Tag Archives: Abundance

The Point of No Return

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In Act 1 of a story with a 3-act structure, the protagonist often reaches the point of no return. Their old world crumbles, and they stumble forward into a new world, often reactively at first. There is no going back to the old world.

In a novel or movie, there may be multiple progressive points of no return, each creating a deeper level of commitment and increasing the protagonist’s risk as well.

Once Neo takes the red pill in The Matrix, he can’t go back to his old life. The old reality has ended, and now his world is permanently changed.

Once Harry Potter learns that he’s a wizard, his world is never be the same again. He must continue on to Hogwarts. Even when he goes home afterwards, it’s not longer the old status quo.

When it comes to personal transformations, we can make progress faster by deliberately aligning ourselves with certain plot beats that are guaranteed to advance the story. One of those beats is the classic point of no return.

Many people get their stories stuck in Act 1 because they just think about the end goal – if they even have a clear one at all – and they never reach a point of no return that moves their story forward.

When you keep your options open and allow yourself to retain access to your Act 1 world, you remain stuck in Act 1. That’s what Act 1 characters do. They resist the call to adventure, to risk, and to change. They are not committed to change, so real change doesn’t occur.

Are you currently living as an Act 1 character in your story?

Suppose someone wants a more independent lifestyle, but they keep showing up to work at a job they dislike. That’s Act 1. We’re seeing the initial status quo. To advance the story, something must perturb and eventually destroy that status quo. A catalyst is needed.

Are you waiting for a catalyst to magically appear in order to progress your story? Are you waiting for Hagrid or Trinity to show up? Are you waiting for your cell phone to cough up a hologram of Princess Leia? These types of events happen in movies, but in real life you may end up waiting a very long time, perhaps years or even decades.

Are you waiting passively for a catalyst, or are you actively looking for one? Better yet, when you need a catalyst, you can create your own. Why wait?

If you want to advance your story, a good first step is to focus on graduating from Act 1, so you can progress to Act 2. Work on reaching your point of no return. Your old world must die, and you must come to accept the obviousness of that. As long as you still think you can keep your old world humming along safely, you’re still thinking like an Act 1 character, and you aren’t ready for Act 2.

In your personal Act 1, realize that your dead-end job, your dead-end relationship, or your dead-end health habits must come to an end. You cannot keep living in Act 1 unless you want your life story to remain perpetually stuck.

With any powerful personal goal, focus first on raising your commitment level. Make it inevitable that you’ll at least get moving in that direction. A good place to begin is to accept that your old world must collapse. You’re going to have to leave it behind.

In order to do this, you must lean your character towards growth, mystery, and risk. Yes, that will probably seem scary at first. Acts 2 and 3 are way more risky and dangerous than Act 1. Act 1 is cozy and safe – and also boring if it goes on too long.

In a typical 100-minute movie, Act 1 is around 25 minutes – just the first 25%. If you remain stuck in Act 1, you’re leaving most of the value of your life untapped and unlived.

This takes courage of course. What also helps is knowing how awful it will be if you grow old and die while your character is still in Act 1 of your story. If you really want to live, you’ll go through multiple story arcs during your lifetime, and these story arcs can overlap. So sometimes you’ll be in Act 1 of one part of your story while you’re in Act 3 of another.

Do you already have regrets about how much time you’ve spent stuck in Act 1? If so, work on progressing to Act 2 by creating the death of your old world. Engineer your own point of no return, where change becomes inevitable. Demand more courage from yourself. Don’t wait for a catalyst to appear. Reading this can be enough of a catalyst if you want it to be. You’re fully capable of making a real decision to change. That starts with realizing that you’re finally done with Act 1.

One of my personal story arcs that spanned many years was a progression from financial scarcity to abundance. My transition from Act 1 to Act 2 happened in 1999. The decision wasn’t the surface idea to stop being broke financially. It was a decision to stop pretending that financial scarcity could stop me from having a fun, happy, and rewarding life. I resolved to stop stressing over money and to start having way more fun in life. I stopped giving my power away to some number in a computer database. That was the real decision that progressed me to Act 2. It was a decision to change how I related to life and money.

The point of no return is really a decision. It’s when you decide to progress your story, and you also decide that there’s no going back. The dead-end job is done. The dead-end relationship is over. The dead-end health habits are finished. The dead-end relationship with money must die.

Other people will see your outer journey, but these decisions have more to do with your inner journey. You don’t just decide to leave your job for surface reasons. You decide that you’re no longer going to be the timid and needy person who will show up for a job that isn’t right for you. You’re not going to keep being the coward who will continue taking orders from a misguided boss. You’re not going to be the drone who works for a company for misaligned values. It’s time to construct a new identity that fits who you’ve ready to become.

A real decision is harder than action. A real decision progresses you into Act 2 of your story. You’ll know when you’ve made the decision because you’ll feel this deep acceptance – and often even some sorrow – that Act 1 is finally over and done with.

Don’t wait for an external catalyst to get your story moving forward. Invite or create whatever catalyst you need to progress your story. Don’t keep living as an Act 1 character when you’re ready for Act 2.

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Why You Should Make a Video in Your Bathrobe

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I love mental and emotional resistance training because it has done so much for me over the years. It’s a fabulous way to think about skill-building when you’re diving into new territory, especially when you feel anxious, uncomfortable, or off balance.

Consider learning how to record and publish videos online, for instance.

So much of this is about how you model the experience in your mind.

A video can be a performance. It can be a conversation. It can be a form of play. It can be a gift. You can frame the experience however you like, but you won’t really feel free to choose your framing until you crush the automatic frames foisted on you by society, like the performance framing.

A simple way to break the automatic frames and discover greater freedom is to notice what you’re resisting about an experience and deliberately do those very things with the intention of losing your fear and resistance.

So don’t fuss over trying to provide value when you begin. Focus instead on shedding your fear, anxiety, and discomfort with the medium. The value will come through more strongly as you do that.

Suppose you want to get comfortable with making online videos. For many people that can feel very awkward and uncomfortable when you first start out.

Even after years of practice, some people still feel awkward and uncomfortable – sometimes even more than when they started. Partly that’s because they didn’t deliberately chase down the resistance. They mostly tiptoed around it, so the resistance remains. Sometimes the resistance even grows as you gain experience.

Consider this type of goal:

Make and publish 50 videos.

That’s an okay goal to gain some experience, but it’s not the same as deliberate practice. You can make hundreds of videos and not practice in the direction of your true resistance. You can still end up trapped into being a bit of a perfectionist, not feeling truly free. You may find that the conditions have to be just right before you’re able to hit the record button. You may procrastinate a lot too.

Consider this way of framing an initial goal instead:

Explore and discover how to make videos anytime, anywhere, under any conditions, on a variety of topics, off the cuff with ease and lightness – without feeling any fear or anxiety.

So the goal isn’t just to gain experience with making videos. The goal is to crush fear, so you become free. Then you can fully express yourself through that medium.

Once you’ve framed your goal in terms of crushing fear and resistance, you can break it down into practical subgoals like these, which immediately suggest action steps you can take:

  • Make a video when you don’t feel like making a video.
  • Make videos in lots of different locations, including some locations that are far from ideal.
  • Make some videos where you feel ugly or unattractive, like when you haven’t showered and your hair doesn’t look right.
  • Make some videos with bad lighting.
  • Make some videos where the audio isn’t as good as it could be.
  • Make some videos while walking with a selfie stick.
  • Make some videos out in public around other people.
  • Make videos in one take, and publish them with no cuts or editing.
  • Make some videos with no pre-set topic or mental script, and speak entirely off the cuff.
  • Make a video in your bathrobe or pajamas.
  • Publish a video that you really wanted to redo because it didn’t turn out well.
  • Make some videos on controversial topics that will surely invite criticism.
  • Share something about yourself in a video that you’ve never shared before and that makes you cringe to share it.
  • Make videos when you’re hungry, tired, sleepy, etc.
  • Make videos when you feel nervous or anxious.
  • Make videos with other people.
  • Make a video when you catch yourself making a justifiable excuse not to make a video.
  • Make videos when you feel like an impostor and have zero value to give.

Whatever makes you feel self-conscious, do exactly that.

Whatever makes you feel like hiding, lean into expressing yourself.

Remember that this is just a training phase. You don’t have to live this way all the time. Just do it while you’re deliberately training through the resistance. You can even split that into multiple phases with breaks in between.

Look for the resistance in yourself, and then resolve to face it. Brainstorm a list like the one above of all the angles that make you cringe a bit. That becomes your to-do list.

It’s not just a matter of checking each item off your list once. Do them once if that’s all you need. Or do them repeatedly. But do them until you realize that it’s not a big deal to do more of them. You can feel that the resistance is either gone now, or at least it’s low enough not to stand in your way anymore.

Maybe you only need to record and publish one video in your PJs to realize that it’s not a big deal to do more videos like that. Or maybe you still feel so self-conscious after the first one that you realize that you have to do more videos like that, maybe the next one in your bathrobe and slippers, to feel comfortable being so casual on video.

You know you need to do more when you feel fear, anxiety, or worry, suggesting that the idea still appears stressful to you. You don’t need to do more when you feel bored over an idea because there is no meaningful stress anymore. What you once feared may eventually feel boring, as it should because the stress was created by a false framing anyway.

Making a video in your PJs isn’t actually stressful – it’s actually a pretty boring goal and a low bar to clear. So once you’ve cleared that bar, and it would seem boring to continue doing more in that direction, turn your attention back towards more fear-busting. Where is the resistance now?

Claw your way out of the pit of fear one step at a time. It’s a gradual process. Keep building on what you’ve done. Keep leaning into the fear wherever you find it.

This is a form of resistance training. When you train up by facing the resistance, you get stronger, and the resistance seems lighter.

Another benefit is that you build up a collection of reference experiences that you can lean on for the rest of your life. You’ll always know that you can make a video in your pajamas. You’ll always know that you can still record and publish when the conditions are far from ideal.

I know that I can make a video in my bathrobe. I can make a video when I haven’t shaved for many days, in my exercise clothes, with salty skin after a sweaty workout. I can make a video when I’m really not sure what to say or if I’m even being coherent enough. I deliberately courted those experiences a few years ago, so I could feel comfortable and be fully myself through that medium. Now it’s been years since I’ve gone more than a few weeks without being recorded on camera somewhere – CGC coaching calls, interviews, YouTube videos, etc. Most weeks I’m recorded on video at least once or twice. So it’s really useful to feel comfortable on camera without being perfectionist about it. Just show up and go.

When you do this in one medium, you can stretch it to others too. One of my best stretch goals was to do a three-day workshop with no plan, no prepared content, and no pre-chosen topic. Just do all three days off the cuff with the flow of inspiration and audience suggestion all the way through. And most importantly, do it with no fear or nervousness – just playfulness, fun, connection, curiosity, etc. It was a beautiful experience, both for myself and the attendees. It helped me reframe public speaking even more than I already had, allowing me to see it as a rich and playful form of co-creation.

What medium of expression would you love to really pwn? (Not a typo, look up pwn if you don’t know the word. It’s in modern dictionaries now.)

Gaining experience alone won’t necessarily get you there. It’s all too easy to keep dodging the scariest parts. Then you might become a control freak who can only express yourself under narrow conditions, and when something throws you off balance, you’re back to fear and anxiety again.

On the other side of your fear is freedom and expansion. You know this. Now you must summon the will to act on that knowing, or you’ll never gain access to those gifts. If you commit to such a process, you can gain access to a new medium of expression that you’ll cherish – and be able to leverage – for the rest of your life. And you can do this repeatedly with a variety of expressive forms. You can be a true multimodal creator then.

When I was younger, I was afraid of many forms of expression that involved speaking off the cuff around other people, other than a small group of close friends. So much opened up when I finally decided that this was no way to live the rest of my life, and I resolved to conquer these fears step by step. You may look far down the road and assume there’s no way that you can reach such distant goals. Don’t worry so much about the distant goals unless they really inspire you. Just focus on the immediate steps you can take right now, like sending me a link to your next YouTube video that you recorded in your bathrobe. 😉

You might figure that you’re doing people a disservice by recording and publishing some material that isn’t your best, but there’s value in that too. You’re encouraging other people not to hesitate so much and wallow in perfectionism. You teach people that it’s okay to just go. You can even weave that lesson into the video. My bathrobe video is about overcoming perfectionism, for instance.

You also never know where your self-expression experiments will lead. During his youth Stephen King submitted a short story to a magazine, and his story was firmly rejected. Years later after King became famous, the guy who’d received that story went up to King and asked him to please autograph the original copy, which the guy had kept all those years as part of a massive collection of Hollywood memorabilia. What may just be a small stepping stone today could have a totally different meaning a decade or two from now.

You’re not the true judge of the value you provide. Other people will receive value in ways you cannot predict. The crappiest video imaginable can still provide plenty of value to people in ways you wouldn’t expect. Let others decide if they’ll watch past the first few seconds. Don’t deprive them of the opportunity to soak up some of your light.

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Universal Timing Alignment

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I’ve noticed that when I get an idea for a big new project, the timing often doesn’t feel good right away. It’s as if the idea wants to get my attention, so I can start thinking about it, but it also needs time to incubate.

If I try to force the idea forward faster, it’s like pushing through molasses. It takes lots of discipline, and I have to forcefully re-engage with the task again and again. The inspiration to move it forward isn’t present. These projects don’t succeed. If they ever get completed, the results are disappointing.

On the other hand, if I conclude that the idea isn’t right for me because the inspiration to take action isn’t there yet, that could kill the idea completely. I may never get around to doing it if I force the “now or never” attitude.

There’s an empowering alternative approach, which is to say yes to the idea and then to invite the alignment that can move it forward powerfully without having to force it. You can say yes to the idea and invite the inspiration to act. Then you wait.

I think of this as aligning with truth first, then love, and then power. I often see the appeal of an idea – the truth aspect – first. Then I need time to dance with the idea for a while. I have to play with it and explore different permutations of it. I need to discover what it wants to become and how I can bring it to expression. This phase of aligning with love for the project could take months, sometimes years. It’s very personal too – I must discover what the project means to me and why I’d want to do it. So this phase is really an exploration of deeper meaning.

This meaning doesn’t have to be so grandiose. Often it’s a very simple framing. Where’s the fun? Where’s the play? Where’s the growth? Why would I want to invest weeks or months of my life in this? What’s the point?

The answer is never money, by the way. If that’s the main reason for doing a project, the idea is lifeless.

The real key to discovering what a project means to me is exploring how it will affect my relationship with reality. Once I see the invitation to explore a fresh and expansive way of relating to reality, the idea starts generating a lot of its own energy. It becomes a power source. I feel waves of motivation and invitation drawing me forward, almost irresistibly so. That’s when I can fully enter the power phase, and I know it’s time to move forward strongly. The power isn’t really mine though. I don’t have to push forward with lots of discipline and force. It’s like surfing waves that are being generated. I just have to align with the waves and catch them, and their energy pulls me forward.

At this point it’s actually harder not to take action. It’s like seeing a delicious meal that’s right in front of you when you’re hungry. It would take more discipline not to take a bite. It’s easier to act when the motivation is there.

What’s the difference between an idea that dies and one that enters this power phase? I’d say the key is that I have to say a true yes to it. I have to commit myself. I don’t have to commit to the exact timing. I just have to get clear that sooner or later, I’m really going to do it. I decide that it will happen, not merely that it could happen.

Then I invite the universe to signal when it’s ready, as if it needs time to put all the pieces in place or to write the appropriate subroutines to simulate its parts of the project.

Sometimes I think of the idea as an energy bubble that hangs out in some subspace of reality for a while, and when enough other people are ready for this idea to be birthed, we all collectively combine our energies to make it happen. Even if it seems objectively like I’m doing most of the work on a project, it often feels like there’s a collective intention driving it forward.

This does require trust. It requires patience. It requires not settling for projects that aren’t very motivating. It requires the willingness to embrace a co-creative relationship with reality.

One reason I’ve learned to trust this process is that it leads to a really nice life that I appreciate and enjoy. I don’t have to work, work, work all the time. When I work in alignment with universal timing, it’s so efficient and flowing that it doesn’t feel like work much of the time. It’s more like a feeling of creative juiciness. The results of this approach are abundant, so there’s no need to scramble or hustle throughout the whole year.

When I have some downtime between these kinds of projects, I enjoy that too. I work on smaller tasks and projects. I make upgrades to my life and lifestyle. I enjoy time with Rachelle. I go through lots of books and courses. I do personal growth experiments. I ponder ideas, journal a lot, and develop new insights. I practice. I prepare. I write and share. And I live with the anticipation that another big wave of creative energy is coming up, and I know that when the timing is right, I’ll catch that wave and ride it.

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Curiosity Goals

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Maybe you have some goals for accomplishments you’d like to experience and enjoy. That’s great. Just be aware that you can also set goals for outcomes and experiences that you don’t even know if you’ll like.

One of my current goals is to be able to walk 80 steps at a normal walking pace while comfortably holding my breath. That’s after exhaling and with only relaxed and shallow nose-breathing beforehand, not while holding in a deep breath. I started working on this goal last week, and currently I’m up to 25 steps.

What will I gain by achieving this goal? I don’t know. I’m simply curious what might be different when I’m able to do that. Maybe there will be some interesting side effects like better focus and concentration. I can’t actually predict what difference it will make. After reading The Oxygen Advantage, I have some ideas regarding potential benefits, but I won’t really know if there are any meaningful benefits till I experience them.

I’m not pursuing this goal for known and clear benefits. I’m exploring it for curiosity’s sake. I like giving myself new experiences to see how they affect me.

Same goes for blogging every day this year. That isn’t a goal with clear and obvious benefits. I’d like to know what it’s like to blog every day for a year. Technically I started on December 24, 2019, so today is my 297th day of daily blogging. After publishing this post, I have 77 days left to go in the year. I wanted to know how this commitment would affect me, and now I have a pretty good idea. I doubt I’ll discover anything new in the next 77 days that I haven’t already learned in the last 297, but I suppose it’s possible. I’m almost 80% done now, so it’s a breeze to finish the year. Somehow I picked a good year for doing this challenge.

A goal is a decision to take action in a particular direction. There’s no requirement that you must like the outcome. There’s no requirement that you must be able to predict the results. You don’t have to be excited about the benefits. You can actually just be curious to see how pursuing the goal affects you. That is sufficient motivation to pursue and accomplish a variety of goals.

Have you ever been curious about what it would be like to start your own business? Me too. That’s one reason I did it. I wanted to know what it was like. That alone is a good enough reason to do it.

Ever been curious what it’s like to take a month off and go travel? That’s reason enough.

What about going skydiving? Why not see what it’s like to jump out of a plane? Gravity does most of the work.

Are you curious to learn a new musical instrument? Curiosity is enough reason to try it.

For many goals you won’t have a clear idea of the benefits in advance. You’re unique, so when you pursue a goal, you’ll do it differently than anyone else. Your results will be uniquely your own.

Curiosity is a great antidote for perfectionism. Curiosity is flexible and detached from neediness. Curiosity keeps us wondering about what’s possible. Curiosity encourages exploration in the face of uncertainty. Curiosity is a fabulous teacher and an incredible character-sculpting tool.

Other people (such as your parents) may want you to explain your reasons for pursuing a goal. If they won’t accept curiosity as a valid answer, tell them you’re doing it just to upset them. Or combine both – tell they you’re experimenting to see how your pursuit of the goal will disturb them.

If you’re curious about a goal or experience, let that be reason enough to explore it. You don’t have to be reckless. You can still make rational and intelligent choices regarding what to explore. But do accept that rational argument that you’ll learn more by doing than by standing on the sidelines.

Accept that your mind and your character are trained and developed by experience. Whenever you pursue a goal for curiosity’s sake, another reason you’re pursuing it is for character growth. Exploration creates expansion.

Do a quick review of your current goals. Which goals are curiosity-based rather than results-based? Would you like to consider adding at least one new goal purely because you’re curious about it? Give yourself permission to do that.

Some of my most cherished experiences arose from pondering: Hmmm… what would it do to me if I pursued that? I wonder…

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The Relationship Frame

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One interesting frame shared in the book The Courage to Be Disliked is: All problems are interpersonal relationship problems.

That isn’t necessarily a true statement, but you can think of it as a lens for viewing problems. Personally I think it’s a bit exaggerated as far as lenses go. I prefer a similar but more flexible one: All problems, challenges, and situations can be framed as relationships.

Not everything translates well to an interpersonal relationship, but you can translate any situation to some type of relationship. This can include your relationships with:

  • yourself
  • other people
  • reality
  • life
  • your work
  • money
  • skills
  • your body
  • and more

Moreover, when working on your goals and habits, it’s helpful to translate your goals and habits into growth experiences for one or more of your relationships with different parts of life. This helps goals feel more personal and meaningful, so they aren’t just the mental “stuck in your head” types of goals that don’t really get accomplished.

For example, I could frame my daily exercise as a discipline-based habit that I have to push myself to do each day, but that’s a lame approach that isn’t very sustainable. That mindset looks especially weak when viewed through the relationship lens. Who wants to maintain a habit if the relationship is based on force and struggle against some kind of resistance? That kind of relationship is headed for a breakup sooner or later.

Instead of pushing myself to exercise more or exercise harder, I focused on improving my relationship with exercise. I asked questions like these:

  • What would make this relationship better?
  • What could I do to increase the enjoyment of exercise, so I naturally want to do it without having to force myself?
  • Where is there friction in the relationship, and how can I reduce or eliminate that resistance?
  • How could I keep improving this relationship over time, so it keeps getting better year after year?

This approach worked nicely. I have a very positive relationship with exercise, and it’s improved even more this year. Here are some aspects of the relationship that I focused on improving:

  • Running different routes for variety and different levels of challenge, so it doesn’t feel too routine or stale
  • Continuing to develop new routes that I’ve never run before, so I feel a sense of abundance in having different routes to pick from
  • Tuning into my body and mind to decide which route to run based on what kind of experience I want (a run with more people, a more solitary run, a run where I’ll see the sunrise, a run where I can expect to see plenty of rabbits, a run with more parks, running near the baseball stadium, running along the western edge of the city, etc)
  • Listening to really good audiobooks while I run, on topics that appeal to me, including sometimes listening to audiobooks about running from runners who love to run
  • Enjoying the views while running through the hills that overlook the whole Vegas Valley
  • Investing in quality running shoes and testing different kinds of shoes to discover my personal favorites
  • Heading out before dawn and being greeted by the rising sun
  • Sometimes picking out planets like Venus or Jupiter when I look up at the dark sky while first starting out
  • Using an Apple Watch to track my progress as I go (time, distance, pacing, heart rate, etc) – and getting a new one each year, so I always have the latest version
  • Mostly running for the enjoyment of it but occasionally setting interesting goals for distance or speed
  • Feeling a sense of accomplishment for sometimes running to spots farther out than I’ve run to before
  • Waving or nodding to other runners and cyclists I pass along the way, which gives a little feeling of social connection with the people in the neighborhood (it’s encouraging to see people exercising)
  • Feeling good when I finish running and switch to a cool down walking pace
  • Enjoying the alone time, which feels more like being than doing
  • Reminding myself to feel grateful that my body can do this (seeing it as a beautiful gift, not to be taken for granted)

Lately I’ve been running 60-70 minutes most mornings. Interestingly it feels more motivating to run for an hour or more than it used to feel to run for 30-45 minutes. One reason is that as I increased the duration, I focused more on the relationship with running rather than the discipline or habit of running. Another reason could be that these longer runs do an even better job of rebalancing hormones and neurotransmitters, so I feel even happier.

Instead of pushing myself to run farther, which I’ve done many times before but which didn’t lead to sustainably longer runs, I sought to connect more deeply with the love and beauty of running. I focused on improving my relationship with running. I leaned towards the principle of love more than the principle of power here. This worked very nicely.

There are so many other ways to apply the relationship frame to create and maintain improvements in different areas of your life. Instead of pushing yourself to work harder or with more discipline, you can focus instead on improving your relationship with your work. Same goes for your relationships with any other kinds of tasks.

More than two decades ago, this type of framing helped me a lot with improving the flow of money through my life. Instead of trying to make more money in ways that were only semi-aligned, I worked on fixing my alignment problems with money. I invested in improving my personal relationship with money. That relationship was weak – I saw money as something annoying that I shouldn’t have to deal with. But I learned to appreciate its role in life and to enjoy earning and spending it. These days I think of money as fun and playful – it feels lighter and less stressful than it used to. Having a better relationship with money makes it easier to earn it, and it’s more fun to spend it as well.

Look at an area where you tend to struggle or have a hard time accomplishing your goals. What do you see when you use the relationship frame on that area? Is your relationship based on trying to force yourself to push through resistance? If so, how could you improve the relationship over time, so you naturally enjoy engaging with this area of life? This simple reframe can generate powerful insights that can radically transform your results.

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Declining Vibrational Mismatches

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Do you ever get invitations that are vibrationally (or emotionally) out of sync with what you’d like to experience?

Do you get invited to boring events when you’re in the mood for some excitement?

Do you get invited to tediously slow experiences when you’d prefer faster pacing?

Do you get invitations that feel obligatory when you find freedom and flexibility more appealing?

Do you get sucked into disempowering invitations (like a pity party or whinefest) when you’re shifting into empowerment mode?

Why does this happen? Why do you get invitations like this?

The answer is pretty simple: You haven’t seriously opted out of them. You haven’t educated people to stop sending you those invites. People are inviting you because you’re letting them invite you.

During my 20s I used to get plenty of misaligned invitations. People would invite me to events that seemed disempowering, obligatory, slow, boring, tedious, and blah. The problem was that I kept saying yes to them. Even begrudgingly I’d still agree to show up now and then. I’d endure the events. I’d tolerate the invites. I trained people to feel okay with continuing to invite me or to feel entitled to obligate me.

At some point I finally realized how foolish that was and that it was just going to be endless if I didn’t make some changes. If I was running this ridiculous pattern in my 20s, I’d still be doing it in my 30s, 40s, and beyond if I didn’t cut it loose. So I updated expectations, first for myself and then by communicating them to others. I opted out of those mismatched invitations.

I prepared myself for a negative response, figuring it would eventually blow over and then I’d be free. All I needed to do was to get my message across. I didn’t need to get into long-winded explanations about it afterwards. And I didn’t need to own other people’s reactions.

And guess what happened? At first people squawked a little bit. And then they stopped inviting me – no more invites to hours-long boredomfests, no more obligatory rituals, no more disempowerment galleries to attend.

How long did it take? Oh… five or ten minutes to write an email and click send. Maybe I did that more than once for different people and situations.

How long does it take to write something like this?

After giving it some thought, I realize that these kinds of invitations are a mismatch for me. So I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t send me more invites like this. I appreciate that you’re thinking of me and would like to spend time together. I just don’t feel aligned with engaging in these kinds of experiences. Hope you understand.

That’s a very basic version, so of course you can embellish with more details if you want.

When you opt out from misaligned invites, you can finally invest in doing what it takes to get yourself invited to aligned experiences. You’ll want something to replace that emptiness. You can seek out playful, fun, ambitious, purposeful, and growth-oriented invites – or whatever appeals to you.

Now it’s hard to remember getting the kinds of misaligned invites that used to be plentiful in my 20s. People just gave up – because I instructed them to give up. Even if they continued for a while, I had already moved on and wasn’t planning to show up, so sooner or later they were going to surrender to that fact. That’s the key – people will usually surrender when they can sense your certainty.

Which is better? To show up grudgingly to misaligned experiences, not being fully present and wishing you were somewhere else? Or to show up with gratitude, appreciation, excitement, and positive anticipation for an experience you’re eager to share with people? Which is more caring and compassionate? Which is more intelligent?

Which type of invitations are you currently getting? You know why you’re getting them. And you know what to do to change them if you want.

Go where your appreciation wants to go. Leave the misaligned invitations in the past, so your present and future can be rich in aligned ones.

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The Alien Mindset of a Fixed Income

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One really weird mindset I notice among certain readers looks something like this:

My wife and I are both teachers. Our combined salary is $___. And in about five years, we’ll be earning $___. So based on this, we’re able to afford ___, but we won’t be able to afford ___.

So the basic idea is that the couple’s income is fixed and predictable. It’s not really up to them. Their family income is largely determined by the system that they’re in.

Okay, this is an alien mindset for me. I’m impressed that people can hold this mindset and not have it fall apart on them.

Here’s what I actually hear within the statements above:

My wife and I choose to get jobs working within a system where we get paid fixed salaries with modest but predictable increases over time. We’re pretending that we don’t have other options for earning more income, so we can have the experience of a fixed income for a while to see what that’s like. And we’re also pretending that we can’t afford anything these two streams don’t directly cover, so we can see what it’s like to experience that form of scarcity as well.

Remember that this couple choose to engage with this system. Even while they’re engaging with it, they still have an enormous range of options available to them. Their income isn’t really fixed – they’ve simply chosen to have the experience of earning a fixed income. To maintain that situation, they have to deliberately ignore or dismiss other opportunities for income generation, which are everywhere.

How do they tune out all those other opportunities? How do they avoid the temptation to create other income streams on the side? That’s hard!

It must take a tremendous amount of discipline to hold themselves back and keep their income from going up. I mean… how do they avoid accidentally making money some other way?

What if one of them gets inspired by an income-generating idea, and they’re tempted to take action on it? How do they stop themselves?

What if they get seduced by some new item they want to buy, but it’s not in their budget? How do they avoid earning more money to cover the expense? How do they get themselves to pretend not to want it or to settle for less than what they want?

I’m really impressed with people who can deliberately cap their income, especially if they can keep this up for years. Most of the people I hang out with regularly are really bad at this. They’re always succumbing to the temptation to make extra money. If they tried to limit themselves to earning a teacher’s salary, I don’t think they could do it. They just don’t have the discipline or the resolve.

I tried having a job with a fixed salary myself, back when I was 21 years old. I didn’t even last a year… couldn’t do it! I have no idea how some people can manage to do this year after year – and make it look easy. Their discipline must be through the roof!

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How to Invite Emotional Consent

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In my previous post, I addressed the importance of emotional consent. In this post I’ll share how to ask for emotional consent when you want to have a heart-to-heart with someone.

It’s pretty straightforward in terms of the words. The intention behind it is what matters most.

You could start with a line like this:

  • I want to share my thoughts and feelings about ___.
  • Something’s really bothering me, and I’d like to discuss it with you.
  • I’m feeling stressed/worried/anxious/____.
  • I’m stuck on ____.
  • I’d love some help with ___.
  • I had a really difficult experience a while back.
  • There’s something I think you should know about me.

Then add something like this:

  • Is this a good time?
  • Can we have that kind of discussion?
  • Do you want to hear about it?
  • Is it okay if I tell you about it?
  • Are you in a good place to hear about this now?
  • When would be a good time to talk about this? (if it’s already a normal part of your relationship to have these discussions, so there’s at least some pre-consent for that)
  • I need to vent my feelings to someone… can you play that role for me?

And then if the other person consents willingly, you can have that kind of discussion.

It’s also important to let the person be free to withhold consent or to get clarification, so honor their choice if they follow up with something like this:

  • This isn’t a good time. How about ____?
  • I’m not up for that. Maybe you could discuss this with ____ instead?
  • How deep do you want to go?
  • Do you need a certain kind of response?
  • Are you wanting empathy and understanding, a solution to a problem, both, or something else?
  • Unfortunately I’m too tired/distracted to do that now, so I don’t think I can be a good listener at this time. I hope you understand. How about ____?
  • Do you sense this would be a 20-minute discussion or a 2-hour one?
  • If I’m not available, how would you handle this instead?
  • What’s your intention for such a conversation?

The words are just to give you some examples. It’s best to use your own words and match them to the situation and to how you feel.

What’s important here is that you invite the other person to enter freely into an emotional discussion or connection with you. Don’t demand it. Don’t assume that you’re entitled to it. Don’t try to make the other person wrong for declining. Give the person space to say yes or no without trying to box them in. Think abundance here, not scarcity, even if you’re feeling emotionally needy.

If you make emotional invitations with a hidden agenda or some attachment to how the other person responds, you’ll probably pick up some resistance when making such invites, especially in the person’s tone of voice or body language. People can often sense when you’re trying to manipulate them instead of honorably asking for their help.

Some people are really good at this. They respect that sharing emotional intimacy can be risky or draining, and they know it’s best if the other person can say yes genuinely and not feel baited or trapped.

Other people could definitely stand to improve in this area, especially by letting go of entitlement and attachment to outcomes.

Hearts connect best when they choose each other freely, not when one tries to manipulate or control the other.

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Do Nice Zombies Make Worthwhile Friends?

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Some people have asked me why I don’t engage with Trump supporters, try to understand them better, invite deep conversations with them, or something along those lines. I think it’s a valid question, and the answer is simple: I don’t see any real potential in such relationships. For me they all land somewhere on a scale that spans from dumb to dumber to dumbest.

It’s not the people that are the issue per se, but the behavior pattern of supporting Trump during this time is so rotten to the core that I don’t see anything redeeming there. There’s no hint of depth, value, or worthwhile discovery. To the extent that I’ve engaged with such people over the past few years, the result has been various degrees of being creeped out.

Some people have said, “But some of them are nice people.” I disagree. In order to frame such people as nice, I have to stretch the definition of nice way too far for it to work. At best I’ll end up with some version of “nice and dumb” or “a nice moron” or “a really nice pile of crap.” I can’t really think of anyone as nice once they’ve been Trumpified. The Trumpification of anyone trumps any niceness, rendering it far removed from anything nice.

Imagine the nicest person you know being bitten by a zombie and turned. Will you still regard them as nice while they try to eat your brain? Does the nice zombie label really work? No, all zombies are zombies. The closest they get to nice is when they’ve been rendered mostly harmless, such as by having their lower jaws removed, so they can’t bite you. It never really makes sense to see them as nice.

Really the closest I can get to labeling such people as nice is to go with mostly harmless, which does indeed apply pretty well to some. But that’s still a pretty crappy connection offer.

When an offer is so horrendously bad, I find it best to say a blanket no to it. Toss those cards in the muck, and let’s see the next hand.

Does this mean if I went earnestly digging for nuggets of goodness among Trump supporters that I wouldn’t find anything worthwhile at all? No, I’m not saying that. Maybe there is something decent in there, but there’s just such a huge mountain of excrement, falsehoods, and ignorance to dig through that a few diamond shards aren’t gonna cut it. The stench is too repulsive to engage with.

One reason I’ve leaned in this direction is that I explored other possibilities first, and nothing quite felt aligned till I thought, Hmmm… what would happen if I took the evil exit here and just declared the whole lot of them to be a stinky pile of excrement?

At heart I’m an explorer, and I’m willing to keep trying different approaches to life to see what works best for me.

Am I saying that you have to use my approach too? Not at all. I think you should find your own path here, and if your approach is different from mine, I celebrate that difference. Don’t clone my approach. Find your own path to alignment through this. But do keep asking if what you’re doing is working well for you, and if not, be willing to change your approach repeatedly till reality seems to affirm your choice.

I noticed that when I was more tolerant of Trump supporters, their presence in this reality kept bugging me. I kept thinking, Are millions of people really this dumb? Seriously, WTF…

And 30,000+ lies later, that attitude starts wearing thin.

It’s easier to deal with a pile of shit when you see it as just a pile of shit and not as a pile of shit that might have some gold or diamonds in it. It’s the feeling that maybe it’s worth digging through that stench that causes problems. Interestingly, this stems from a scarcity mentality, right?

Do you see that? Why deal with Trump supporters socially at all, even if you think they may have some redeeming qualities? Why deal with the smell? What you’re missing is that in a different social direction, there are way more gold and diamonds that aren’t covered in shit. You just need an abundance mindset to see them.

A Trump supporter isn’t going to be a good social match for me by any stretch of the imagination. The smell is always going to be an issue, and the gold and diamonds they may offer socially will never compensate for the smell. So as I see it, it’s a sensible response to just call this a “hell no!” all around.

Once I realized that engaging with Trump supporters had to be a hell no for me, it did feel a bit extreme at first, but I’ve since gotten used to it. And the more I’ve gotten used to it, the more a different direction of social abundance started opening up to me.

I’ve been seeing a gradual increase in positive results from this mindset, which is why I continue to double-down on it. By saying no to the stenchiest stench of the social realm, reality no longer has to simulate this kind of nonsense in my close-up presence, so it can devote more resources to expanding the aspects of life that resonate with me. Consequently, I’ve seen more opening and expansion in directions that feel aligned and intelligent.

It was like I said to reality: Stop wasting resources simulating the dreadfully dumb and stinky. Reassign those resources to more aligned connections, opportunities, and invitations – anything that smells good.

And that’s been working well indeed.

As a simple recent example, yesterday I just loved the livestreamed script reading of The Princess Bride, which was also a fundraiser for the Wisconsin Democratic Party (as I mentioned in yesterday’s post). That was a superb treat! There were more than 100,000 people on the call.

I think that’s the first time in my life I’ve made a political contribution, and I was happy to finally lose my political donation virginity. I love how this invite showed up in the form it did – a chance to engage in a fun way with my all-time favorite movie and many of its cast members. That was an easy yes.

It was great to see actors standing tall against the current Trumpian nonsense too. I felt a stronger sense of oneness from that, like we’re all in this together, pushing back against a zombie horde of 30,000 lies. It’s time to shift this reality in a more positive direction. It was really wonderful to see so many comments coming in from people who are similarly aligned with creating a positive future.

By saying a firm no to 100% pure crap and the people who are wallowing in it, I see beautiful doors opening in the part of reality that isn’t crap.

I felt tremendous respect and admiration for Cary Elwes for making the event happen – one actor stepping up to bring us together in this way.

Lately I’ve been experiencing a rising sense of hope and optimism. I’m feeling better and better about the direction this reality is going.

This is common when we step up our boundary management. Say a really bigger no to the misaligned and stop engaging with it. This doesn’t mean denying the existence of the misaligned. It means acknowledging: I see that you exist – and that you really are a pile of shit that doesn’t belong anywhere near me!

When you see a pile of crap on the sidewalk, do you feel inclined to talk to it and see if you might improve your relationship with it? Or is the sight and smell enough of a turnoff for you to simply call it as you see it and step around it, or shovel it off to the side, so no one else steps in it?

Now there is a nonzero chance that some crap contains gold or diamonds. Is that enough for you to go digging into it each time?

When I label the shit as shit, I needn’t give it as much attention, which frees my attention to focus on legitimate sources of social gold. Engaging with the real gold is fun and rewarding and way less stinky.

So my preferred approach to dealing with Trump supporters isn’t to engage with them – I have zero interest in subjecting myself to the vapid nonsense they spout. I prefer to marginalize the hell out of them. Squeeze them to the borders of my reality, so I barely notice them anymore. Send them back to the simulator to repurpose as something more useful, like fresh spatulas.

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The Trepidatious Concertgoer

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