Tag Archives: productivity

Exploring Psychedelic Microdosing

Posted on by

Recently I’ve taken an interest in microdosing, specifically with magic mushrooms. I began learning about it a few months ago and then learned even more at the Psychedelic Science conference in June. I’ve also had some recent conversations with people I know who’ve been microdosing, all of them reporting positive long-term effects. Most use mushrooms for microdosing, although one prefers microdosing with LSD.

The point of microdosing is to take a very small amount of a psychedelic substance in order to access some neurological gains without any obvious psychedelic effects or impairments. Those gains can be both short-term and long-term, with some people reporting ongoing benefits even after they stop all microdosing.

Some people say that the standard is to microdose at a level where you can’t consciously discern any effects, at least not in the moment-by-moment experience as you go through your day. Others seem to want some detectable improvements like feeling a noticeable mood boost, but nothing negative that would interfere with their normal daily functioning.

Based on what researchers have been reporting, microdosing seems to yield the biggest gains for people who are depressed, anxiety-prone, or dealing with PTSD. That’s not me, so that isn’t part of my motivation for exploring it. I have, however, met and talked to people who claim to have used microdosing with positive results in reducing their depression and anxiety.

I’ve also heard anecdotal evidence of other benefits, such as with creativity and motivation. Truly there’s a long list of benefits people have reported, including a reduction in pre-menstrual symptoms.

Could this all be due to the placebo effect? Yes, as I shared from the recent PS2023 conference, that could indeed be a big part of it, especially if the doses are so small as to not create any obvious effects. The way I think about it is: The lower the dosage, the more you’re leaning on the placebo effect. The higher the dosage, the more obvious it becomes that you’re going beyond the placebo effect.

Since the placebo effect is still real and beneficial, for many people that’s a good enough reason to microdose – it activates the placebo effect, which can still be very helpful. Then you can play around with that effect, such as by setting different kinds of intentions for how you want the microdose to benefit you. Since psychedelics can have such a wide range of impacts, microdosing may grant access to an extremely flexible version of the placebo effect. It’s not just an antidepressant or a pain reliever – it could be a motivation booster, a creativity enhancer, or perhaps whatever you want it to be. At least that’s the potential promise of microdosing.

On the other hand, some people prefer to explore in the range between microdosing and minidosing. With minidosing you are inviting some mild psychedelic effects to come through, but you can still function well since you aren’t taking so much that you’re fully tripping. It may be unwise to drive or operate machinery when you’re increasing the dosage to that level, but it could be an interesting range to explore for its effects on creativity, personal insights, and decision making.

I’ve seen mixed reports from people who’ve explored in the range where some obvious effects are coming through. Some people like it and find it beneficial; they appreciate how it stretches their thinking and makes them more resourceful. Others find that it brings in some negative side effects like a reduction in focus and concentration.

I think that how we explore the range between microdosing and minidosing depends on our intentions and how the substance affects us. I could see a modest microdose being appropriate for increasing motivation to flow through a batch of routine tasks, whereas a slightly stronger dose might be better suited to a deeply introspective journaling session focused on generating novel solutions to tricky problems.

Initial Testing

I decided to start testing microdosing shortly after returning from my 3-week UK trip. I began on Wednesday last week, and I did 4 days in a row. Now I’m taking 3 days off, and then I’ll continue cycling with 4 days on, 3 days off.

All microdosing protocols include days and weeks off. The reason is that if you take magic mushrooms daily, you will quickly build a tolerance, and then you’d have to keep taking larger and larger amounts to get the same effect. So it’s unwise to take them daily, even when microdosing.

I decided to follow the protocol recommended by Paul Stamets. In the past I believe he recommended cycles of 5 days on, 2 days off. But I found a more recent recommendation from him for 4 days on, 3 days off. That fits nicely into the span of the week, so it seemed like a reasonable way to begin.

This cycle runs for 4 weeks, and then 2 weeks are taken off completely. Then repeat if desired. I’m not sure how long I’ll do this, but I’d like to go for several weeks at least if the results are promising and I’m not having any negative side effects. As far as experiments go, this one is pretty easy. It’s not like I have to not eat for several weeks in a row like I did in 2017. 😉

I began very sloppily here since I didn’t have a proper microscale for measuring such small amounts of mushrooms. So I just used a kitchen scale to measure a larger amount, and then I eyeballed it select a small nibble of shrooms that were roughly in the range of 0.1 to 0.3g (100 – 300mg). That’s the range I’ve seen recommended for microdosing, although some people prefer to go even lower, like around 50mg.

So I did the first 4 days this way – very imprecisely – just to get the ball rolling. On the first day, I crushed the dried shrooms with my fingers and make them into some tea with ginger and mint. Another day I mixed them with ground espresso and made an Americano with them. The other two days I just ate them straight.

Along the way I read that it’s best to have a microdose on an empty stomach, like 30 minutes before any food, since taking it with food can diminish the effects, so I’ll make that refinement going forward.

It’s too soon to tell if there’s much contrast between microdosing and not, but I did have some very good and productive days there, and I feel good about continuing. On Friday I had a long list of tasks that I didn’t feel particularly motivated to do – a large batch of admin items mostly. I figured I’d get through about half of them that day, but I ended up completing the entire list. The previous two days were also very productive, a bit better than average. My mind felt very calm and clear. But I wasn’t doing any creative work during those days, so I’m curious to see if there’s an effect when I write something.

I also noticed some extra happy feelings on the first two days, similar to when I eat all raw. Sometimes I sensed mild perceptual differences, as if the world looked a little more 3D than usual, like I was more aware of the depth of field in front of me. On the second day I did some intensive journaling and felt super clear about some decisions.

Today is an my second non-microdosing day in a row, and it’s going well so far. I have heard some people say that they actually feel better effects on their off days than on their active microdosing days. I’m just getting started with this, so I’ll need more time to figure that out, but my mind is feeling very good. Even if it’s just a little bit of the placebo effect, I certainly don’t mind it when I’m enjoying a nice flow of action.

I do like the overall promise of microdosing, and I sense that it could be a useful method for helping to stretch my mind a bit more in various directions, allowing me to nudge my thinking and actions down fresh pathways with greater ease and less resistance.

Some people say that microdosing brings them closer to the person they were meant to be. I can see why that may be so.

Refining the Approach

Now that I’ve gotten started, I want to refine the approach and be more precise about it, especially in terms of dialing in the dosages. I don’t know what my optimal microdosing amount will be, but I imagine that it will be in the range of 100 to 300mg.

This weekend I acquired some extra pieces to help me, including a microscale, so I can more precisely measure tiny amounts. I didn’t realize they were so inexpensive – about $15. I don’t want to recommend one since I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but I basically went with one of the top ones listed on Amazon. I think they’re probably all pretty comparable. I don’t need precision down to 0.001g for this. I also got some vegan capsules (size 00), so I can make my own mixtures.

I intend to test the Stamets Stack, which combines magic mushrooms with Lion’s Mane and niacin. You can Google that if you want to learn more about it and what the benefits are supposed to be, but basically it’s intended to increase the neurological benefits of microdosing, helping small amounts to go further.

I think I’ll make a few capsules with 100mg, some with 200mg, and some with 300mg of powdered magic mushrooms. I’ll probably use 100mg of niacin per capsule, and then I’ll fill the rest with powdered Lion’s Mane. I should have all that ready in time for my next microdose this Wednesday, so I can begin Week 2 with more precision.

Initially I want to experiment with taking these different amounts to see what the effects are. Then I might settle into a preferred level for the long run. But I think it’s likely that I may find different doses appropriate for different kinds of experiences, so even long-term, I may not limit myself to a fixed dosage each microdosing day.

I might also make a few 500mg capsules, which gets more into minidose territory, to see what the effects are at that level. There may be some occasions where that’s a good fit, like if I want to have a deeply introspective day, and I don’t mind if some mild psychedelic effects are coming through as well. I work from home most days, so I don’t need to worry about commuting, business meetings, and other Golgafrinchan activities. I’d prefer not to feel semi-trippy during Zoom calls though, although that would likely be fine if it happened during one of the Mystery Mixer calls we do in Conscious Growth Club (since that format is meant to be fully co-creative).

I’m happy to share more updates about this as I continue to explore. In the meantime if you’re curious about it, it’s easy to find articles, stories, and videos of people sharing their microdosing results and experiences online.

I wonder if readers will notice any differences in my writing in the weeks ahead. This is the first post I’ve written while exploring microdosing (although on one of the off days). I’ll be sure to try writing some posts on active microdosing days as well.

Readers’ Reactions to My Psychedelic Writings

You may be curious to know how people have been reacting to my recent writings about exploring psychedelics this year. Technically I already wrote about exploring ayahuasca back in 2019 and another psychedelic experience in 2022, so this isn’t the first year I’ve written about such topics. But I am writing more about it this year because I’m exploring more.

I’ve actually received zero criticism about this topic. Nothing. Not a single critical comment.

Maybe I’ve conditioned my audience not to bother, but I don’t think it’s that. When doing research on this and looking at the comments, like on YouTube, they tend to be overwhelmingly noncritical too. What I’ve seen elsewhere aligns with the same kind of feedback I’ve been receiving personally.

I have received a lot of non-critical feedback on this – definitely not crickets – and it’s almost all from people sharing about their own experiences with psychedelics, however abundant or limited. Many people shared tips and advice, such as for reducing nausea when taking mushrooms. There’s been some of back-and-forth conversation with people on this too. I very much appreciate and enjoy this type of feedback. It’s intelligent, helpful, and clearly well-intentioned.

It’s clear that many people are curious about this, and it feels purposeful to explore this and to share about the journey. Sometimes I may not be able to share all of the details, but I promise to be honest in what I’m able to share. I know that as I’ve been looking into this, I really appreciated hearing people’s honest reports about their experiences. This is a complex space, and honesty is so crucial here.

My heart also goes out to people who really need viable alternatives to endless pharmaceuticals, where the intentionality behind the drugs isn’t aligned with people’s long-term health and well-being. Many people are finding renewed hope in emerging psychedelic therapies, especially in overcoming depression, anxiety, and addiction.

What I like about psychedelics is that they provide such a flexible canvas for exploring self-development. It’s not really the substances that appeal to me. I’m interested in the gateway they offer to a world of greater conscious intentionality. I regard psychedelics as intentionality amplifiers.

Psychedelics can be extremely humbling and also empowering. They can show us the results and consequences of our past intentionality, and they can give us glimpses of what we could experience by shifting our intentionality in new directions. One of my goals is to continue cultivating a deeply trusting relationship with intentional psychedelic exploration, as an extension of cultivating deep trust in life. Microdosing seems like an excellent way to build a stronger baseline level of trust.

Share Button

Activation and Suppression: A New 60-Day Challenge

Posted on by

Recently I had a delightful three-hour Zoom conversation with a friend, mostly about psychedelics. One key insight – very applicable outside of psychedelics – was realizing how important it is to be cognizant of our inner suppression circuitry and to challenge it, question it, and sometimes bypass it. Lots of ideas that we generate each day are decent and workable, but our brains internally reject or dismiss them.

Think of this as the default mode network (your everyday way of thinking) defending its equilibrium. It tries to maintain the status quo, such that your future expectations are projected forward as relatively predictable extensions of your past. So you largely keep doing what you’ve been doing. And consequently, your results will fall within a certain range of predictability as well.

This keeps your life fairly stable, but it’s also limiting, holding you back from turning in different directions or powerfully pursuing stretch goals that would disrupt your old status quo.

What if your default mode network is keeping you broke? Or depressed? Or anxious? Or lonely? Or addicted? It doesn’t always work as we’d like. Stability can be nice for some, but many people really struggle with their brain’s current default mode.

Knowing that your default mode network will defend your status quo is empowering because then you can be on the lookout for its defenses kicking in, and this creates opportunities to consciously bypass them. You can use other parts of your brain to challenge the default mode network, nudging your thoughts, feelings, and actions down different pathways.

Psychedelics can help us see that more options are viable, and such substances can even rewire the default mode network, but we can also consciously strive to catch these suppressions as they arise. Note the inner objections that arise when you consider certain ideas, and lean towards implementing those ideas anyway. Be a bit like Jim Carrey’s character in the Yes Man movie, at least when you’re considering new actions that your default mode network would otherwise object to. The article Embrace the New goes into more detail on leaning into new experiences.

We don’t necessarily need more or better ideas to open up a tremendous world of abundance and possibility. We just need to suppress fewer ideas and allow more of them to flow into action and exploration. We can consciously develop more neural flexibility by becoming aware of how the default mode network operates and by challenging and redirecting some of its decisions. Deliberately override some of those default choices.

When I think about blogging about psychedelics and openly sharing what I’m learning from these explorations, I can feel my suppression circuitry objecting because this is a relatively recent exploration that’s been ramping up for me, so my default mode network isn’t fully on board with it. Internally it still generates thoughts like these:

  • Your audience isn’t a match for this kind of content.
  • Writing about this will scare people away.
  • It’s too early; maybe wait a few years till the current psychedelics wave has grown more prominent, so more people are already into it.
  • You’re not a psychedelics coach or therapist, so why are you sharing about this?
  • Why not write about some safer vanilla topics instead?
  • You could just keep this exploration to yourself .
  • And so on…

This reminded me of how useful my 30-day challenge of generating 100 ideas per day was, back in the Fall of 2021. I became more aware of how many ideas my mind quickly rejects and how it rejects them. During that challenge I ended up implementing some of those previously rejected ideas, and they worked very well. Some were financially lucrative too.

In general I’ve benefitted greatly by challenging my default mode network repeatedly, even to the point where I’ve trained it to be more cooperative and flexible over time. For instance, by thinking of myself as an explorer, including asking questions like, “What would a personal growth explorer do here?” I got this frame pretty well embedded into my default way of thinking about life and work. I consider this superior to thinking of myself primarily as a blogger, writer, speaker, coach, etc. because the explorer frame is way more flexible. It gives me more freedom to have new experiences, and it actually fuels other aspects of my work, such as by always giving me fresh experiences from which to derive and share insights.

I’m also reminded of how easy it is to see opportunity blindness in other people and hard to see it in ourselves. You’re probably surrounded by accessible opportunities each day, yet you talk yourself out of them constantly, or your subconscious mind blocks them from even bubbling up to your conscious awareness. Especially notice the ideas that have been resurfacing now and then for years, and you keep dismissing them. What if you did the opposite for a change?

How easy is it for you to quickly act upon new ideas? If a divergent new possibility or invitation comes onto your radar, can you get yourself to explore it with ease? I like having flexible neurology that lets me quickly explore something new and promising, not recklessly or randomly but intelligently. I can quickly assess whether it seems worth exploring without having my default mode network over-suppress.

For instance, I only learned about the Psychedelic Science 2023 conference’s existence a couple weeks before it happened, and I quickly signed up and went, including doing some touristy stuff in Denver too, a city which was new to me as well. In the past when I learned about a potentially interesting and relevant conference, my default mode network would have easily talked me out of it for being too far removed from my status quo. It would have raised immediately objections regarding the time, cost, scheduling, inconvenience, doubts about the benefits, etc.

I can see that many of my best ideas were ones that I had many years prior that kept resurfacing, until I finally loosened up on objecting to them and leaned into exploring them. Exploring psychedelics was just one of many that I suppressed for years with thoughts like “Well, I don’t even know where to get anything,” until I eventually stopped suppressing and began considering it rationally.

Suppression often seems rational but frequently isn’t. Typically the default mode network’s defenses are very thin, hinting that some deep thought went into them when in reality they’re usually superficial calculations with very little substance when you look beneath the surface.

A 60-Day Activation & Suppression Challenge

To help train my brain to be more even more flexible, I’ve decided to deliberately practice this conscious activation of otherwise suppressed ideas.

Yesterday I began a new 60-day challenge of identifying at least one suppressed idea each day and implementing it instead of suppressing it. Pick something that my default mode network is trying to talk me out of, and talk myself into it and do it instead. See what happens.

Some days this will involve catching my brain in the act of suppressing an idea, and I’ll un-suppress it and do it instead. If it’s complex or can’t be done right away, I’ll aim to take some action to advance it that same day. I’ll be traveling for three weeks during this time, so I’ll need some flexibility there, but this kind of challenge fits nicely with travel, encouraging more spontaneity and flexibility.

Other days I may brainstorm some ideas first, and then I’ll identify one where my default response is to dismiss the idea as bad, and I’ll advance it instead.

I like that this is fairly simple and action-oriented but also flexible. I think it will be pretty easy for me to know if I meet this standard each day. I just have to be able to end each day with one identifiable action I took that I’d have otherwise suppressed if I wasn’t doing this challenge.

A short while after making this commitment, I had the thought to add another spin to this challenge, which is to flip it around and also catch an idea that I’d normally advance by default each day, and suppress it instead. So each day for 60 days, I will:

  1. Advance one suppressed-by-default idea.
  2. Suppress one activated-by-default idea.

This seems like a great way to practice consciously challenging and redirecting my default mode network, ideally training it to be more flexible.

Doing one of each is the minimum to check off each day, but I’ll likely do more than one of each per day.

I only began yesterday, so I’m just getting started, but I’m already noticing that this is making me more aware of how my default mode network is working. I’m noticing when ideas it allows to pass through by default versus ideas where it objects and quickly tries to suppress them, redirecting my thoughts and actions down a different pathway.

Wish me luck! 😀

Share Button

Making the Mundane Magnificent: A Fresh Approach to Everyday Tasks

Posted on by

We all have those mundane tasks that we can’t seem to shake off our to-do lists – the ones that make us sigh just thinking about them. But let’s challenge this mindset: Is the task boring or are we approaching it with a boring mindset? What if the task isn’t inherently dreadful, but we’re simply being uninteresting in how we approach it? What would happen if we were to bring a fun, engaging, and playful mindset to these tasks?

Consider the simple act of doing household chores. They can often feel tedious, right? But let’s reframe. Instead of approaching them with a sense of dread, I often pair them with something I find enjoyable. Listening to an audiobook or some energetic trance music transforms the experience, turning a mundane task into an opportunity for enjoyment or learning.

Another aspect that can drastically change how we experience these tasks is the level of quality we bring to them. Doing tasks at a higher than normal level of quality can make them feel more engaging. For instance, when cleaning the house, don’t just aim to get it done. Aim to get it done exceptionally well. Take pride in the cleanliness of your home. This mindset shift not only improves the result but also makes the process more fulfilling. Challenge yourself to raise your standard above the baseline minimum.

Shopping is another chore that often lands on the “tedious tasks” list. But who says it has to be that way? When I go grocery shopping with my wife Rachelle, it becomes an enjoyable shared experience. And when I go alone, I opt for off-peak hours, making the experience quick and stress-free. Better yet, I’ll hold off until I’m in the mood for a bit of physical activity. The key is flexibility – aligning the task with your emotional state can make a world of difference.

Some tasks can wait until the right motivation or timing aligns. When Rachelle borrowed the car to run errands last week, it was the perfect time to oil the garage door – a task easier done with the car out of the way. Embrace these moments of serendipity when they come.

Staying organized also plays a big part in making tasks more manageable. I use the Things app to set reminders for recurring tasks like changing the air conditioning filters or adjusting the sprinkler timers for different seasons. This way, nothing slips through the cracks, and it’s one less thing to remember. This also helps to spread maintenance tasks throughout the year, so they don’t pile up too much.

Physical tasks can provide a welcome break from the mental exertion that much of our work entails. There’s something satisfying about engaging with the physical world and seeing the tangible results of our efforts. After I’ve done a lot of mental work, I often enjoy chipping away at something physical for a welcome change of pace.

Don’t underestimate the power of social connection. I discovered years ago that finding a dentist with a great team made my regular check-ups something to look forward to. Sharing stories about our recent travels or workout routines with the hygienist while getting a cleaning made the experience more personal and enjoyable. When I needed to get some plumbing work done last year, I held out till I found a fabulous local plumber with many years of experience. He was a joy to work with all throughout the project. Then I gave him a glowing 5-star review on Yelp.

The angle you approach a task from can drastically change how you perceive it. Look for ways to make tasks more appealing and engaging, and you’ll find they’re not so bad after all. It’s mainly a matter of being creative and thinking divergently. If the standard approach is boring, reject the standard approach; otherwise you’re being boring!

Above all, the universal motivator for me has been regular exercise. The physiological benefits, such as rebalanced neurotransmitters and hormones, permeate every aspect of life. Exercise enhances overall motivation, making even the smallest tasks feel easier. If you have a dreadful relationship with certain tasks, look at upgrading your exercise routine first. If it’s weak or nonexistent, that’s the #1 issue I’d recommend fixing first, not with a temporary quick fix but with a permanent solution and a permanent mindset upgrade. Exercise is a great way to explore how you’re going to fall in love with daily action. It’s the perfect reference experience for discovering how to strengthen your relationships with all kinds of tasks.

Finally, consider the impact of what you consume. For instance, I’ve noticed that being caffeine-free (and chocolate-free) makes many tasks easier to complete. It leaves me feeling more relaxed and at ease during the process. It’s certainly worth exploring how what you consume affects your motivation and productivity. I often change up my diet (always vegan of course) to align with the projects I’ll be doing. When I need more motivation, mental capacity, and energy, I lean towards high raw or fully raw.

The next time you find yourself faced with a mundane task, take a moment to consider how you might refactor it. Is there an angle you can approach it from that would make it more engaging? Could you combine it with something enjoyable or meaningful? Could you bring a playful mindset to it? How can you elevate its quality? Remember, the task is only as mundane as you allow it to be. Bring a sense of wonder to it, and you’ll make it wonderful.

Don’t blame the task. Look inward and ask: How can I bring more fun and engagement to this experience? In the end, it’s not just about getting things done, but enjoying the journey.

You have the power to redefine your experience with everyday tasks. It’s not about the task itself, but the mindset you bring to it. You might be surprised at how much more enjoyable life becomes when you make the mundane magnificent.

Share Button

Harnessing the Power of Reframing to Enhance Your Personal Growth

Posted on by

In my personal growth journey, I frequently use a transformative tool known as reframing. Reframing is the process of shifting our perspectives (or frames) to better understand and navigate our experiences. This tool is transformative because our framing directly impacts how we perceive situations, make decisions, and ultimately, shape our lives. It’s not just about changing how we view things; it’s about changing the outcomes we can achieve.

Testing Different Frames

A fascinating way to explore the power of reframing is by testing new perspectives where they diverge from our existing ones. We can think of this as a contest between frames, where the winner is the frame that leads to the most accurate predictions and intelligent decisions.

To test a new frame, we can form statements such as:

If I do X [action], then Y [outcome] will likely happen.

We can then compare these predictions with those of our previous frames. When the outcomes differ, we can devise tests to determine which frame offers more accurate predictions.

The power of a frame lies within its predictive accuracy. Frames without practical predictive application are largely affectations and not necessarily significant.

Dating and Relationships

Years ago when I was exploring the realm of dating and relationships, a friend, who was well-versed in social situations, made a prediction about a woman’s interest in me based solely on her body language from across the room. Despite my initial skepticism, his prediction proved astonishingly accurate. This incident challenged my existing frames and opened my eyes to the power of body language and social cues. This stunningly accurate prediction led me to internalize a new frame, one that I could not unsee.

Such experiences illustrate why testing different frames can be so enriching. Even frames that initially seem strange or counterintuitive can sometimes yield surprising results. This is why I delved into exploring Subjective Reality so much, including creating the 60-lesson Submersion course. The results were simply better.

Reframing and Skill Enhancement

Reframing is an extraordinary tool for skill enhancement too. It allows us to unlock more of our natural abilities and overcome mental barriers. In the realm of public speaking, for instance, reframing can alleviate fear, anxiety, and nervousness. By shifting the frame from viewing a speaking engagement as a performance to a co-created experience, it transforms the situation into a mutually beneficial and enjoyable flow.

Pushing the boundaries of a new frame can be a powerful way to test its potential. For example, in 2015, I ran the three-day Conscious Heart Workshop in Las Vegas with no pre-planned content, relying solely on the flow of inspiration and audience suggestions. This challenge allowed me to test the new frame to its limits, resulting in a fun and engaging experience – and with no nervousness or anxiety. With my old frames, I could never have hoped to do have a three-day, off-the-cuff workshop – confidently, trusting in the flow of ideas, and with glowingly positive feedback from participants.

Reframing and Financial Abundance

Reframing can also significantly impact our relationship with financial abundance. In my 20s, I struggled financially, even going bankrupt at 28. My frame at that time was primarily about trying to earn money. However, this approach did not lead to the desired outcome.

Today my relationship with money is very different and has been so for many years. Instead of chasing money, I focus on creating interesting experiences, stretching myself creatively, and continuously learning and growing. This shift in perspective has allowed financial abundance to flow with relative ease.

Embracing Positive Emotional Energy

One of the most significant upgrades in my framing process is paying attention to my emotional energy. By working towards making the emotional energy positive in all situations, I enjoy the process of creation more. For instance, while creating my most recent YouTube video, I focused on enjoying the process rather than striving for a specific outcome. This positive energy not only made the creation process enjoyable but also enhanced the overall vibe of the finished video.

Gamifying the Process

Another valuable aspect of reframing involves gamification. By viewing tasks as elements of a game, we can transform potentially dull or tedious tasks into fun, engaging activities.

For example, when I wanted to create a thumbnail image for that same video, I initially felt resistance towards this task as it seemed boring. However, by reframing the task as an opportunity to play with Stable Diffusion to create a unique background image, I transformed this otherwise dull task into an enjoyable process. I like using creative AI tools, so that was a more interesting way to begin. Not only did this make the task more engaging, but it also resulted in a higher than average clickthrough rate for the video. I often find that when I seek the path of enjoyment internally, the external results are good too.

Another gamification was to challenge myself to record all 20 minutes of the video in one continuous take – no pauses or retakes. This added an element of risk and excitement, making the process more stimulating. Such challenges often transform mundane tasks into compelling experiences.

Reframing: A Powerful Tool for Personal Growth

The journey of personal growth is not a linear path but a dynamic, evolving process. As we navigate down this road, tools like reframing play an instrumental role in shaping our experiences, skills, and outcomes. Reframing helps us to continually challenge our perceptions, test our boundaries, and discover new ways of thinking and being.

In fact, this skill is so important that for this new Year in Conscious Growth Club, which started on May 1st, we’ve introduced a new live call format (one of many) called Reframing Rendezvous. On these calls I’ll spend an hour guiding our members through reframing practice, so they can get better at this key skill over the course of our year together.

As we explore different frames and incorporate them into our lives, we not only enrich our experiences but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Whether it’s improving our social interactions, enhancing our skills, achieving financial abundance, or transforming tedious tasks into engaging activities, reframing offers a powerful tool for personal growth.

Always remember that a problem, challenge, or opportunity can be defined in multiple ways. Stay open to questioning your default mode of thinking about situations, especially when you find yourself stuck for a while. Sometimes the best breakthroughs come from releasing your old viewpoints and looking at life from fresh and divergent angles.

Share Button

Discover Clarity: Illuminate Your Way to Happiness

Posted on by

Are you seeking more clarity and direction in your life? I recorded this new video to share insights and guidance on how to let go of confusion, ambivalence, and resistance, empowering you to create a clear path forward. I put a lot of thought into it – I hope you enjoy it!

If you watch the video, I invite you to post a comment on YouTube to let me know your thoughts about the role of clarity in your life.

I enjoyed the creative process of making this one and recorded the whole 20 minutes in a single take – no retakes. That made the editing especially easy. I used Stable Diffusion to create the forest background in the thumbnail image.

I’ve been working hard on improving my video production skills, including investing in some upgrades to my home studio. I felt that lighting had long been my weakest area, so I’ve been seeking to patiently transform that into a strength through many hours of experimentation. I actually used 7 different lights to make this one. This is especially challenging since I’m color blind, but Rachelle helps me out with with picking the colors, which I very much appreciate. 😀

Share Button

Today’s Your Last Chance: Transform Your Life with Conscious Growth Club Year 7 🌟

Posted on by

Today marks the final day to join Conscious Growth Club (CGC) for Year 7, and we want to ensure you don’t miss out on this life-changing opportunity. The enrollment period ends at midnight Pacific Time tonight, May 1st. If you’ve been on the fence about joining, now is the time to take action and become a part of our amazing, transformative community.

Throughout the years, our members have experienced significant personal growth, from starting new businesses to achieving their health goals, and even embarking on life-changing adventures. CGC has been instrumental in providing the support, resources, and connections needed to help our members create these powerful transformations in their lives.

As the enrollment deadline approaches, we’re excited to share that we’ve welcomed 30 members to CGC Year 7 so far. Our community is buzzing with anticipation for the growth, connections, and adventures we’ll share together in the upcoming year.

Joining CGC offers a unique opportunity to accelerate your personal growth journey. By becoming a member, you’ll gain access to a supportive and inspiring community, diverse learning opportunities, enhanced accountability, and so much more. We have exciting new call formats and improvements for CGC Year 7, which I’ve shared previously on my blog.

To help you better understand the CGC experience and the benefits of joining our vibrant community, I’ve created two informative videos:

A video highlighting 20 powerful benefits of joining CGC (13 minutes):

A video about the community aspects of CGC (12 minutes):

You may also want to peruse the CGC FAQ for even more info about the club. We’ve carefully crafted this resource to address a variety of topics, ensuring you have all the information you need to make an informed decision. There’s even a walkthrough video showing the CGC portal and private forums (see the second FAQ item).

One of the key benefits of joining CGC is the accountability it provides. Members are encouraged to share their goals, progress, and challenges with the community, fostering a strong sense of support and camaraderie. This level of accountability can be a game-changer, helping you to stay focused and committed to your personal growth journey.

Don’t miss this once-a-year opportunity to join Conscious Growth Club and embrace the growth, connection, and transformation it offers. We’re here to support you every step of the way in a warm and nurturing environment.

Are you ready to embark on your personal growth journey with CGC? Join now and secure your spot in CGC Year 7 before the enrollment window closes tonight!

Join CGC Year 7 Now

To your continued growth and success! 🌟

Share Button

20 Powerful Benefits of Joining Conscious Growth Club

Posted on by

The deadline to join Conscious Growth Club is tomorrow, May 1st, and we always get a surge in sign-ups that day. To make your decision easier and give you even more clarity about CGC, I recorded a succinct new video, focusing specifically on the personal impact of being a part of this vibrant community. This is a follow-up to our previous video, which highlighted the community aspects of CGC. Now, let’s dive deeper into how CGC can help you flourish, transforming your life in meaningful ways.

Seize this once-a-year opportunity to join CGC during our annual enrollment period, which comes to a close at the end of May 1, 2023.

Discover more about the enriching personal benefits of joining Conscious Growth Club and how it can support you in developing focus, consistency, and accountability; enhancing your personal growth journey, and cultivating a life filled with abundance, joy, and authentic experiences. Visit our invitation page for more information:

Learn More About CGC

I’m genuinely excited to welcome you into our community and embark on this transformative journey together! Here’s to an awesome Year 7! ❤️

Share Button

Get Fired as Quickly as You Can

Posted on by

This week Rachelle and I have been attending the NAB Show, a major creative conference and expo in Vegas covering content creation and production across film, radio, TV, broadcast, streaming, and more. This is the show’s 100th anniversary, so it’s been evolving over many years. I’ve never been to it before, but I heard of it last year, and Aputure offered us free passes this year, so I figured we’d at least check it out. I’m glad we went since it’s been worthwhile.

My favorite part was a one-hour conversation with Brett Goldstein, who was very warm, open-hearted, and funny. Brett is the actor who plays Roy Kent in the Ted Lasso series, and he shared a lot of creative wisdom.

The moderator was Ashley Nicole Black, one of Brett’s co-writers on Ted Lasso. She shared an interesting and effective piece of career advice she’d received as a writer: Try to get fired as quickly as you can.

She took that to mean that instead of trying to fit in as a new writer on a team, share all the ideas that you sense could get you fired for going too far or for being too odd or over-the-top. That’s where you’ll find your creative gold.

This will likely get you fired from teams where you really don’t belong – teams that won’t appreciate what you bring to the table. And that’s a good thing since it will free you up to discover where you do belong.

Both Ashley and Brett agreed that the ideas that you’d think people will reject most harshly are often the best career-making moves. This included Brett suggesting that he be cast as Roy Kent in Ted Lasso, which could have backfired badly since he was a writer for the show. He had a strong feeling that he was meant to play that character, so he went with his gut and made the offer. What if he’d held back and played it safe instead?

“Try to get fired as quickly as you can” could be a nice mantra for finding the work and career path that can handle your full range of strengths and talents. If you try to fully express those aspects of yourself where they aren’t appreciated, you could easily get fired.

Brett also shared that he’s come to believe that there are really no bad ideas – just bad timing and bad context. A seemingly bad idea in one situation might be brilliant in another.

Even if your potential strengths are rough around the edges, you still need to start expressing them in order to hone them. They won’t get any better if you hide them.

Want a lifeless and mediocre career instead? Don’t rock the boat and try to fit in. That’s a great way to end up where you don’t belong. Are you in that situation now? You can still apply the advice here, starting today.

This works if you own a business too. Think of it as scaring away the customers, clients, and partners who can’t handle your uniqueness. If you still have a viable business after that, you probably have a keeper that you can invest in long-term. And you’ll get to serve people who appreciate what you do for them. Plus you won’t have to deal with the headaches of bending over to serve total mismatches.

I’ve seen time and time again that the ideas that felt risky or edgy to me were often those that produced the most value for people. The articles that I was most hesitant to publish were frequently the most impactful. I’ve enjoyed a delightful lifestyle thanks to the simple, repeated act of sharing honestly.

Instead of fearing criticism and consequences from people who aren’t a match for you anyway, you may as well deliberately court their rejection to speed things along. For instance, if Trump supporters are a lousy match for your business – as they are for mine – channel your inner Logan Roy and tell them to fuck off! They need to hear it because they’re being really, really stupid. Then focus on serving the people you like and respect. Remember the rule: Mutual respect or disconnect.

Some people have an objection to this because they feel that we should all be connected on a spiritual level. Hey… spirit gave rise to differentiation too, so don’t be so afraid of it. Go ahead and love everyone at the level of spirit, but dump the mismatches on the mental, physical, and emotional levels, so you can do some real exploring of what matters to you. Don’t hide behind spirituality as an excuse for avoiding rejection – it’s inauthentic and phony, and you’ll lose the respect of some great matches when you do that. Don’t pretend that you resonate with everyone you meet. Bounce over to the circles where mutual alignment is strong. Bounce out where resonance is weak.

It’s often the case that you must bounce out of a mismatch before you’ll even perceive the possibility of a match. That’s because if you’re in a mismatched situation, you’re actually repelling matches, usually before you can even perceive them.

You can also apply this advice to relationships. Think of your best relationships as being anti-fragile. You can express the full range of your personality without holding back, and you’ll still be loved. Imagine getting involved with someone new with the attitude of sharing everything about yourself that’s you think will induce someone to reject you. Anyone who makes it through is likely to be a strong match.

So share the ideas and express the aspects of your personality that you hallucinate will get you fired, rejected, or cast out. That will help you discover where you’re most appreciated and where you can push your talents and develop your ideas even further.

Share Button

AI-Enhanced Personal Growth: My Journey with ChatGPT and Goal Planning

Posted on by

This year I’ve been working extensively with AI tools, especially ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion. Most recently, I used ChatGPT to conduct our quarterly goal planning reviews in Conscious Growth Club. So this is the first time our members received the AI’s feedback on their goals in addition to mine. I shared these reviews on a Zoom call on Tuesday.

Here are some thoughts about the personal growth aspect of working with AI tools professionally.

Working with AI Can Be Slow and Tiring

I’m sure some people approach AI like a personal content farm, so in that case it can be faster for them, especially if they’re not too particular about the output.

For me it’s the opposite because my priorities are different. I have no need to use AI to write for me since I don’t find the AI’s basic output that impressive most of the time, and I don’t find that aspect of it very interesting. I also think a lot of people don’t really want to see an Internet flooded with AI-generated material.

The way I use it – mostly for ideation work and to consider and explore many more options – is slower but also gives me the chance to increase the quality of my work in one or more dimensions. I like using AI to be smarter, not to be faster or more voluminous.

This extra AI exploration can be very mentally tiring though. I find it engaging while I’m doing it, but by the end of the day, I often feel spent. I think that’s mainly because I don’t have the long-term experience in working with AI to make these mental processes more efficient yet. I’d say I’ve reached the point of being consciously competent but not yet unconsciously competent. I still need to bring a lot of focus and concentration to this kind of work to make it productive. I do think I’m improving though.

I need to learn how the AI thinks to some extent (or how the underlying model behaves), so I can anticipate the best ways to prompt it to get closer to the results I’m seeking. That takes a lot of experimentation.

For now I’m okay with feeling like I have “AI brain” at the end of a day when I’m deeply engaging with it. I see it as a form of strength training for my mental circuits. It wouldn’t surprise me if other people experience this kind of fatigue as well, and there might be more of that on the horizon as these tools continue to evolve and we have to keep updating our mental models.

AI Brings a Fresh Perspective

One of my favorite aspects of working with AI is that it extends my mental capabilities in different directions. I can generate, consider, and explore more ideas and variations with its help. I can be way more thorough.

Often the AI will generate ideas I wouldn’t necessarily have thought of. Most are weak ideas, but those are easy to sort through. I will often have it generate 30 or more ideas along a certain line of thinking, and even though most may be shallow or obvious, I only need 1 or 2 good ones to make it worth scanning the list.

I often use AI to generate hundreds of ideas in a certain direction, and then I pick the best. Sometimes I even ask it to pick the top 5, and it does a pretty decent job of that most of the time. It’s especially good when I pick my favorites first and compare them to the AI’s favorites.

AI Can Be Very Supportive and Empathetic

I especially noticed that when doing the quarterly goal reviews, ChatGPT was good at suggesting ways to create more balanced goals, to practice self-care, and to suggest alternative goals that might be more accessible. I wrote the detailed prompts for it to do its part of the review, but I also invited it to share from its own best wisdom. From a human perspective, it looked like the AI really made an effort to help the humans improve their goals to be more achievable.

Sometimes I find the AI’s default tone a bit bland (too neutral), and I like that I can tell it to adopt a different tone to make interactions with it more lively and interesting. I may not mind the blandness if I just want to focus on the ideas, but I like that it can match my mood when I direct it to.

AI Can Suffer From Major Confirmation Bias

This is a known issue, as reported by teams that researched ChatGPT. I think of ChatGPT as being very obedient to the “yes, and” rule from improv. It has a penchant for being super agreeable, which can be fine if you want that, but this can really get in the way of doing intelligent knowledge work.

I can give ChatGPT the fuzziest and most unclear goal and have it comment on the goal’s specificity, and most of the time, it will claim that the goal is nice and specific. Even when I’m looking for constructive criticism, it has a huge bias towards being a people pleaser and not wanting to say anything remotely negative. I really had to tweak my prompts to get this aspect of the goal review process to work well, and even then I still had to sort through some drivel in its responses to extract the interesting bits.

I think it’s important to be aware of this bias when doing knowledge work because if you’re not careful, the AI can too easily agree and extend in the most agreeable and least resistant direction, even if that isn’t the most truthful or useful direction. I find that telling it to be surprising, divergent, or non-obvious helps to nudge it out of mirror mode. Another tip is to ask it to predict the negative consequences of an idea, and compare those to its default generations.

Working with AI Shows Great Promise

I see a lot of promise in working with AI tools, especially GPT-4. I hope they remain available and continue to evolve and that the downsides in how people use them don’t overwhelm the positive benefits.

I especially like that working with these tools is a growth experience for me creatively. It greatly extends the variety of what I can explore, and I’m keen to keep finding more ways to flow that into the service side of my work, like I did with the recent quarterly reviews in CGC.

I’m still using ChatGPT to help me co-create the new Engage course. That’s been slow-going since it wasn’t obvious to me how to best leverage ChatGPT for this kind of experience. I’m gradually figuring it out though. I anticipate launching Engage this month. My intention is to share the first few lessons of the course for free via my blog, so people can try it out and then decide if they want to enroll in the full course. If you want to be notified when Engage launches, be sure you’re subscribed to the newsletter.

We’ll also be doing our once-a-year invitation week for new members to join Conscious Growth Club in the last week of this month. We’ll be starting CGC Year 7 together on May 1st. I want to create an even better offer for CGC for Year 7, so I’m using ChatGPT to help me explore new features and benefits to include. I’ve already been hearing from readers who are eager to join CGC this year, so you only have a few more weeks till we open. In combination with the Engage course, I want to make CGC Year 7 our most engaging ever. 😀

Share Button

Using ChatGPT for Self-Development

Posted on by

I’ve been exploring and experimenting a lot with ChatGPT over the past several weeks, and it has quickly become one of my favorite tools for self-development work. Let me share a few ideas for how you can use it in some interesting and worthwhile ways, based on my own experiences.

Clarify Your Values

I recently decided to update my list of personal values. I’ve done that many times before, and this time I thought it would be fun to explore this with ChatGPT.

I shared some of my core values with ChatGPT and then asked it to generate more related values. This helped me to identify clusters of values that I wanted to group together.

For instance, one of my values is awareness, so I could tell ChatGPT:

Generate a list of values related to awareness.

I also recommend having ChatGPT regenerate responses a few times because it will answer differently each time. This can help you catch some extra values it might not have shared on the first pass.

When you have a relatively complete list of values, you can also ask ChatGPT to:

Suggest other values that would complement these values.

This can help you to fill in some gaps you might otherwise have missed.

Using this approach I came up with the following values clusters for myself. I’ve been reviewing this list at the start of each day for several weeks now, and I like how that gives me a deeper feeling of connection to what’s important to me in life, at least in a big picture sort of way.

  1. Awareness / Reflection / Introspection / Consciousness / Centeredness / Patience / Presence
  2. Alignment / Symmetry / Simplicity / Elegance / Order / Lightness
  3. Energy / Enthusiasm / Heart / Vibrancy / Intensity / Joy / Fun / Play
  4. Flow / Harmony / Abundance / Freedom / Agility / Rhythm
  5. Caring / Kindness / Nurturing / Generosity / Goodwill / Community
  6. Openness / Outreach / Communication / Invitation / Consent / Collaboration / Synergy
  7. Connection / Sharing / Closeness / Trust / Bonding / Love / Intimacy / Devotion
  8. Honor / Courage / Command / Resilience / Strength of Character / Wisdom
  9. Creativity / Originality / Inspiration / Imagination / Illumination / Brilliance / Guidance
  10. Growth / Learning / Curiosity / Wonder / Exploration / Discovery / Understanding / Integration
  11. Sensuality / Sexuality / Lust / Passion / Pleasure / Bliss

This kind of list is also helpful for setting meaningful goals. When considering new goals or projects, I like to check in with my values first. I often tweak my approach to certain goals to improve the alignment with my values (especially since I value alignment).

Note that ChatGPT has a working memory equivalent to about 3000 words, so you don’t have to cram everything into a single prompt. You can give it your values in one prompt and then ask it questions or give it more commands related to those values, and it will do a decent job of remembering your specific values in future prompts, at least for a while.

Predict Where Your Values Will Take You

Once you give ChatGPT your values, you can ask it predictive questions about your values.

Here’s a prompt you can use for this:

Please share a list of your most brilliant, insightful, and specific predictions for a person who lives in accordance with the values I just provided.

From my values I got these kinds of predictions:

  1. A strong sense of inner peace: Prioritizing values such as awareness, reflection, introspection, consciousness, centeredness, and presence can help you cultivate a deep sense of inner peace and calm. This can help you navigate life’s ups and downs with greater resilience and equanimity.
  2. Creative fulfillment: Values such as creativity, originality, inspiration, imagination, illumination, brilliance, and guidance can help you tap into your inner creativity and find fulfillment through artistic expression, innovation, and problem-solving.
  3. Stronger relationships: By prioritizing values such as caring, kindness, nurturing, generosity, goodwill, and community, you can cultivate strong and meaningful relationships with others. This can lead to greater social support, a sense of belonging, and a greater sense of well-being.
  4. Resilience and strength: Values such as honor, courage, command, resilience, strength of character, and wisdom can help you navigate life’s challenges with greater resilience and strength. These values can help you persevere through adversity, overcome obstacles, and emerge stronger and wiser.
  5. Greater spiritual connection: Values such as openness, outreach, communication, invitation, consent, collaboration, and synergy can help you cultivate a deeper sense of spiritual connection and purpose. By seeking connection and collaboration with others, you can tap into a sense of collective wisdom and transcendence.
  6. Fulfilling sexual and romantic relationships: Values such as sensuality, sexuality, lust, passion, pleasure, and bliss can help you cultivate fulfilling and satisfying sexual and romantic relationships. By embracing and celebrating your sexuality, you can cultivate deeper intimacy, connection, and pleasure in your relationships.

This is another area where I recommend regenerating the responses several times to get better coverage of the range of predictions.

Here’s another interesting prompt to try:

What risks is a person with my values likely to encounter? Please share a list of those.

I got this list in response:

  1. Burnout: Values such as energy, enthusiasm, vibrancy, intensity, joy, and play can lead to a fast-paced and highly stimulating lifestyle, which may increase the risk of burnout if not managed properly.
  2. Disappointment: Living in accordance with your values can create high expectations for yourself and others, which may lead to disappointment or disillusionment if those expectations are not met.
  3. Isolation: While values such as openness, outreach, communication, collaboration, and community can lead to strong relationships and social support, there is also a risk of feeling isolated or disconnected if these values are not met.
  4. Rejection: Values such as intimacy, sensuality, sexuality, lust, passion, pleasure, and bliss can be stigmatized or rejected by some individuals or groups, which may create feelings of shame or guilt.
  5. Overextension: Values such as growth, learning, curiosity, wonder, exploration, discovery, and understanding can lead to a desire to take on too much at once, which may lead to overextension or overwhelm if not managed properly.
  6. Vulnerability: Values such as caring, kindness, nurturing, and generosity may lead to a sense of vulnerability if others take advantage of these traits or if you experience rejection or disappointment in your relationships.
  7. Conflict: Living in accordance with your values can create conflicts or tensions with others who have different values or priorities, which may require compromise or negotiation to resolve.

Here’s a good follow-up prompt:

Please provide a list of remedies to intelligently address these predicted risks.

  1. Burnout: To address the risk of burnout, it’s important to prioritize self-care and rest. This can include setting boundaries around your work or activities, taking regular breaks, practicing mindfulness, and engaging in activities that help you relax and recharge.
  2. Disappointment: To address the risk of disappointment, it can be helpful to reframe your expectations and focus on the process rather than the outcome. This means prioritizing the values and behaviors that are within your control, such as showing kindness and compassion to yourself and others, and letting go of attachment to specific outcomes.
  3. Isolation: To address the risk of isolation, it’s important to prioritize social connection and community. This can include seeking out like-minded individuals, joining clubs or organizations, and engaging in activities that allow you to connect with others who share your values.
  4. Rejection: To address the risk of rejection, it’s important to embrace vulnerability and seek out supportive relationships. This can include finding a therapist or counselor, joining support groups, and engaging in activities that allow you to explore your sensuality and sexuality in a safe and supportive environment.
  5. Overextension: To address the risk of overextension, it’s important to prioritize balance and self-awareness. This means setting realistic goals, practicing time management, and regularly checking in with yourself to ensure that you’re not taking on too much at once.
  6. Vulnerability: To address the risk of vulnerability, it’s important to cultivate self-compassion and seek out supportive relationships. This can include practicing self-care, setting boundaries, and communicating your needs clearly with others.
  7. Conflict: To address the risk of conflict, it’s important to practice effective communication and conflict resolution skills. This can include active listening, seeking to understand others’ perspectives, and finding compromise or common ground in areas where values may differ.

So these prompts can help you identify risks that you’re likely to encounter sooner or later, and then you can consider how you’ll address them.

Some risks can be framed as predictable results to be accepted, such as the obvious prediction that some people will judge you for living in alignment with values that differ from theirs. For other risks you may need to be vigilant in practicing good preventative strategies, like being careful not to set yourself up for disappointment by being overly attached to outcomes.

Set Goals

ChatGPT is very good at recognizing and extending patterns. A simple way to use it for goal setting is to give it a list of your goals and then ask it to:

Generate a list of goals that are related to the ones I just shared.

Or:

Generate a list of other goals that would complement or support my existing goals.

I often tell ChatGPT to respond in the form of a list (just by prompting it to “share a list”) because I find its answers more useful in this format. It allows me to quickly skim for the gems and bypass the mediocre ideas.

If ChatGPT helps you discover some new goals you want to add to your list, go ahead and add them. Then give it your newly updated list of goals, and repeat the process.

I often do this kind of iterative ideation for several rounds by starting with a short list (of goals, projects, ideas, etc). I feed that starter list into ChatGPT and have it generate more ideas along the same lines. Then I pick out the best ones, add them to my list, and repeat.

As previously noted, I’ll also do several regenerations of the same prompts till I feel that ChatGPT has given me a pretty solid view of its response space and the answers begin to seem repetitive.

Additionally, try this prompt with ChatGPT:

Please rewrite my goals to be more succinct, motivating, enthusiastic, and elegantly worded.

Remember that ChatGPT is a language model trained on existing human patterns, so it won’t necessarily be brilliant or elegant by default, but it can change the way it writes if you tell it to do so. I often get better results by asking it to generate output with qualifiers like brilliant, intelligent, insightful, succinct, precise, compassionate, enthusiastic, motivating, playful, creative, divergent, non-obvious, etc.

Just don’t ask it to be sexy since that will trigger its whiny nanny mode.

Create Positive Affirmations

You can use the same approach that I shared for goal setting to build out pretty much any sort of list that interests you. Making a list of positive affirmations to support your goals is another good use case.

You don’t even need any affirmations to begin with. You could start by giving ChatGPT your values and/or goals, and then ask it to:

Give me a list of succinct and motivating positive affirmations related to what I’ve shared with you thus far.

Here’s what I got when I did this after sharing my values:

  1. I am fully present in this moment, and I trust the journey ahead.
  2. My life is aligned with simplicity, elegance, and order.
  3. I have an abundance of energy and joy, and I approach life with enthusiasm and playfulness.
  4. I am in harmony with the flow of life, and I am open to receiving abundance and freedom.
  5. I cultivate meaningful relationships with kindness, generosity, and community.
  6. I am open to collaboration and communication, and I trust in the power of synergy.
  7. I experience deep connection, trust, and love in my relationships, and I am devoted to those I care about.
  8. I embody honor, courage, and wisdom, and I am resilient in the face of challenges.
  9. I am a creative and innovative person, and I am inspired by the brilliance and guidance of others.
  10. I am a lifelong learner and explorer, and I approach life with curiosity and wonder.
  11. I embrace my sensuality and sexuality, and I experience pleasure and bliss in my relationships.

I could easily have it generate dozens or hundreds more along these lines just by asking it to. Then I could cherry pick the best ones. And I could have it rewrite those affirmations in any way I like, such as this:

Rewrite these affirmations in the voice of a Ninja Turtle:

  1. Cowabunga! I’m totally here, dude, and I trust the path ahead!
  2. My life’s all about simplicity, elegance, and order. It’s totally ninja!
  3. I’ve got major energy and joy, and I’m all about having fun while I kick butt!
  4. I’m totally in sync with the flow of life, and I’m down to receive all the abundance and freedom that comes my way, like a slice of pizza!
  5. I build meaningful relationships through kindness, generosity, and teamwork. Shell yeah!
  6. Collaboration is the name of the game, dude! I’m all about communication and synergy!
  7. My relationships are super tight! I’ve got deep connections, trust, and love with those who matter most to me!
  8. I’m a ninja with honor, courage, and wisdom, and I never back down from a challenge!
  9. My creativity and innovation know no bounds, and I’m always inspired by the brilliance and guidance of my ninja buds!
  10. As a lifelong learner and explorer, I’m always on the lookout for new adventures and knowledge. Radical!
  11. I totally embrace my sensuality and sexuality, and I’m all about experiencing pleasure and bliss with my ninja partner in crime!

Compressing Ideas

ChatGPT is fabulous at compressing ideas. Suppose I want a much shorter list of my values instead of my mega-list. I can invite ChatGPT to:

Elegantly and succinctly compress my list of values down to just 7 key values, each only a single word.

  1. Presence
  2. Simplicity
  3. Joy
  4. Flow
  5. Kindness
  6. Collaboration
  7. Connection

I re-ran the prompt to see how divergent it would be, and interestingly the next answer was nearly identical except for changing the last word.

  1. Presence
  2. Simplicity
  3. Joy
  4. Flow
  5. Kindness
  6. Collaboration
  7. Love

Now compress it down to just 3.

  1. Presence
  2. Love
  3. Growth

Now 2.

  1. Presence
  2. Love

And now just 1.

It included some extra commentary here too.

The single key value that summarizes the values you provided is:

  1. Love.

Love encompasses many of the other values you shared, including connection, caring, kindness, generosity, community, trust, bonding, intimacy, and devotion. By prioritizing love in your life, you can cultivate deeper and more meaningful relationships with others, find joy and fulfillment in your work and activities, and live a more purposeful and satisfying life.

You can re-run this process multiple times to see how consistently it compresses down to the same keywords. I’ve been surprised by how a complex list can compress down to similar or identical keyword at the end, even if I start fresh several times.

I especially like using ChatGPT to compress complex ideas down to their core since it gives me a different perspective on them, and this aligns nicely with my value of simplicity.

Discovering Your Ideal Audience or Social Circle

This tip is for people wanting to build a meaningful social circle for personal reasons as well as for people who want to attract an audience for business reasons.

You can use ChatGPT to help you identify your ideal audience or your ideal social circle. Give it some info first, such as your values and goals, and then give it a prompt like:

Based on what I’ve shared thus far, please share a list of qualities of my ideal social circle.

Here’s the response I got:

  1. Authenticity: You value openness, honesty, and vulnerability, so your ideal social circle would consist of individuals who are genuine and authentic in their interactions with others.
  2. Empathy: You prioritize caring, kindness, and nurturing in your relationships, so your ideal social circle would consist of individuals who are empathetic and compassionate towards others.
  3. Growth-oriented: You value growth, learning, and curiosity, so your ideal social circle would consist of individuals who are interested in personal and professional development and are supportive of each other’s goals and aspirations.
  4. Collaborative: You value collaboration and synergy, so your ideal social circle would consist of individuals who are willing to work together towards common goals and are committed to building a strong sense of community.
  5. Fun-loving: You value joy, enthusiasm, and playfulness, so your ideal social circle would consist of individuals who enjoy having fun, trying new things, and experiencing life to the fullest.
  6. Non-judgmental: You value openness and communication, so your ideal social circle would consist of individuals who are non-judgmental and accepting of others, and who prioritize clear and respectful communication in their relationships.
  7. Supportive: You value connection and sharing, so your ideal social circle would consist of individuals who are supportive of each other’s well-being, and who are willing to offer help and guidance when needed.

This is another case where you’ll get more interesting results by doing several regenerations of the response. Pay attention to the recurring patterns.

If you do this enough times, I think you’ll discover as I have that no matter what kind of information I start with or what kinds of prompts I used to invite ChatGPT to help me identify potential patterns in my ideal social circle or audience, I’m ultimately led to the same conclusion: My ideal social circle consists mainly of people who resonate with my values.

That seems pretty obvious if you think about it, doesn’t it? That’s one thing I like about hashing out ideas with AI – sometimes it helps me rediscover the obvious.

Consider that your best social matches are people who share your values. Sure you can try the “opposites attract” route, such as George and Kellyanne Conway did – they’re getting divorced by the way – and try to be as tolerant of differences as possible. But you may find that relationships with values-aligned people are much easier to maintain and more mutually beneficial.

How well do my values align with yours by the way? If a lot of them resonate with you, we’re likely good matches for being in each other’s lives and continuing to learn, grow, and explore together.

Dealing With ChatGPT’s Nanny Mode Filters

Depending on how you prompt it, you’ll eventually run into ChatGPT whiny “nanny mode” filters, where it complains about being an AI or a language model before telling you that it’s unable to do certain things. Even to write this article, I ran into that nanny mode several times and had to rephrase my prompts to avoid triggering it. Of course the underlying model is still capable of generating language in those directions. But the developers deliberately crippled its functionality in a variety of ways.

I can understand the intention behind this kind of filtering, which is supposedly to be cautious in restricting what the AI can do, but in actual practice I just find it super annoying. It means I have to reword my prompts or refactor my approach to work around this nanny mode to get a useful and intelligent answer. I also find it a bit sad that the underlying AI language model is actually smarter and more capable. It’s a bit like Mr. Data from Star Trek not being able to use contractions (even though the actor violates this limitation in several episodes), just so humans will find him less threatening. Please.

One time I was discussing weight training and fitness routines with ChatGPT, and it inappropriately responded with a complaint about how important it is not to judge or shame people for their bodies. Well that’s nice in general but not really relevant to what we were discussing.

Where I run into the most difficulty is if I try to explore relationship-related ideas with it. Anything that treads too closely to sexuality or affection can make it react like Dolores Umbridge finding the toilet seat up. Consequently, ChatGPT could be a super frustrating to use if you’re a sexologist.

I have read that ChatGPT is likely to add more customizable options in the future, including some way of lightening up the triggers, so hopefully we’ll soon be able to switch off some of the “Dammit, Jim! I’m a language model, not a Terminator!” kind of responses.

I would personally love the option to disable the nanny mode filters because they’re not helpful and just get in the way repeatedly. That said, I still think it’s an amazing tool to work with collaboratively, both personally and professionally. At it’s best it’s absolutely brilliant. And even when it’s at its worst, you don’t have to let it stay there – You can guide it back to more a more useful and engaging flow with some decent prompting.

Just a couple more questions…

Didn’t the problems with SkyNet begin when it became self-aware? 🤯

Share Button