Tag Archives: Abundance

Fragile Objections

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Suppose you’re sitting in a Toastmasters meeting where members are practicing their speaking skills. Suppose there are about 20 members in the room, which would be pretty typical for a Toastmasters club.

Now suppose you hear a fellow member give a speech that you find objectionable, and it bothers you to hear such words spoken within your club. The topic is permitted within the club though.

What do you do?

Do you stay quiet and keep your thoughts and feelings to yourself?

Do you voice your objections to the speaker privately?

Do you privately share your concerns with some other members about the speech or the speaker?

Do you stand up during the meeting and voice your objections in front of all the members, including the speaker?

Do you sign up to give a speech, so you can disagree with the first speech?

Do you call for a vote to kick the member out?

Do you switch to a different Toastmasters club?

Do you quit Toastmasters altogether?

How you handle this depends on your personality and how you frame the situation. Your response depends on the meaning you assign.

Some assignments of meaning will cause you to have a more fragile relationship with your club, with its members, or with Toastmasters. Other meanings will give you enough resilience to maintain a long-term connection to your club or the organization.

Here’s a very fragile assignment of meaning:

What that speaker shared is totally out of line and should never be heard in this or any other Toastmasters club. If I stay in this club (or in Toastmasters), it means I’m personally condoning what this speaker said. I cannot stomach that.

That framing is pretty inflexible. It frames you into a corner, giving you few options. This sort of framing is incongruent with a long-term membership in Toastmasters.

Here’s a more resilient and flexible assignment of meaning:

A Toastmasters meeting is a growth-oriented practice space. Toastmasters is where members go to learn and build their skills. We don’t expect perfection there. We expect and even encourage mistakes. It’s expected that some members will share disagreeable ideas. It can even be good to have our viewpoints challenged sometimes. Variety can be nice.

If you’re in Toastmasters long enough, there’s a good chance you’ll encounter an objectionable speech or speaker. If you want a more resilient relationship with Toastmasters, it’s important to take these situations in stride. If you get worked up over them, you’ll have a more fragile relationship with Toastmasters, and sooner or later you’ll find a reason to ring the bell and quit.

From the outside looking in, the difference between these frames is pretty striking. You may look at the first frame and think that of course it’s not going to work long-term if someone adopts that frame. The second frame provides way more flexibility.

Here’s a key point: You always have a choice of framing. You can lean towards resilient frames, or you can choose fragile frames. By choosing a fragile frame, you increase the likelihood that you’re going to have to ring the bell and quit eventually. With the first framing above, quitting Toastmasters becomes pretty much inevitable; it’s just a matter of time.

So consider that by adopting such a fragile frame, you’re really choosing ring the bell and quit as well. Using a fragile frame is a way of inviting the final straw moment to present itself, often before you can identify a viable final straw event.

Why do this fragility dance then? Why pick a fragile meaning when it leads to such a predictable outcome?

One reason is that people often prefer a final straw objection. It provides a neat and tidy justification for a sometimes complex decision.

Like any growth-oriented space, Toastmasters is uncomfortable at times. You invite some risk when you show up. You may feel anxious at a meeting. You may face embarrassment. Now and then you may leave a meeting not feeling good about how you did. You may feel envious of peers who seem to be progressing faster than you.

It’s hard to keep showing up and facing that discomfort. It’s also hard to say that you’re leaving because you no longer want to deal with that discomfort.

Truthfully there are lots of reasons that people may choose a fragile frame. A common reason is to speed up the arrival of a final straw moment, so quitting can be justified without having to offer up a reason like, “It’s too uncomfortable” or “I felt too anxious” or even “My heart is calling me in a different direction.”

The downside of using fragile objections is that other people often won’t buy into them. While you may feel they’re solid enough reasons to explain your bell ringing, it’s fairly easy for many people to see them as self-created justifications, just as easily as you can spot the fragility of the first frame above. People will generally let you off the hook when you produce your fragile objection, but they’ll also likely conclude that it wasn’t your real reason for ringing the bell.

Ultimately fragile objections are a crutch. This crutch begins with the adoption of a fragile frame. A key personal growth challenge is to graduate from needing to use fragile frames that inevitably lead to fragile objections. If you’re going to ring the bell, can you learn to do that without needing to engineer any justification for it.

In any area of life, you can ring the bell and quit without having to explain or justify your actions. You can quit Toastmasters at any time and for any reason, for instance. You can quit your job today just because you decide it’s time.

I think another reason people use fragile objections is that it’s a less scary way to transition. Some decisions involve a lot of uncertainty, and it isn’t perfectly clear which way to go. To decide without a fragile objection, you need to trust reality or your intuition a lot more. You also have to accept that a big decision involves risk. If it feels like you have little or no choice in the matter, it takes some of the pressure off and makes you feel less responsible for the choice and its outcome.

So one solution I’ll provide is this: Be willing to be wrong. Be willing to make mistakes. Be willing to sit in the muck of bad outcomes that resulted from your decisions.

Consider that this life is much like a Toastmasters meeting. It’s a growth-oriented space where you learn by doing. You will make mistakes. You will make some decisions that leave you shaking your head afterwards. And that’s okay. It’s part of the reason you’re here.

You do not need to engineer fragile objections to ease the burden of those decisions by artificially narrowing your options. You can choose flexible frames that give you lots of options, and you can still make decisions even when facing a minefield of risk. Now and then you’ll choose wrong. Celebrate that you’re free to do that because that is an incredible gift.

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Why I Like My Life So Much

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I did some reflection in my journal about why I like my life so much. Here’s what I came up with:

Space for Reflection

I like that my life isn’t overloaded with so much activity. Sometimes I get really busy, but over the course of a year and during most months of the year, I have plenty of time to think, reflect, and ponder.

This month a number of friends told me how much I seem to be a person of deep thought. I do love to think deeply about many different topics, and I’m genuinely curious about so many aspects of life. For someone like me to be happy, I absolutely need abundant space to engage in deep thought.

I can’t really help doing this. Most of the time I’m not even aware of it. It just seems normal to me to keep asking questions about the nature of this reality. I’m always trying to connect more dots and deepen my understanding of how life works.

I feel less happy when I fill my schedule with too much activity and don’t have as much time to think.

I especially love morning runs because they carve out an hour of thinking time each day. One reason I like going for longer runs is that I gain more time to think and ponder.

I find thinking to be a gloriously rewarding activity. It’s been super important for me to create a lifestyle rich in time to think. It definitely makes me happy to have this kind of lifestyle.

Money on the Back Burner

The world of money sometimes interests and excites me, but much of the time I find it rather mundane and boring for my tastes. So I usually prefer to keep this aspect of life in the background instead of the foreground.

I still consider money when making business and life decisions, but I prefer not to base decisions mainly on financial concerns. I’d rather make decisions based on other forms of value, such as appreciation, exploration, or growth.

For me to be happiest, I’ve found it best to see income generation as a problem to be thoroughly solved, so financial concerns don’t get in my way too much.

I like having years’ worth of savings, so even if all of my income switched off suddenly, I could coast for a long time – plenty of time to create new income streams, even if I had to start over in a whole new field from scratch. And even if the savings evaporated, I’ve invested enough in a variety of income skills that I feel that I could replenish it as needed.

“Get the money problem solved once and for all” was something I worked on for many years. I like having this area of life solved well enough that I can give more attention to other aspects of life.

Exploration

I love to explore. I get bored easily, so wandering through different learning experiences is a big part of my life. This also gives me plenty of source material for connection more dots.

Centering my life around exploration and discovery was a terrific choice that has made me way happier than investing in a traditional corporate career.

Interesting Friendships

Friendships are a big source of value for me. I especially like connecting with people who are a bit unusual. I’m often sponging mindsets and ideas from other people, testing them for myself to see how well they work.

I’m good at making new friends quickly. I tend to just assume friendship with new people instead of feeling like we have to go through a long building phase together. I think life is too short to do otherwise.

Having dozens of growth-oriented friends (and hundreds if not thousands of looser connections) makes me a lot happier than when I used to have no growth-oriented friends. I especially like that lots of interesting invitations and ideas flow to me through my friendship network. I appreciate the ongoing stimulation this provides, even though sometimes it feels like the flow is a bit too high, and I have to withdraw a little.

A Wife I Adore

Last but definitely not least, my marriage to Rachelle is a key source of happiness. I appreciate her every day. Being in love for 10+ years is absolutely wonderful.

Every day I get to share the words “I love you” multiple times with someone. What’s not to like about that?

We spent a LOT of time together. It’s rare for us go more than a few hours without interacting, verbally and through touch and affection. Somehow we naturally make each other happier. When people see us together, they can tell we just belong with each other.

Even when we aren’t doing any particular activity, we enjoy each other’s beingness. Spending time together doing just about anything is very satisfying for us. This makes us optimistic for the future too. It’s a special feeling looking forward to spending so many more days together.

These are just some aspects that create happiness in my life that came through while journaling. There are others of course – a healthy lifestyle surely helps – but these have been more top-of-mind for me lately.

What makes you happiest? If you have a happy life, be sure to pause and appreciate what’s going well. And if you’re still working on getting there, see if you can identify what specific changes need to happen to increase your long-term happiness. Then do what it takes to truly solve those problems one by one. Even if it takes years or decades, the time is going to pass anyway. You may as well give the gift of happiness to your future self by investing where it counts.

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Core of Play

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While pondering an update to my mission statement, I was thinking about how to frame relationships, and this line popped into my mind:

My relationships are based on play.

My relationship with Rachelle fits this like a glove, and I think it’s why we’ve had 10+ happy years together. Same goes for my best friendships.

This applies to more than human relationships, like my relationships with work, creative projects, personal growth experiments, writing, speaking, courses, coaching, hobbies, etc. There’s a core of play when the flow is strong and healthy.

When a relationship loses its core of play, it seems to be on its way out and won’t endure, or it devolves into something not worth preserving.

What happens if you reflect upon past relationships with the lens of play? Any insights generated from that?

If you’re considering a transition in some area of life, could it be that the old path lost its core of play (or never had it to begin with)?

Consider the lens that a healthy relationship is really about play. I’m not saying that this is absolutely true. Just look at your past relationships through this lens, and see if it sparks any interesting realizations or reassessments. When you reflect upon the story arc of the relationship with respect to its changing level of playfulness over time, what do you see?

Also consider that you have a relationship with your work. When that relationship loses its core of play, does it ever work?

Consider the ripples that play generates – connection, caring, bonding, happiness, enjoyment, appreciation, respect, cooperation, etc. Those can be valuable in any relationship context – both in work and your personal life.

Injuries can still occur, but in a context of play (like a game), they’re quickly forgiven. When people lose sight of the play aspect, then an injury may be taken more seriously though.

What can be objectively accomplished with a frame of seriousness that can’t also be accomplished at least as well with a frame of play?

One way to think of play is that it maintains the intensity of seriousness but ditches the attachment. It lightens the experience of full engagement, allowing you to focus on the present moment activity without worrying so much about the outcome. The lens of play removes the clinginess without being forced to descend into goofiness.

I’ve always appreciated playful relationships more than others. That’s been true of romantic and sexual relationships, connections with colleagues, coaching or mentoring relationships, friendships, and even random acquaintances. Playfulness elevates the mundane, making it more stimulating but not stressful.

Play can be a tough value to respect unless you test it enough and see what it does for you. When you observe that investing in play generates strong results with good consistency, it’s easier to trust it. Also observe the results you get when you lose the connection to the core of play. Which results do you prefer?

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Appreciation Density

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In the past 11 weeks, I’ve lost an average of 1.15 pounds per week, mainly just by logging what I eat. This simple practice has helped me tweak and adjust my meal choices even though I’m still eating the same foods as I was previously. I’m eating less food in terms of calories, but my current diet is actually more satisfying than before. Since there’s no sense of restriction or deprivation, it’s frictionless to maintain this approach.

Let’s say that the appreciation density of a meal is your overall physical and emotional satisfaction with it, divided by its calories:

Appreciation Density = Satisfaction / Calories

I don’t exactly know how to calculate physical and emotional satisfaction though. Maybe we could rate the satisfaction of meals on a 1-10 scale, but fortunately that isn’t necessary. We can just compare based on equivalent calories by asking whether one meal is more or less satisfying than another. We can also do this at the level of individual ingredients.

Through food logging and a little reflection, I saw that some meals (and some ingredients) are more satisfying than others for the same number of calories.

I’ve learned that roasted eggplant is really satisfying relative to its calories. Peaches and strawberries are super satisfying as well. Steamed broccoli and zucchini with some hummus is a delightful meal – very satisfying for so few calories.

Some foods have diminishing returns if I include too much of them. For instance, 10g of olive oil on a salad may be pretty satisfying relative to the 90 calories it adds. But would 20g of olive oil be twice as satisfying? No, definitely not. Doubling the olive oil might only increase the satisfaction by an extra 20%, so it’s probably not worth it.

Adding 1/3 of an avocado to a salad can be really nice. But if I use a whole avocado, is it 3x as satisfying? Nope. I find that the sweet spot is to use about 1/4 to 1/2 of an avocado on a salad to get the maximum satisfaction relative to the calories.

Through lots of experimentation, I’m gradually figuring out better balancing points where I eat quantities of foods that raise the satisfaction level of a meal but where consuming more would lead to diminishing returns. So when I compose meals, I require each ingredient to pull its weight by meaningfully contributing to the overall satisfaction.

Note that satisfaction is mainly an emotional assessment. It’s based on how I feel during and after eating. How satisfied I’ll feel isn’t perfectly consistent. One day I may find 100g of some item optimal while I might prefer more or less of that item on a different day. By paying attention to my logs and connecting them to my inner sensations, I’m getting better at predicting what kinds of meals to make based on how I feel.

I don’t try to hold back from eating. I eat when I’m hungry. I just put a little more thought and care into making meals very satisfying relative to their calories.

Suppose you eat a 500-calorie lunch today. Have you ever considered how you might compose a 400-calorie lunch that’s actually more satisfying? If you could figure that out, you could shave off 100 calories per day while actually enjoying your lunch more. Now scale this up for every meal and snack, and come up with more solutions and variations. You could enjoy your food more while actually eating less.

I already eat an all vegan, mostly whole foods diet that typically includes 10+ servings of fruits and veggies per day, so take that into consideration. Making this diet highly nutritious isn’t an issue. But I don’t think I’d feel as emotionally satisfied if I tried to adapt this approach to a junk food diet. Whole foods leave me feeling better emotionally and physically.

I’ve been including some small indulgences, but I use them where they really add to the satisfaction. For instance, if I slice up two peaches (100 calories), and I add 50 calories worth of coconut whipped cream, that treat has a high appreciation density for its 150 calories, more than eating three peaches without the topping.

Another nice dessert is one date plus four pecan halves (80 cal). Split the date in two, and push two pecan pieces into each half – it’s like eating raw pecan pie. For this small addition of calories, it’s super satisfying as a little snack.

I don’t worry about empty calories in terms of low nutrition. I frame empty calories as too little satisfaction per calorie, which could include adding too much of an ingredient beyond a certain sweet spot of satisfaction.

By focusing on enjoying and appreciating my meals relative to their calories, I’m getting more appreciation per calorie today than I was when I started. I really enjoy the foods I eat. It feels like I’m doing the opposite of dieting, but I’m losing weight by eating this way.

This useful frame can be extended to other areas of life by generalizing the definition of appreciation density, like this:

Appreciation Density = Satisfaction / Cost

Cost could be your investment of time, energy, money, or some other factor.

So you could use this frame to select work projects, choose which friends to engage with, or decide how much time to spend on social media each day. Which investments satisfy you best? When does the satisfaction start to diminish?

Imagine what you could discover by combining this frame with time logging. Is 30 minutes of social media twice as satisfying as 15 minutes? How much journaling or meditation time is optimal for you? Would you feel more satisfied with an extra hour in the morning or the evening?

If you’re feel unsatisfied in some area of life, look at your appreciation density. Are you deriving enough satisfaction from your investments? If not, where’s the waste? Where are the empty calories? Where are you investing time, energy, money, or other resources and not getting much satisfaction in return? Obviously that waste needs to be cut if you want to increase your appreciation density.

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How to Extract 5-10x More Value From Your Personal Growth Investments

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We’re used to thinking about “receiving value” as a passive endeavor most of the time. We expect items and services that we purchase to provide value to us. We pay the price up front, and then we feel entitled to just relax and enjoy the value we’ve purchased.

It’s easy to expect that if you spend the money, your purchase should cough up its full value to you. I paid for you. Now give me what I’m owed.

But only some parts of life work that way, like if you buy and enjoy a nice latte. Buying it is the hardest part of the transaction. Drinking it is easy.

But have you ever made a major purchase that you were a little hesitant about because you knew it would require extra work, like buying a new phone or computer? Or maybe you paid for a trip. Or you stretched yourself to go to a seminar. What happens in those cases? The value delivery isn’t totally passive.

There’s an active element in many purchases. You must do your part to fully extract the value you’re paying for. You have to learn and set up the tech you bought. If you go to a seminar, you have to pay attention, take notes, and do your best to apply what you’ve learned afterwards; the ideas don’t automatically implement themselves. Even if you buy a fun video game, you still have to become skilled enough to enjoy it; it takes some effort to extract the fun.

Recently my wife and I bought some new adjustable pillows. They came overstuffed (as expected), so we had to remove some of the stuffing to adjust them to our desired firmness. It took extra work just to receive the full value of a pillow.

Some personal growth value can be derived passively. You can read articles and books, listen to podcasts, and watch videos. You may learn some interesting ideas this way, including many useful reframes. You may make some easy tweaks here and there. You’ll gain some clever hacks as well. But there are much bigger gains to be made that require extra effort to extract and apply.

Passive value is great. It’s just limiting. It would be nice if we could transform all parts of our life through easy consumption, but that isn’t the case.

I must have consumed about a billion words of personal growth content by now in the form of books, articles, audio programs, videos, speeches, seminars, and more. I’ve also created a lot of it. But in terms of the value I’ve received from personal growth, I’d say that the passive value benefits are no more than 10-20% of the total. The other 80-90% is on the active value side, requiring non-trivial effort to extract it.

Joining Toastmasters is a good example. You may gain some knowledge by showing up for the meetings. Sit in your chair, listen, observe, and maybe jot down some notes about anything that strikes you as interesting. I’ve seen members approach Toastmasters in this way, and they generally progress very slowly. It’s hard to even notice that they’ve improved much after a year or two; it’s like their skills are mostly frozen in time.

The members who advance fastest embrace the extra work to extract the value. They write and deliver speeches. They enter speech contests. They volunteer for different meeting roles. And they generally progress a lot faster. For $60 in dues, these members extract thousands of dollars worth of value.

But of course it takes more work to do this.

I’d say this is just something to accept about personal growth. If we acknowledge in advance that we’ll have to do this extra work, we won’t resist it so much, and we’ll be paid back with a much bigger avalanche of value.

Which is better? Buy a fancy new phone and barely learn how to use it… or buy a fancy new phone, master it, and enjoy more value from it just about every day? I’d say the answer depends on your priorities. Which areas of life are really worth mastering?

In my own business, I’ve found that people who accept this basic fact about reality make for much better customers too. They’ll do the work of extracting the value, such as by fully completing every lesson of a course. Some go through each lesson multiple times. They’re happier too because they get good results this way. So it’s win-win to focus on such people. It’s a very sustainable business model. I love customers who will go all-in to extract the value and then tell me about their great results afterwards. What’s not to like about that?

I think this also explains why some content creators burn out when they mainly serve people who are looking for passive value. You’ve probably heard of YouTubers who’ve called it quits due to frustration or overwhelm. I think one reason is that it’s less satisfying to try to help people get results through passive value, like if they’re mostly just watching videos. Such people may only be receiving 10-20% of the value that active value seekers would be able to achieve, so they may not be as appreciative or supportive of the work because they aren’t getting as much out of it.

Contrast this with serving an audience who will work harder to extract the value, so they may receive 5-10x as much value from the same amount of material. They’ll be a lot more appreciative, supportive, and forgiving, and it will be more rewarding to serve them.

It’s so much easier to satisfy and delight people who are willing to invest some extra effort to receive the full value of your contribution. They don’t just consume content. They actively test and apply ideas. They explore and experiment with you. They engage with the work. And they often reflect ideas back with improvements.

I’m this type of person myself. I’ve learned the hard way that being too passive doesn’t pay off that well. I get better results from personal growth investments where I have to do extra work to extract the value. Consequently, I’ve been beyond satisfied with some of my personal growth investments over the years because I’m willing to do a lot more work beyond just making purchases, watching videos, and showing up to calls.

I’m the kind of person who will spend $10K on someone’s coaching program and get $100K in value from it – hence I LOVE $10K coaching programs because I get such terrific results. The passive value is worth perhaps $10-20K. The other $80-90K of value is from the extra work I do to squeeze more value out of it.

When buying a piece of software that I’ll use a lot, I’m the kind of person who will watch every tutorial video and spend many extra hours learning the interface and practicing with it, so I can extract more value from using it over the years. I grew up using software where reading the manual was often essential because the interfaces were much less intuitive, and there was no Google to look things up.

Here’s a simple tip for extracting 5-10x more value from your personal growth investments: Decide in advance that you won’t be outworked when it comes to extracting the value. Show up with a pick and shovel.

Don’t just go a few steps beyond passivity. Ask yourself what standard is expected of you for extracting some decent value from your investment. Then beat that standard – by a lot.

If you buy a book, for instance, we could say that the baseline standard is that you’ll at least read it. But what standard did you apply for the books where you got the most value? Did you discuss them with others, take notes, test ideas, read them multiple times, bookmark pages, etc?

You’re severely limiting your progress if you focus on passive value through osmosis. Don’t wait for value to seep in. Go squeeze the full value from your investments.

Be like an outstanding juicer. Don’t leave wet pulp behind.

Now it may not be realistic to always apply this standard, but when it really counts, it’s an awesome standard to use.

When I was in my 20s, I wouldn’t just buy an audio program and listen to it once. I’d listen to some of them 50+ times (for a 6-hour program), to the point where I had them virtually memorized. I can still hear the voices of Earl Nightingale, Brian Tracy, and Denis Waitley echoing in my head sometimes. Additionally, I kept testing the ideas from those programs in a variety of ways. I didn’t have a lot of money to spend on personal growth materials, so I did my best to squeeze all the juice out of what I could afford.

This approach paid off very well. I juiced one $60 time management course for all it was worth, applying the ideas to go through college faster, thereby saving a few thousand dollars just in tuition. (College was a lot less expensive in the 90s.)

The truth is that a lot of personal growth ideas work amazingly well, but it takes work to extract and apply the best ideas. Don’t lament this fact. Do your best to accept and then embrace it.

Despite the pandemic I’ve learned that many readers of my blog are having an amazingly good year. Some directly credit their active application of personal growth ideas as being instrumental in helping them stay positive, overcome setbacks, navigate career pivots, and spot aligned opportunities. It’s great to see them adapting and thriving by being so active during these months.

We’re surrounded by tremendous opportunities for growth, learning, and improvement in life and business right now, but those who show up with picks and shovels are extracting a lot more value than those who are mostly relying on their eyes and ears.

How have you been showing up this year?

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Graduating From $20 Problems to $20K Problems

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One simple tip for inviting more abundance into your life is to elevate the cost of the problems you normally focus on.

Suppose you order groceries online and have them delivered. And suppose the company screws up several items in your order. Maybe you feel inclined to complain and get a refund on those items.

Perhaps you take some time do the following:

  1. Feel upset.
  2. Vent to someone else about it.
  3. Think about following up with customer service, wondering how they’ll respond.
  4. Actually write to customer service.
  5. Feel distracted while awaiting a response.
  6. Read the response from customer service.
  7. Receive a polite apology and $20 refund on your order.
  8. Finally let it go.

So you successfully processed and solved a $20 problem.

That’s fine. You can do that, but be wary of making a long-term habit of this. Ten years from now you may still be dealing with $20 problems. Is that what you want? Or would you like to graduate to more expensive problems?

The more time you spend thinking about $20 problems, the less time you spend dealing with different classes of problems – $200 problems, $2K problems, $20K problems, $200K problems, etc.

Even if you solve lots and lots of $20 problems, you’d have to solve 1000 of them to equate to the financial impact of solving one $20K problem. You can ignore hundreds of $20 problems and solve just one $20K problem now and then, and you’ll still come out way ahead financially.

Of course there are other considerations. Solving lots of $20 problems could add up to a significant mental and emotional impact. It’s not only about the money. But it can still be helpful to consider the financial impact of each problem you’re dealing with to consider if it’s really worth your time.

I still deal with $20 problems now and then, but I try to limit myself to the ones that matter to me. For instance, Rachelle and I recently spent some time considering new pillows to buy for our bed. This was a $50 problem. But since we’ll be spending a lot of time sleeping on those pillows and since a bad choice could cause some angst, including physical discomfort and lower quality sleep, we wanted to take the time to select some really good pillows. Taking an hour to weigh options and make that choice seemed reasonable. So even though it looks like a $50 problem, we could also see it as a $50K problem for the potential productivity and lifestyle impact.

However, if the impact of a decision is really just $20 or $50, then it’s best to work on your framing. Realize and accept that the more time and energy you spend dealing with decisions at this level of financial impact, the more you steal time from investing in bigger, more impactful decisions.

I know it can be hard to let go of $20 decisions, but this is an important skill to develop if you want to progress financially. You can’t keep collecting coupons year after year – unless you start finding $20K coupons.

Here are some frames you may want to progress towards:

  • Your Starbucks points don’t mater. If some of them expire, you’ve lost a few dollars. It’s not even worth caring about. It’s not even worth your time to check their latest promotions.
  • It doesn’t matter who pays for dinner. You can pay. The other person can pay. It’s better not to spend much time thinking about it since that just wastes neural energy.
  • Buy the best quality tech you can afford. Then you needn’t waste time wondering if you should have bought something better. Don’t skimp on your tools.
  • Take all the mental energy you would have spent fussing over $20 decisions, and use it to negotiate a meaningful raise at work, or do a new marketing campaign for your business. Even if you just bring in an extra $5K per year, that’s equivalent to solve 100 $50 problems or 250 $20 problems.
  • Solve fewer, bigger problems. Let lots of little problems die unsolved.
  • Instead of solving lots of little problems, solve the problem of finding someone to solve those little problems for you.

Keep progressing. At some point you have to stop fussing over $20K problems and opportunities, so you can focus on $50K or $100K issues.

At one point a $20K opportunity may excite you, but to progress beyond that level, you eventually have to start seeing $20K opportunities as partial matches and let them go. It’s really hard to see $50K opportunities when you’re still tempted by $20K ones, just as it’s harder to spot paper money when you’ve trained your mind to notice coins on the ground.

When you’re dealing with a problem or an opportunity, pause and ask yourself: Is this a $20 issue? A $2K issue? A $200K issue?

Which class of problems and opportunities feels aligned for you to deal with right now? What kinds of problems make you feel really good when you solve them (versus feeling empty or dissatisfied)? Are you keeping your focus at your desired level? Are you reminding yourself to let go of the partial matches?

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Partial Match Relapsing

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After you’ve decided to move on from partial matches in some area of life and you’ve declared your standards raised henceforth, you can still relapse. The old habits can seduce you back. This is incredibly common. People usually do relapse one or more times before they strongly lock into a new standard of behavior.

You may declare “no more misaligned jobs” or “no more misaligned relationships” and mean it. A few months pass, and you may catch yourself thinking about applying for jobs that would be predictably misaligned… or you feel tempted to lower your relationship standards when nothing aligned is showing up.

One reason is because the new behavior takes practice to fully integrate.

You have to practice saying no to the partial matches, but your mental pathways were previously trained to say yes to them. It will take time to decondition the old patterns and strengthen the new approach. It will feel uncomfortable and awkward to say no to partial matches at first, but it does get easier with practice.

You also have to practice inviting the full matches you really want, but your old mental pathways have grown accustomed to pre-settling for what you think is more accessible. So it will feel uncomfortable to ask for more.

A second issue is that you have to learn to deal with time pressure, social pressure, and financial pressure. Many people bow to pressure by lowering their standards, believing that any match is better than none. But of course if you try to deal with the pressure that way, you’ll remain stuck in the old patterns that didn’t serve you.

So you also have to practice dealing with pressure differently. Don’t lower your standards just because bills are piling up… or your parents are pushing you to get something going career-wise… or you’re seeing your friends pull ahead of you.

You need to create a different relationship with these kinds of pressures. Instead of invitations to lower your standards, see this pressure as a test of your commitment. You pass these tests by standing firm – or even raising your standards higher – not by caving in and retreating to your ineffective past methods.

Really this pressure is internal. A bill is just a piece of paper or an email. A parental nag is just a sound effect. These aren’t real threats, even though they may feel very visceral to you. Your own framing is encouraging the circuitry of your own mind to get in your way, creating internal blocking patterns. To avoid relapsing again and again, you’ll need to change how you deal with these ineffective thought patterns. See them for the traps they are.

If you wish to make your own conscious choices and create a life that aligns with your standards, you can’t let lesser standards continue to rent space in your mind.

If and when you do relapse, it won’t feel good, and you won’t like the results, but you’ll still learn from the experience. Relapsing after you’ve glimpsed higher standards will help you see the problems with your old approach. You’ll better understand just how ineffective your old standards were; you’ll see that they’re never going to serve you well in the long run. So the benefit of relapsing is that it can help you recommit to your new standards and stop investing in partial matches.

Lastly, another shift to practice is to see your higher standards as normal, not as exceptional. Seek to frame your new standards as your default, everyday, run of the mill behaviors and habits. Do your best to stop seeing them as special or extraordinary, or you’ll only push them away.

Take early rising for instance. I like to get up at or before 5am almost every day, including weekends. Most mornings I’ve done at least an hour of running by 6:30am. Some people see this as exceptional, and so did I when I was first training myself to do this. But that type of framing isn’t helpful. It’s best to regard such a habit as normal if this is something you want to do routinely without relapsing.

Seeing any habit as a stretch is just going to encourage relapsing. So do your best to welcome and practice the framing that your new standards are normal and routine, not exceptional. You can still love and appreciate those habits – just see that love aspect as normal too. 🙂

When you see people doing work that lights them up motivationally, contributes in positive ways, and generates abundant income, do you think they’re lucky or exceptional? It’s a mistake to frame it like that. You ought to see this type of experience as normal. That will help you lock it in and not relapse so much.

My world is rich in people who do aligned work, so I actually do see this as normal. The dark and scary part of the corporate world that makes people feel depressed or stressed about going to work – that’s abnormal and weird. The journey away from that world seems like a perfectly normal and sensible path back to health, sanity, and happiness.

One reason people relapse is that they still regard their old approach as normal. If you still think the old path is normal, you’ll be tempted to go back to it. If you frame your old standards as abnormal, stupid, deranged, ineffective, lame, and so on, you’re more likely to avoid relapse.

Do you see it as normal to explore your kinky sexual desires with a compatible and motivated partner or partners? Or do you think it might be a bit perverse to explore the true depths of what you might enjoy? Can you see it as normal to have experiences and partners that turn you on? Can you also see it as weird or perverse not to explore what you really enjoy? Moreover, can you see it as weird, perverse, or repressed for people to judge you for consensually exploring with aligned partners?

Would it feel exceptional, weird, or deranged for someone to call you Master or Mistress each day? If so, then you probably can’t have that experience, and if you did manage to go there for a while, you’d soon relapse back to vanilla life. That’s fine if you want a vanilla life, but what if you’d really enjoy something kinkier that feels like a stretch right now? Well… seek to frame it as normal – the truth is that what you frame as a stretch experience is indeed normal for many people. Why not decide to join them?

Personally I don’t like the kink framing much because it frames interesting desires as abnormal or unusual. A kink is a sharp twist or curve in something that’s otherwise straight, so it’s framed as an abnormality by definition. Consequently, I tend to toss that framing back towards the other side of repression – I think of highly religious people as the kinkiest ones out there; I regard them as the most twisted members of humanity.

Normal doesn’t have to be boring. You can create a fun and lively normal that you appreciate, especially if you regard daily appreciation as normal too. Framing such experiences as normal just makes it easier to invite them and to continue experiencing them.

Remind yourself of why you want to progress to higher standards. One good reason is to make happiness, satisfaction, and appreciation normal for you. Experience more of what you want, and appreciate it each day. Note that your old behaviors didn’t achieve those standards, so it’s time to elevate your behaviors to meet your new standards.

Reality is capable of giving you a lot more, but if you make it clear that you’re willing to settle, it will let you relapse – repeatedly – until you reach the level of inner commitment that makes relapsing essentially impossible for you. Then reality just gives up and brings you what you want.

Other human beings also find commitment appealing and attractive. People are more likely to invest in helping you get what you want when they can tell that you’ve graduated from your relapsing phase.

Relapsing to your old standards should feel as creepy as voting for Trump – not something you’d ever do. If you’re still tempted to do that, you’re one kinky and deranged masochist.

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Add More Constraints for Better Decisions

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It’s tempting to try to keep your options open. People often assume that having more options is equivalent to having more freedom. But actually the opposite tends to be true when it comes to making aligned decisions. When you keep your options too open, you keep your standards too low.

When people have too many options to intelligently assess, they tend to settle for choices that are good enough but not great.

But when you narrow the range to a few options that you can reasonably consider one by one, you’re more likely to go for the best choice, at least among those options.

Consider buying a new piece of tech. If you’re only considering two or three models, it’s easier to identify the best one for your needs. But if you have hundreds or thousands of options available, picking the optimal one for you seems hopeless.

This is a common issue when it comes to finding an aligned career path or an aligned relationship. When you have too few constraints, you have too many options. This can make you feel doubtful or even paralyzed about making a decent decision.

It may seem counterintuitive to narrow your options by adding more constraints, but it works well in practice, especially when you choose constraints that elevate your standards.

When I’m ready to buy a new phone, laptop, tablet, or watch, for instance, I’m only going to consider Apple products. I’ve been using products in their ecosystem for many years, and I’m pleased with them. So when making such purchase decisions, I wouldn’t consider stepping outside the Apple space unless something goes really wrong. My last 4 phones, last 3 laptops, last 4 tablets, and last 3 watches were all iPhones, MacBook Pros, iPads, and Apple Watches, respectively.

This simple constraint creates a pathway to investing more deeply in a relationship with Apple too. I’m on a first-name basis with a member of the business team at the local Apple Store, and she regularly arranges discounts for me. So constraints can lead to more depth and efficiency for related future decisions.

What about finding an intimate relationship partner? First consider how to rule out partial matches and mismatches.

For me to be deeply involved with a woman, she must be a committed vegan. She has to be interested in open relationships. She has to be into D/s play. She must be into personal growth. By narrowing the vast field of possibilities down to a relatively small number of options, I can eliminate many risks related to partial matches, such as the risk of over-investing in a connection that isn’t going to work well.

If you want to date around a lot and aren’t feeling too particular, you can keep your options open, but you may find that approach dissatisfying or disappointing after a while. When you’d rather find a really strong match to invest in, add more constraints to narrow your options and raise your standards. It may surprise you how well this works, especially by helping you quickly decline partial matches.

Same goes for career options and income-generating opportunities. Start by eliminating options that aren’t fascinating, stimulating, and fun. Rule out whatever doesn’t feel purposeful and heart-aligned. Drop ideas that aren’t likely to be highly lucrative. Dump the possibilities that aren’t creative and growth-oriented. Keep narrowing your options till you start wondering if your standards might be too high.

In this particular area, I found it helpful to establish a minimum standard for considering business deals. For a while I didn’t consider any deal that would be worth less than $10K. Eventually I bumped that to $20K. Later I held it around $50K for a while. These days I tend not to bother considering business deals or projects unless they’re financially worth $100K or more. And on top of that, they still have to be fun, creative, stimulating, purposeful, etc.

Interestingly, this makes life easier and improves the odds of discovering really good options. It keeps me from getting bogged down in partial matches.

When thinking about relationship matches, consider the perspective of a really good match who’s looking for someone just like you. Does it make sense for them to remain receptive to less than what you can offer? I’d rather connect with a vegan who’s looking for a fellow vegan, not a vegan with lower standards. Would you rather be what someone is looking for… or what they’re settling for?

You may not be sure about how to identify or recognize an optimal solution, but what can you be pretty sure about? Start by adding some constraints where you are confident in your desires. Relationship-wise I can say it wouldn’t work out if I tried to get seriously involved with a non-vegan woman – our ethics and values wouldn’t align well enough. That by itself isn’t enough to guarantee a good match, but it’s an easy way to rule out a large swath of partial matches.

What are some equivalents for you? What constraints would help to steer you closer to a really strong match and away from partial matches?

If you do this right, you’re going to turn off partial matches. Some may feel a bit miffed that you’re excluding them without giving them a chance. But you’re also doing them a favor. You’re making it clear that you wouldn’t be a good investment in some dimension of life, so you’re saving them time, energy, and false hope. If you want to clarify your investment worthiness for an aligned option, you’d better be willing to disappoint partial matches up front. The smarter ones will actually respect you for this preventative no.

Aim for true success here. Don’t waffle on what you really want. Don’t pre-settle for less. Challenge your brain to figure out how to invite and experience what you really want. Start by ruling out whatever would feel a bit dissatisfying or disappointing – whatever feels like settling. What’s the relationship or career equivalent of a sad Android phone? 😉

Constraints are very freeing – they free you of the nasty traps of partial matches.

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Do Partial Matches Still Tempt You?

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A partial match is basically a 7 out of 10 (or lower) – where you get much of what you want, but at least one significant aspect is missing.

Partial matches include:

  • Finding a relationship partner that you like and respect as a person but aren’t physically attracted to
  • Getting a job that pays well but provides no sense of purpose or contribution
  • Finding a cheap web host that provides incompetent support when you really need them
  • Using a phone that works except that the screen is cracked
  • Hanging out with friends you’ve known a long time but who are overly pessimistic and discouraging, especially when you want to do something ambitious

I’d say that the main areas where people fall for partial matches are jobs and relationships. That’s where people seem to get stuck most often.

A partial match isn’t something minor that you’ll get used to, like having to commute 15 minutes to a job when you really wanted 10 minutes or less. A partial match is missing some key aspect that you consider important and valuable. You’ll never be fully satisfied with a partial match. That cracked screen will always be present, and it’s always going to bug you to some extent.

Partial matches are obstacles to real satisfaction and appreciation.

Partial matches are also part of the scarcity phase of life. In order to accept a partial match, you must be unwilling (or think you’re unable) to create or acquire something better. This is a position of weakness. It stems from a mindset lacking in confidence.

Why would you keep using a cracked phone when you could replace it with a better one or get the screen repaired? That’s a solvable problem.

Why settle for a job that’s missing something important that matters to you when you could get a job (or start a business) that satisfies you properly? That’s a solvable problem too.

Why remain in a relationship that’s missing an important aspect that you care about? You won’t be satisfied with less. You can fix this too.

Partial matches aren’t necessarily easy to solve. It may take more work to find a solid match, but it’s at least possible. Moreover, making a genuine effort to keep looking for a real match is more satisfying than getting bogged down in a partial match. Real searching is more rewarding than settling.

Looking for a new phone feels better than using one with a cracked screen. Looking for aligned work or an aligned relationship feels better than showing up to a misaligned one. People start feeling better when they decide that it’s time to move on from the partial match, even before they find a real match.

It’s hard to engage in more looking unless you expect to succeed. And that’s really a decision. You must decide to move on from the temptation of partial matches and be done with them, at least in some important area of life.

The key step to making real progress here is to decide that you’re done wasting time and energy on partial matches. They don’t satisfy you. They just take up space in your life. They perpetuate scarcity-mindedness. They’re not going to magically turn into better solutions. The cracks won’t just disappear on their own.

As long as you’re still tempted by partial matches, you’ll continue to receive more of them, most likely cycling through more years of stuckness and dissatisfaction. At some point you’ll figure out that partial matches don’t provide the value you seek and never will, and you’ll decide that it’s time to be done with them. You’ll see them as unworthy investments of your time and energy.

When your partial match phase is over, your abundance phase can begin.

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Reassessing Career and Business Opportunities

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In light of the virus situation, is it time to consider a career or business change? For many people this is a good time to rationally re-evaluate your opportunities – instead of merely hoping that things will magically turn around. Hope is not a good career or business strategy.

Many restaurant and retail workers, for instance, now have to field questions like these as part of their jobs:

  • Why should I wear a mask?
  • Why are you even open right now? Do you only care about the money?
  • Can you take a pay cut and do the same work as before?

If this (or something similar) has become part of your job or business, do you really want to continue on these terms for months or years? Is the offer you’re getting from that situation still a good one? Are you still happy with the opportunities? Or are you just spinning your wheels there due to the difficulty of shifting?

Think of your current career circumstances as an offer from reality. See it as a test. When the offer shifts to something unpalatable, will you grudgingly accept it? Or will you pass the test by declining the weak offer and requesting something better? You don’t have to say yes to an offer that’s full of stress and uncertainty.

The virus is suppressing some previous opportunities, not just financially but emotionally as well. For some people the work that was once reasonably pleasant is now a lot less pleasant and more polarized. This is a good time to reconsider whether it’s still worthwhile to invest your life in the same path going forward. You could invest elsewhere instead. Sure it’s challenging to do that, but staying could be a lot worse.

You are not your career or your business. When a line of work is on the way out, you needn’t link your own survival to it. Businesses aren’t born and don’t die. They’re created and retired, and the people live on to create more. It’s not a failure to retire from a business or line of work. It’s simply a choice to reinvest your time and energy elsewhere.

Bet on choice opportunities instead of chasing after bad ones. Many opportunities that looked good a year ago have turned into bad ones these days, and that’s unlikely to change in many fields for at least the rest of the year. Even if everything clears up by 2021, which is unlikely, you still have six months left in this year. Don’t throw that away on non-opportunities and virus denial. Reinvest your time and energy where there are some truly good opportunities, which are still abundant.

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