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Given the rapid rise of veganism we’ve been seeing lately, which by some accounts has increased by a factor of 10 or more in recent years (at least in the USA), it seems clear that this explosive growth is going to continue for a while.
It stands to reason that many people who aren’t vegan today eventually will go vegan, perhaps sometime within the next few years.
I’ve had a lot of experience seeing people transition from non-vegan to vegan, including hundreds who’ve emailed or talked to me about this before, during, and/or after their transitions.
I’ve also seen people who’ve been familiar with veganism for years but show no signs of transitioning. This got me curious to ponder more deeply about the differences.
Based on this experience, I’ll share some observations about common differences between future vegans and non-vegans. Technically both groups are non-vegan today, but I use the “future vegan” label to distinguish those who show the telltale signs of someone who’s on their way to eventually becoming vegan.
These are generalizations and predictions based on personal observation, so take them on that basis. You could also read this article to see if you recognize any of the transitional signs within yourself, and then consider whether you think those could be suggesting a personal transition coming up for you.
Moreover, while this article is just about veganism, I think you could also generalize some of these ideas even more and ponder them as advance indicators of other types of transitions, such as signs that someone may be heading for a career or relationship transition.
So here we go…
Future vegans engage with the world. They actively look around and observe. They seek information and want to learn new truths, including truths that may upset them. They’re willing to have their realities upended now and then. Veganism sparks their curiosity, so even if they feel resistant at first, they’re also compelled to learn more about it.
Non-vegans don’t engage as much with the world, preferring to stick to the familiar. They don’t read as much about unfamiliar topics. When they spot an alternative lifestyle such veganism, they don’t feel as curious to learn about it. They figure that if it’s unfamiliar, it’s probably not worth learning about.
Future vegans frequently attract other vegans and vegetarians into their lives, often without deliberately trying to do so. Sometimes it appears that vegans recognize them as kindred spirits, while other times the future vegans appear to be subconsciously taking action that will predictably inject themselves into social spheres where vegans are more abundant, as if the future vegans are courting the influence.
Non-vegans tend not to experience this attraction effect. From their perspective vegans and non-vegans tend to keep to themselves most of the time. If there’s a rise of veganism in the world, they don’t see it happening as much.
One especially common sign of a future vegan is how much they like to debate and argue with vegans. It’s part of the process of working through their objections and resistance to going through the transition for themselves. To get good at debating this topic, they also have to learn more and more about veganism, which invites them deeper into the rabbit hole and eventually plays a role in convincing them to go for it.
Non-vegans generally don’t care to debate about veganism, and they aren’t very good at it anyway due to lacking the knowledge, experience, and curiosity to fully participate. If they do engage, you’ll usually find them being emotionally dismissive, raising one or two easily countered objections and then opting out, or they’ll just quote the Bible and leave it at that. They don’t really see the point in debating when their minds are already made up. Some will object to the whole notion of a debate happening at all while they’re around.
Future vegans tend to dabble and dance with aspects of veganism or vegetarianism, often for years, before transitioning. Many will buy appliances that are much loved in the vegan community, such as a Vita-Mix. Some will apologetically say they like to eat “rabbit food” now and then, or they may feel increasingly drawn to plant foods like salads and green smoothies. They may go to vegan restaurants or a vegan event, or they’ll buy a vegan cookbook and try out some recipes. Some will catch themselves watching documentaries about factory farming. There are telltale signs of progressive investment. In fact, the non-vegans in their lives will often recognize these leanings (and often try to dissuade the future vegan) before the future vegan consciously recognizes where they’re heading.
Non-vegans tend not to experiment or lean in this direction. They don’t even want to try it or test it. It’s not something they perceive as worthwhile or interesting, not even around the edges. It’s a complete non-starter for them.
Future ethical vegans value caring and regard compassion as a quality to be developed. They generally like the idea of becoming more compassionate and see it as a worthwhile direction of character growth. This eventually leads them to question how they’re contributing to the treatment of animals, and they start thinking about how this relationship could be improved. They may also begin to care more about the planet and question how their diet and lifestyle aligns with caring.
Non-vegans tend to have more static views of caring. It’s not a quality they desire to extend and further develop beyond a certain framework. They tend to have hard edges around their boxes of caring, frequently enforced by religious views. It’s pretty rare to see signs that they have any interest in becoming more caring or compassionate towards animals, let alone towards human beings from different cultures.
Future vegans value their ability to think and choose for themselves. They prefer to make their own choices regardless of what other people may think, sometimes going with the grain of society and sometimes going against it. Making a choice to go vegan often requires a strong independent will that puts following one’s own intellect above obedience to others’ demands or expectations.
Non-vegans tend to be more conformist and obedient to the will of others. They’re more deferential to authority. Many have been conditioned against independent thought, especially with heavy religious conditioning. They fall back on rules and frames taught by others about the role of animals, such as by repeating the story that animals were created to serve humans. They regard their loyalty to the old rules and stories as being more important than independent choice.
Going vegan requires courage. This isn’t so much about bravery though. It has more to do with heart-alignment and following one’s deeper feelings, even when the road ahead isn’t clear. When someone demonstrates courage in other areas of life, such as by summoning the courage to leave a misaligned job or relationship to pursue something better, that’s a good indicator that the person may be inclined to eventually use such courage to explore veganism as well.
Non-vegans tend to be more risk averse and conservative, preferring to maintain the status quo instead of exploring the unknown to seek significant gains. Their fears, worries, and concerns speak to them more viscerally than the voice of courage.
Future vegans are interested in growth, and they understand that growth is about creating improvement, not about achieving perfection. Veganism isn’t a perfect diet or lifestyle, but it is a significant improvement for many people and certainly for animals and the environment, and this positive step forward is good enough for future vegans to regard the transition as worth pursuing. Future vegans eventually recognize that progressing to the problems of veganism is a graduation of sorts from the problems of being non-vegan.
Non-vegans tend to be more static and absolutist in their thinking. All they need is to identify one potential flaw or objection (usually a heavily debunked one) to dismiss veganism outright, even as their current lifestyle has many more flaws. They rationalize that getting enough of X, Y, and Z nutrients as a vegan would somehow be a dealbreaker problem while overlooking more severe problems linked to their lifestyle, such as high rates of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. A key pattern is that non-vegans tend to look for reasons not to change while future vegans frequently look for reasons to change.
Future vegans value internal alignment in their thoughts, feelings, and mental models of the world. They dislike cognitive dissonance and want to resolve certain questions. They acknowledge that treating animals as products is not a satisfying solution, and they seek better answers to the questions of how to eat and live.
Non-vegans are more tolerant of cognitive dissonance. They can handle frames that are too misaligned for a future vegan to hold. Alignment is not such a big deal to non-vegans because they value other aspects of life more highly, such as obedience to authority.
Many future vegans reach the point where going vegan starts to feel inevitable. They’ve already decided that they’ll eventually do it. They’re just figuring out how to make it practical for them. For some people there’s a lot to adjust in terms of diet, lifestyle, and social life, and they want extra time to come to terms with this.
Non-vegans of course never reach this point of inevitability. They’re more likely to see it as inevitable that humans dominate animals, which also leads to other inevitable conclusions like humans dominating other humans. They’re more likely to frame diet and lifestyle as being chosen for them rather than something they get to choose.
* * *
There are other factors too, so please don’t consider this an exhaustive list, but the ones I included here are some of the main ones that pop out. It’s really the combined weight of multiple factors that matters. Many future vegans will only show a few telltale signs before they transition, but they’ll be important indicators of investment.
If you recognize some of the future vegan patterns within yourself, you might enjoy reading the very thorough article called How to Be Vegan, which I wrote in 2015. It’s not about how to transition per se. It’s about what it’s actually like to be a long-term vegan, and it’s rich in details that you aren’t likely to find elsewhere. It will inform you about lifestyle aspects you may not have even thought about yet. It’s also the longest article I’ve ever written, long enough that if you actually read the whole thing, that’s another hint and a half that you’re heading for a transition.
I’m currently in my 24th consecutive year of being vegan. Before I transitioned in January 1997, I have to admit that I also showed many (but not all) of the telltale signs that I was heading in this direction, such as buying a Vita-Mix about two years prior and testing recipes from some vegan cookbooks. I also had the inevitability sign, knowing that I was eventually going to transition many months before I finally did it. It was only a matter of when.
By being vegan for as long as I have (and vegetarian a few years before that), about 5000 fewer animals were harmed and killed by my lifestyle.
But since I blogged about this aspect of my lifestyle (including writing my longest article ever, called How to Be Vegan), I’ve since influenced hundreds (if not thousands) more people to try vegetarianism or veganism for months or years or to adopt such a lifestyle permanently. So the combined impact of going vegan and publicly sharing what I learned is likely beyond 1,000,000 animals by now. That’s based mainly on feedback people have shared with me over the years.
And then since many of those people I influenced have also influenced others in similar ways, some of them very actively, the total ripples are probably somewhere in the millions of animals… and still going.
Maybe this impact is a drop in the bucket relative to the 50 billion animals killed for food each year, but one drop can still create ripples. And of course we could identify more ripples such as the resource savings like water and electricity, the reduction in emissions, etc.
When we create a change for personal reasons, we often don’t see how far the ripples of personal change will extend beyond ourselves.
And similarly, when we don’t change ourselves, we don’t get to see the positive ripples that could have come into existence, if only we’d taken a few more steps.
What’s most personally meaningful to me about this aspect of my lifestyle, however, is the internal shift it created within me and some other ripples created by that shift.
What many people don’t realize is that if I hadn’t gone vegan more than 2 decades ago, I wouldn’t have started my personal development blog 15 years ago. I wouldn’t have written articles in an effort to be helpful. I wouldn’t have cared enough to do something like that. Doing this kind of work takes way more heart energy than I used to have. The voice of caring just wasn’t loud enough or strong enough to motivate this much action or this long of a commitment.
My sense of caring about people is inextricably linked to caring about animals. What may seem counter-intuitive though is that I also care more about non-vegans than I used to. You might think that the opposite would be true. Wouldn’t going vegan make me feel more disconnected from non-vegans? After all, such people hurt animals, which I care about.
As a vegan I feel more emotional pain than I use to. But I also feel more love and connection than I used to. They come as a package deal.
When someone hurts animals, for food or otherwise, I feel the pain of that. It stings my heart. When I’m at my best, I don’t try to numb myself to such feelings. I allow them to have their say. I see those feelings as important. They remind me that I care. I remember what it was like not to care about such things and to feel no sting at all, and I have no desire to return to such an existence. I like having stronger feelings of caring and connection, and I accept that a heightened sensitivity to violence is part of that.
Caring is difficult but also beautiful. Truth be told, seeing ripples that reduce the number of animals harmed and killed doesn’t do much for me motivationally. Maybe it’s nice karmically, but I feel the most alignment juice from the heightened sense of caring.
Going vegan many years ago seems to have created some kind of permanent shift in my vibe that I can’t undo – and wouldn’t want to undo. One of the scariest things to me in life would be to return to a state of emotional numbness and to forget what it feels like to care a lot.
Even though it can be hard, I like being sensitive to the pain of other beings. I like that I can sense the vibes of suffering, like a radio transmission that never turns off. Those signals are so much louder and clearer than they once were. There is a lot of suffering in the world, and a lot more of it is coming from animals than humans. As much as we can point to human suffering, we’d need to hurt and kill 7x the planet’s human population every year just to match what animals are going through. And we’d have to achieve that population through a massive increase in rape to match the forced reproduction those animals endure.
If you’re sensitive to vibes, turn your heart towards human suffering and listen for a while. Then turn your heart towards animal suffering, and notice how that signal sounds. When I do this, I certainly feel some sorrow on the human side. The animal side is overwhelmingly sad though; I can’t listen to it for more than 30 seconds without crying.
It may sound odd to label this sensitivity as beautiful, but somehow it just seems accurate. Because of our ears, we may be disturbed by unpleasant noise now and then, but isn’t it worth the price if it means we can hear beautiful music and communicate with each other?
So many of my articles were written from a desire to be helpful, often because I picked up a signal of human sadness, struggle, stuckness, or confusion – or even curiosity or wonder. Somehow those signals are just so loud and clear most of the time. All I have to do is listen, and the writing and speaking takes care of itself. When the heart is aligned, the brain does what it’s supposed to do.
So many issues that I struggled with in the past just seemed to resolve themselves when I listened more with my heart instead of always trying to plan, strategize, and force things with my head. The voice of caring provides such a beautiful form of guidance. So much clarity flows from the simplicity of caring.
When I think back to my pre-vegan days, it feels like a time of darkness. I just had no idea how emotionally numb I was back then… and how vibrationally unaware and insensitive I was. I couldn’t even fathom what more was eventually going to be possible. What I now label as numbness or darkness, back then I would have simply called feeling normal or neutral. I had no idea how quiet my “normal” world was back then.
Today what I consider normal is to feel an abundance of vibrational and emotional signals. These signals are always flowing, circulating, and broadcasting. People want help. Animals want even more help.
One of the strongest human signals I hear these days is a desire to feel connected. I sense so much loneliness, aloneness, and disconnection. Many people have become so numb and desensitized, yet they still yearn for something more – something they can’t even define. Some part of them wants to be embraced by love, connection, healing, understanding, acceptance, appreciation, and acknowledgement. Even though the world is more connected than ever tech-wise, today’s outlets are letting people down on the emotional side. It’s ironic that the more connected we become, the less connected many people feel.
I think part of the solution is to listen more to pain… not just your own pain but the pain signals that are constantly being broadcast. Pain signals are usually louder than pleasure, joy, and delight. Happiness purrs while pain screams.
If you want to hear the loudest pain signals on earth, go within, tune into your heart, and then listen with your heart to the signals being broadcast by animals right now. Listen to the 23 billion chickens on the planet right now… or the 1 billion cows… or the 780 million pigs. Listen to the ones that are slated for your consumption if you feel entitled to some of their bodies. Can you hear what they’re broadcasting? What do you sense when you tune in and just listen for a while?
Sensitivity to pain is also sensitivity to so much more – love, beauty, inspiration, creativity, fun, and so many other frequencies that make this life precious and worthwhile.
It’s easy to find conscious people with a variety of dietary lifestyles, vegan or non-vegan alike. But where I tend to see mostly agreement is in terms of how animals are currently being treated by humans. It’s hard to find people who consciously agree with our current practices.
If you consciously choose to continue participating in the treatment of animals as products, I suggest that you stay tuned into their pain. If you’re going to continue opting in, I think it’s wiser and more beneficial to you to feel the hurt and the pain as opposed to numbing yourself. Feel the ripples you’re supporting. Invite and accept the future pain of the thousands of animals who have yet to be hurt and killed from your actions. Feel the ongoing rapes and forced pregnancies to spawn these animals. Don’t run from this reality. Don’t tune out from it. Don’t try to pretend that this pain isn’t real. These are loud signals. Listen to them and tune in.
Listen whenever you purchase animal products. Listen while you cook. Listen with every bite. Let these signals have their say. Let them speak to you honestly and directly. Hear the screams again and again and again.
And each day, choose consciously what you’ll eat and how you’ll live.
I know… it takes courage to do this. It’s a growth experience, regardless of where you land afterwards.
If you can listen to the screams each time and still maintain your current lifestyle, then great – you’re aligned. If you can listen to the screams and feel compelled to change your lifestyle, also great… you can create the alignment you desire. But if you can only maintain your lifestyle by tuning out or trying to numb yourself to the reality and the ripples, that’s a glaring misalignment to address, wouldn’t you say? If you’re going to participate in the flow of hurting, raping, and killing animals, then do so consciously. Don’t go dark or numb just because you dislike the screams. If you’re okay with contributing to ripples of suffering, them the screams should serve as a palatable sauce that makes your meals richer and more meaningful. This can be your way of honoring the thousands of animals who sacrifice their lives for you. Don’t discount or diminish their pain. Appreciate what they’ve done for you because of the high price they repeatedly pay to appear on your plate.
If you’re going to contribute to the screams, then appreciate the screams. If an animal had to give its life or its milk or eggs to please your palate, don’t you think those animals deserve some appreciation at the very the least? When you tune into the screams, beam back your best vibrational thank you.
If you consciously choose to prey on the weak, appreciate the weakness that empowers you to do so. Consciously own the part of you that feels aligned with thoroughly dominating other living beings.
If you can do that, you need never be fearful of vegans. You can stand firm and simply own what you’ve decided is right for you. You ought to be able to make statements such as these:
If such statements feel misaligned to you and you can’t see yourself embracing such an attitude, you’ve got some realignment work to do. And of course if you can embrace such attitudes, they’ll create similar ripples throughout your human relationships as well.
In short, if you’re going to cause pain, it’s important to love the pain you’re causing. Consciously acknowledge, accept, and embrace the pain as an honest and authentic part of your lifestyle. That pain is real. That pain happens every day. Stay aligned with the truth.
Generating pain is a normal and routine part of the package of treating animals as products. If you think it’s okay to treat animals as products, then get yourself aligned with contributing to ongoing ripples of pain. And listen to the screams since that’s part of your truth.
If you don’t listen to the screams of the world, you won’t be sensitive to the real depths of joy and connection either.
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Obviously you’ve been through a lot of character sculpting already. You started as a baby, and you’ve grown into the person you are today. But much of that sculpting process was done to you, such as by your family upbringing, the culture you were raised in, and the education you received. Up to a certain point, you were sculpted by the world.
How 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.
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?
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).
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.
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.
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?
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.
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