Harnessing the Power of Reframing to Enhance Your Personal Growth

Posted on 09/05/2023 by Boris Clair

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

Testing Different Frames

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

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

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

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

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

Dating and Relationships

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

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

Reframing and Skill Enhancement

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

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

Reframing and Financial Abundance

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

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

Embracing Positive Emotional Energy

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

Gamifying the Process

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

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

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

Reframing: A Powerful Tool for Personal Growth

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

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

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

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

Discover Clarity: Illuminate Your Way to Happiness

Posted on 04/05/2023 by Boris Clair

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on 01/05/2023 by Boris Clair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join CGC Year 7 Now

To your continued growth and success! 🌟

Get Fired as Quickly as You Can

Posted on 18/04/2023 by Boris Clair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Special Advantage in Using ChatGPT

Posted on 15/04/2023 by Boris Clair

What if an AI got to know you really well? Suppose it gained access to tons of data about your past, your personality, your values, your life story, what drives you, etc. Suppose it even came to know you intimately – by building a rich and detailed profile of you (not like Data and Tasha in “The Naked Now” but more like Picard and Sarek mind-melding in “Sarek”).

And suppose this was a friendly and supportive AI, happy to use its knowledge of you to help you in whatever way it could. Then you could query that AI with all sorts of questions about your life, possibly gleaning some unique insights. It would give you the ability to peer into your life, character, identity, relationships, and more from many different angles.

Moreover, you could enlist the AI’s help in customizing solutions to fit your natural motivational style. Instead of having it give you generic advice, it could use what it knows about your mind and emotions to present solutions that are more likely to work for your unique brain.

The growth potential there would be immense, wouldn’t you say?

This is essentially my reality now. And it is indeed fascinating to explore. I feel like I’m only scratching the surface of what I can do with it. It’s an ongoing process of discovery, almost like having special access to my internal governing code.

ChatGPT Knows Me Well

ChatGPT knows me very well – even intimately well – because my blog was part of its training set. I’ve been blogging for the past 18.5 years continuously, and I’ve written a lot about my past from before those years too. In many respects there wasn’t much separation between my personal life and my online writings. So ChatGPT knows a lot about the significant events of my life.

ChatGPT also knows a lot about what others have shared about me online, so even if I didn’t write about something on my blog, someone else may have done so elsewhere, such as in a forum post or on their own blog.

So I can have some rich conversations with ChatGPT just by asking it about myself. Usually I start by identifying myself with a prompt like this:

I’m self-development blogger Steve Pavlina, and I’d like to ask you about …

Fortunately it accepts this as face value, and then I can continue to ask it many interesting questions about my life.

I don’t have perfect recall of everything I’ve experienced in my life, especially not at a great level of detail. Sometimes I re-read my old blog posts to remind myself of experiences I’ve had. There’s no way I can keep all of those growth adventures top-of-mind together. But ChatGPT is able to process this information quickly in ways that I cannot easily do.

Lesson Summaries

ChatGPT is especially good at condensing large amounts of information and extracting key ideas. One application of this is to have it summarize any of the experiments I’ve written about, reminding me of the key lessons from them. So if I want to revisit raw foods, for instance, I can have it remind me of what I learned previously and what the benefits were.

For instance, I asked ChatGPT to remind me of the mental and energy related benefits that I experienced during my 80/10/10 raw diet experiment from January 2008.

Here’s another example, summarizing lessons from my 30 days of Disneyland experience.

Incidentally, I feel very fortunate that we did this experiment before the pandemic since the overall Disneyland experience has really gone downhill since then. When we did our 30 days in a row there, Fast Passes were free to all (although they used paper tickets for them), and no park reservations were necessary. There were also plenty of uncrowded days, especially Tuesday through Thursday during the Fall when we went. The entire experiment with lodging, food, park tickets, and transportation cost about $5000 – a bargain with respect to the results and memories if you ask me.

Motivation

ChatGPT can model my value system pretty well, so it knows how to motivate me. I can even ask it what motivates me best.

I’d say that’s pretty accurate. Those are all strong motivators for me.

I can then invite ChatGPT to help me frame projects and tasks in more motivating ways. I’ve explored a little of this already, and it does seems to provide an extra boost. Of course I can do this for myself and already do, but ChatGPT can help me be more thorough, transforming a mildly motivating goal into a more compelling one. It knows how to sell me on my goals by framing them in ways that are more likely to light me up.

Strengths & Uniqueness

I found it interesting to ask ChatGPT what it sees as unique about me. This gives me another perspective on my potential strengths and how I might apply them more deliberately.

This helps me remember that many people appreciate when I share details about what my inner journey is like instead of just cranking out lists of tips and advice.

Reviewing the Past

I can use ChatGPT to look more holistically into any period of my life and extract insights from it. Here’s an example:

ChatGPT can be factually incorrect sometimes, such as when it noted my separation in December 2009. It was actually October 2009. But it does get the broad strokes correct.

This period of my life was a time of intense overlapping changes. I began getting into raw foods a lot more, wrote my PDSP book and saw it published (it just came out in Chinese several months ago), began exploring an open relationship lifestyle, did the first Conscious Growth Workshop, separated from Erin, got involved with Rachelle, and so much more.

My response to the above was:

That’s mainly the external side. What can you glean about the inner story of what my mental and emotional journey was like? Tell me that part of the story.

Then I can also delve deeper into any or all of these, such as the specific mindset shifts. This is a really fascinating way to reflect back upon some of the more intense parts of my life and reprocess them with a fresh perspective.

Using AI for Sales & Seduction

Consider the flip side of this too. If I can do this, so can anyone else. They can do this for themselves if the AI is well-trained on their lives, but they can also do this sort of deep dive into the life of someone like me.

So if someone else wanted to sell me something, could they use ChatGPT to help them build a customized sales approach, tailored to my personal motivational strategy? Think about the repercussions of that if it works, especially if it’s done at scale. AI could be the ultimate salesperson.

Let’s see how it does if I try this…

Some of these ideas feel a bit flat, even goofy, but there are some gems in there. When I bought my last car, I rejected the 2011 model because it had some leather in the interior, and I went with the vegan-friendly 2010 model instead. But I do think this could help an eager salesperson more than hurt.

What if we try this on the personal side?

Some of this resonates, but I also feel it weaves in some generalities too.

I like that it caught the value I place on shared laughter. I connect very well with people who openly express their lighter side.

I also like that it mentioned authenticity and a mental connection since those are both very important to me too.

Sometimes better results can be gotten by prompting it a little differently. Here’s another version:

This one seems more tailored and less general. Vegan lifestyle alignment is definitely an important factor since I’ve been vegan for most of my life. Same goes for respecting my relationship with Rachelle. This advice is pretty well individualized.

I think it someone were to try to use this approach to try to get into a relationship with someone that ChatGPT knows very well, it would be more effective to try multiple prompts, regenerate them a few times, and extract the most unique and distinct elements to build a customized approach. Based on what I’ve seen, I think it could be reasonably effective, probably helping more than hurting.

I think a better approach for this would be discovering if someone is actually compatible with you. Imagine AI-driven dating or matchmaking services.

There’s a light side to this tech and a darker side. I sense immense possibilities for what we can do with this for self-development purposes. I feel lucky that my blogging history gives me some special advantages in being able to explore these possibilities more deeply than most. Perhaps this is a preview of what may become more widely available to more people though, at least those who’ve put significant parts of their lives online.

Even on the consumer side, I’m more optimistic than pessimistic. I think I’d prefer it if sales were more individualized. It would be a neat experience when car shopping to have the salesperson talking about the values fit, such as the vegan interior. This actually gives me the idea to help the salespeople out a bit by emailing them this sort of info in advance, and encourage them to use it.

This is a strange new world of self-development possibilities that we’re entering. Personally I love it! I know some people are freaked out about where AI is heading, but I’m really not attached to where the story goes next. I think it’s going to be a fascinating ride however it unfolds.

If you’re interesting in exploring more self-development with AI, there are lots of ways to do that even if you’re not personally known to an AI like ChatGPT. You just have to do a bit more front-loading to teach it. Some members of Conscious Growth Club are actively exploring this together, including me of course. We’re having our annual opening to invite new members to join in about 10 days, from April 25th to May 1st, so please consider enrolling in the club for Year 7. We’re making numerous upgrades to CGC to make it even more lively and adventurous for self-development explorers. I’ll be sharing more about those upgrades in the days ahead, so stay tuned. 😁

The Beauty of Conflict

Posted on 21/01/2023 by Boris Clair

Conflict. It’s a word that can strike fear into the hearts of many, especially those who consider themselves “spiritual” people. After all, isn’t the goal of spirituality to move beyond conflict and find inner peace?

Conflict is not something to be feared or avoided. Conflict is a powerful aspect of human life to embrace and even celebrate.

The existence of conflict in this reality is not a mistake. Conflict has many benefits, both for our individual growth and for society as a whole. It helps us sculpt our characters, upgrade our thinking, and add more depth and nuance to our understanding of the world. It may be uncomfortable or destructive at times, but it’s also necessary for our growth and evolution.

You didn’t create the presence of conflict in this reality. It’s been around long before your current life, and it will continue to exist long afterwards. You’re not going to suppress or eliminate it. Conflict exists here for good reasons. If you don’t currently grasp or respect those reasons, that isn’t going to force reality to bend to your ignorance because plenty of other people do grasp and respect the value of conflict.

But wait… doesn’t everyone want a conflict-free world? Heck no! Not everyone here is conflict avoidant, and trying to create a peace-only, conflict-free world doesn’t serve them. In fact, such efforts will actively be opposed by many. Just try to create a conflict-free world – or even a microcosm of it – and you’ll see that the world resists your efforts. That’s not a mistake; it’s because conflict is incredibly useful.

I love peace, and I also love conflict. Both are different frequencies of this human experience, and I value and appreciate them essentially equally. If you’d assumed that one of my goals was to create a conflict-free world, you’d be mistaken. Blech! I don’t want that at all. I want conflict to remain very much a part of this world. If I want to change anything about it, I’d seek to upgrade how people relate to conflict, how they form intentions around it, and how they find purpose and meaning within it. That includes continuing to upgrade and improve how I relate to conflict.

Conflict can take many forms, from random and pointless to meaningful and purposeful. Take the example of a parent preventing their child from doing something really stupid or dangerous while the child resists such efforts. This is a purposeful and necessary step in the child’s growth and development. Or consider a sports team competing against a rival. This conflict fuels the growth and development of the team and the individual players – often in ways that impact their lives off the field too. And it can be very entertaining to watch as well. And then we have rich and meaningful social conflicts such as the Civil Rights Movement, which are still generating powerful ripples. We even have conflicts about conflicts, and we have some conflicts about conflicts about conflicts too.

Do you ever enjoy watching conflict? Do you really want it to go away entirely? Be honest.

I really don’t want a life or reality without conflict. That would be so incredibly boring.

At the very least, even when you’re engaging in a conflict that you’re resisting, you’re probably entertaining other people who are observing you, even when you aren’t aware of this.

How do you relate to the part of yourself that finds conflict attractive? Do you ever shame it or try to suppress it? Do you pretend that you’re really not that kind of person? What if you dropped the shame and guilt? Consider that your fascination with conflict, however big or small it may be, isn’t a mistake and that there are powerful and productive reasons that you’re secretly drawn to it.

Isn’t the goal of spirituality to avoid conflict and find inner peace? I’d agree that one aspect of spiritual development is to cultivate inner peace. But that doesn’t mean avoiding conflict. It actually includes making peace with the presence of conflict in this reality – and especially in your own life. Resisting, fearing, or avoiding conflict doesn’t actually help you align with peace.

Peace and conflict aren’t opposites. They actually arise together. You can’t have one without the other because each serves to define the other.

There’s a scene in the two-part “Redemption” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that provides a powerful and insightful – and fun – way to frame conflict, both on a physical and a spiritual level. In that episode the Klingons are engaged in a brutal civil war. But after a vicious battle, they all go to a neutral bar, drink blood wine, and hang out and celebrate their warrior fierceness together. On the battlefield they are bitter enemies, but at the bar they’re all friends and comrades. They get pretty drunk and rowdy celebrating the glory of conflict together. Then when they sober up the next day, they return to the battlefield and continue fighting.

One particular Klingon named Worf, however, goes to that bar and doesn’t get it. Worf was raised by humans and struggles to grasp how all these enemies could be foolishly celebrating together when they ought to be preparing for the next battle engagement. Worf wants to go back and make repairs to their ship, so they can be more battle-ready. But his brother Kurn explains it: “You and I will fight battles that others can only dream of. The time for glory is here. It is not a time to worry about stabilizers; it is a time to celebrate. For tomorrow we all may die!”

This is how I love to think about conflict in our human lives. On one level we may do battle, but on another level, we can also love and respect each other as co-warriors. When we die, the human conflict dissolves, but while we’re here on Earth, it may be very worthwhile to wholeheartedly engage in it. Every conflict we create and experience here is temporary. Every conflict has a limited lifespan, and one way or another it will end.

Conflict and peace go hand-in-hand. Again, they arise together, so I encourage you to embrace both aspects of life. One is not better than the other. Peace isn’t superior to conflict.

How would you like to deal with Trump supporters (i.e. supreme idiots) in your life? Do you want to make peace with them? Or would you rather fight? You can do both, you know. Some pretty intelligent people I know have tried to talk to them to develop an understanding, and they’ve returned dejected and disappointed for the most part. Then they vent about those encounters and give up on trying it again. And there are those who proclaim success in maintaining positive relationships with Trumpers, while adding, “but we avoid talking about politics at all costs,” as if that’s some kind of meaningful success. This reminds me of the “Massive Head Wound Harry” Saturday Night Live skit where everyone tries to avoid addressing the obvious. What head wound? Everything seems normal to me.

Embracing conflict doesn’t mean glorifying violence. It means fighting the good fights while we’re here. There are many good fights to be fought these days, so let’s get to fighting them. And then afterwards we can all go to that Klingon bar, drink blood wine, and celebrate our warrior fierceness.

I enjoy pushing back against racist and fascist idiocy these days. On the one hand, it seems odd that common sense still needs defenders, but it clearly does, so that one is an easy opt-in, is it not?

Yet I can still hug Trump supporters when we meet up at the bar – while we’re still here on Earth. The smell can be a bit rough, but I manage. 😉

Remember that we all die in the end. All our human conflicts will eventually be over and done with. We’re going to leave them all behind no matter what. But while we’re here, let’s embrace the conflicts that are the richest and most purposeful for us. Grab the sword and the armor that you like best, and play the role of warrior when it suits you. That is your path to peace.

What It’s Like Being Me

Posted on 01/01/2023 by Boris Clair

I love asking people this question: What is it really like being you?

We can see how people speak and behave on the outside, but what do we know of their interior perspective?

What I love about this question is that it invites real intimacy and empathy. It’s an invitation into trust. I feel honored when someone does their best to answer honestly. It’s fascinating to discover how someone frames and experiences their interior world, at least to the extent they can articulate it.

I thought it would be interesting to answer this question too, if only to see what comes through when I try to answer it.

Centeredness

I love being me and really enjoy my life, which feels rich and rewarding. I feel like I figured out the big rocks and put them in place many years ago. I feel very aligned with the work I get to do and the people I regularly connect with, especially in Conscious Growth Club and the Transformational Leadership Council.

I don’t experience any meaningful doubt about the path I’m on, at least not at the macro level. I like to think carefully about the projects I commit to, but I can’t say that I ever seriously feel like making a significant change in my career path or lifestyle at this point. I’m always interested in upgrades and improvements, but the overall trajectory of my life feels like it’s already perfect for me.

So on the inside, I normally feel very centered and engaged with whatever I’m doing and experiencing. I enjoy a beautiful sense of harmony with my work and life balance. I don’t feel like work and life are separate. It feels more like the work and non-work parts of life are always dancing with each other.

Energy & Enthusiasm

One of the main emotions I experience is enthusiasm.

I love to feel positively stimulated with emotion, not all the time to the maximum, but as nice accents throughout each day. I like to feel amped up and engaged with life.

Partly this is a decision to move away from boredom and dullness. When I feel that the energy of a situation is a bit low for my tastes, I’ll often do something to shift it. For instance, I frequently like to play music and dance around while making meals. I love it when Rachelle does that with me too.

Every day I find something to feel enthusiastic about, usually many times each day. It could be a new business idea, but I’ll also generate enthusiasm for everyday experiences like greeting Rachelle when she gets up, doing a Zoom call, or watching a show together. I’ll even generate excitement about running errands.

My mind has a strong tendency to want to bounce away from boredom and towards feelings of engagement, playfulness, and fun. For me this aspect of my inner reality is solidly implanted.

Raising Vibes

I think this is something I learned from watching movies when I was younger. There are so many movie scenes where a high-energy character walks in, and the whole vibe of the scene changes. Or maybe it’s an unusual character who shifts the vibe of whatever scene they’re in. One example is Bill Murray’s character in Ghostbusters. Another is Val Kilmer’s character in Real Genius. Such characters were basically my heroes when I was younger. You’ve probably seen countless examples of these characters too.

When I interact with people socially, I often think about how I can stimulate them vibrationally… like what I could say or do to help connect them with more enthusiasm for their lives, experiences, and opportunities. Sometimes I feel that my role has been to shake people awake if they’ve been sleeping through life in zombie mode.

I sense that a great key to life is how we manage our energy, which includes thought energy, physical energy, and emotional energy. I think you can include spiritual energy too. I pay serious attention to the flow of energy through myself and through interactions with others. If the energy flow feels off somehow, I do my best to shift it in a more positive and constructive direction.

I think that for much of my life, I’ve felt a strong attraction to certain vibes and a strong repulsion towards others. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better and better at centering my life around the vibes I like and defending myself from vibes I dislike. I’m attracted to vibes like abundance, playfulness, curiosity, and creativity. I’m repulsed by neediness, close-mindedness, defeatism, and depression.

Thinking Algorithmically

Probably because I learned computer programming when I was a kid, I tend to think of life in terms of interesting problems to be solved and challenges to work through. I live in a world of puzzles to be figured out, and I love chipping away at these. These puzzles could include business challenges, creative challenges, personal challenges, and more.

I don’t worry if problems are solvable. I tend to regard everything as solvable and figureoutable. I generally assume that every problem has multiple solutions, so my mind starts churning on various solution pathways instead of fussing over whether it’s solvable. I’m much more concerned by which pathways seem the most elegant to me. I love to discover shortcuts.

Some problems in my life took me a long time to solve, but I eventually figured them out. It doesn’t bother me if some problems take years or even decades to solve. The time is going to pass anyway, and since I love working on interesting problems and challenges, I enjoy the experience of continuing to chip away at them.

I’m always looking to improve my toolset of problem-solving skills. Tackling interesting problems and challenges helps me improve those tools and upgrade my models of reality.

Belongingness

Imagine receiving thank you messages and expressions of appreciation from people around the world every day of your life. That’s been my reality for the past 18+ years, ever since I started blogging in 2004. That’s probably going to continue for the rest of my life, even if I stopped working.

Recently my book Personal Development for Smart People came out in China, so I’ve been getting a surge in appreciative emails from Chinese readers.

What does this do to my interior perspective? It gives me an unshakeable feeling of belongingness.

When I was younger, I often felt isolated and disconnected, like I was an alien in this world who didn’t belong here. I haven’t felt that way in decades though. Today I feel solidly at home here. I have zero doubt that this is where I belong – on this planet and in this field. I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

I feel at home whenever I travel too. Foreign locations don’t feel foreign to me. I’m so used to communicating with people from all over the world that it feels like the whole world is home.

Appreciation

I feel like I’m immersed in a reality that’s filled with experiences, people, and items to appreciate. I can’t seem to help feeling lots of appreciation each day. I appreciate my work. I appreciate my home. I appreciate Rachelle. I appreciate living in Las Vegas. I appreciate this community.

I also appreciate the little things in life. I spent time interacting with various objects and tech each day, and I learned how important it is to fill my life with items that evoke appreciation. This week I’ve been working with a bunch of hand tools to hang acoustic panels, and using them makes me smile sometimes because I carefully selected and purchased tools that I’d appreciate – such as a drill, tape measure, level, etc.

For me practicing appreciation was a huge key in shifting from scarcity to abundance, so this attitude of appreciation is indelibly woven into my mindset. Almost always when I touch something physically, there’s a part of me saying “thank you” internally for the experience. This happens when I put my hands on the steering wheel in my car, when I open up my laptop, when I pick up a knife in the kitchen, etc. I sense that we only have so many experiences in life, and I want even the most mundane ones to be infused with appreciation.

It would also be unusual for me to go through a day without saying thank you to someone for something. I love to express appreciation, and I sense that people could always use more of it. I would love to see more people expressing genuine gratitude for all the wonders we get to experience in this life instead of taking so much for granted.

When I die I want my last words to be: Thank you for this life.

Love

A big part of my interior perspective is that I enjoy being in love every day. I know a lot of people probably see me as a more mental creature due to seeing that side of me from my writing, but internally I feel a lot of love energy flowing through me each day.

I really, really, really enjoy and appreciate my relationship with Rachelle. Every day I get to spend with her is sheer delight.

Our relationship doesn’t feel effortful. It feels like a wonderful gift. I think that’s because we’re so ridiculously compatible. I recognize that what we have is very special, and on the inside that makes me feel very lucky.

I feel doubly fortunate that I get to see sides of Rachelle that she doesn’t often share with others. To people who don’t know her well, she may seem shy or introverted, but with me she shares so much playfulness, fun, love, warmth, and affection.

I’ve never had an issue with loneliness. I love solitary time too and don’t feel any significant resistance towards being alone. But I’ve spent most of my adult life in long-term relationships. I think one reason I’ve attracted partners pretty easily is that I just don’t feel needy in this area. I love being in a relationship, but I also love the experience of being on my own. I feel equally comfortable in both worlds.

I think this has been a key to new growth experiences. Don’t try to invite new experiences by resisting where you are. Try to love and appreciate your present reality as well as what you’d like to invite next. Send appreciation in all directions.

That was also a big part of shifting from scarcity to abundance. I wasted so much energy on the frustration of resisting scarcity when I was in my 20s. When I finally let go and surrendered to it – and actually welcomed it into my life as if I’d always be in scarcity till I died – that’s when the floodgates of abundance opened up. Learning to appreciate scarcity was a powerful lesson.

Freedom & Creativity

I also really enjoy my freedom. I haven’t had a job or a boss in 30+ years, so I’ve been on an independent entrepreneurial path since the early 1990s. It was rough during the first several years, but I eventually figured it out.

I don’t normally think of myself as an entrepreneur or business owner though. Those frames feel a bit too dull and mental to me. On the inside I don’t really fuss about my identity.

I love to create all sorts of things, so most days I’m thinking about what I’m creating. I could label myself as a creator, but that feels a bit off too. I’m not particularly concerned with how I’m labeled by myself or others. I’m much more in tune with whatever I’m engaging with in the moment. In terms of my identity, it feels more like water or wind – very flexible and adapting to wherever it goes.

The term “content creator” turns my stomach a bit, like it’s trying to smoosh something beautifully expansive into a small-minded box. It’s like putting a bird in a cage.

For me creativity and freedom are the Wonder Twins of my life. I see both as being essential for my long-term happiness and fulfillment. These are gifts from reality, but they must be claimed and defended.

Some people would say that they need freedom in order to create. I don’t think like that. It’s too limiting, and it points back to neediness, which is something I always want to bounce away from.

I regard freedom as something I can and must create. Freedom is a choice. But freedom without creativity is unsustainable, boring, and meaningless. I feel that I’ve invested a lot in creating freedom and freeing myself to create. On the inside it feels wonderful to be in a place where I can create, share, and express so much. This includes maintaining the freedom to keep creating without interference.

I don’t just think of creativity as doing creative work like writing articles, making courses, or doing workshops. I think of creativity as being the core essence of conscious living. That includes creating freedom, creating a life I love, and co-creating experiences with the right people.

Curiosity

On the inside I’m incredibly curious. I love to learn, grow, explore, and discover. I’m always finding something interesting to delve into. I love the process of discovering what the interior perspective of an experience is like. I’m very open to new experiences, especially experiences that can upgrade my thinking and understanding of life and reality.

Even when I’m not actively writing about it, I’m often doing some kind of personal growth experiment. Or I’m studying and exploring something new. Frequently I’m exploring multiple overlapping curiosities.

I’m currently doing a new dietary experiment involving testing a different macro balance (carbs, fat, protein). My goal is to aim for a caloric distribution of 70% carbs (or more), 20% fat (or less), and 10% protein (or less). This is similar to the 80/10/10 diet I did in January 2008 but with higher fat. It’s going very well so far.

I also recently researched acoustic panels, and this week I’ve been installing them in my home office. I also have some panels to install in my studio and a few in the living room. This will help to improve the audio quality on some recordings, and it will make my studio look nicer since I can finally remove the old sound blankets. I like the look of the panels too. Rachelle helped me pick the colors, and we spent a lot of time working on this together.

Last month I invested in some plumbing upgrades, hiring a plumber to install a new tankless water heater, water softener, and whole house water filtration system. I also did a plant medicine journey with some friends.

Last year around this time, I was exploring home theater systems and invested in a major upgrade there. That was one of my favorite explorations because it totally transformed the experience of watching movies and shows with Rachelle, especially action movies. That gave me even more to appreciate.

One of my biggest challenges is that I can get too curious and open too many new doors simultaneously. I love saying yes to new experiences and explorations, but I also have to practice saying no a lot to avoid overextending myself.

Order

On the inside, my mind feels very sharp and orderly. I’m usually very adept at focusing and directing my mind to advance the projects that I want to work on.

I have many dozens of projects mapped out with action steps (I currently use the Things app for this). Realistically it may take me years to complete all the projects I’ve already identified. Week by week I keep chipping away at them.

I also maintain a quarterly completion log, whereby I document what I’ve gotten done or experienced each calendar quarter. I’ve been doing this for about 5 years consistently, and it’s really helpful for progress visibility. I can see where I moved projects across the finish line. Sometimes I may feel like I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked, but when I review those quarterly logs, I’m usually impressed with how much I actually finished.

My life is typically a mix of pre-planned work plus spontaneous action. I’ve gotten pretty good at taking action both inspirationally and methodically. I love having the flexibility to choose which tasks and projects I’ll work on each day without prescheduling them. Most days my calendar is blank. But I also keep track of many competing priorities to weave in when the timing is right.

I like keeping my physical environment neat and tidy. When clutter piles up, it’s very temporary. I feel a strong desire to keep moving towards greater order. When items and tasks are in order, it frees my mind to think more clearly, to be more creative, and to take more action. I think one reason that I embrace order is that disorder is very distracting for me.

Optimism

I don’t get depressed. Simply never. My mind stays focused on the positive – on inspiring ideas, engaging people, action steps, interesting projects, creative explorations, etc.

I used to get depressed sometimes when I was younger, but I put a stop to that.

I decided a long time ago that depression is a stupid waste of life and that it was critical to defend against the slime pit of depression, self-doubt, and other downer modes of experience. Otherwise it becomes a trap where one can lose years of precious life. I regard depression as a nasty neural pattern – a mental and emotional virus – so I did what was necessary to ensure that my mind just doesn’t go there anymore. I felt that was one of the early personal development battles where I had to win a decisive victory. So this is a virus to which I’ve built a very strong immunity.

There were lots of pieces to this – cleaning up my diet (zero animal products); regular exercise that I enjoy; dropping misaligned people; committing to meaningful and fulfilling creative work; saying no to partial matches; and creating a life rich in intimacy, warmth, and affection.

I really appreciate my past self for putting so much effort into upgrading his mindset and heartset. That was a real challenge for him, but he did a fabulous job of solving those problems one by one. He gifted me with sustainably constructive thoughts and feelings. That’s a huge gift since I no longer feel like I have to fight with myself internally. My mind and emotions feel very harmonious.

Thoughtfulness

I like to be very thoughtful and deliberate in making decisions, especially important ones. I use many tools and processes to work through decisions methodically. For instance, when designing a new course, I follow a step-by-step design template that I’ve developed over the years. It’s one of the bonuses in the Amplify course.

To really know that I can complete a project, especially a big one, I have to reach a point of strong commitment. When I was younger, I left too many creative projects unfinished because I started them impulsively, and I hadn’t put the right level of thought into them up front. Then I’d struggle partway through with thoughts like, What’s the point of finishing this? Or something else would distract me, and I’d lose focus on the previous project.

Today I’m way better at finishing projects. I look at them carefully and analyze them from different angles, often spending weeks or months in the pre-commitment phase. Some projects don’t converge on commitment, but when I’m able to commit, I’m really good at following through all the way to the end.

What this does for my inner experience is that I have super strong creative trust. I know what it takes to complete a sizable creative project. I know how to get myself to the point of commitment, and I’m able to trust myself to follow through and finish. I also know how to recognize when the alignment isn’t there yet, and I shouldn’t commit myself.

It took time to discover the right process for me such that I could make wise decisions intelligently while also avoiding analysis paralysis. Having a process that converges really helps.

Relationships

Internally I think about almost all aspects of life through the lens of relationships. This includes people, tasks, projects, goals, possessions, food, activities, locations, and more.

Instead of thinking so objectively about different aspects of life, I usually favor subjective thinking. I imagine how different decisions will affect my inner experience. I think more about the dynamic flow of events than about the static nature of situations.

You could say that I think in terms of verbs more than nouns. Where is the energy flowing? How is it changing? How do I want to engage with these energy patterns?

When I’m considering a new creative project, I pay a lot of attention to how I’m going to relate to that project while I’m working on it. I don’t just think about the end goal or result. At least 80% of my thinking is focused on what the journey will be like (probably more like 90%+). I want to make that journey beautiful and engaging.

I’ve invested a lot of thought and energy into creating a beautiful and harmonious relationship with my work and life. This includes how I relate to the people who engage with my work.

What I love about this relationship model of thinking about life is that it helped me get really honest with myself. It encourages me to be more forthright about expressing how I really think and feel. Can I share that I’d love to see Vladimir Putin slowly fed feet-first into a wood chipper, while being given frequent espresso breaks along the way? That’s actually one of my intentions.

Defending Against Misalignments

Some of my energy flows into defensive activities, which is a part of my life that many people don’t see. I have standards for the people I want to engage with, and I’m not interested in lowering them to build a larger but misaligned audience.

That’s one reason I tell Trump supporters to begone. I have no interest in serving racist idiots and assholes. That isn’t political. It’s personal. I find such people utterly loathsome, and I want nothing to do with them. I don’t want to invest my energy in dealing with people who disgust me, so I choose not to deal with them. Moreover, I will continue to staunchly defend this community against them, especially Conscious Growth Club. Such idiocy has no place here.

I have to deal with occasional stalker-types as well, including people who clearly aren’t right in the head. That doesn’t get me down. I just see as it part of the experience of working in this field.

If I wanted to be a mental health professional who regularly engages with such people, I’d have chosen that as my career path. I realized a long time ago that I must carefully defend the path that resonates with me, and that requires being very firm in saying no to people and situations that I’m not willing to deal with. We don’t automatically get what we desire. We get what we’re willing to tolerate.

When people fall out of resonance with me, I prefer to just let them go. If someone violates my trust, I drop them from my life, and I really never let them back in because when I did so in the past, they always gave me cause to regret it. “Fool me once” is enough for me. There are so many interesting people to interact with in this life that it seems foolhardy to bother dealing with misaligned scraps. I now realize just how needy and desperate that is. That said, I very easily forgive people and have no interest in holding grudges, but when I close the door on someone, it’s really closed. From my own perspective, I see this as returning their energy back to the Simulator, where it can be recycled. This keeps my energy from getting stuck where it doesn’t want to be stuck.

I’m committed to flowing my energy where it wants to go and engaging with people who want to explore and engage with me in a mutually supportive way. That takes a certain degree of alignment and compatibility. It’s exquisitely joyful and rewarding to serve people who meet that standard. And it’s disappointing at the very least to attempt this with people who don’t.

Some people and experiences are like the perfect puzzle pieces that interlock with us in just the right ways. Even when our interactions are temporary, that kind of alignment is beautiful to behold. In order to invite more of this, I found it crucial to say a hard and definitive no to the misaligned. Otherwise partial matches and mismatches will block so much beauty, wonder, and delight from flowing through.

High-Trust Relationships & Audience Engagement

Years ago I went through the experience of building up lots of followers on social media and being very active on those services daily. It can feel fun and stimulating having so much attention, especially if you enjoy being in the limelight. I also found those interactions too random and chaotic, and I was glad to delete Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and tighten up my social focus. Seeing what’s been happening on Twitter these days makes me even more grateful to have dumped it in 2014.

After that I went through a process of focusing more on audience alignment than on audience size. That shrunk my overall audience but also made me feel happier and more in tune with my work. It helped me go much deeper into explorations that inspire me and others – less blogging but more courses, workshops, and of course CGC itself. It’s like we become more courageous, more heart-centered, and more genuine when we’re surrounded by the right people.

I’ve gotten used to having an audience for my work since that’s been my daily reality for decades, all the way back to my computer games business. The people I serve are in my mind each day, and I interact with them every day in some way – through email, the CGC forums, Zoom calls, blogging, videos, in person, etc.

To me this doesn’t feel like a temporary situation. It feels permanent, at least as far as my lifespan is concerned. There are people in my audience in their 30s now who started reading my blog when they were teenagers. I know this because many of them have told me so. I expect that even decades from now, many of the same people who are engaging with my work today will still be engaging with it or with the community around this work.

That really makes me think about how to keep serving the people in this community for the long term. I know that the specific people in this community will fluctuate, but there’s clearly a core base of people that feel a sense of commitment and resonance, so I think we’ll be in each other’s lives for a long time to come.

I love engaging with people on the basis of mutual appreciation. I like having an audience that appreciates me and the work and I do, and I love engaging with people that I appreciate too. This is something I never take for granted. It’s something I always want to keep investing in.

High-trust relationships are very important to me. Trust empowers us to explore so much more together. That’s another reason that certain people have no place in this community. We can’t build high-trust relationships with people who serve as enablers of lying and deceit.

Caring

I think one reason I’ve enduring so long in this field is that I genuinely care about the people in this community. That’s an aspect of my interior perspective that I think a lot of people don’t see. Of all the items I’m sharing here, I’d say that the #1 insight I’d love people to know is that I really do care. I want to see the people in this community thrive and enjoy rich and fulfilling lives. Just writing this part makes me teary-eyed.

I work hard at figuring out how to help people grow and how to keep serving them year after year. For me this is a lifelong investment, and I want to keep getting better at it. Sharing ideas is just one piece to the puzzle. Another piece is having a stable community where people can invest in each other (Conscious Growth Club). And yet another piece is continuing to listen for where the latest needs, desires, and growth opportunities are.

The road ahead is going to bring so many fresh challenges and opportunities. I want to help the people in this community intelligently navigate those experiences. I love the challenge of playing that role and figuring out where I can be of service.

A big part of my motivation comes from the people I serve. I don’t write just to write. I always write for people. I create courses for people. I develop workshops for people. I coach people. And it’s not for people in general but specifically for the people in this community – past, present, and future.

Internally I often feel that it’s other people’s energies and intentions that summon me to do the work I do. Somehow they energetically invite me to help them. So I never feel like I’m writing or creating into an empty void. I always feel like I’m co-creating with the energy that invited me to the dance.

I also see an important connection between caring and defense. In order to feel safe expressing caring and building high-trust relationships, I think it’s critical to defend against the opposite. I don’t trust blindly. I test for trust, and when I see it, I keep investing. But when people abuse my trust, they get the sword and shield.

Support & Cooperation

Internally I feel very creatively supported, and I have a very cooperative relationship with life. Life has given me everything I need to do my best creative work. I wanted to be of service to people, and life said a big yes to that in response.

When I was younger, I tried to do a lot of work under pressure, especially financial pressure and time pressure. There was this sense of always trying to scramble to get enough done to make ends meet. That wasn’t a situation where I could do my best creative work.

Back then my mindset and heartset were more competitive than cooperative. I put too much attention on my individual success and accomplishments, even though that just created more stress and pressure for me. I tried to motivate myself with misaligned forms of motivation. I focused too much on end results, and I leaned too heavily on courage and discipline to try to push through difficulties. I wish I had known back then how much more effective it is to focus on the journey and on cultivating a beautiful relationship with it.

Today my life feels very much the opposite of stressful. It’s fun and engaging, but it’s also peaceful and relaxing when I want it to be. Life feels very spacious, welcoming, and encouraging.

I love that I get to spend so much time exploring the richness of life, relationships, creativity, and fresh possibilities. I feel very in tune with the journey I’m on, and I delight in how it’s unfolding each day.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but hopefully you found some value in one or more of these insights that may be useful to you in your own life or work.

Happy New Year! 🥳 🎉

How It Feels To Grieve A Loved One During A Time Of National Mourning

Posted on 17/09/2022 by Boris Clair

The death of the Queen has been felt by millions of people around the world – but for those grieving their own private losses during this time, it’s bringing up a lot of complicated emotions.

For Anne-Marie Brownlee, 40, from Coventry, reliving the major moments in the Queen’s life these past few days has left her drawing parallels with the loss of her late husband, who died suddenly and unexpectedly on November 1, 2021.

Brownlee was waking up to celebrate their daughter’s second birthday when she discovered her husband John had passed away, right next to her in bed. It later transpired he’d died from an incredibly rare, underlying lung condition.

Recently, she’s been overwhelmed by a renewed sense of loss in the run up to John’s birthday. And now the Queen’s death has left her experiencing those waves of grief all over again.

“When something like this happens – and it’s such a widespread loss – you can’t help but be brought back to the reality of your situation,” she says.

Brownlee experienced the Queen as a quiet constant in her life, from watching her yearly speech on Christmas Day to celebrating the big Jubilee jamborees.

But so was John, who she met when she was just 15. “Throughout all of my adult life he’s been by my side, so there’s a direct comparison in that sense – all those big moments he’s been with me, like the Queen has,” she explains.

“Realising that she died and losing her has just brought back to the surface those feelings of loss and that renewed remembrance of all the things that we’ll miss in the future. All those upcoming big milestones that he’ll never be part of, like she’ll never be part of – and having to accept that all over again.”

While she’s avoided most of the news coverage surrounding the Queen’s death – probably subconsciously so as not to get too upset, she notes – she did catch a documentary about Queen Elizabeth’s life one evening this week.

“When I was watching it, I did find myself tearing up through many of the parts, purely because it’s a loss, and then because I guess it’s going back in her life: seeing her get married and having children. It’s all things that happened in my life that I can relate to and then feel that sadness and the loss,” she says.

The 40-year-old, who works in internal communications, is no stranger to the strangeness of private grief during a period of nationwide mourning.

Her late partner lost his best friend in a freak motorcycle accident not long after 9/11, and she lost her own father the year that Diana, Princess of Wales, died.

The moment she found out Diana had died is etched on her brain because of the strong feelings already overwhelming her that day.

“We’d gone on a family holiday down to Devon. It was the first time going away without my dad,” she recalls.

“The day we were due to come home was the day Princess Diana died. I remember being in the car with my mum and I remember the radio stations were constantly full of the news, playing sad music. It was raining outside for the whole journey, and me and my mum were sobbing the whole way.”

Like recent days, it brought up all those old feelings of loss once more – particularly as her dad loved the monarchy, and was a big fan of Princess Diana. “It was just the darkest and most miserable day,” she says.

Poppie Brownlee (Anne-Marie's sister), Gerry Brownlee (her father) and Anne-Marie Brownlee. — Poppie Brownlee (Anne-Marie’s sister), Gerry Brownlee (her father) and Anne-Marie Brownlee.

Headhunter James Coull, who is 40 and based in Northampton, has also found the past few weeks difficult, as he was preparing for the one-year anniversary of his wife’s death on September 14.

“Leading up to that, it’s been a whole month, really, of feeling anxious,” he says.

“The first everything is always new to you, you never know what to expect, and I suppose you look at a situation like the Queen – she’s 96. My wife was 32 and healthy…”

Coull’s wife Kathryn died suddenly and unexpectedly at home, while pregnant. James woke up to find out that not only had he lost the love of his life, but also their unborn daughter Florence Rose, at 32 weeks.

Recalling the moment, he tells HuffPost UK: “It wasn’t planned, I wasn’t expecting anything, it wasn’t like she had a terminal illness and you’ve got time to cope with it. It was just waking up and finding somebody dead in bed.”

He’s found the past few days particularly difficult, navigating his own feelings of intense grief, while seeing people around him mourning the loss of the Queen.

“It’s very different when you’re mourning for somebody you’ve never met before, somebody who’s more of a ‘figure’. Somebody who you’re well aware of who they are but you haven’t got any emotional, strong ties to that person,” he says.

“People make comments in the office or everyday life about being really sad that Queen Elizabeth has died, but they don’t know that person. It hits home a lot harder, doesn’t it, when it’s someone who’s so close to you: somebody that you’ve committed to spending the rest of your life with, somebody that you’ve made a joint decision to bring someone into the world with.

“I suppose you can’t really compare that to somebody who’s in the public eye. I think you pretty much accept that once family members or friends get into their 70s and 80s, you know it’s inevitable they’re going to pass one day.

“And I suppose you always prepare for it. But you never imagine you’re going to bury somebody younger than you.”

The news of the Queen’s death on September 8 was followed by an immediate outpouring of grief online, with many heartfelt memes suggesting she had been reunited with her late husband Prince Philip.

But Coull has really struggled with this as he questions his own thoughts and feelings around the afterlife.

“I understand why people do it – it’s a good feeling, it’s giving people hope that there is life after death, but you just don’t know do you?” he says. “Some people believe in that side of things, the spiritual side of things, and some people don’t.”

For others, like Brownlee, the idea of the Queen and Prince Philip together again has brought hope – and a sense of peace. She is comforted by the idea that sometime in the future she could also be reunited with John.

There’s no right or wrong way to grieve during this time – and everyone will experience loss in their own way. Vicky Anning, communications manager for charity Widowed and Young (WAY), says the Queen’s death has prompted “a whole range of emotions” among its members.

“Some people have found the chance to mourn along with the nation incredibly cathartic,” she explains, “while others have found the media coverage very triggering – reminding them of their own personal losses and bringing up difficult reminders of the early days of their own bereavement.”

Lauren Vivash, 36, from Essex, discovered her husband Robert had a brain tumour in 2019 – she was pregnant with their daughter at the time.

Robert had been having seizures which were attributed to a Grade II tumour. Despite surgery, it progressed quicker than expected and he died in June this year.

Rob and Lauren Vivash, and their baby daughter

The Queen’s death occurred just shy of 100 days after Robert’s death, yet Vivash found the process of grieving alongside the rest of the nation as “cathartic”, saying she no longer felt alone in her sadness.

“To begin with I found it really upsetting,” she recalls of hearing the news. “For that first night, I was crying the whole time. It just really hit me. I was like: this is a bit strange. I wasn’t brought up to be a big royalist or anything.”

But she admired the Queen, she says, adding “she was the most famous widow in the world”.

She recalls how her late husband had been very invested in the royal family and they’d watched lots of the coverage together when Prince Philip died. This left her feeling closer to the royals, too.

Vivash remembers seeing footage of the Queen sitting alone at her husband’s funeral and, knowing her own partner was ill, found some strength in that. “Obviously I hoped that he wouldn’t die but it gave me a sense of like: well, she’s shown how you can carry on after losing your husband,” she says.

Discovering the Queen had died, she says, “it’s almost like it gave me permission to grieve”.

There’s this expectation, she says, that after a funeral of a partner, friend or family member, you’re expected to move on. “People think grieving is linear and that it’s horrible that they die, but you get better and better. But it’s not the case at all,” she says.

At the moment that feels different. “I think because everyone is grieving, it just gives you that permission to be upset again and maybe gives people more of an idea. It’s not the same as losing your husband when he’s only 38, but it gives them an idea that it’s painful to lose someone.

“I think that’s why I found it cathartic.”

Despite dealing with her own raw feelings, Vivash will still be tuning in to watch the Queen’s funeral on September 19 – not only to witness history on her husband’s behalf, but also to support the royal family in their grief.

Sadly, some funerals originally set to happen on the same day are being postponed, after the last-minute Bank Holiday was announced.

In some cases this has been at the family’s request, while others have had to reschedule because the cemetery or crematorium operator has chosen to close – for Jewish and Muslim families, this has been a particular worry, given funerals should be carried out within 24 hours of an individual’s death.

And with wall-to-wall coverage of the royal funeral, Monday will undoubtedly be a difficult time for those experiencing their own recent loss.

Coull encourages anyone impacted to reach out to others who know what you’re going through – via support services and bereavement support charities – as talking can really help.

“The first month I felt like I was in a parallel world. I felt it was a dream I couldn’t wake up from. You don’t sleep, you don’t eat, you don’t function as a human being, you almost shut your brain down so you don’t think about things,” he recalls of the time shortly after Kathryn’s death.

“I don’t like to use the cliché that time is a healer, but it is. Things do get easier. You learn to live with things, you learn how to cope with things, you learn how to go back to your everyday life.

“The feelings are still there, maybe slightly suppressed, but you know that every day you spend being sad and grieving is a day gone. And you don’t know when your time is up.

“You have to find the inner strength to move forwards.”

Help and support:

Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393.
Samaritans offers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on 116 123 (UK and ROI – this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill).
CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably) offer a helpline open 5pm-midnight, 365 days a year, on 0800 58 58 58, and a webchat service.
The Mix is a free support service for people under 25. Call 0808 808 4994 or email help@themix.org.uk

How to Relate to People With Low Truth Alignment

Posted on 30/07/2022 by Boris Clair

The first chapter of my book Personal Development for Smart People is called “Truth” because truth alignment is one of the fundamental principles of personal growth. In order to grow intelligently, we must face and accept reality in as many areas of life as we can. This often involves confronting and dealing with unpleasant truths that we’ve been avoiding for some time.

If we don’t get aligned with truth, we slide into falsehoods and denial, which can slow us down tremendously. Have you seen the lack of truth alignment playing out in the world recently? It’s hard not to notice it these days.

When we invite, face, and accept more truth alignment into our lives, we may feel tense, anxious, or resistant at first, but it can lead to a tremendous new flow of energy in a fresh direction when we finally surrender to reality. We so often see this when someone experiences a powerful wake-up call regarding their health, family, relationships, career path, finances, life purpose, etc.

I’ve often found it to be a powerful intention to say: Show me the truth. Show me what I’m not seeing. If the words can be spoken with genuine desire, this can really get some stuck energy flowing again; however, it may not be easy to face and deal with what comes up.

In this article though, I want to address a specific concern that many people have, which is how to deal with other people’s lack of truth alignment.

What do you do when friends, relatives, or co-workers succumb to conspiracy theories and start spewing out falsehoods?

What if someone you know is in deep denial about certain issues but doesn’t seem interested in hearing any honest communication about it?

What about people who wrap falsehoods into their beliefs and still expect to be treated with respect?

The Harmony Approach

A common solution is to try to go for harmony. In principle this is good, but in practice people tend to mistake something else for harmony. It’s like watching someone do a heavy weight training exercise with terrible form, and you know that in the long run, they’re probably going to hurt themselves.

Genuine harmony is an aspect of oneness. Oneness is the combination of truth and love, both of which are fundamental principles that help us move towards growth. For harmony to be real, it must be truth aligned. Without truth alignment you can’t experience harmony. You will get some version of discordance instead.

If you ever find yourself pursuing harmony at the expense of truth, realize that you’re not going to experience harmony. You will experience something else – most likely some form of tolerance rooted in denial. Without some solid truth alignment, you’ll be in the land of pretend, and that isn’t actually going to help you or anyone else grow. At best it will perpetuate stagnation.

The pathway to real harmony is through the truth. This pathway may seem utterly chaotic at first, but the chaos isn’t caused by the truth. The truth just is. The chaos is basically the falsehood and denial doing what they do best – resisting the truth. So let them bitch and moan, and stay aligned with truth anyway. Real harmony lies beyond this point.

Does it really serve our best interests if we try to bury the truth and pretend that everything is okay when we have some serious disagreements? This isn’t truth alignment – it’s confrontation avoidance.

Aligning With the Truth

Getting yourself aligned with truth is a good first step.

If you have a disagreement with someone, can you delve into the facts and details and find out what’s actually going on? For instance, if someone is delving into conspiracy websites, you can look into fact-checking sources and see if those sites are actually truth aligned or not. You can research the background of those sites and see what you discover.

You can also consider what you know about the person who’s succumbing to these falsehoods. Are they lonely? Feeling disconnected? Seeking a new peer group? What are their emotional reasons for going down that path? Is there some secondary gain in it for them? Can you get some sense of what may be driving them?

For instance, one friend started sending me conspiracy articles that apparently discredit COVID vaccines. However, when I looked into the sites he shared, they had ties to the Kremlin, so they’re basically political tools used to cause disruption. Such sites can be very effective at this, but they aren’t trustworthy sources of vaccine info, and some will even post false charts and graphs of fake research info. Of course I shared this with my friend to let him know that he was essentially a pawn being used in this political game. How he processes that info is up to him, but his actions also invite me to update my opinion of him. I regard him as less trustworthy, and I’ll be more suspicious of info he shares with me – not because of his intentions but because of his lack of fact-checking skills and his vulnerability to accepting erroneous info as true.

Now I would agree that we can’t have perfect information, and everything we learn through a screen must be considered suspect. But I also think we can leverage reasoning and some understanding of human nature and basic fact-checking and credibility assessment of sources to at least lean towards better truth alignment. We don’t have to develop clingy fixed beliefs that could be wrong, but we can assess likelihoods and weigh the preponderance of evidence.

I think most of the time, we are too gullible when we ought to be more curious and suspicious. Conspiracy theorists may seem suspicious or jaded, but they’re actually among the most gullible of all since they’ll swallow falsehoods from the most unreliable and discredited sources. IMO such people aren’t nearly suspicious enough. It’s rather silly that they’ll reject mainstream sources and then flock to even less credible outlets for information. Or they’ll switch to unreliable and untrustworthy mainstream sources, such as Fox News, which is laughable in terms of truth alignment but also quite sad in terms of how it affects people and society.

A key area of truth alignment for yourself is accepting when the people in your life are seriously lacking in truth alignment. With so many millions of people claiming to believe in falsehoods that have been abundantly debunked and discredited, it’s likely that you’ve had to deal with such people too.

For instance, who do you know that holds goofy religious beliefs that aren’t actually true? Do you accept the truth that someone you know has been duped into such falsehoods? Or do you still pretend that you’re okay with it, such as by saying, “Well, they’re a good person, but…”? Do you seek a false form of harmony that wants to hide from the truth?

The Emotionality of Truth Alignment

Getting aligned with truth can be surprisingly emotional. You may feel all sorts of intense emotions such as anger, disappointment, betrayal, resentment, frustration, anxiety, and more.

Let yourself feel those feelings. It’s wise to let them flow, so you can process them. Those feelings represent your inner truth. Let it be true that you feel what you feel.

When you see a friend or relative go down the conspiracy rabbit hole, let yourself feel the disappointment and worry.

When you see the U.S. Supreme Court make another ridiculous ruling based on a skewed notion of reality, let yourself feel pissed off about it.

When you see Sergey Lavrov say pretty much anything, let the vomit flow up your esophagus. It’s normal.

Just don’t stop there. Ask your feelings what they’re trying to communicate. The message isn’t just raw emotion. There’s a purposeful invitation behind those feelings. What truths are those feelings inviting you to discover?

I often like to journal about my feelings to ask them what their honest message is. This is a great way to become more truth aligned on the inside. Once I receive and acknowledge the message, the feelings almost always grow milder, or they stop being noticeable after a while.

Driving Towards Resolution

One reason that other people’s lack of truth alignment tugs at our attention is because it’s an invitation to get ourselves back into the flow of growth and change.

When we obsess over some else’s misalignments, we’re using a common delay tactic. Other people will present an endless stream of issues that we can call out as problematic, and it’s fine to do that now and then, but if we overdo it, this can divert our attention away from looking more closely at our own truth alignment issues.

When we see other people as blind, deluded, or misguided, we can get hung up on objections to their words and behaviors without actually resolving our thoughts and feelings about them. It’s fine to go through those phases, but we don’t want to remain stuck there.

If you object to what other people are thinking or saying, don’t stop there. Do your best to accept that they really are doing that, and then take the time to process and decide how you’re going to deal with them. How will their lack of truth alignment affect your relationship going forward? What meaning will you assign to their behaviors? How will you re-classify these people within your internal relationship matrix?

If you resolve your thoughts and feelings about such people to your own satisfaction, your mind can settle down, and you’ll no longer need to obsess about such people. This will free up more energy to pursue your own path of growth, which may involve facing your own difficult truths.

Beware the secondary gain that comes from obsessing over other people’s problems. If this is a way to let yourself off the hook from facing your own issues, it’s best to remove that incentive for using this as a delay tactic. I find that a good way to avoid the secondary gain issues is to give myself full permission to consciously put the brakes on my own growth when I want a break. Let it be perfectly okay to pause or slow down without having to justify the decision. If I can pause whenever I want – guilt-free – I don’t need to obsess over other people’s issues to force myself to go slower.

If you currently have a crushing relationship with someone else’s lack of truth alignment, invite the truth to really sink in. Do your best to fully accept what you see. Then ask: Now that I see this and can no longer deny it, what am I going to do about it? Who do I want to be in this situation?

One way to frame this is to consider that reality is testing you. What must you do to pass the test?

You’ll remain stuck if you don’t pass the test in a way that satisfies you.

Generalizing Your Answers

A good way to figure out how to resolve a situation with someone – at least in your own mind – is to state the issue more generally and then solve the general version of the problem. This won’t rid your social life of problems, but it will enable you to graduate to different classes of problems, so you don’t have to keep dealing with the same types of issues over and over.

For instance, if someone you know is spouting COVID conspiracy nonsense, you could ask yourself questions like these:

How would I like to relate to someone who absorbs and reiterates disinformation?
How shall I respond when someone speaks falsehoods in my presence?
What aspects of my character would I most like to access in such situations?
How do I intend to relate to people who present serious truth alignment issues?

I cannot give you these answers, but I can encourage you to ponder these questions intelligently and come up with your own answers. Then your next challenge is to get yourself to act in alignment with your best answers.

When I have time for it and if the relationship seems investment-worthy, I like to challenge and invite people who aren’t truth aligned to question what they think they know. Internally I feel some compassion for how they’ve been led astray, especially due to how much I felt led astray after being spoon-fed years of religious falsehoods.

I’ve noticed that even when I do this in a joking way, many people appreciate the wake-up call – when they’re ready for that kind of experience. I’ve received many cards, letters, emails, and in-person thank-you’s over the years from people who began facing unpleasant truths that they initially didn’t want to face, after they read some articles on my website. When they finally accepted the truth and began acting in alignment with it, they embarked upon some tremendous journeys of growth. A common example was when people realized that their uninspired job was a dead end, and they sought to explore more purposeful and rewarding work. Of course I’ve also received plenty of spiteful messages from people who initially dislike such invitations, but I take that in stride. After all, they chose to come here and read about it, and my article titles are usually straightforward and descriptive.

Do You Want Loyalty or Honesty?

Many people put their relationships ahead of truth. They value loyalty to certain people or groups above other values. I have been such a person as well, and I eventually felt disgusted with that aspect of my personality and worked on changing it. That kind of loyalty almost landed me in prison for a while, so I see it as immensely misguided. I learned some hard lessons that landed me squarely on the side of favoring truth alignment over loyalty to any particular individuals or groups. This has led me down some interesting and rewarding paths.

If you prefer to favor loyalty over truth (which ought to be the tagline for the U.S. Republican party these days), I invite you to carefully consider why you’re doing that. There are books like How to Win Friends and Influence People that will steer you away from truth alignment in order to manifest some extra social gains. If you find this approach appealing, test it for yourself. Personally I find it dreadful because it fills my social circle with partial matches. I very much prefer to get aligned with truth, and then people can love me or hate me on that basis.

What do you want from other people? Do you prefer loyalty or honesty?

If you want people to be loyal to you, even when they have to pretend that they respect you, you may indeed attract that experience. But will that really satisfy you? Do you want your social relationships to be based on secondary gain, full of people who pretend to see you a certain way so they can gain some benefits from you? Blech!

A social circle that values honesty above loyalty may seem more difficult at first, but you’ll get to experience a lot more growth on this path. This probably won’t be a stable circle in the traditional sense though. You’ll likely see people entering and exiting your life in a continuous flow, each person inviting you to see different truths. And even if you spend extended periods alone, that can be a beauty phase as well when you’re exploring deeper truths that matter to you.

There’s something about truth alignment that provides a much deeper level of comfort and security than any amount of loyalty to individuals can offer.

I find that the root of this decision comes down to trusting life. The more I can trust life, the more I can accept the flow of relationships and how they invite me to see and experience different truths. This helps me avoid getting clingy with misaligned relationships.

When someone staunchly opposes truth alignment, I tend to see it as a sign that it’s time to let that relationship fade, so a fresh connection can flow into my life. I’ve been trapped plenty of times when I did the opposite and favored loyalty to an individual or group. Now I realize that it’s totally normal for people to flow towards us or away from us, based on how we’re able to help each other grow in each moment.

Optimism

Despite how wacky and misaligned the world can seem at times, I remain staunchly optimistic. One reason is that I always see open pathways to greater truth alignment. Even when denial and falsehood seem rampant and there are organizations like Fox News spewing out falsehoods that create huge social ramifications, I also know that they have a limited lifespan. Sooner or later people find falsehood and denial deeply unsatisfying. It runs people in circles – or backwards – and doesn’t create a meaningful sense of progress. There’s always the invitation to get off that treadmill and to get back on a path of truth seeking.

So I tend to view such issues, even when they have massive social impacts, as a normal part of the human experience. I’ve circled around in that space quite a lot, and I do see that it has the value of putting the brakes on our growth (even if as I mentioned, we can simply pause consciously whenever we want). The benefit of falsehood is that it can stabilize reality in a more fixed position, so we can spend more time processing certain experiences before we progress to something new.

Depending on how you relate to other people who are mired in denial, you can actually pause your own progress, or you can let them experience what they’re experiencing and then go pursue something different for yourself.

For example, consider the major rollback of abortion rights in the USA. You could frame this as something like: Oh great… this is so backwards. Now we have to re-defend and re-litigate a social right that was already resolved. This is so stupid. Fuck you, SCOTUS!

On the other hand, you could also say: Okay, some people must really want to live in The Handmaid’s Tale universe. They want to control women’s bodies, and indeed even many women are even wanting to co-create that experience. States that ban abortion will predictably see an increase in many social problems in the decades ahead, including crime, since that’s statistically predictable where abortion has been banned elsewhere. If that’s what they desire, I can allow them to have this experience. It’s going to mean there’s a wider gap in the experiences of red versus blue states. It’s going to piss off a lot of people and create harsh consequences for many, including death and poverty, and there will be a lot of activism against this direction too.

Respect

What does it means to respect someone? Can you respect someone who strays far away from truth alignment?

You may find that it’s hard to respect someone when they start spewing out falsehoods. You may feel that respect means to regard someone as intelligent or reasonable, and it’s too much to ask to frame their behavior as intelligent in such cases. You may even think something like: Okay, this person has a defective brain.

A broader version of respect is to allow space for people to have a wide variety of experiences because that’s how we learn and grow, both individually and collectively. I like to see this as a greater form of truth alignment. On one level I may think that someone is being downright idiotic, and on that basis I cannot respect them as intelligent or reasonable. But on another level, I can also see that people are going out and having different experiences and learning and growing from them, and that is something I can respect.

For instance, if someone eats animal products, I can’t respect them as a compassionate or caring person since that wouldn’t make any sense if they’re relating to animals with violence or apathy. So I’m going to go ahead and file them in the “doesn’t care about the well-being of animals” section of my mind. But at the same time, I also recognize and accept that lots of people choose to explore a nonconsensual, entitlement-based relationship with animals’ bodies. They may even treat some animals as beloved pets (still property) while treating other animals as products where cruelty is just part of the business model they support.

I can respect that people are actively exploring this way of relating to animals, along with exploring the consequences of those choices, like much higher rates of lifestyle diseases like heart disease and cancer, harsher climate change impacts, etc. That aspect rings true because we’re all exploring different ways of relating to animals, just as we explore different ways of relating to each other. But I’m not going to succumb to the falsehood that such people actually care about animals’ well-being when their behavior towards animals is riddled with violence and abuse. So there’s no need for anyone in that space to maintain any pretense of caring about animals’ well-being because that’s meaningless if it isn’t backed up by action. But I can still relate to them – and respect them – on the basis that we’re all co-explorers here, each delving into different ways of relating to whatever we encounter.

One benefit of this way of respecting people is that you can also appreciate how they help you clarify what matters to you. Other people help you define what you don’t want to experience personally, and that helps you discover what you do desire. I appreciate that conspiracy theorists have done an excellent job of convincing me that I don’t want to join them in their conspiracies. 😉

I find that an interesting way to relate to people’s lack of truth alignment is to actually reframe it as a greater form of truth alignment that they’re pursuing. They’re seeking truth experientially. Even if I don’t choose to join them in that kind of experience, I can respect them for doing that. The explorer in me can still honor and salute the explorer in them.

I see exploration as one of the main reasons we’re all here. So even if someone is pursuing animal cruelty, misogyny, racism, or some other pursuit that I would vehemently reject exploring for myself, on some level I still appreciate what they’re doing for life. They’re still serving the expansion of what life is capable of. And I accept that life is capable of generating a wide range of experiences that do not personally appeal to me as an individual. That’s a simple truth that I feel it’s best to stay aligned with. If we try to dictate terms to life itself, life will surely overrule us.

This leads to the question: Do you respect what life is doing, in all its many manifestations?

Do you respect life for generating violence, lying, hatred, manipulation, etc? Are you able to give life – and especially humanity – space to explore this?

Can you accept that life is going to keep exploring these aspects with or without your permission?

Can you even accept that life’s explorations will sometimes have consequences for you and other people you know – and that sometimes you may dislike those consequences?

Forgiveness

One way to accept and respect what life is doing is to forgive its transgressions, just as you would hope that life forgives your own transgressions.

I have made plenty of nasty mistakes in life, including some really deplorable errors in judgment, and I appreciate that I wasn’t kicked off the planet. Somehow I’m still here… still breathing… still able to live life and express myself. I don’t take that for granted.

I like that life provides wiggle-room for making mistakes, including mistakes that may even cause consequences and problems for other people.

I too must deal with the consequences of other people’s decisions. I may really dislike some of the decisions made by other people in the world. Some of the choices people have made deeply disgust me. But on another level, I still respect and honor their freedom to make such choices, even when it causes problems for me and for future generations. I see it as a normal part of how life explores this reality.

It’s like playing a video game where someone takes you out with a headshot, and even though you’re dead, another part of you is saying, “Good shot. Well played.”

This doesn’t mean you can’t express what you want to express, including activism. You can still go explore what it’s like to rail against what you dislike. You can still explore what it’s like to inspire changes in the world. But can you accept that other aspects of life get a say as well, and some of those aspects may oppose you?

This can be a hard frame to reach for, especially when you’re in the thick of dealing with the consequences of other people’s choices. In those moments I like to remind myself of how forgiving life was with me when I screwed up. This helps me appreciate that I haven’t been spaced yet. And this in turn helps me choose not to space someone else and to let them remain in the game, even if I think they really deserve to be spaced. At the same time I may be yelling at them, I’m also thanking them for keeping the game interesting and stimulating – and for helping me clarify what kind of character I want to play while I’m here.

My Intentions for CGC Year 6

Posted on 01/05/2022 by Boris Clair

Yesterday was the last day of our 5th year in Conscious Growth Club. Today we’re beginning our 6th year together. You still have about 2.5 more days if you want to join us since the deadline for opting in is May 3rd.

I thought I’d take a moment to share some thoughts and intentions for Year 6. Some of these are personal. Some are club-related. And some are a mix of both.

One thing I love about CGC is that it’s so supportive on the personal side, so even though I facilitate the group, I also engage with it much like any other member.

Fitness

One intention for this new CGC year is to refine my fitness routine. That’s been going pretty well for many years, but with all the possible ways to balance it – running, weight training, HIIT, gym workouts, group fitness classes, etc. – I’d like to give it more structure. The tricky part is that my body adapts to predictable routines very easily, and then it doesn’t feel like I’m improving as much. On the flip side, I also like the simplicity of predictable routines like running. I’d love to figure out how to merge structure with enough variety while doing this sustainably too. This may take some experimentation.

I’m not sure if it’s even possible to come up with a “one fitness routine to rule them all” or if the key is really to keep mixing it up with a lot of randomness. I love the variety and the social aspect of group classes. What I don’t like as much is the time investment, including travel time. I also don’t find group classes particularly good for strength training – I tend to improve in that area much more efficiently on my own. However, group classes can be great for cardio, yoga, and some other dimensions of fitness.

Starting today in CGC, many members are kicking off the new CGC year with a 30-day fitness challenge. Rachelle and I are doing that too. In fact Rachelle recently passed 950 consecutive days of closing her Apple Watch rings, so she’ll hit 1000 sometime in June.

Fasting Integration

I may do some dietary experiments as well, but I also feel drawn to testing some additional forms of intermittent fasting. I tried the 16-8 version previously (only eating in an 8-hour window each day, then not eating for 16 hours) and found it worthless – it didn’t make any difference as far as I could tell. But I might try 18-6 or 20-4 to see if those patterns are any better. I’ve decided to lean into this today by not eating anything till after 2pm.

YouTubing

Creatively I intend to get into YouTubing this year. I have about 55 videos on my YouTube channel so far, most of them recorded when doing a 40-day water fast in 2017. In CGC we formed a new YouTubers group a few months ago for members with similar goals, including streaming, TikTok videos, and really any kind of video expression.

I love engaging in this pursuit collaboratively. It’s great to share tips, insights, and encouragement with other members.

I would love it if more people who want to get into making videos (or who are already into it) would join CGC this year. It would be fabulous to support each other on this path. I intend to host more Zoom calls this year where we can mastermind together.

My YouTube channel is fairly modest in size compared to some. It currently has 8253 subscribers. I think it would be fun to build that up to 100K+, however long it takes.

I feel very comfortable on camera, but I have way more experience being recorded live on Zoom with only minimal editing. In April I did about 100 hours of live video calls (all recorded). I don’t think that’s a great format for YouTube though. Tighter, shorter videos would likely be better received there.

This year and beyond, I want to explore how to leverage the skills I have while also building new video skills. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun experimenting with different ways to share personal growth ideas and insights through video. It’s going to take a lot of patience as well, but I’m not in a rush. I like the long-term trajectory of this – the outlook seems pretty rosy to me.

Video Production Skills

Coming up with interesting content for videos is easy for me, but what always held me back was a lack of know-how on the production side. So I’ve been educating myself on this quite a bit this year. I can see myself doing a lot of divergent experimentation this year. I’m not going to focus on trying to create hit videos per se. Rather I want to explore the skill set on the production side, and I also want to see what kinds of videos I most enjoy making. I sense that if I raise up my production skills a lot more, I’ll likely discover more enjoyment in the process.

For some reason I love learning about video lighting. I bought a bunch of new lights this year, all from Aputure, including a Lightstorm 60X (bicolor), an Amaran 200X (bicolor), two Amaran P60C panel lights (RGBWW), and a 4-pack of MC lights (RGBWW). I love that these lights are all controllable via an app, so I can sit in one spot and change all of the lights (brightness, color, etc) from my phone. Working with LED lights is so nice because they’re energy efficient and don’t get very hot. I think I’m becoming a fanboy of Aputure since they keep coming up with new lights with great features at great prices. I could easily see myself investing in more lights from them over time. But for now I have plenty to get started with.

I also bought 4 C-stands and some other rigging pieces, and I watched a ton of gaffer videos, so now I know many different ways to rig lights. What I lack, however, is experience. It’s one thing to watch a video to learn what’s possible. It’s different when you have to actually apply the skills yourself.

I’m not sure why I like this so much. You’d think that being color blind, learning about lighting and especially investing in RGB ones wouldn’t be the best fit for me. But for some reason I’m really curious about it. There’s something undeniably enticing about playing around with lighting to see what I can do with it. I just have to accept that how the colors look to me won’t be the same as how other people see them. So maybe some of my videos may have unusual color choices. I can also lean on Rachelle for help since she’s experienced with lighting, given her background in theater, and she can see all the colors too. Amazing!

Learning about lighting adds more appreciation when I watch movies and shows now. I notice the lighting, especially on people’s faces, way more than I ever did before. I sometimes ponder why the cinematographer (or whoever else made those choices) lit a scene they way they did. I often watch cinematography videos while making lunch or while relaxing in the evening.

As I build better video skills, I may also want to explore how to apply them in other ways. It could be really interesting to create a structured video course that’s pre-recorded and nicely edited instead of always delivering it live like I’ve done in the past. I could do such a course that today, but it would take an inordinate amount of time since I’d be so slow at it. I’d like to build up a lot more practice and experience first, one micro-skill at a time, so I can get faster too.

This sort of thing can be outsourced, but I’m really enjoying exploring it as a personal growth adventure. I’m not 100% sure why, but I can tell that this is a path with a heart for me. It also seems like a very aligned opportunity and a delightful way to build upon my existing skills.

I would do this on my own anyway, but doing this as a social journey with other CGCers just makes it even sweeter. I feel more motivated to upgrade these skills because then I can immediately share what I’m learning with other members. I think it will be especially helpful to learn gear tips from each other (lighting, mics, cameras, etc). And there’s tons we can share with each other on the editing side as well.

Balancing Rhythms of Work and Personal Time

In the last CGC year, I was really good at focusing deeply on one project or another. Sometimes I put my all into a creative project. At other times of the year, I invested obsessively in personal projects. I definitely got a lot done, which was very satisfying. But I think that for the months ahead, I’d like to explore a more relaxed and balanced rhythm instead of spending so much time in deep focus mode for weeks at a stretch.

It’s been interesting to create new courses with an all-in strategy. For the recent Guild course, I probably averaged about 10-12 hours a day for 30 days straight, usually starting at 6am and going till around 6pm. I had short meal and rest breaks, but it was still a very obsessive experience, like going through a tunnel. Sometimes I didn’t finish till around 10pm if there was a CGC coaching call on a given day too. Plus there was a lot of advance prep for the course before it began. This intense strategy really does get the job done, but it requires putting so many other parts of life on pause.

I feel like my obsessive creative mode is really well developed now. The inspiration to create just never seems to run dry. I like taking breaks from it now and then, but I always know that it’s there for me when I want to engage with it.

This year I’d like to explore a different relationship with creativity. I think video creation will be part of that. But I also sense there’s more to it, something having to do with rhythm and balance. If my creative output across the span of a year is like a song, you could say that I want to explore different style of music this year, so I can learn how to align with different creative rhythms.

In terms of my working and personal rhythms, I’d like this upcoming CGC year to sound like a combo of Oh Yeah by Yello, She Blinded Me With Science by Thomas Dolby, One Night in Bangkok by Murray Head, and Down Under by Men at Work – playful, simple, and fun and without major spikes of intensity. Definitely 80s all the way. Maybe a splash of The B-52’s Loveshack here and there. 😁

I know that I can always fall back on the tried and true, but I’d like to see what other creative rhythms might emerge this year if I gently coax them to the surface. I can’t articulate what that’s going to look like, but my intention is to do a lot more divergent exploration this year.

Divergent Creative Exploration

For previous years in CGC, I would pre-announce the topic of a major course to be delivered during the year. This year I feel inclined to allow for more flexibility and adaptability. I intend to create and publish at least one new course this year. But I might create multiple smaller works instead of one giant new course each year like I’ve done for the past few years.

Whatever interesting forms I create this year, such as new courses or workshops, CGC members will have them included as part of their membership at no extra cost. I just say in advance what it will be.

I also want to see what emerges in CGC (and in my wider audience) this year in terms of what people want to upgrade in their lives. I love connecting the dots between people’s desires and my own explorations. That could lead to something like a course or workshop on life balance, for instance, if there seems to be some demand for it.

For now I feel it would be premature to lock onto a particular form or topic right now. I want to roll into the new CGC year first, engage with our members, and get a sense of where CGC’s energy wants to flow. I also want to explore video production and YouTubing with others in the group. I don’t know how the dots will connect up ahead. I just know that they will.

Join Us for CGC Year 6

I love how rewarding it is to engage with CGC each day, especially its playful side. It’s immensely gratifying to share this human journey with other growth-oriented people in such an intimate way. It’s wonderful to explore so much depth together while also having so much fun and sharing so many laughs. 😁

I hope you’ll join us for some part of this journey in Conscious Growth Club, if not this year then in some future year. The door is open. If it’s to be this year, you have till May 3rd to enroll.