuasion, and let them maintain emotional control.

Alignment

Favor alignment over sales volume. Filter for aligned people, and seek to dissuade misaligned people from participating. Attract people who are very likely to benefit from the offer. Make heart-aligned decisions at each step.

Win-Win-Win

Make win-win-win offers: good for them, good for me and my team, and good ripples for the world. Use this standard for pricing decisions too.

Boldness

Offer strong, bold, unique growth experiences that pack in a lot of value.

Simplicity

Don’t complicate the process unnecessarily. Don’t slow people down if they’re ready to progress faster.

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How I Use Scrivener to Design Course Launches

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Scrivener is an outlining and word processing app for writers. It’s especially suitable for large creative projects like a book or screenplay. It helps me organize and structure my thoughts, research, notes, and more as I gradually piece together a larger work.

I’ve been using the Mac version for many years, and I’ve been very pleased with it. It has way more features than I need, but the features that I do use work solidly. I like the flexibility of it, and the interface does a reasonable job of balancing accessibility and complexity. There’s a little bit of a learning curve at the beginning, but a good tutorial walks you through it. Afterwards with a little practice, it’s easy to settle into a more personalized way of using the software.

I create a new Scrivener doc for every large creative project. This is where I work through all aspects of a project, including the initial concept, the intended transformations, the offer, the launch, the marketing, the content, the delivery, the bonus material, and more. Every piece of the project has some representation in the associated Scrivener doc.

I have detailed Scrivener design docs for each course that we’ve published so far: Deep Abundance Integration, Submersion, and Stature. Each of those design docs would be 100 to 200 pages if I were to print them out.

Here’s an example of what my left Scrivener sidebar looks like for the Stature design doc, just to give you an idea of how I structure the outline. There’s a bit more that’s not shown as the outline continues, but this is most of it.

If I click on any of those items, it opens up the relevant part of the larger document that contains the details in a separate window pane on the right side, so it provides instant access to all the details. So it’s like each piece of the outline has its own associated text document.

Here’s an example of what the right window pane looks like, from the Overview section of the Stature course:

What I like about Scrivener is that it provides an expandable and collapsible outline structure, so I can delve into any one part of a project while hiding the other details. I can also click and drag these outline elements and move them around.

This is especially nice for jumping around a lot during the design phase, when I might get a random idea that I may wish to capture while working on some other part of the doc. Then can I click over to the appropriate section, add the idea to process and integrate later, and then return to work on the previous section. Sometimes early in a project, I’ll have a separate capture section, where I collect ideas to process later.

I don’t just use these docs to outline and create the course content. I use Scrivener to work through all of the relevant decisions for a large project. I spend a good bit of time clarifying the purpose of the project. I work through how it’s a win for the participants, a win for me, and a win for the world. I anticipate objections and decide how I’ll address them. I carefully decide what bonus content to create to provide a more well-rounded package. I go over the offer again and again, refining it till it looks really solid. I consider different pricing options.

Many weeks and often months of work go into the project before it’s ready to launch – there are just so many decisions to be made. A launch that looks smooth and simple on the front end is usually way more complex on the back end. If it looks simple, that’s because of all the careful thought that went into simplifying and improving the alignment. People don’t see all the alternative ideas that were considered, evaluated, and rejected along the way.

Some parts of the larger doc are like journal entries where I go over my reasoning for making certain decisions. Then if I ever feel doubtful about a choice later on, I can review my reasoning and see if it still seems sound or if I want to update it. This keeps me moving forward and prevents running in circles while still allowing room to make improvements to earlier ideas. It also gives me an archive where I can look back on previous decisions and see why I made them as I did, even years later. This helps me unearth my own best practices and learn from experience, especially after I’m able to assess the long-term feedback and results of a project.

As this larger document gets filled out, the overall project takes shape. It’s a lot of work to create this type of doc, but it gives me good progress visibility on how far along I am, and it ensures that I attend to every important detail. Most importantly, it helps me anticipate and address potential risks.

Risk reduction is a big reason that I invest so much in creating these design docs. There are lots of things that can go wrong with a launch, and it’s much better to anticipate potential problems early and develop plans for dealing with them. My design docs often include multiple options and contingency plans in case my original plans don’t quite work.

I probably put the most effort into designing the offer. The quality of the offer is the most sensitive part of a launch and the biggest risk in my opinion. It’s where I see many friends endure failed launches – their offer just didn’t land well with their audience. This is why I prefer to invest in co-creating the offer with my readers and especially with previous course participants. When I start seeing some interest and enthusiasm, I know the offer is becoming more solid. Much of this involves picking the right topic and the right transformations to focus on, so people can expect to gain real benefits from going through a course. It’s all about helping people move the needle forward in their lives.

I’ve found that a good way to choose topics is to focus on the relationships we all want to improve. Each course focuses on a different relationship dynamic in our lives. Deep Abundance Integration works on improving your relationship with abundance, money, and even with scarcity. Submersion seeks to improve your relationship with reality, including your relationship to past traumas and painful experiences. And Stature seeks to improve your relationship with yourself, including the relationships between different parts within you to create more synergy and reduce inner conflict and resistance. Our next course after Stature will delve into your relationship with work, especially the creativity and productivity aspects – there’s already a design doc underway for that one.

I think this level of thorough preparation is one reason that all of our course launches have gone very well, not just financially but in the deep satisfaction that people have been gaining and the happy emails about the results people have been achieving.

The launch and development of a major personal development course may look like ease and flow to some, but there really is a tremendous amount of careful thought and detailed consideration that goes into each decision, often long before the launch. Stature’s design doc, for instance, was begun in early 2018, almost two years before it actually launched. It went through several iterations before it converged to the point where it was ready to launch.

I also maintain separate Scrivener docs for Conscious Growth Club, for ongoing marketing and business strategy, and for my overall goals and plans. So I don’t only use these docs for courses and launches.

I often come up with more ideas that I can implement, so these Scrivener docs are good for capturing those “someday / maybe” ideas as well. For instance, I worked through the idea of hosting a free webinar during Stature’s launch week, but I just didn’t have time to work it in, so that had to be cut. However, by documenting the idea in the design doc, I could potentially transplant it into a future project, thereby benefitting from the work I’ve already put into this idea.

Moreover, design docs serve as a nice record of what worked and didn’t work. After a project is fully done, I conduct a postmortem to review what worked, what didn’t work, and what could be improved for next time. Then for future projects, I can keep doing more of what worked (without forgetting) and do less of what didn’t work.

I like to incorporate at least one new idea into each project, and then if it works well enough, I can continue doing it for future projects. It takes a lot of time and energy to develop and implement a new idea, but it takes a lot less effort to repeat the implementation of a good idea that worked before. For Stature, for instance, the new idea was to invite people to connect in a launch Facebook group. It worked well enough that I decided to keep the group open even after the launch finished in mid-January. People who are going through the course are still actively sharing their progress and realizations in the group. I wouldn’t say the group is super active, and a lot of my readers don’t like Facebook, but it was relatively easy to implement, and it provides a nice extra channel to interact with some of the people going through the course.

Each time I develop a new course, I begin with the previous project’s template, and then I can refine it from there. So this gives me an evolving skeleton template to carry over from one project to the next. Just carrying over the structure of the previous project helps to capture the wisdom accumulated thus far, and it makes egregious mistakes less likely.

Perhaps the main benefit of these design docs is that they help me focus. A course and its launch have so many pieces that I can’t keep all of the details in my mind. So I use Scrivener for my go-to capture and design system. This frees my mind to let go of the pieces that I know are already recorded, so I can focus on considering options, making decisions, and moving the project forward instead of being worried that I might forget something important.

Even though these projects are a lot of work, I really do enjoy the creative process. I like Scrivener’s nice touches like how it provides a choice of icons for different sections of a project, so it looks more visually appealing. Dark mode looks nice as well. When I find an app appealing, it reduces friction and makes it easier for me to want to engage with it.

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Fully Disengaged Rest Breaks

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A lot of time and energy are poorly utilized by working with partial engagement and then taking half-engaged breaks, like to web surf or check email.

A great way to increase productivity is to focus on a single task when working and fully engage with it. If the task is a little dull, a good way to make it more engaging is to try to do it faster than usual but at the same level of quality.

Then when focus starts to fade, take a break that’s fully disengaged for several minutes, doing nothing other than resting your mind. Don’t check email or social media. Don’t count eating or going to the bathroom or chatting with someone as a break. Just disengage completely.

When I want to take a disengaged break, I put my feet up on my desk, kick back in my chair (which has a headrest), close my eyes, and let my mind go blank. Sometimes I’ll start with 1-3 minutes of deep breaths with the Breathe App on Apple Watch (at the rate of 4 breaths per minute). Afterwards I’ll zone out completely with eyes closed, usually for 5 to 15 minutes. I don’t try to think about anything. I don’t usually listen to music. I just rest my mind. If my mind tries to stay active, I just think “Shhhhhh” now and then.

Sometimes I nod off and fall asleep during this time. Other times I just feel my mind going into low gear and slowing down. Normally I don’t set a timer. I trust my mind to let me know when it’s ready to return to work. The signal to re-engage is usually pretty clear. I feel my mind speeding up again, and at some point my eyes pop open, and I feel a desire to get back into work mode.

Another type of break is to lie down on the couch and take a nap. That’s really good in the early afternoon. I usually set a 20-minute timer but normally don’t need it unless I’m extra tired. Typically I pop awake automatically within 16-18 minutes. Rachelle and I often like to cuddle nap together on the couch if we both want this kind of break at the same time. Naps are terrific for restoring focus.

A third method I use for full rest breaks is to lie down on the couch and listen to some meditative music for 15-30 minutes. I often do this when I desire a longer break, like when I’m doing lots of creative work, and I sense my mind could use more downtime to rejuvenate itself. For this I usually listen to Brain.fm “relax” tracks, and there are 4 different modes to choose from: chill, recharge, destress, and unwind. I’ve tested all four of these, and I get the best results from the unwind tracks. They usually take me down to a deep level of relaxation, and when the track ends I feel nicely refreshed and ready to get back to work.

With a few of these types of breaks during a workday, I can normally be productive all day long. They don’t take a lot of time, and they’re very restorative. Even five minutes of mental disengagement once per day makes a notable difference.

While I’m resting I do my best to focus solely on rest, and I try to avoid doing anything else. If I take semi-breaks only, like a break that’s really a meal or a break that includes some low-engagement online interaction, more fatigue accumulates, and it gets harder to focus later in the day. I especially notice the difference when I’m doing creative work or design work that requires careful decisions and attention to detail.

In the past I often thought it would be productive to switch to low-engagement tasks during breaks from high-engagement work. But it’s normally counter-productive to do that. It’s so much more restorative when I let my brain basically go offline. Of course it doesn’t really switch off, but it often feels like some parts are able to power down for a while.

Have you tested fully disengaged breaks during your workday? If not, I encourage you to do so. Tune out completely, and let your only mental activity during such breaks be relaxation or sleep. Hold the intentions to rest deeply, to allow some parts of your brain to go inactive, and to notice the signal to return to work when you’re feeling refreshed.

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Aligning Rewards

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We had an interesting discussion on a recent Conscious Growth Club coaching call about making sure that the financial rewards of your career path are aligned with the ways you’d like to be rewarded.

For instance, you may want or expect to be rewarded for some of the following:

  • devising a creative solution to a problem
  • successfully completing a project
  • helping a co-worker solve a problem
  • reporting a problem that could cost the company if not solved
  • acting with honor and integrity
  • telling the truth in a difficult situation
  • encouraging and/or mentoring a team member
  • stretching yourself to develop a new skill
  • working hard

But what people are actually rewarded for often includes:

  • keeping your mouth shut and your head down
  • obeying orders without question
  • agreeing with the boss
  • looking busy
  • lying
  • closing sales at any cost
  • successfully hiding how distracted and unproductive you are
  • leaning on team members to cover for you
  • completing trivial tasks
  • generating data that doesn’t help the company achieve any meaningful purpose

Misalignments like these can occur regardless of how much control and independence you have over your work.

When I started my computer games business in 1994, I expected to be rewarded for my creativity, programming skills, work ethic, and for project completion. I went bankrupt waiting for such rewards to come through.

What actually generated income was closing deals with publishers, and those deals introduced dynamics which were misaligned with my expectations. Creativity wasn’t high on the list of what publishers wanted at the time.

Eventually I was able to create better alignment, partly by shifting my expectations and partly by shifting the reward structure of my business. That involved changing my business model. No one really cared about my programming skills but me, but at least I could be rewarded for my creative ideas and execution. The area where I most had to shift my expectations was marketing. In order to succeed with that business, I needed to up-level my marketing skills, and I had to adjust my expectations to account for good marketing as an activity that would be financially rewarded. I also had to note that weak marketing was financially punished.

I ran into similar challenges with my personal development business some years later. My initial income streams rewarded me in mixed ways. When I generated income from ads on the site, I was rewarded for blogging, for traffic growth, and also for selling and optimizing ads. I was okay with the first two, but I wasn’t as fond of being rewarded for people clicking on ads and leaving the site instead of sticking around to read more articles.

I dropped that model in 2008 and explored other models that felt more aligned. My current models, such as doing workshops, offering courses, and hosting Conscious Growth Club, are good at rewarding me for helping people achieve positive transformations. The more people get good results, the better it is for me since this means more repeat business. This also financially incentivizes me to keep creating more and better courses, to design and deliver more workshops, and to keep supporting and improving Conscious Growth Club.

In this case too, however, I also have to adapt to what the real-world situation rewards. Almost any business, including mine, rewards good marketing. I’ve wanted to improve at marketing too, so I’m okay with this. I’ve tried to set things up so as to align my rewards with doing marketing honestly and honorably, and that’s been working well.

When the actual rewards are nicely aligned with the desired behaviors, life and business flow more easily. You can focus on doing the work and getting better at your core skills, and you can expect to be rewarded for this because the business model is aligned with rewarding you for such behaviors.

What can really mess you up is when your business or employment situation has a misaligned reward structure, so you get rewarded for behaviors you’d rather not reinforce, and/or you don’t get rewarded for behaviors where you feel like you really do deserve some acknowledgement.

In this article so far, I’ve mainly focused on the financial rewards since those tend to be the easiest to assess and measure. But we can extend this to other rewards such as how you’re being appreciated.

When I generated income from ads, people would thank me for my articles and how they benefitted from my writing and ideas. They wouldn’t usually thank me for the ads, although some people did when an ad helped them discover something personally useful.

These days I normally get thanked for insights and ideas I share, especially those that help people get results. I get thanked most often for course lessons, for blog articles, and for helping people in Conscious Growth Club. So that’s all pretty well aligned because these are all areas where I’m continuing to invest.

I don’t typically receive appreciation or rewards for all the study, research, and experimentation I do in private, unless I share something beneficial to others along the way. I don’t get rewarded for making mistakes or pursuing false starts, such as partly developing something that never ships. But I do get rewarded down the road for the results that these activities eventually lead to, and that seems adequate for now.

It’s important to keep an eye on sustainability too. I can be rewarded temporarily for overworking, for instance, but then I get punished for it when it catches up with me. I can generate surges of extra income when I want, such as by launching something new, but if I overdo it, then I get punished on the lifestyle side when life becomes nothing but work, work, work all the time.

Take a look at how you’re being financially (and otherwise) rewarded in life and business. How well do these rewards align with your desired behaviors? Are you being incentivized to grow, improve, and execute in the ways you like? Is the current reward structure sculpting your character in ways you like and appreciate? How are you being over-rewarded or under-rewarded?

If you like what you see, great. And if not, then you have an important problem to solve. One option is to re-align your personal priorities, and get with the program. See if you can release resistance to how you’re being rewarded, and agree to let those rewards sculpt your character as they will. So if you’re rewarded for sales, then get aligned with up-leveling your sales skills, and accept that you’re pursuing a path of becoming a better salesperson. Sometimes this is workable while other times it’s just too unpalatable.

Your other option is to change the reward structure. This may involve negotiating with an employer for different terms, switching employers to find a more aligned reward structure, or changing the business model you’re using.

It’s important to be proactive here. You do have options. If you don’t like what the current reward structure is doing to you, then get into a more aligned reward structure, even if you have to design the business model yourself.

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Creating Harmonious Flow

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It’s only February 5, and due to my daily blogging challenge this year, I’ve already published more blog posts in 2020 than I did in all of 2019.

I realized fairly early in this challenge that it could feel very burdensome if I don’t frame it the right way. I think the wrong way to frame it would be as a self-discipline challenge. That makes it feel stressful to me. It makes the daily behaviors feel like demanding “have tos.” I wouldn’t want the next 11 months to feel like a forced march.

This morning while doing some journaling, I noted that writing is an activity that I often regard as restorative and rejuvenating. Writing can be cathartic. It helps me connect with people. It helps me process and understand ideas better. When I set my intentions properly before I start, the words flow naturally and sometimes even playfully. Writing doesn’t feel so much like thinking. It feels more like not thinking. Sometimes it feels like listening. Sometimes it feels like channeling. Sometimes it feels like dancing.

Writing is a part of my life that I feel that I’ve solved very well. While it still provides plenty of richness and depth, and I still appreciate its role in my life, this isn’t due to the experience of challenge or conflict. Writing feels like a channel that’s wide open for me to continue exploring, like a river I’ve traveled so many times that I know where all the rapids are, yet I still enjoy traversing it again and again.

Writing as a medium fits squarely within my comfort zone, yet it still has many branches that I can follow beyond my comfort zone. Oddly it has become a comfortable way to explore many discomforts.

I tend to think of many parts of life in terms of relationships. For me this way of thinking has been very transformational. What I especially love about writing is how I’ve developed a close, trusting relationship with it. It’s not just the act of writing that’s a source of positivity in my life. It’s my relationship with writing that’s grown so healthy and positive, and I can benefit from that relationship even when I’m not actively writing.

My initial intention for the daily blogging challenge was to more deeply explore my relationship with creative self-expression. This was more of an intuitive decision than a logical one, similar to how you might have an intuitive feeling about connecting with someone.

What is your relationship with money? What’s your relationship with your work? What’s your relationship with social media? What’s your relationship with sexuality? What’s your relationship with your partner (if you have one)? What’s your relationship with your character? What’s your relationship with reality?

I’ve been asking myself these questions for many years. I’ve answered some of them in the form of significant courses. And I continue to reflect upon all of these relationships and more.

Conscious Quality Control

Thinking of different aspects of life in terms of the quality of the relationships is empowering because I know that those relationships exist in my mind. That’s where I experience all of them. While I can say that there are external aspects to many of these relationships, I still process all of the details within my mind. I model each relationship mentally. I feel each relationship emotionally. Some relationships have physical aspects that I experience with my body and my senses, and those signals also get processed through my mind.

I don’t control the externals per se, but I can wield some conscious control over how I do the internal processing. If I notice that the way I represent a relationship is becoming problematic, I can delve into how I’m modeling it. This is tricky work since the initial modeling happens subconsciously. I don’t really control how my mind frames these relationships from the start, but I can consciously discover the details of those models, such as by asking questions and journaling about it. Having conscious conversations with others helps too. As I gain more clarity about how my mind is modeling a relationship, I can look for modeling problems that could introduce bugs in my thinking or give rise to paralyzing emotions, and I can challenge my mind to devise more intelligent and accurate models.

I often think of the architecture of my mind in very physical terms – a collection of neural clusters in my brain. Since the brain exists in 3D space, it has physical limitations that give rise to various artifacts. Some regions of the brain don’t share data very well with other regions. You’ve probably heard the term cognitive dissonance, when we seem to believe something even when we have plenty of evidence to the contrary. My religious upbringing was rife with that. I see this as being linked to the physical structure of the brain. The architecture of the brain doesn’t force congruent thinking. We can have one region of the brain modeling reality one way and another region modeling reality a different way (or simply storing memories that conflict with the first region’s model), and they don’t necessarily talk to each other to resolve these conflicts.

Hence I don’t really take it personally when my mind holds models that lead to problematic relationships. I tend to regard such problems as engineering or algorithmic problems. These problems don’t usually disturb my sense of self-esteem. I recognize that the architecture of my brain is giving rise to these problems, but I also have well-developed tools that I can use to resolve such problems. These tools are my collection of personal growth insights, many of which I’ve been blogging about over many years.

I notice that when many people have mental modeling problems, they tend to take it personally, as if they’re somehow defective, unworthy, or broken. I encourage you not to think like that.

My mental processing occurs within my mind, but that mental processing isn’t me per se. It’s just the software running within me. So if the software is buggy or defective, I like to interpret this as an invitation to explore and experience those bugs, to diagnose them, and to attempt to fix them if I’m so inclined. I try not to take it personally, just as I wouldn’t take it personally if one of my devices behaves in a buggy manner.

This mental model was one that I learned from programming computers and from studying some neuroscience. But I don’t have to root it to the physical to make it work. Quite often I prefer using the subjective reality perspective, and in that context I still regard thought as software, except that it’s running in some kind of simulation instead of within my physical brain. The simulation doesn’t need to have a physical aspect. It could be some kind of dream world, in which case I just consider the dream constructs to be a different type of software.

If I think of thought as software, then thoughts can sometimes be buggy. Multiple thoughts don’t have to agree with each other. Congruence is not a requirement for thought to exist.

Harmony

I also sometimes think of thought as music. Some music sounds harmonious and pleasant, and some doesn’t. Just as we can listen to unpleasant music and consider what’s wrong with it and what needs to be changed to make it sound better, we can do the same with thought.

I often feel this drive within me to make my thinking more harmonious. Sometimes this feels like the drive of life itself. How can life organize itself into increasingly complex yet stable structures? This requires bringing harmony to competing priorities, so the competition doesn’t tear apart the overall structure.

We see this on a social level too. Individuals have different priorities, and this bubbles up to competition among families, tribes, communities, political groups, and countries. Socially and politically we have a lot of disagreements. Our collection social software can be pretty buggy and disharmonious sometimes. But we could say that this bubbles up from our individual software. If we’re internally disharmonious, how can society be otherwise?

I recognize that when I’m working on my own personal problems, trying to bring harmony to my inner relationships, I’m also working on an internal version of our larger social problems. Perhaps the reason I notice certain problems in the world is that they resonate with internal patterns, so I can look at my issues with the world as indicators of what might be issues in need of resolution within myself.

How would we recognize harmony when it’s present?

Imagine a world where politicians greeted each other with hugs and smiles instead of withholding handshakes. Imagine a world where politicians praised each other and expressed gratitude openly. Imagine politicians agreeing on purpose and priorities together. Imagine politicians sharing honestly what they intend to do and what they can’t realistically do. It’s not that difficult to imagine what a more harmonious situation would look like, although it may be difficult to imagine it becoming real.

Can we do this internally as well? What would a more harmonious you look like?

With more inner harmony, you might find yourself doing a wonderful job of balancing priorities, as if you’ve somehow resolved the inner competition by recognizing common ground and getting each part of you to align with that common ground. You wouldn’t experience the problem of feeling like you should work and distracting yourself online instead.

Purpose

One way to achieve this sense of inner harmony is with clarity of purpose. If you can clarify and commit to a strong purpose for yourself, it’s easier to get otherwise disagreeable neural regions to align. A strong purpose can serve as an alignment beacon, but only if you’re really committed.

Thinking of different parts of life in terms of relationships also connects with the purpose idea. Then you can consider how each relationship in your life is serving your greater purpose. How is your relationship with money serving your purpose? How is your relationship with work serving your purpose? How is your relationship with your body serving your purpose? Asking such questions will expose further misalignments in these relationships since some aspects won’t serve your purpose very well. Then you can delve into the misaligned models and see if you can upgrade them to better align with your purpose.

It can be easier to write a harmonious song if you get clear about the purpose. If you compose one track with one purpose in mind, and you write another track with a different purpose in mind, you may inject disharmony into the song. But if all tracks are created with the intention of collectively serving a singular purpose, that can help you to create a more aligned and harmonious song.

I’m noticing the usefulness of this purpose alignment with my daily blogging challenge as well. Each day I seek to fit this into my schedule, there’s the possibility (and sometimes the reality) of running into resistance. Competing priorities can push against this commitment, sometimes delaying it till late in the day. I may not always feel motivated to create. I may be extra busy some days. Sometimes surprises will happen, and I’ll have to deal with those too. With a full year of daily blogging, it’s unavoidable that I’ll experience numerous episodes of resistance from various other regions of my brain.

Trying to push through such resistance day after day can be draining, and if I do that too much, it leads to feeling burnt out and not wanting to continue. Then I have little choice but to lean on self-discipline and force compliance with the commitment. But of course that option isn’t ideal.

There are many options for this purpose, and really it’s just a matter of reminding myself of why this challenge is a good idea. I can focus on the daily connection with the flow of creative energy. I can think about helping people grow and how many people are served by this challenge. I can think about the character growth this challenge is creating.

By connecting with a strong enough purpose for this challenge, I notice that the resistance starts shifting towards a feeling of greater harmony. What’s really interesting is that just having a decent purpose for the daily blogging is also helping other parts of my life to harmonize, not just with this challenge but with each other. It’s like the purpose serves as a core musical track, providing the rhythm that all of the other tracks sync to. And when those other tracks sync to the rhythm track, they also sync well with each other.

For example, I’ve noticed that I’m doing a better job of self-care lately than when I first started this challenge. I’m feeling more relaxed and peaceful while I work, even when I have a lot to do. I’m working with better flow and less stress. January was an extra busy month due to the Stature course launch, and I also had a Panama trip that month, so it was an unbalancing time that took me off my normal routine. February is still plenty busy, but it feels more relaxed and flowing. I think this has a lot to do with finding greater clarity among otherwise competing priorities. Instead of feeling pulled in different directions, I’m doing a better job of getting my activities and projects aligned in service to an overall purpose.

When I get extra busy, my sense of purpose can feel a bit scrambled. I get lost among the trees and have a hard time remembering which forest I’m in. And when that happens, I often find it hard to justify keeping up those vital self-care activities, and of course that just makes things worse. But when I get back in tune with a clear purpose, it’s easier to slow down, and slowing down helps me speed up. Instead of burning the candle at both ends, I do a better job of creating harmonious days and weeks that feel sustainably pleasant. My personal song begins to sound increasingly harmonious.

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Loved-based Clarity

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It’s common to slant your understanding of clarity heavily towards truth and power while not giving as much attention to the love aspect of clarity. The risk in doing so is that your perception of clarity may end up being too mental and lacking in the depth that emotional alignment brings to it.

So you may think you have it all figured out, but your mental models won’t feel quite right to you. You’ll look at your goals and plans, and they’ll look brilliant on paper – until you actually attempt to take action on them. That’s where you’ll often feel like you’re fighting yourself and running into major resistance. You may have a hard time finding the flow.

When this happens, there’s a tendency to push even harder on the truth and power side of the personal growth triangle. You may have this surging desire to finally take charge of the situation and make it the way you want it to be. This approach usually doesn’t go smoothly though. You’ll often feel like you just can’t muster the necessary force and drive required to push through that last bit of resistance and get into the flow state.

This situation frequently arises when your attempts to create clarity overemphasize rational or logical intelligence and underemphasize emotional intelligence.

So let’s delve into the emotional side of clarity a bit more here.

If you’ve ever been in love, take a moment to recall what that felt like. What was it like to feel deep love?

Didn’t such feelings bring forth a level of clarity, but perhaps a different type of clarity than you might experience on the truth and power side of the triangle?

Did you feel clear about wanting to spend more time with someone? Did you experience increased clarity about what you wanted to explore next on your relationship path? Did you find it easier to make decisions regarding your social calendar? Was it easy to go with the flow of what was fun in the moment? Did you notice yourself saying yes more often than usual?

Did friends or family members ever question your rationality when you made decisions based on your feelings of love? Did they ever try to talk you back down to earth or point out the flaws in your fantasies? Did you listen to them? Did you heed their warnings and cautions? Or was your level of clarity too strong for them to influence?

When emotional clarity comes into your life, it can feel like an obsession. The energy can be pretty intense. Life tends to feel less effortful and more flowing. You don’t have to spend time reasoning things out. You don’t have to push-push-push yourself to take action. The reasoning just seems abundantly clear to you, even though others may find it illogical. And action is intrinsically motivated and relatively easy; you catch yourself taking action without really trying.

Clarity that stems from the truth and power side of the triangle is rooted in prediction. You think to yourself: If I take this action, I’ll get this result. And if I take this different action, I’ll get this different result. So you’re trying to piece together the action steps that will lead to a desirable outcome. You want to see that chain of action steps laid out in front of you, with high predictability that one step naturally leads to another, cascading like a waterfall to the end result. You might even consider such plans beautiful, like an elegant mathematical proof.

By contrast love-based clarity isn’t rooted in prediction or action steps. It doesn’t involve any particular sequencing of events. It could occur synchronistically with other forms of clarity, but it doesn’t have to.

Truth-based clarity says “I see.” Power-based clarity says, “I will.” What does love-based clarity say?

We could use the phrase “I feel,” but I think that’s the obvious answer and not necessarily the best one. Perhaps a deeper way to frame this form of clarity is with the phrase “I am.”

Love-based clarity is self-identification with a path. In English we don’t just say, “I feel in love.” We say, “I am in love.”

With truth-based clarity, you might say, “I see the path from A to B now. It makes sense. I know what I have to do.”

With power-based clarity, you might say, “Okay, let’s do this! I’ll find a way or make one. It’s time to push myself!”

With love-based clarity, you might say, “This is what life is all about. This is why I’m here. This is where I want to be.”

The challenge with love-based clarity is that it can be difficult to trust it, at least until you gain sufficient experience with it. It’s a less predictable form of clarity, even after you’ve practiced it a great deal, but it has the capacity to help you move through blocks and resistance that truth- and power-based approaches often succumb to.

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Just Deciding

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If clarity won’t succumb to an information-based approach, how can we possibly make any headway here? Don’t we need reliable information in order to make good decisions about our lives?

Here’s the thing: we actually don’t. We often make decisions without perfect information, and we still get by. We don’t freeze up constantly.

Every day we drink water, we eat food, and we move around. Maybe we get some work done. Maybe we talk to people. Maybe we mess around online a bit. But we can and do make decisions. And we live with the results of those decisions. We do this repeatedly.

We don’t need 100% reliable information to make decisions. Somehow we’re able to decide and take action anyway, even when our information is full of holes.

Consider some decisions you’ve made in the past few days. Did you always carefully consider the potential upsides and downsides of each option? You’ll probably find that you made some decisions very quickly and without serious analysis.

How did you decide what to eat for each meal? How did you decide what to wear? How did you spend your leisure time? It’s doubtful that you weighed the pros and cons of every accessible option.

For many decisions you had to make, it would appear that you just decided.

How did you muster a sufficient level of clarity to do that? How did you just decide instead of thinking more deeply and analytically about each possible path?

Consider this: Making a decision can be an incredibly simple process. You can do it in a split second by just deciding.

No long-winded analysis. No resistance. No analysis paralysis. You can just decide. You already do this many times each day.

When you make decisions simply, you allow a decision to unfold without stopping yourself, and you flow into action. You don’t use blocking mechanisms to slow yourself down.

When you’re ready to eat, you decide what to eat, and you eat. When you’re ready to go to bed, you decide to go to bed, and you go to bed. When you’re ready to quit your job, you decide to quit, and you quit.

Just deciding is a simple step, often made automatically and unconsciously. It usually doesn’t take much force or pushing. You may have the sense that some part of you – your brain, your heart, your spirit, or something else – just decided for you.

Here’s a simple but important reframe to adopt. When people claim they’re making a decision, and they’re taking a while to do so, consider that they aren’t actually deciding. Deciding takes less than a second. Making a decision is as quick as pushing a button. What such people are actually doing is applying the brakes.

Researching options isn’t making a decision. Discussing possibilities isn’t making a decision. Thinking about making a decision isn’t making a decision. All of these are braking mechanisms that delay action. The button isn’t being pushed yet.

Now there may be intelligent reasons to apply the brakes. Maybe it’s important to weigh the pros and cons. Maybe your outcome would be improved by seeking more and better information. Maybe you need to consult with others who may be affected by the decision.

That’s all well and good, but I advise you not to wrap these information-gathering and analytical aspects into the simple act of making a choice. The reason is that if you wrap these into the decision itself, it’s easy to fall into the trap of claiming that you’re deciding when you’re actually delaying, and once you’re stuck in that particular frame, it can be hard to escape and move the process forward.

It’s okay to delay now and then. You may not feel ready to move forward with your decision. But when you frame your braking methods as part of your decision-making process, you can easily muddle your sense of clarity. It’s common for people to claim to be unclear about a decision and to say they need more time to decide, when what they’re really doing is applying the brakes because they don’t feel ready to deal with the decision and its challenges yet.

There’s tremendous value in saying to yourself, “I feel the need to apply the brakes and work on my readiness because I’m feeling overwhelmed by what I need to do next” instead of saying, “I’m still trying to decide.” The first statement increases your clarity. The second muddies your clarity.

It’s important to note that clarity tends to diminish when you’re standing still, and it tends to increase when you’re in motion. When you’re applying a braking mechanism, you’re slowing down or stopping, so your sense of clarity will usually decrease. It’s okay to experience that temporarily, but if you also believe that you should be feeling more clear because you’re in the “process of deciding,” you may feel frustrated and confused by your reduced sense of clarity when you’re expecting the opposite.

When you frame this process as applying the brakes, you won’t be so surprised when your sense of clarity drops because you’ll know the drop is caused by your own braking… and you’ll also know that you can raise your sense of clarity back up again by releasing the brakes and getting back into motion.

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