What’s the connection between clarity and action? Can you achieve better clarity just by diving in and taking lots of action?
The short answer is yes. In fact, often this is a superior approach to making advance plans, at least in terms of the clarity gains you’ll experience.
A key reason that direct action can help you gain clarity is that when you take action, you map out more of the possibility space. Action usually involves exploration. The more you take action, the more you explore. Even when your actions don’t work out, you’re still mapping out part of the possibility space. And this can easily help you gain clarity about your path through this space.
Suppose you go to Disneyland for the first time in your life, and you don’t know the layout of the park. You won’t be able to spend your time there very efficiently, at least not without help, since you won’t have a good map of the possibility space. You won’t know the most efficient way to navigate the park. You won’t know what times to go on certain rides if you want to avoid the longest wait times. You’ll end up spending more time waiting in line, and you won’t be able to take in as many rides and attractions as someone with more experience.
In 2016 Rachelle and I did an experiment where we went to Disneyland every day for 30 days in a row. So we spent a lot of time there, and consequently, our minds now contain detailed mental maps of the park. Whenever I want to, I can picture myself walking around there in my mind’s eye. You can name any two rides there, and I can mentally navigate an efficient route from one to the other, as if I’m seeing all the scenery on a movie screen. And that’s simply because I took lots of action for 12-16 hours a day for a month. As a result of doing this, I can now navigate that space with greater ease than ever before.
Now I could have done a bunch of research online first, and I could have made written plans for what I was going to do. But I don’t think any of that would have given me as much clarity as just diving in and taking action day after day. The mental maps I gained through action and experience are more useful and accurate than those I acquired through learning from others.
I experienced something similar when I got into public speaking. I read many books on speaking. I attended workshops. I had conversations with professional speakers. All of that helped to some degree. But nothing moved the needle forward nearly as much as just diving in and doing a lot of speaking.
My friend Darren LaCroix, who’s the 2001 World Champion of Public Speaking, likes to say that there are three steps to getting good at speaking: stage time, stage time, and stage time. He gained skill through direct action, and he had a mentor that encouraged him to never turn down stage time. Darren was taught to always say yes to stage time, even if he had to drive hours to participate in an open mic night for a few minutes. That’s some dedication!
When Darren began building his comedy and speaking skills, by his own admission he was atrocious. Less than a decade later, he was a world champion. That’s a nice success story, but it’s also a clarity story. Darren created refined mental models of his area of expertise by speaking a lot, by doing stand-up comedy, and by traveling around the world for stage time, stage time, and more stage time. Darren is also one of the more focused people I know in terms of his goals, projects, and actions. His clarity largely comes from direct experience.
If you try to minimize how much action you take, thinking that you’re trying to be more efficient, that’s understandable. It seems logical at first. But it’s generally a mistake because you won’t map the possibility space as well if you resist taking action.
A common reason people resist action is that they have limiting beliefs about the exploration phase. They think it’s risky. They don’t want to fail. They don’t want to waste time doing things that don’t yield immediate results. And again, that’s very understandable.
But if you’re too focused on getting an immediate result, you’re surely going to struggle with clarity because you won’t develop a deep enough understanding of the possibility space around you. You won’t have a good map of the territory that you’re in.
During his championship speech, which was called “Ouch,” Darren purposefully fell down on stage to demonstrate the value of failure and how it’s all part of the learning process. It’s is also part of the mapping process.
Now if you’re in a situation where you can’t afford to map the space first, like if you’re going to Disneyland only once in your life for a single visit, and that’s it, then what’s the best way to have a good visit that packs in a lot of value? Well, you could muddle through on your own, but perhaps the best way would be to have someone with superior experience show you around and be your tour guide for the day. You’ll probably get at least 50% more value out of the experience if you can enlist the assistance of someone with a well-developed mental map.
You do something similar whenever you pay for expertise. You pay for access to the mental maps of an experienced doctor, dentist, lawyer, accountant, and so on. Realize that you’re often paying for clarity when you do this, and the way you purchase clarity is by paying for access to superior mental maps. Let that be a hint that experience gained through direct action can be an equally effective avenue for building clarity yourself.
In some spaces you can do both. When I learned public speaking, I did a lot of speaking to map the possibility space through action. I also learned from mentors like Darren with vastly more experience. That’s a quick way to learn new skills and also to gain clarity.
But between these two choices, I still think your best bet is to favor learning through direct action when you can. Put in the time to map the space. As you build a stronger mental model for the space you’re in, you’ll naturally experience an increase in clarity.
When I get an opportunity for more stage time, I still hear Darren’s “stage time, stage time, stage time” mantra echoing in the back of my mind, which nudges me to say yes most of the time. I know that more stage time will further refine my mental maps. That’s one reason I accepted an invitation to perform the emcee role at an event last week in Panama. I was already going to the event anyway, but being an emcee isn’t a role I normally do, and that means I’d learn something from it. It was a great experience and upgraded my clarity about public speaking in a way that sticking to the familiar wouldn’t have accomplished.
When you set a goal within a space that you’ve done a good job of mapping, you’ll be able to traverse the space more efficiently because you’ll know the territory. You’ll know how to get from point A to point B, just as if you were walking from one part of Disneyland to another after you’d already spent a month there.
But if you stubbornly refuse to map the space you’re in, well… good luck with that approach. I think you’re always going to suffer from a lower level of clarity and more confusion when you do that.
Ultimately this boils down to some pretty simple lessons: Explore the world around you. Explore the field you’re in. Explore the possibility space. And if you don’t know what to explore, then pick anything because any exploration will improve your mental models more than no exploration. Be willing to fall on your face now and then as well; that’s also part of the exploration process.
There are situations in life where we develop fairly consistent negative predictions regarding how those situations will turn out, but then we don’t actually honor those predictions.
For instance, suppose you’ve had some corporate jobs, and they’ve never turned out well for you. You never really liked them. They’ve never put you in situations where you’ve deeply enjoyed your work each day and where you’ve felt aligned with the company’s purpose. Suppose that something about these jobs always felt off to you.
And suppose that currently you find yourself unemployed and wanting some income. Does it make sense to apply for another corporate job?
If you repeat this type of experience again, it may yield some income for you, but it will likely hurt your sense of clarity because you’ll be deliberately acting in opposition to the clarity you’ve already developed. You already know this isn’t likely to lead to a positive outcome. You’re already able to predict that the outcome won’t be very good.
So why would you repeat what’s likely to be a predictable mistake? Why would you make a deliberately bad decision like this?
Well… note that you can still do this. People do such things often. But you also have to accept that if you’re willing to do this, it absolutely will hurt your ability to have clarity. How can you possibly hope to have more clarity if you’re failing to act in alignment with the clarity you’ve already achieved?
If you desire clarity, then clarity must become a high value in your life. You have to elevate it to a level of importance and keep it there.
Otherwise if something else is more important to you than clarity, such as having a stable job, you’ll keep going back to the stable job even if it degrades your experience of clarity. Or if you need a relationship more than you need clarity, you may often find yourself in a confusing relationship.
One obvious way to improve your experience of clarity is to stop doing whatever opposes your current best predictions. Stop taking those actions that give you a negative outcome, which you’ll perceive as a negative internal reaction.
This doesn’t mean that you have to avoid every negative situation. Just start avoiding the most predictable ones. Stop taking the actions that you already know aren’t going to lead to positive outcomes with positive internal reactions.
The sheer obviousness of this stares us right in the face, doesn’t it?
How can you expect to discover foods you like if you always keep eating foods you already know you don’t like? It’s never going to happen. You’ll never get clarity about the foods you love if you’re wasting time eating what you don’t like. The way out of this trap is to stop eating the foods you don’t like. Reject them soundly. Honor your best predictions.
What would happen to a kid who adamantly refused to eat certain foods that she didn’t like? Eventually the parents would get a clue and would stop offering her those unwanted foods. And then she’d have a much better chance of being offered foods that she actually liked. This isn’t particularly complicated, right? Just say no to what you don’t want, and you’ll have a better chance of getting what you do want.
But what if this same child doesn’t object. Or what if she only puts up some token resistance and then eventually caves in and grudgingly accepts the unwanted food? Well… most likely the parents will keep offering her that same food in the future, right? If they learn that she tolerates it, then she’ll be given more of what she tolerates.
Moreover, if the parents keep giving her tolerable but still mostly undesirable meals, then what chance will she have of discovering more desirable foods? Very little, unless some outside force disturbs the situation.
Are you succumbing to this pattern in any areas of your life?
Are you tolerating a job that you don’t really like?
Are you tolerating a relationship that isn’t what you actually want?
Are you tolerating living in a city that you don’t like living in?
If you’re doing anything along those lines, then here’s a big dose of clarity for you. As long as you’re willing to keep doing those things – as long as you’re willing to tolerate these situations – you’ll make it essentially impossible to improve your sense of clarity. You’re absolutely going to stay confused, and you’re very likely to keep experiencing what you don’t want.
That’s pretty much a given, isn’t it? How are you supposed to map out what you want while you’re still tolerating what you don’t want? Those paths are incompatible.
Is it absolutely guaranteed that if you leave such situations, you’ll find something better? Not quite. But it’s highly likely, especially if you haven’t explored much of the possibility space yet. If there’s an expansive space you haven’t explored yet, you have a good chance of finding something much better than the merely tolerable.
That said, you may have to explore a bit to find it. But isn’t it better to explore and have real hope of finding something better than not to explore and cling to irrational false hope?
The lesson here is both simple and unpopular. When you’ve figured out what you don’t want, stop doing it. Stop doing what’s similar to it as well. Say no loudly and proudly. You needn’t explain yourself. You needn’t apologize for your lack of interest. Just let your no be a no. This is critical if you ever hope to discover your bigger yes.
What’s the point of planning? The point of planning is ultimately to help you create a result, so planning is a means to an end. And some other purposes of planning are to reduce risk and increase efficiency. You create plans in order to achieve your goal with less effort and less risk.
Now a good plan requires making predictions. If you take these particular actions in this particular order, you’ll get this particular result. In fact, a plan is really a collection of predictions. Another word for prediction is expectation, so we can also say that your plan depends on your expectations and especially on the accuracy of your expectations.
Now the usefulness of a plan largely depends on its predictability. If you follow the plan, will you achieve the desired results?
The more predictable the actions and results are, the more useful a detailed plan is likely to be. But if your predictions are inaccurate, your plan may not be very useful and could even be counter-productive.
Let’s consider some situations where a detailed plan may not actually be too helpful. These are situations where your predictions are likely to be inaccurate.
First there are your predictions or expectations about the world. Next, we have your predictions or expectations about yourself. And finally there are your predictions or expectations about your relationship with the world. To make a good plan, you need decent accuracy in all three of these areas.
Planning and the World
Within the slice of reality that’s relevant to your plan, is the world – the external situation – stable enough for you to make good predictions regarding the results of your intended actions? This doesn’t mean that the entire world has to remain still. And you don’t have to have total certainty about every possibility. There’s always going to be some risk and some chance of being surprised by unexpected events. But for good plans to be possible, you need some degree of stability, such that the cause-and-effect relationship of your actions and results will remain reasonably stable.
During the first five years that I ran my computer games business, I worked with other publishers. My company’s job was to develop the games, and the publishers’ job was to publish them. I ran into a lot of trouble with this approach because I couldn’t control nor predict with sufficient accuracy what was happening inside these publishers. Their instability led to my team’s projects getting canceled. Eventually I ended up going bankrupt with this approach. I created what initially seemed like great plans for what I wanted to do, but my predictions and expectations regarding the other businesses I worked with were ridiculously inaccurate, and I paid the price. My plans during this time were largely useless. I couldn’t execute them because they were based on erroneous expectations. To the extent that I followed my plans, my risk actually increased, because this led me to invest more resources in an unstable situation. It’s like increasing your investment in a falling stock because your plan says the stock is supposed to rise.
After that, however, I changed my business model. I stopped working with external publishers and shifted to selling games direct over the Internet. Now I could make reasonable plans and execute them because this model was based on more reliable predictions. I didn’t have to worry about understanding the inner workings of any one publisher. After I switched to this model, the business finally became profitable, and generating stable and increasing cash flow became much easier. My plans worked because they weren’t built upon inaccurate assumptions of honesty or stability at some other company. They were built upon more stable and reliable expectations such as continued player demand for certain types of games, people’s willingness to buy downloadable games online, and more newcomers signing up for Internet service.
Planning and You
Next there are the predictions and expectations that you have about yourself. This may seem like the easiest area to predict because all you have to do is control yourself. But it’s often not as easy as it looks.
Have you ever made plans that required you to perform actions that should have fairly predictable outcomes, but you didn’t follow through? Did you ever fail to do what you intended to do, even though you’re pretty sure it would have worked out well if you’d only taken action?
We all succumb to that trap at times. Sometimes we procrastinate. Sometimes we get lazy. Sometimes we feel unexpected resistance to a task and give in to those feelings. It happens. So if we’re going to plan effectively, we also need to get better at predicting when we’ll actually follow through and when we won’t.
I’ve learned that if I set certain types of goals and turn them into plans, I usually won’t follow through. If I try to do something that’s just for the money, and I’m not feeling any other motivation to do it, I usually won’t do it – even when I logically predict that I’d make good money if I just took the necessary actions. I’ll find ways to procrastinate. And even if I can get myself to do it, I won’t do my best, and I won’t feel good about it afterwards. Consequently, I’ve had to update my personal behavioral predictions over time to account for this.
I’ve also learned that if my motivation is rooted in playfulness, fun, connection, or just having some interesting new growth experiences, it’s much more predictable that I’ll follow through with action. If an action feels like a playful or interesting challenge to me, I’ll probably do it, and then of course I’ll get the results of that action too.
So this bit of self-knowledge becomes part of my calculus for making plans and taking action. And I encourage you to make this part of your thought process too. If you repeatedly observe that you fail to reliably execute certain types of plans, stop making similar plans. They’ll probably turn out poorly because you’re building them upon unreliable expectations.
Planning and Your Relationship with the World
The third area to consider is your relationship with the world. How stable is that relationship? The more stable it is, the better your plans are likely to be.
What do we mean by the relationship between you and the world? I sometimes think of this relationship as my overall vibe. Some people prefer to think of it as their attitude. And others would see this as their beliefs about the world. Use whatever label you prefer. If you like thinking in terms of your vibe, your vibration, your energy signature – if you’re comfortable with those labels, great; use them. If you prefer to think in terms of your attitude, beliefs, and feelings towards the world – also great.
How stable is this relationship? Do you have a fairly consistent vibe or attitude right now? Or are you bouncing around a lot? Are you positive and happy one day and dreadfully depressed another day? If your attitude keeps fluctuating, it will be hard to make reliable plans. For planning to be effective, you need a fairly predictable relationship with life, with the world, and with the universe as a whole. You need a reasonably stable vibe or attitude to make good progress with a plan. Otherwise if your vibe or attitude keeps bouncing around, you’ll probably question your plan, the actions you’re supposed to take, and even the goal that the plan is supposed to achieve. A fluctuating vibe is a recipe for inconsistency. This tends to be the case even if you can predict when those fluctuations are likely to occur.
Planning and Stability
This isn’t to say that planning is bad. It’s just that good planning requires a good bit of stability – stability in yourself, stability in the relevant parts of the world, and stability in your relationship with the world (with your vibe or attitude). If any one of these areas lacks stability and predictability, your plans are likely to have issues, and you probably won’t get very good results when you try to execute your plans. Now this doesn’t mean you can’t still experience clarity, but it does suggest that advance planning may not be your best tool for doing so.
What can make matters worse is when you fail to execute an ill-conceived plan – a plan that was probably doomed to failure before you even began – and then this failure to execute creates even more unpredictability. For instance, if you begin with a very positive attitude, but your plans aren’t working, and then you start succumbing to a negative attitude because of that, now you’re just heading for a downward spiral where your plan is even more doomed.
There are times where planning works well, which is when you have high predictability such that your expectations will likely be met. Suppose you follow a recipe to make dinner. That will probably turn out well if you have access to a stable kitchen, if you can expect yourself to follow the recipe (like if you have sufficient cooking skills to do so), and if you have a decent attitude towards cooking. That’s a pretty simple situation, but it checks off the stability requirements for a plan to work.
Planning is one tool among many. It tends to work well in highly predictable situations, but it can be rendered useless or counterproductive by unpredictable situations.
Let us first note what doesn’t qualify as looking. Waiting for clarity is not looking. Sharing your lack of clarity is not looking. Distracting yourself is not looking. Only looking is looking.
How can you tell if someone is looking for clarity? What would you expect that person to be doing? What activities would you classify as “looking for clarity” if someone else were doing them?
Are you regularly engaging in similar activities?
I can tell you what it’s like when I’m looking for clarity. I’m reading books and listening to audiobooks on the subject. I’m researching online. I’m talking to people with more experience. I’m going to club meetings and related events. I’m making phone calls. I’m sending emails.
I’m asking questions. I’m gathering information. I’m recruiting social support.
I’m writing about the subject in my journal. I’m brainstorming ideas and drawing up lists of questions. I’m meditating on the topic. I’m muttering aloud while going for a run or walking in the park. I’m relaxing on my couch, staring up the ceiling, and daydreaming about possibilities. I’m often blogging about the subject while I’m still trying to figure it out.
This works. I normally feel extremely clear about my path. I almost always know what I want and where I’m going. It’s rare that I get stuck in confusion or uncertainty, and when I do it’s usually just a short pause. And I think the main reason is that I assume full responsibility for creating clarity. I know that those islands of clarity are out there, and I accept that I must put in the effort to find them, so I make the effort. Time after time this approach succeeds.
Sometimes I’m wrong though. Sometimes I race like a madman to an island covered in seagull poop. But it doesn’t matter. When I realize I’ve made a mistake, I quickly start looking for another island, and I’m off again in a new direction. Enjoying each island’s beauty and wonder is a temporary experience, but in between I’d rather be searching for the next one (even if I don’t know where it is yet) versus drifting around bored at sea, wondering what to do and coming up blank.
When you desire clarity, if we watched a week of your life playing out on a movie screen, what undeniable evidence would we see that you’re actively looking for clarity? If you can’t name several visual scenes that would prove that you’re actively looking, then you’ve got an obvious problem, wouldn’t you say? And the solution is equally obvious, is it not?
If you wait for clarity to come to you, you may randomly bump into an island in the sea of chaos. You may randomly win the lottery too. But it’s more likely that you’ll find clarity by actively looking for clarity. And by actively I mean that we’d see clear and undeniable evidence of your efforts if we watching were you on video.
Many entrepreneurs find pricing decisions for their products and services really challenging. You’ll often hear such people asking each other, “What should I charge?”
I’ve read a number of books about pricing with complex ideas on how to do it correctly. Most involved some form of testing and optimization. They all shared the same underlying assumption though: that the optimal prices are those which extract the most long-term profit. Since that’s extremely difficult to predict, testing is essential.
Testing of that nature can be dreadfully boring though, and you still won’t know if your tests are accurate. Since economies fluctuate anyway, a test done one month could yield different results than if you run it a month later.
I dislike that approach mainly because I find the framing too limiting. It’s a very objective model, and I have a long history of getting better results when I use subjective framing. If my reality is some kind of simulation, it seems unlikely that my simulation is programmed to train me to care about pricing optimizing by doing split tests. That seems like a rather useless skill to develop, akin to improving my telephone sanitizing skills (which admittedly aren’t very polished). I have no desire to sculpt my character into a split testing mogul.
Pricing as Communication
A model I like much better is to think of pricing as a form of communication. The pricing is part of the offer and inseparable from it. The price isn’t something to be tacked on later.
Pricing can communicate whether you’re trying to provide something cheaply or luxuriously, for instance. If I tell you that I bought a car for $8000, that would communicate something different than if I say I bought one for $80,000, even if I told you nothing else about the car.
In this sense pricing also serves as a filter. Your price will affect the types of customers and clients you attract. For instance, I could price Conscious Growth Club at $10K per year instead of $2K a year, and the group would still work, but we’d have different types of members and fewer of them. Otherwise the program’s structure and design could be entirely the same. The price would communicate what types of members we’re looking for. Similarly I know someone who charges $80K per year for his coaching program and $5K for his seminars. Are they objectively any better than our $2K coaching program and $500 workshops? Nope, but the pricing difference will attract different people.
So when I think about pricing from this perspective, I think about the kinds of people I’d like to attract and work with. If I want to offer a coaching program for the kinds of people who like $10K programs, I’ll price it at $10K. I’m personally one of those people, currently enrolled in a friend’s $12K coaching program for the year.
Pricing From the Customer’s Perspective
Another frame I like is to think about what price is best for the customer to pay. This is a good model if you know your customer base really well, and you know how different prices will make them feel.
You could price something low to communicate that it’s easy and accessible if that’s what you think is best for the customer.
Or you could price something higher if you want to communicate that a product or service is a bigger investment or a bigger value. People often appreciate higher priced products more. Pricing too low can reduce a person’s appreciation.
I use this on myself too. I know that if I join a coaching program that costs $10K per year, I’ll appreciate it more and gain more value from it than if I pay $1K per year. When making purchasing decisions, I think about pricing and features in terms of what will help me appreciate a purchase.
Pricing can be a bit funny that way. It’s hard to admit that sometimes it’s better to pay more because you’ll appreciate the ownership experience more. If you pay too little, you may communicate to yourself that you don’t value the purchase as much. Trying to get something for less isn’t always wise.
Setting prices based on what’s likely to be best for my core customer base has been super helpful. I could continue to maintain a healthy business just with this pricing model alone. It seems to work very well in practice, as I get more compliments than complaints about my pricing. People pay enough that they value and appreciate the investment, but it’s still low enough that they can extract lots of value from their purchase to make it very worthwhile. This generates a lot of repeat business too. Most of the sign-ups for our new Stature course are from repeat customers.
The best price for the customer to pay is the price that helps them extract the most value, satisfaction, and appreciation from their purchase. One key factor for the courses I offer is that people need to do the lessons to extract the value. When someone completes the course, I know from experience that they’re very likely to get really good value from it and feel that the deal was more than fair, generous even. But they also have to invest time and energy to extract the full value. If they pay too little, there’s less buy-in and less motivation to do the work and finish the lessons, even if it will benefit them immensely. Paying too little sends a message to their minds that maybe they shouldn’t value this investment as much.
On the other hand, if the price is too high, then people feel stressed out and worried. Or they talk themselves out of making that kind of commitment. Some people, however, will feel even more excited when they commit to a price that’s a stretch for them. I’ve experienced this myself when I’ve stepped up to pay for high-end coaching programs. It can be exciting and fun to spend enough money such that it feels edgy and risky, and so far I’ve always gotten more than my money’s worth when I’ve stretched myself to pay more. That’s mainly because when I take a bigger financial risk, I’m very committed to doing my part to extract the value; otherwise I’d feel really stupid for paying that much for something and not leveraging the heck out of it.
Another factor could be that I join a group with other people who’ve stretched themselves to join as well, and such groups are just awesome to participate in because people really put in the effort to make it work, which benefits everyone in the group. We’re all committed, so we all pitch it and make it work for each other. When everyone has to stretch a bit to get in, it’s even better inside. Higher pricing can serve as a good filter for attracting ambitious, growth-oriented people – not perfectly but pretty well.
One reason I price Conscious Growth Club at $2K is that for much of my audience, that pricing feels pretty edgy already while $10K would feel out of reach for them. Based on the great community I’m seeing inside, I think it’s the right pricing for most members. For some I can tell it’s not edgy enough though. If you’re looking for a community of only entrepreneurs, for instance, a $10K program would be better. In our community people work on all different types of goals: health, relationships, finances, life purpose, meaningful work, creative skills, and more.
Pricing for Trust
Another frame I like using today is what you might call trust-based pricing. I didn’t learn about this somewhere else, at least not to my knowledge. It just gradually evolved from trying to find better frames for this aspect of business.
In doing workshops, creating courses, and running Conscious Growth Club, I experience just how wonderful it is to work closely with people who trust me. High-trust relationships are so win-win all around. Trust reduces friction and makes it easier for people to get results, which in turn leads to more appreciation. Appreciation is good all around, both for business and personal reasons.
When people ask me questions about our products and services, and I can tell they’re not really aligned with what we provide or the kind of relationship I’d like to have with them, I gently recommend that they don’t buy anything. Sometimes I’ll suggest free articles to read instead, and sometimes I’ll suggest other resources in this field that might be a better fit for them. I don’t try to invite everyone to become a customer. To me that’s a special relationship, and the alignment matters.
I’m not suggesting that people need to trust my advice blindly. That’s not the type of trust we’re talking about here.
In this case I’m referring to trust in my intentions, experience, and honesty. I want people to trust that I’m on their side and that I genuinely want to help them grow and improve. If they can at least buy into that, it makes a world of difference for us. These days I only want to work only with people who can feel aligned with having this kind of relationship. I feel very fortunate that I can maintain this standard and still attract plenty of business. Not everyone is right for this kind of relationship, but for the right people who are aligned with it, they tend to love and want nothing less. Having such a high-trust relationship is just beautiful.
I love these kinds of relationships with other businesses too. For instance, I really like the dental practice that I’ve been going to for the past several years. I’ve worked with multiple dentists there, and they’re all great. The people at the front desk are super friendly, and I sometimes joke around with them. The hygienist is awesome too. She and I chat about all sorts of things like travel and even ayahuasca. I’ve never been to another dental practice like this; previous ones felt somber, cold, and heartless. But in this place, it’s obvious that the people like working with each other, and they like their patients too. In the past, I’ve gone at least a decade between dental appointments because I disliked the experience so much. With these people I’m currently going 3x per year, which I’ve never done before. Most importantly, I trust them. They aren’t just friendly. They’re also good at what they do. I hope they stay in business for as long as possible.
I’m a good customer for them too. I show up on time. I follow their advice. I pay every bill on the spot, so they never have to bill me. I never complain about prices or try to negotiate them down.
With high trust in a coaching situation, people are willing to share deeper truths about themselves. If you only get the surface truth, coaching can only go so deep. With more trust people will share the more vulnerable parts of themselves, and that leads to even deeper trust.
When someone trusts me in this way, such as by sharing something that’s really difficult for them to share, I feel honored. It’s a privilege to be trusted with that level of intimacy. It makes me feel more invested in helping the person. Handling such situations can be delicate. Delicate is a word that in my distant past, I’d never have applied to myself. But today I like sculpting my character in that direction. I love the realm of high-trust relationships because it leads into a world of subtlety and delicacy, yet there’s still room for playfulness and fun.
In terms of pricing models, I think about pricing for trust. If I want to attract more high-trust customers (if only because they’re delightful to serve), then I think about what price will best align with attracting and developing high-trust relationships.
If I price too cheaply, it means people can buy without having to trust as much, which can flood the business with too many jaded and skeptical people that I’d rather not deal with. If they want something too cheaply, they probably don’t want something really good, which means they won’t have the right attitude for supporting me in doing my best work. That isn’t going to create a win-win relationship.
If I price too high though, it can damage trust because then people might assume I’m just doing it for personal greed. So if there’s a valid reason for pricing higher than usual, it’s important to communicate that clearly.
It’s also wise to consider the existing trust relationship. I like to offer launch discounts for new courses, such as for the new Stature course that’s launching now. Most of the people who will join during the launch already have a trusting relationship with me, like repeat customers and long-term blog readers or newsletter subscribers, so from my view they don’t have to prove themselves to me. I want to make it easier for them to join, so we’ll have a nice, high-trust group inside. And I also want to make the price lower for them as a way of saying that I trust them too and that I appreciate our relationship. I trust that even at the lower price, they’ll still take it seriously enough and do the work of the course, so they can get the benefits.
After the launch, the course can continue selling for many years, but the new people who discover it probably aren’t part of my core, high-trust audience yet. They may be new to my work. They’re not sure if they can trust me, and I’m not sure if I can trust them. So it may be better if they start with reading free articles for a while. Then they can think about taking a course when they trust me enough to do so. The higher price is a bigger hurdle for them, so it takes more trust for them to say yes.
Some people are really into growing their businesses. For me alignment is way more important than growth. If I can do both, that’s great, but between the two, I see alignment as far more important. I’d be a lot less happy if I 10X’d my business but messed up the alignment in the process. I just don’t want to work closely with people unless we can develop and maintain high-trust relationships.
I really, truly don’t want to do business with people who don’t trust me enough to make it win-win. Even if I made a lot more money trying to capture those extra sales, I wouldn’t want it. Even if I could delegate way more, including all of the customer service, I wouldn’t feel good about a customer service rep having to deal with misaligned customers either. It wouldn’t be right.
Alignment Pricing
I think the ultimate pricing model is to price for alignment. What would an aligned business look like for you, and what pricing decisions would help you create that?
Incidentally, you can use this mindset even if you’re an employee. What’s the right salary for you to request and for your employer to pay such that the alignment is there, and you’re able to invest in a high-trust relationship?
We can also see why split-testing and traditional optimization strategies look good on paper but often fall short in reality. Trying to optimize for profit is short-sighted and risks attracting many misaligned customers. That can increase support costs, negative reviews, product returns, staff turnover, etc. Many people I know who use this model would consider a refund rate of 5-10% to be pretty good. My business’ current refund rate is 0.0%. And the reason is simple, we don’t offer refunds. Instead we have an honor code. If you’d like to see my explanation of the honor code and why we have it, watch the Stature video from 27:33 onward. But the main reason is that I tested offering a money-back guarantee, and while it brought in more sales, it messed up the alignment and created more problems and friction inside the business. It really sucks to feel hesitant about investing fully in someone because I suspect they might request a refund. It’s so nice not to have to deal with that anymore.
Having an honor code instead of money-back guarantee really does turn away some business. I would almost certainly make more money in the short-term by offering unconditional refunds. But the reason I don’t is simple. The headaches aren’t worth it to me.
People have to meet a higher standard of trust to buy with our honor code – trust in me and trust in themselves to follow through. That’s the standard I want. It means fewer people getting through but way more alignment inside. And it makes the business so much nicer and more fulfilling to run. People who are jaded or suspicious just aren’t going to accept such an offer, and I’m glad for that. I’m delighted to refer their business to other people who’d welcome it.
I also think that in the long run, this approach will make the business better for staff members too. It means that staff also get to work with aligned customers who will trust and appreciate them. No staff member should have to deal with customers from hell. We’ll fire such customers from hell and keep the aligned staff. Our staff won’t be treated poorly.
Creating win-win relationships is a high standard, but it elevates so many other parts of the business. It removes so much friction and makes it easier to just do the real work of serving people. Financially it works well too. This will be a six-figure January for us, which is a nice way to start the year.
One of the biggest traps is life is trying to achieve goals that only you will care about, such as making money or achieving success in your career. Yes, those kinds of goals can still create some ripples for others, but if your intention is mostly about you and your personal gains, I’d predict a lot of stuckness and stagnation for you.
I fell into this trap as well. In my 20s I thought my goals were well-intentioned enough. I was trying to get my computer games business going, make some money, and have a nice life in the field of game development. I certainly wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. But I didn’t really care much about what happened beyond my immediate sphere. That seemed logical at the time, but I realized later that it was an irrational approach.
When I thought about goals back then, they were personal goals. I set fitness goals and financial goals and relationship goals. I achieved some of them, but the money and success goals always eluded me, even though at the time I made them a high priority.
What I didn’t realize back then was that money and business success goals are social goals, not personal goals. Do you see that?
Suppose you lived on an island by yourself. What sense does it make to set financial and business or career goals? There’s no economy. There are no social constructs. Such goals are meaningless.
Try Service on for Size
In 1999, mostly out of desperation, I decided to start volunteering in a nonprofit association. I was a member for a few years but never did much with my membership other than receiving the monthly newsletters. I recognized that something was terribly wrong with my previous approach to success because my results were terrible – lots of debt and then bankruptcy – even though I invested a lot of time and energy in the business.
I finally surrendered to the poor results I was getting and decided that I should explore new directions, if only to gain experience with other modes of living. Anything looked better than the stressed and frustrated mode of working hard on goals that I wasn’t achieving.
So I began volunteering and helping people more without worrying about personal gains. I began writing articles that same year, starting slowly at first. This totally turned my life around within a year. Sometimes it’s good to take a blind leap into unexplored areas when you aren’t getting results you want from what you’ve been doing thus far.
This attitude and practice helped me achieve what I previously thought were my personal goals. Every year since then I’ve been writing articles and seeking to be of service in other ways, which have created many ripples for other people. I know that because many of them tell me. And every year since then has been pretty financially abundant. This year will likely be the best ever in that regard.
What blocks a lot of people from being more service-oriented is that they can’t see the logic behind it. When you’re so concerned about your own gains, how are you possibly supposed to free up even more time and energy to help others on top of that?
I understand that mindset since it used to be mine. It’s an ineffective mindset though. It seems rational, but it isn’t. Is it getting good results for you? Do you see it working in your real time? Or does it only seem logical in an abstract way?
Do you really think that money and success will flow into your life because you’re hyper-focused on your own goals and needs? Great… try doing that alone on an isolated island. That should give you the best focus since no one will be there to distract you. See how far you get. What you don’t realize is that you’re essentially acting out this metaphor in real life if you regard financial and success goals mainly as personal goals.
Being hyper-focused on your personal goals for personal reasons can work in some areas of life, but it’s unlikely to get much flow going for more social goals. Financial and success goals are inherently social.
Success Is Social
Money flows from other people. Any evidence of your success, including having customers and clients, flows through people too. If you can’t achieve such goals without other people’s cooperation, doesn’t it make sense to deliberately invite their cooperation instead of just hoping it will happen?
When your goals are mostly solo, that creates friction and resistance. People aren’t likely to spend money to help you achieve such goals unless you provide a decent reason for them to care. Your own success isn’t a decent reason; it’s a pretty pathetic one actually.
Other may spend money for own their personal priorities and interests, which probably doesn’t include helping you succeed. But they may be very willing to spend money in order to participate in an interesting social flow that’s extends beyond you and them.
A simple way to sum this up is that you’re likely to receive way more help by reaching out and caring about others. If you focus on what only you want to receive, virtually no one will care to help you.
You want more abundance flowing to you? It flows from other people. And if they don’t care much about helping you, you’ll find it 10X more difficult to get that flow going, maybe 100X. Everything you try to achieve will be self-powered, and self power is weak.
You can test living in a more service-based mode for a few years like I did, but admittedly that can become draining after a while. I put in hundreds of hours in volunteer effect, and while it did help me turn things around, it’s hard to give, give, and give more.
For me this was an example of swinging the pendulum. I got terrible results from certain personal goals, so I wanted to see what would happen if I went into full-on service and volunteer mode to the extent that I had the time and energy to do so. That did improve my results very quickly, especially because it opened me up to a world of networking in my field. By reaching out to help others, a lot more people reached out to help me, such as members of the press who helped my games get more attention or other software developers who gave me good marketing advice.
Throw a Party
So what’s a good way to balance the solid social benefits of service with the inner drive and ambition of working on your personal goals?
Basically you throw a party. A good party is fun for you and for everyone else. Fun is a great binder because it’s personal and social.
There are many different kinds of fun, so you have lots of options for what kind of fun you want to create. Your party could be entertaining, amusing, playful, sexy, mentally stimulating, rowdy, etc.
The key is to recognize that a good party is both personal and social, especially if you host it in your home.
A good party is also very sensitive to the people you invite. You’ll need the right people to make it work. Invite the wrong people, and your party may become boring, creepy, frustrating, or some other form of bad.
A party is also sensitive to a good invitation. If your goals are entirely personal, that’s like making this offer:
You: Hey, I’m having a party at my house on Friday, and you’re invited!
Friend: Oh I love parties! What kind of party is it?
You: I’m inviting a bunch of people over to help me achieve my personal goals. We’ll have chips and guacamole too (as a lead magnet).
Friend: Umm… okay. Who else is coming?
You: Just me so far. Everyone keeps saying they’re busy.
Friend who’s about to ghost you for life: Okay, well I’ll try to make it, but I might be having surgery that day, so I’ll let you know!
How is that kind of offer working for you so far?
If you make equivalent offers in business and life, people will ghost you. Life will ghost you. That isn’t because you’re not a good person. It’s because you made a ridiculously lame offer. Everyone knows that wine is a much better lead magnet. 😉
If you want more money and success flowing through your life, don’t focus so much on trying to acquire and achieve. Think instead about throwing parties and inviting people with fun, interesting, and stimulating offers. Direct your ambition towards creating nice social flow.
Think about the people and businesses that you love to patronize. Think about the best companies or fields you’d love to work in. Can you see how their perceived invitations and offers are more interesting than just, Come help us achieve our goals? We wants moolah! That isn’t a typo, Dimi. 😉
When you host a party and invite people to it, everyone wants it to be a good experience, so your intentions are nicely aligned. You may still need to do some boundary management to make sure people don’t trash your home, but that mainly comes down to inviting the right people who can agree to your standards.
One of the greatest areas of stuckness among my readers stems from trying to work on personal goals that would work so much better when framed as social goals. When you do that, you have to self-power everything. It’s like hosting a party all by yourself and trying to make it fun and interesting all alone, with no one to help you, and with no guests participating. Then you may tell yourself that once you have a really good party going alone, then you’ll finally invite some people. What you don’t see is that people are the party.
In business and life, people are the success. People are the money. People are the fun.
The best part is that you don’t have to figure out all of the party details by yourself. You can co-create an awesome party together. It all starts with your intention. A party based on your personal goals isn’t likely land well. So step back and create a more aligned intention. Start telling people you want to host a fun party, and ask them if they’ll help steer you in the right direction. Ask them what would make them happy to attend? Listen. Involve them. Even if you only talk to one person about this, that can build momentum.
I’m hosting such a party right now – a character sculpting party where we all connect online to work on diagnosing, understanding, improving, enhancing, and upgrading our characters together. All for one and one for all. It’s intellectually stimulating and also playful as we explore the characters we’d most like to become, and then we work on becoming those characters for real. So far 266 people have opted into the party this year, and 150 others were already pre-invited, so there are 400+ people already inside. Fortunately I have a big house. 😉
What I’d really love for you to grasp is the mindset of moving beyond framing your goals as strictly personal and opening yourself up to the world of social flow. Most of the good stuff you want in life will come from this social flow, so it’s wise to stop trying to achieve your goals by acting like you’re on an island bouncing ideas off a shredded volleyball. If you honor this social flow and learn to appreciate it, you’ll achieve your goals more easily, and you’ll have a lot more fun in life as well.
Inviting a stronger flow of inspiration kicked off by the 365-day creative challenge is helping me get more done than I expected, including completing some stale to-do items that I never felt inspired to do before.
This morning I updated all of my YouTube videos (42 of them) to have end screens that invite people to visit my blog, subscribe to my channel, or check out other videos on my channel. For instance, an abundance-related video will now invite people to watch a Deep Abundance Integration invite video next.
I also set most videos to invite people to watch my latest video, which is currently the Stature invite video.
This small improvement is probably more beneficial for the long-term than giving much of a short-term boost. I expect to publish more videos this year, so I wanted to at least get the older videos encouraging people to watch the most recent videos too. My oldest YouTube videos are from 2009.
This small project has been on my to-do list for at least a year, but I could never make it a high enough priority to get it to the top of the list. Then as a surprise this morning, the inspiration was just there to do it, and I got it done very easily. I even enjoyed doing it.
I think this inspiration partly came about from connecting with people on YouTube last night during the live chat for our Stature video live premiere. By connecting with real people on the site in real-time, I felt a stronger energetic link between my YouTube videos and the real human beings who are watching them. I strongly suspect that the flow of inspiration comes from the collective energy of other people.
Even though I don’t have many videos and haven’t published frequently on YouTube, people are watching my videos there every day. The most popular one is the 40 Days of Water Fasting video from 2017, which currently has about 125K views and keeps going up. That was the video I recorded right at the end of 40 days without food, summarizing what the experience was like.
My second most popular video is the first in the Creating Abundance playlist, which currently has about 82K views. That series is from November 2009, and the view count has been gradually increasing ever since.
Most of my videos have between 2K and 10K views on YouTube. Six are between 10K and 100K. Only the 40-day fasting video has passed 100K views so far. Over time this led to a small subscriber base on YouTube, currently about 5900 people there.
Mentally I see a lot of potential in sharing more videos, especially on YouTube. I’m comfortable on camera, and I have an infinite supply of ideas. People generally like the videos I share (95%+ approval according to YouTube’s stats). But as nice as this looks in terms of the opportunity for more sharing and more ripples, I just didn’t feel any energy wanting to flow in that direction. I’d think about making more YouTube videos, and that’s as far as it would go – just thinking but with no motivation to actually do it just yet.
As I’m exploring the flow of inspiration more intensely this year, I’m seeing some promising shifts happening. I’m getting the “big rocks” handled pretty well, but I’m also in such a nice flow that a lot of small rocks are getting handled too and without delay, some old and some new.
Last night in the Stature launch Facebook group, someone asked if there was an audio version of the Stature invite video. There wasn’t, but I knew it would be a simple matter to export the audio from Final Cut Pro and add it to the Stature page, so I did immediately. It only took a few minutes.
I did this extra task when I was tired, after a long day that started around 6:30am, and I think it was sometime after 1am that I handled this. It wasn’t because I had to do it then or because it was the next logical item on my to-do list. It’s because even at the end of a long day, the flow of inspiration was still strong enough that it was easy to leverage it to get more done.
When I act in alignment with this flow, I’m often able to complete tasks (especially creative ones) 2-3x faster than I would if I was disciplining myself to do it without any strong feelings of inspiration. I think this is because when I use self-discipline to take action, I’m pushing through at least some resistance to overcome inertia, whereas the flow of inspiration deactivates such resistance, so I can go faster because no internal misalignments are slowing me down.
I really don’t have to self-motivate or use self-discipline much at all to get a lot done each day. In fact, it feels counterproductive when I try. It’s so much more effective to listen and to invite inspiration without getting too attached to what shows up.
I know what my plans and goals are for each day. I know I have blog posts to create and Stature lessons to design, record, and publish. And there are plenty of other items to attend to, such as doing coaching calls in Conscious Growth Club and keeping up with various business tasks. I think that the flow of inspiration also understands my to-do list, and it’s actually better at getting things done from that list than I am when I try to use a more “businessy” approach.
I’m now wondering how many of the dull, boring, or tedious items on my Nozbe projects list may get done without actually trying to schedule them. The current flow of inspiration is chipping away at some of these items, even when I don’t expect to get to them for a while. When I feel inspired to work on one of these tasks, it’s easy because the energy moves through me to get it done with much less effort than if I were try to self-power my way through.
The part that requires more trust is that I don’t really get to decide when I’ll do which task. I wake up each morning and listen to what the inspiration channel is currently broadcasting, and then when I’m ready I dive into the flow of action, which feels like surfing waves of energy that drive me forward. I often map out my to-dos for the day, but I can’t predict in which order I’ll do them, and it’s better if I don’t try to predict.
At the end of a long day, I may be physically and mentally tired, but it feels like there’s another channel of energy (spiritual or astral perhaps?) that’s still full. Last night I noticed I was getting pretty sleepy and still worked an extra 3 hours beyond that point, partly because I was enjoying the flow and partly because I still had tasks that I’d committed to for the day, like writing and publishing a new blog post.
Before this year I’d prefer to be in bed at 10pm and get up at 5am. But so far this year, I’m typically going to bed around 1-2am and getting up at 5-6:30am, so I’m sleeping less. I’ll often take a 20-minute nap during the day, or I’ll meditate for 30 minutes, which refreshes me enough to keep going. I keep telling myself that I need to slow down and catch up on sleep, and then I don’t. I don’t think I’ve slept more than 6 hours in a night this year yet.
This flow of action doesn’t feel stressful or pushy. It feels more fun, like an invitation to dance. But it also seems to leverage time pressure a lot, sometimes more than I’d like.
I have some definite to-dos on my plate each day. Logically you’d think it would be best to get those done early in the day. And sometimes that’s where the inspiration flows, like this morning as I’m writing my daily blog post – nice to get this done early.
But sometimes the flow of inspiration does just the opposite. I get inspired to work on non-urgent but still valuable projects during the day, and then it might be 5pm or 8pm when I’m finally getting the nudge to do my must-do items. I’m getting them done, but just in time some days, like getting blog posts published only two minutes before midnight (twice, including last night). I do find this stimulating sometimes, especially challenging myself to write faster, but then of course more typos are going to slip through. It’s still fun and stimulating though. The time pressure helps me focus, and it isn’t too stressful.
I sense that this flow of inspired energy knows me better than I know myself. It sure knows how to drive me into resistance-free action – much better than I’m able to on my own. I wasn’t bad before, but this energy flow is next level. It just demolishes tasks and projects with such ease and rhythm, turning each day into a unique song and dance of creative work.
I could definitely get used to this because I enjoy high-stimulation flow. The main challenge is trusting it. Will it still get the accounting done? Will it eventually flow towards tasks where I think a certain timetable matters? Will it ever let me down? Will it respect the social promises and commitments I’ve made? Honor is a really important value to me, and so is trust. So this energy makes me a bit anxious when I can’t be sure if it cares about such values.
Fortunately I know that if I ever need to pause this energy and do something for less inspired reasons, I still can. For instance, I have a dentist appointment this afternoon, and whether the inspiration is there or not, I’ll show up on time and have a nice chat with the hygienist as usual.
But when I have a more open schedule and some flexibility in deciding what gets done and when, I like inviting this energy to flow through and see where it takes me. It rewards me with delightful motivation, productivity, and energy when I get out of the way and let it decide the what and the when hour by hour. Each day is a fun, stimulating ride. We’re not even 10 full days into the year yet, and I feel like I’ve already completed at least a month of work. This flow is nicely aligned with abundance too – creatively, financially, socially, etc.
This year I want to build even more trust with this flow. We’ve been good friends for many years, and I know we can become closer still. I actually think this inspired energy invited to create a closer relationship with it a few week ago. I’m glad I accepted.
I feel like I’ve had a hefty dose of wrestling with the universe’s timing this week.
I had wanted to get the invitation video for Stature’s launch done much sooner – several days ago – but I also tried to do this video differently than the other course invitation videos. Mainly I wanted to make it shorter and more succinct.
My previous invitation videos for Deep Abundance Integration, Submersion, and Conscious Growth Club were all more than an hour long. I wanted to get Stature’s invite video down to about 35 minutes and still cover all the same bases as the longer videos.
Well, I succeeded. The video is finally done, and it’s 35:24 in duration. You can watch it now on the Stature page. But it took way longer to create than the previous videos. I ended up using a very different process to design and record it.
I wasn’t actually planning to change up my process for making these videos when I first started. I started out with the same approach I’d used before and just tried to make it more efficient length-wise. But I also sensed that my approach wasn’t the best way to go in the long run.
I ended up following an intuition-based trail that led me to a different way of designing and recording these videos. It took way longer the first time because of all the changes and having to figure out some things for the first time, but now I know how to make these a lot shorter for future course launches as well.
Over the past several days, I was a bit frustrated at times with how long this was taking. But it’s actually going to save more time in the long run, so from that perspective it was perhaps worth the effort. I also learned to think about making videos differently than before, so in that sense it was a growth experience too.
Stature Launch Discount Extended
Tonight at midnight Pacific time is supposed to be the launch discount deadline for Stature. I’m extending it though. I posted a message in the Stature launch Facebook group several hours ago to at least let the people there know, but I still have to update various other outlets with this news. I wanted to prioritize getting the video finally done and published.
This was a weird launch week. While it’s been going well in terms of hundreds of people joining Stature and lots of great feedback on the course so far, I felt like reality was fighting my intended timing. I had a schedule that I wanted to follow, and reality just didn’t cooperate with it at all. But I can also see that what did actually get done was actually really good for the long-term.
Timing-wise it feels a bit ridiculous that I finally got the invitation video done and added to the Stature page about 30 minutes before midnight, and since it’s 35 minutes long, it’s almost like the universe was playing a joke on me.
Even though they aren’t essential for launching a new course, many people like and appreciate these invitation videos because it helps them get a better idea of what the course is about versus plain text. So I want to give people a chance who’ve been waiting for the video to watch it and still have the ability to get the launch discount if they want. I think that’s only fair. Hence I’ll extend the launch discount at least a few days and possibly for as much as a week. I’ll decide that tomorrow when I’m fresh.
I’ve actually been pondering whether it would be better to do 10-14 day launches instead of the weeklong launch I had originally planned. It would allow more time for better communication, connection, and spontaneity, which is more my style than trying to follow a rigid schedule. Even if a launch looks smooth and simple on the public side, the backend side tends to be way more complex. There are a lot of behind-the-scenes details that people never see.
I’ll share more updates about this in the days ahead when I get back in tune with where this launch-with-a-mind-of-its-own seems to want to go next, but rest assured the 70% off launch discount for Stature will remain available for at least a few more days, so for now you can ignore the January 8 deadline you may see elsewhere on the site… till I have a chance to update everything.
I just finished 14 days of daily blogging (15 if we include this post), publishing an article called Sculpting Your Character 7 minutes before midnight last night. That was fun piece to write. 🙂
The commitment of this one-year daily blogging challenge is energizing and motivating. And my writing is becoming faster, easier, and more flowing.
Previously I’d prefer to blog in the morning. I love the early morning hours and like to get up around 5am. But with the current Stature course launch happening (2 days left to go), my blogging time has shifted to later in the day sometimes, like starting at 9 or 10 pm or even later. I’d normally go to bed between 10-10:30pm, so that’s very late for me. Previously it would be highly unusual for me to write that late in the day.
Now two weeks into this challenge, I’m liking the flow of it so far. With the launch happening, I’m only getting 4-5 hours of sleep per night this week, but somehow I still feel energized. I am looking forward to when the launch is over since I haven’t had a day off since… I can’t even remember, but it was before Christmas. The best I’ve had since then has been a light day of only 10 hours of work. I am looking forward to making it through the final two days of the launch, so my schedule can become a bit more relaxed.
I often tell myself that I’ll just write a shorter piece this time, maybe 1000 words or so, and then go to bed. But then as I start writing, I feel increasingly inspired and engaged. Writing is fun and energizing, especially when I write in a playful way like last night’s 2700-word article, which flowed very easily. I started out tired but felt energized by the time I hit the publish button.
Sending Energy
It feels like people are sending me energy whenever they read my work. There’s always a surge of readers when a new article first gets published, perhaps since many people subscribe to my blog via email or RSS. I’m most sensitive to this energy during the first hour after I publish something new since that’s when the greatest number of people are reading it. If I publish late in the day, and people’s reactions are positive and energizing like they were last night, I can’t go to sleep right away because I don’t feel tired anymore. Hence my bedtimes have shifted till 1-2 am lately.
Clicking the publish button is like downing a double shot of espresso, not because I’m nervous about people’s potential reactions, but because the energy that flows through very shortly afterwards is usually very loving, enthusiastic, and happy.
I also notice major differences in the energy patterns based on the tone with which I write. If I feel nervous it’s because I wrote something that made people feel insecure. I’m becoming increasingly aligned with expressing caring and connection through my creative work, partly because the energetic feedback feels a lot better to me. If I share something that makes people feel bad about themselves, they transmit those feelings to me, and I’m soon feeling what they’re feeling, although in my case it’s more of an aggregate summation of many frequencies of energy, which isn’t always harmonious. Maybe it’s a form of writer’s karma. It’s very noticeable.
I realize that some people aren’t into the notion that we can somehow transmit energy and emotion to each other at a distance. I’m convinced it’s real though because it just happens so much, the sensations are so pronounced, and I’ve received (and continue to receive) ample validation that we’re energetically synching up. Plus I find it to be an empowering perspective, and I get better results from thinking this way.
On many of our Conscious Growth Club coaching calls, I’ll sometimes feel a surprisingly strong burst of energy or emotion that I can tell isn’t originating from me. I’ll often ask which person on the call just got triggered by the last sentence or phase I said, and someone (often multiple people) chime in to validate that what I was sensing was coming from them. As anyone can verify from the recordings, this also happened on the Deep Abundance Integration calls more than once.
It doesn’t matter if the other person is 10 timezones away. The feedback happens just as quickly at a distance, so apparently the planet doesn’t block such signals.
Honoring the Endless Creative Flow
I love being sensitive to people’s energy and emotional feedback because I think it’s part of the same channel that gives me an endless flow of ideas to write about. I think that because I write so much, this channel sends me more good ideas than most people because I honor the intentions of this energy flow, which is to share and broadcast the ideas and not keep them bottled up in my mind.
I never get writer’s block. I feel like there’s always beautiful waves of inspiration flowing towards me, and I can tune into these waves anytime, anywhere, whenever I want, and I’ll be gifted with new creative ideas to express through any medium I like. I believe this privilege is bestowed upon me because I honor this flow. I’m loyal to it, I cherish it, and I serve it well, even when it yanks me out of bed before dawn to get up and write.
This flow is very real-time, so it’s always best if I act on it immediately. This morning I woke up with an inspired idea for a new article called “Are You Bored with Your Character?” I told my wife who is not a space alien that I was getting up to write such a piece right away, even though I’d only had about 4.5 hours sleep. But then when I got downstairs, I felt like checking on some launch stats and the latest feedback to see how that was going. And then I realized I was hungry, so I had breakfast. That only delayed me an hour or so, but I sensed that the energy transmission for the original article idea was falling out of sync. I had waited a little too long, and I knew that if I tried to write it, it would be more difficult. There was a different idea coming through for writing at this present time. And that’s this article.
When I’m at my best and really in the flow of inspiration, I won’t write the same article at 8am than I would have written at 6am. Even if I’m certain of what I’m going to write about at 6am, if I wait a few hours, I know it’s best to tune in and pick up a fresh idea that’s appropriate for that new time. Ideas have a time signature, and they’re super sensitive to delay. When I postpone an idea, it may revisit me again, usually in an altered form, but much of the time it’s gone forever, never to return with the same inspiration. Only the mental shadow of the idea lingers once that initial wave of energy is left, and there’s little or no joy in trying to create from lifeless shadows (shadow puppetry excluded).
If you get an inspired idea, I recommend that you act on it immediately – as in the very same minute. Don’t wait. Don’t delay, not even by an hour. The energy is there, but it won’t stick around for long. The universe is offering you a tremendous gift. Open it!
If you delay then you slam that gift back in its face, and it will remember that slight. It will divert that beautiful and life-enhancing flow of ideas to someone else… perhaps someone like me who will act immediately.
Does Your Muse Trust You?
I’m not perfect about this of course, but I do take action consistently enough that my muse knows it can trust me. Does your muse trust you, or have you betrayed it so much that it has pretty much abandoned you? Don’t disrespect your muse – unless you want to spend the rest of your life barely squeaking by and always having to do boring or tedious work just to make ends meet. That’s on you. Your dance partner deserves better.
If your muse has abandoned you, it’s never too late to repair that relationship. Ask for an inspired idea today, and then act immediately when it shows up. Prove that you’ll honor this energy, and it will dance with you. Screw it over by getting stuck in your head and second-guessing yourself, and it will abandon you. The gifts that were meant for you will flow to someone else.
There’s more than enough of this creative energy flow for all of us, more than you could ever exhaust in a lifetime. This energy knows no scarcity. It can flood you with abundance across all areas of life if you’ll simply dance with it.
Dance playfully. Dance fearlessly. Dance fiercely. Sometimes slow-dance to “Careless Whisper.”
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It may feel awkward at first, but if you just keep showing up, you will get better and better at it. And that’s when dancing with this energy becomes life’s true delight.
Aligned Intentions
This energy is super sensitive to aligned intentions. If your intention is based on neediness, it won’t be kind to you. But if your intention stems from love, caring, creative expression, growth, expansion, contribution, and other energy signatures that light you up inside, then you can dance, dance, dance.
I love how the daily blogging challenge has enhanced and improved my relationship with this energy channel. It’s become louder and clearer. I think it recognizes the strength of my commitment on some level. It doesn’t just feed me endless ideas. It also feeds me energy, so that while I’m writing, I’m bestowed the energy to cross the finish line. Even if I’m tired when I start, I feel awake and alive when I’m done. It’s just like dancing. You can start out tired, but once you get moving and loosen up a bit, it can be fun and energizing.
I anticipated that something like this might happen when I began this challenge, but it’s even more delicious than I expected. I feel like this channel of inspired energy and I are dancing together like never before. Instead of wondering how I’ll make it another 360 days, I have this sense of knowing that because of this long-form dance, this is going to be the most beautiful year of my life so far.
Every day I’m also getting more emails from people, expressing gratitude and appreciation for the recent articles. A few have said that they’ve been reading my blog for 10+ years, and this is this is the first time they’ve sent me any kind of feedback ever, but they felt inspired by a recent piece to finally reach out and connect. I’m genuinely touched by that. I too can tell that something has shifted in a really beautiful direction this year.
I’m not the only one experiencing this type of shift. We’re seeing this energy being stirred up in many Conscious Growth Club members, and I’m seeing it in some friends who are amping up their creative output this year too – such beautiful ripples.
In the past I used to think I could only use this flow of inspiration for short-form content, but with practice and experimentation, I’ve learned to use it for long-form content, such as our courses. That was trickier than I thought due to my own limiting beliefs about how it would be different from short-form content, but I finally got out my way, and now I know how to do the long-form dance too, which is immensely rewarding on a whole new level. I’m pouring this same kind of inspired energy into creating Stature, which is now up to 147 sign-ups… make that 148 since another one came in just as I was typing this. I’m sure a lot more will join today or tomorrow to get the launch discount.
Let’s dance! 💃🕺
P.S. Here’s a fun sync… I actually started playing “Careless Whisper” on YouTube when I first posted the link to it above. YouTube continued streaming a couple more songs after that automatically as YouTube normally does, and just as I typed “Let’s Dance!” to close out this article, the song “Lady in Red” started playing – a song about dancing.
If you enjoy applying Subjective Reality interpretations to songs as we covered in lesson 9 of Submersion (“Listen to Reality”), maybe try interpreting the lyrics from “Lady in Red” to see if they have any special meaning for you right now. For me this was just beautiful, so I’m gonna listen to it again right after I post this.
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For some reason that song often makes me wanna cry. 😭
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.
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.
