Ask AI What to Watch

Posted on 28/03/2023 by Boris Clair

After working on my Q2 2023 goals yesterday evening (via Conscious Growth Club’s 5-step goal setting process), I wanted some chill time before bed, so I asked ChatGPT to recommend an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that would be a perfect fit for my goals.

“The Inner Light” is one of my all-time favorite episodes, and I could also see that it resonated pretty well with my goals. So that was a very solid pick.

I didn’t feel like rewatching that episode though since I’d seen it not that long ago. So…

I hadn’t seen “Sarek” in a while, so I figured I’d rewatch it and see if it resonated, and I invited Rachelle to join me. She loves it when I pick an episode and she has to guess the title, ideally before the opening credits start. She nailed it of course – this is a pretty easy one to guess for anyone familiar with the show.

Both episodes that ChatGPT recommended are about characters coming to terms with a new reality, one that can’t be understood with logic alone but that involves a big emotional journey into a new sense of self. They’re both meaningful matches for my Q2 goals.

Watching “Sarek” with this extra layer of curiosity made the episode more engaging than it otherwise would have been. It helped me connect some extra dots among my goals. There was a lot of humor in that perspective too since lots of characters lose emotional control during the episode, including a big bar fight scene. That helped me accept that my goals are going to invite a bit more chaos into my life, and I’ll just have to roll with it.

I know that many people see movies and TV shows as distractions from personal growth. Those people are dreadful and boring NPCs, so just stay away from them if you happen to know better.

I grew up loving movies and had many favorite shows, such as Star Trek, so I’ve always associated this kind of media with inspiration and growth. I often get fun syncs from them too. I love inserting movie references in our courses as well, sometimes in obscure ways just to see if people notice them.

If you want to watch a show or movie in a deeper or more meaningful way, give your criteria to ChatGPT and ask it to recommend something. When you get a recommend that seems reasonable, watch it with the attitude that it contains hidden messages or syncs for you. I think you’ll find this approach engaging.

Interestingly there was a meaningful sync in the AI’s recommendation too. As CGC’s Community Manager, Rachelle was trying to pick the April CGC challenge – we do a new 30-day challenge in CGC each month – and she had just floated the idea of doing a vulnerability challenge. That idea resonated with me too, and then the AI beamed us a timely sync about it, so we’re going with it.

I also found it really engaging to go through the goal-setting process with ChatGPT this time. Once I’d completed enough parts of the process, such as the journaling prompts, I could even have it predict the goals I was going to set. I’d say it was about 80% accurate, and it suggested one goal that I hadn’t considered but that seemed like a really nice one to include. I love how AI can spot strengths and desires in us that we might overlook.

Another nice touch was to ask ChatGPT to rephrase my goals to be more personally motivating for me, based on what it had learned about me thus far. It chose different phrasing than I would have, and I did indeed like its version better (with some minor tweaks).

Using ChatGPT for Self-Development

Posted on 09/03/2023 by Boris Clair

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

Clarify Your Values

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

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

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

Generate a list of values related to awareness.

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

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

Suggest other values that would complement these values.

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

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

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

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

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

Predict Where Your Values Will Take You

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

Here’s a prompt you can use for this:

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

From my values I got these kinds of predictions:

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

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

Here’s another interesting prompt to try:

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

I got this list in response:

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

Here’s a good follow-up prompt:

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

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

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

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

Set Goals

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

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

Or:

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

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

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

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

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

Additionally, try this prompt with ChatGPT:

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

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

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

Create Positive Affirmations

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rewrite these affirmations in the voice of a Ninja Turtle:

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

Compressing Ideas

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

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

Presence
Simplicity
Joy
Flow
Kindness
Collaboration
Connection

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

Presence
Simplicity
Joy
Flow
Kindness
Collaboration
Love

Now compress it down to just 3.

Presence
Love
Growth

Now 2.

Presence
Love

And now just 1.

It included some extra commentary here too.

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

Love.

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

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

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

Discovering Your Ideal Audience or Social Circle

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

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

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

Here’s the response I got:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dealing With ChatGPT’s Nanny Mode Filters

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just a couple more questions…

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

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! 🥳 🎉

Frequencies of Experience

Posted on 30/11/2022 by Boris Clair

I often think of life as a summation of different experiential frequencies, much like different musical instruments can combine to create a song. Some frequencies combine harmoniously while others would sound discordant if you tried to merge them.

What I find most interesting about this model is that it helps me discover when some frequencies are holding me back from having new experiences. I cannot always invite new frequencies into my life when pre-existing frequencies are anchoring me to a different range.

Usually I must detach myself – or at least loosen my grip – from some anchor frequencies, so I can float freely into the range of new experiences. Otherwise I’ll never have the opportunity to experience those new frequencies fully while I’m still shackled to the old ones.

If you try to stuff more and more tracks into a song without removing some old ones, you may end up with noise, not music. When the tracks play together, their frequencies interact, and the more tracks you add, the more complex the balancing act becomes.

In your own life, now and then you’ll need to do some frequency decluttering if you want to progress to new experiences.

Anchor Frequencies

When you want to flow into a new zone of experience, such as by pursuing and achieving an interesting goal, think about the old anchor frequencies that might interfere, and see if you can loosen your grip on them.

Do you have any anchor frequencies that would make you feel some resistance to your new path? Any worries about what other people would think? Any unwillingness to grow beyond your comfort zone? Any old habits you’d rather not release?

Whatever anchor issues you identify, it’s wise to start working on those now, mentally and emotionally. It’s important to start changing your relationship with the old frequencies, so you can create space to harmonize with new frequencies. Many people do a piss-poor job of this, which is why they remain stuck. They may be willing to embrace the new, but they’re not committed to relinquishing the old.

For example, if you’re contemplating a career change, start thinking about how you’ll say goodbye to the old career and how you’d like to frame those memories. Begin to align yourself with the goodbye experience before you leave.

When I moved on from game development and got into personal development in 2004, I framed my 10 years of professional game development as a nice phase of learning and growth but not one that I had to cling to for the rest of my life. I approached the transition like a graduation. This included declaring even unfinished projects over and done with. That wasn’t easy, but I knew I had to let go of the old, so I could fully embrace and explore the new.

This wasn’t a fast process, but before I could really focus on a career change, I had to spend months winding down my relationship with game development work.

Some of those old frequencies faded from my life. I stopped hosting a popular indie game developer forum and handed it off to some friends to keep it going. I stopped working on new games. I stopped doing any new marketing for my games. I let people know that I was closing up shop. I also had to mentally and emotionally let go of a lot of future plans and expectations along the old path.

Any anchor frequencies that might have kept me stuck in the old world had to be surrendered.

Crossover Frequencies

Some frequencies, however, were flexible enough to transition with me. I was able to bring some productivity habits along. I could still do some coding now and then. I brought my creativity, playfulness, community-building skills, entrepreneurial spirit, and explorer’s mindset into the new career.

Those compatible crossover frequencies served me well. They helped me retain some sense of stability while so much else in my life felt new and different. In the same year I started my blog, I also moved to a new city (from L.A. to Las Vegas) and joined Toastmasters to get into speaking. I had a new home, a new social circle, and a new business all in the same year – and a new child the year before.

One crossover frequency that I especially found helpful was growth. This is one of the ultimate crossover frequencies because we can always invest in learning and growth, regardless of how many transitions we go through. So you can also think about anchoring yourself to flexible frequencies – like growth – so you don’t feel so unhinged every time you go through an interesting transition.

Transitioning

When you’re facing a transition in life, see if you can identify some of your anchor frequencies and your crossover frequencies. Which aspects of your life will need to be released? Which can come along for the ride?

If you really look into this carefully, you may find some surprises. You’ll probably recognize some frequencies of experience that you didn’t realize were choices. You may spot areas where you’ve been clingy with anchor frequencies, but you didn’t recognize them as such. And you’ll see where you’ve gotten stuck when trying to transition.

When I wanted to transition from a scarcity experience with money to a more abundant relationship with money, I noticed that I was relating to money in a way that wouldn’t make sense on the abundance side. I had some habitual ways of interfacing with money that were serving as anchor frequencies and keeping me from progressing.

I might describe some of these anchor frequencies as stress and worry. Others involved making money such a high priority – giving so much thought to bills and rent each month. I thought about money pretty much every day. Another issue was focusing so much on my desire for more money. Would I be doing that if I were already in the abundance zone? Nope.

I realized that if I wanted to transition to a more abundant relationship with money, I wasn’t going to relate to it with frequencies like stress, worry, or intense desire. In fact, I realized that many days I wouldn’t even think about money. It would recede more into the background of my life, and it wouldn’t be such a foreground concern. Money would be like a reliable friend, and I’d also have a lot of fun with it – earning it and spending it. I’d have a chill, relaxed, and playful relationship with it. But worry about it, stress over it, or obsess over it? Nah… those were the old anchor frequencies that kept me in scarcity, so I had to let them go.

When I recognized that certain habits of thought and emotion were acting as anchors to scarcity, I realized that I had a choice to make. I had to put a stop to stressing, worrying, and over-thinking about money. I actually worked through the logic of that. Did those old frequencies help? Did they actually create more money? Were they effective? Reliable and consistent? Ha… nope.

These old frequencies sometimes got me to scramble to pull some extra resources together at the last minute, but that was an endless treadmill. There was no way that this way of thinking would lead to greater abundance. It was a foolish approach with no hope of success. Even if I did earn more money, I’d just have more to stress and obsess over, which seemed dreadful.

Once I understood the logic, I asked myself if I wanted to align with my best thinking or if I wanted to keep being illogical and foolish. I made a commitment to stop fretting and worrying about money, and I’ve done a solid job of honoring that commitment ever since. I do slip a little bit now and then, but barely. I’ve gotten really good at pulling my mind away from that old frequency zone and keeping it in the zone of abundance-aligned frequencies.

Abundance-Aligned Frequencies

What are some of the abundance-aligned frequencies then?

One of my favorites is service. Instead of fussing over my own sniveling problems, I think about what I can do that other people would appreciate. In my games business, I shifted my focus to creating experiences for people. That’s still a big part of how I think about my life and business today. I like crafting and delivering interesting experiences that people can appreciate – especially unique experiences they may not encounter elsewhere. I really resonate with the frequency range of investing in growth-oriented people. That connects to even more frequencies that I like, such as caring, mutual support, and co-creation. This range gets me taking a lot of action.

Can I share a simple observation with you? When I see people who are stuck in scarcity, they’re almost always expending way more thought and emotion in dealing with their own personal or family problems than they invest in thinking about serving other people in the world. They anchor their focus inward instead of outward. Is it any wonder that they’re anchoring themselves to scarcity frequencies? So don’t hide. Get out there and engage with the world.

Another favorite is creativity. I love, love, love the frequency zone of creative projects. This feels like a solid home base for me. I’ve created millions of words of published material, and I never get writer’s block. I know that I can always create, and many years of feedback tells me that there are always people who will appreciate these creations. I’ve been a professional creator of some form or another for about 30 years now, and I expect that to continue. Note that this is also a frequency range where lots of action happens.

Also note that actually creating is NOT the same frequency zone as thinking about creating, typing up to-do lists, or otherwise procrastinating on creating. I spend WAY more time writing and publishing than I spend thinking about writing or reading about writing. Some planning is good if it helps you get organized, but is your planning driving projects through to completion? How much of your creative work is getting into people’s hands? Appreciation and abundance are very compatible frequency zones, very often arising together.

Other favorites are exploration, playfulness, and fun. I’m one of the most fun-loving adults that I know, and so is Rachelle. Do you know any other couples who spent 30 days in a row going to Disneyland? We enjoyed every day of that experience. I love being married to a woman who makes me laugh so much, and I love to make her laugh as well. Living with her is immensely entertaining. Even when she’s not trying to be entertaining, she just is.

People who remain stuck in scarcity are so ridiculously tolerant of their old anchor frequencies. They remain clingy with frequencies that clearly aren’t compatible with abundance. Abundance-aligned people have decided not to be so tolerant of those incompatibilities.

Investment & Surrender

One of the most critical self-development concepts to grasp is that where you invest your energy is a choice. You don’t have to remain loyal to old anchor frequencies. You have the option of surrendering those old frequencies and moving into a new range.

To shift your frequencies often requires a real commitment. Don’t even think about trying to half-ass it.

I don’t see any way I could have flowed into such an abundant relationship with life if I was willing to tolerate a relationship with ongoing worry, stress, and obsessive thinking about money.

How do you really surrender the old frequencies that no longer serve you? You reframe them as something that you’ll never want to revisit.

I reframed my old frequencies as stupid, idiotic, dumb, pointless, moronic, foolish, and utterly ineffective. It was illogical through and through to align with those old frequencies. They don’t work. They never worked! Only a great fool would cling to them. Do I want to be a great fool? No, I don’t!

Whenever my mind catches itself backsliding, it generates a huge load of warning signals that prevents it from staying there. It’s like noticing a skull and crossbones on a bottle of poison that you’re about to drink. This makes the whole brain light up with a super strong, “HELL NO!” signal.

I recommend that you do something similar. Stop trying to have a cozy relationship with anchor frequencies that are keeping you stuck. Break up with them instead. And I mean really break up. Dump them for good. Kick them to the curb. Make a “never again” resolution not to engage with them.

Yes, you may slip now and then. Slipping is to be expected, but when you slip, don’t fall. Catch yourself. Remind yourself of your best reframes for the old frequencies. Tell yourself which frequencies you want to engage with instead. Work through the logic of how you’re going to relate to those old ranges henceforth. And then hold yourself to that logic. Remind yourself to honor your best thinking.

Your thoughts and feelings exist in certain frequency ranges. If you want to invite new experiences and results into your life, you almost certainly need to adjust your thoughts and feelings too. While it’s nice to imagine what you’re new reality will be like, it’s even more important to start boxing out your old reality by cordoning off the old anchor frequencies. Remove the old ropes that kept you docked, so you can set sail and float over to new destinations.

How I Think About My Life and Work

Posted on 16/10/2022 by Boris Clair

I often think about my life as a flow of experiential explorations.

I’ve found it overwhelming to consider the vast array of possibilities that life presents objectively. Traversing just a fraction of this space could occupy endless lifetimes, so that framing doesn’t bring much clarity and leaves me adrift.

Instead I create clarity by thinking of experiences as a summation of different vibes. A vibe is the inner, subjective flavor of an experience, similar to qualia. It’s what I experience internally when living through an outer experience. This includes my emotions and the thoughts I have along the way.

I typically find it much easier to create clarity regarding the inner experience I want. Even when I don’t have clarity about the outer experience, I can collapse the inner experience into something relatively crisp.

My inner desires are often reactive. If I’m over-stressed, I automatically want to feel more relaxed and at ease. If I’m bored, I want to experience more excitement and stimulation. If I feel happy and engaged with life or if I’m in a nice productive flow, I usually want more of the same – until my inner mood tells me I want to shift. When I take stock of any inner experience, I naturally think about what I’d like to experience next, like I’m laying out some kind of story progression.

Most of the time this is an unconscious process. The conscious part is simply paying attention to what’s arising. I notice whatever vibes I’m experiencing in the moment, especially the pervasive ones that have been with me for days. Once I clarify where I am, I tend sense a pulling sensation to move in a new direction.

Sometimes I feel pulled in multiple directions, but if I consciously list out the vibes that are pulling at me, it’s not hard to clarify my preferences. In those cases usually all of those vibes are correct, and I really want to experience a combo of them, such as a peaceful adventure or a cozy connection.

Guided by Inner Experience

So generally I like to think about life based on the inner quality of my experience. I like to make decisions about my human life as if it’s the same as my spiritual (or inner) life. I find that my life works better when I do that. By contrast when I make decisions that only seem reasonable on the physical plane but feel misaligned at the level of energy, emotions, and inner experiences, the results are usually poor. Not only do I not enjoy those experiences, but I usually fail to get the physical reality results I was aiming for.

However, when I flip this around and focus primarily on the inner experience – meaning that this inner world is where I set my true priorities – my outer world seems to flow along pretty well too. Where the outer world isn’t working so well for me, I normally sense that it’s because I haven’t assumed enough responsibility for the vibes I want to explore and express into that part of life. Or I’m still dealing with internally conflicted vibes in those areas, and I need to resolve those objections.

When choosing work and personal projects, I like to think about the vibes I want to explore. I think deeply about what the inner experience will be like from start to finish. I want to create interesting, varied, and meaningful inner explorations. Overall that approach keeps me feeling satisfied and fulfilled with life.

When I complete a major project, I like to do a postmortem on it. I’ve included a couple of those as bonuses with the Amplify course. I think about what went right and what could be improved for next time. I also journal a lot about the project, taking note of what I enjoyed and what I wish I’d done differently. I use those insights to make choices for future projects.

I think many people choose projects based on the external results they seek to gain. Or they get projects assigned to them by others. I like to choose projects mainly based on what the inner adventure will be like. I make those choices differently each time, which naturally infuses my projects with plenty of variety.

Beyond Happiness

Choosing to be happy is too vague for me. Happiness doesn’t have enough resolution. There are many different vibes that I enjoy and appreciate when I experience them, and they’re more specific than happiness.

Here’s how I think about my life purpose these days. I recently updated it to this:

Consistently invest my precious freedom to create, invite, attract, and enjoy the exploration of different vibrational combos, such as: abundance, wealth, intensity, coziness, lightness, relaxation, oneness, presence, optimism, fun, playfulness, vibrancy, sexiness, ease, comfort, power, order, love, warmth, nurturing, inspiration, wonder, beauty, awe, gracefulness, appreciation, caring, compassion, generosity, adventure, trust, honesty, stability, openness, curiosity, courage, wildness, boldness, pleasure, silliness, mischief, indulgence, excitement, naughtiness, freedom, immersion, imagination, connection, self-expression, creativity, cooperation, co-creation, service, simplifying, accessibility, accomplishment, achievement, speed, efficiency, intelligence, patience, reflection, and celebration. Expand my experiential range and abundantly serve the expansion of life’s range.

I think of my life as an exploration of different vibes. When I was younger, I often focused on vibes I could express with single words, such as abundance or courage. At this time in my life, I prefer mash-ups of different combos. I especially like exploring vibes that may seem a bit contradictory.

For instance, I enjoy caring about people while also challenging them. I love being honest and mischievous. Mixing coziness with wildness is a fun combo too.

You could say that I love being a vibrational mixologist. I love exploring the rich complexity of which vibes combine well, like complementary flavors in a drink.

It’s easy to use my inner purpose to as a basis for the purpose of my business and work as well:

Invite our community members (and other growth-oriented people) to explore different vibrational combos to expand their experiential range, such as: abundance, wealth, intensity, coziness, lightness, relaxation, oneness, presence, optimism, fun, playfulness, vibrancy, sexiness, ease, comfort, power, order, love, warmth, nurturing, inspiration, wonder, beauty, awe, gracefulness, appreciation, caring, compassion, generosity, adventure, trust, honesty, stability, openness, curiosity, courage, wildness, boldness, pleasure, silliness, mischief, indulgence, excitement, naughtiness, freedom, immersion, imagination, connection, self-expression, creativity, cooperation, co-creation, service, simplifying, accessibility, accomplishment, achievement, speed, efficiency, intelligence, patience, reflection, and celebration. Help them invest in growth explorations and meaningful upgrades they’ll treasure!

It takes time to get used to different vibes and to integrate them into our lives. Initially we may want to practice certain vibes individually, and then we can build upon that with endless combos.

Serving the Flow of Life

I feel that this kind of exploration is what life wants from me – and from all of us. When I look at life, I see the ongoing exploration of possibilities. I find that when I support this expansion by doing my part to contribute some interesting explorations, life seems to give me plenty of support as well. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t had a job in more than 30 years.

I consider freedom to be a precious gift because with sufficient freedom, I can access more of the possibility space. I can explore some aspect of life deeply for many weeks in a row. I can go on fun travel adventures. I can connect with a variety of different people. And I have lots of space for reflecting on experiences and considering next steps, especially through journaling.

A nice way to create value for people is to invite them into vibrational explorations together. This can be done in so many ways. Writing blog posts can have that effect by invite people to consider fresh possibilities. I also love doing this through speaking, workshops, coaching, courses, and Conscious Growth Club.

What surprised me was that just sharing more of my inner and outer journey also created a lot of value for people. As long as I keep having new growth experiences, I can share what I learn from them. People have expressed lots of appreciation for this type of sharing over the years. And these explorations have helped me clarify more vibrational combos that I love. For instance, I think of this writing session as inspired cozy reflection time.

Fresh Vibrational Combos Create Fresh Solutions

A key benefit of this type of exploration is that I discover solutions where I didn’t expect to find them. I think we have a tendency to mono-focus on some vibes to the point of stuckness.

For instance, I often see people trying to create more success, achievement, or efficiency in their lives, but they get stuck pretty easily with those vibes. I get more success by not focusing on success. Instead I like to move towards vibes like curiosity and playfulness and learning.

When I focused intensely on success and achievement, I went bankrupt. That made me feel humble enough to start looking at different vibrational directions, and I found that other vibes were much better for me. I eventually became a millionaire with that approach, and it happened with a nice easy flow and wasn’t a struggle to get there. Financial abundance showed up without trying to force it so directly. I got there by exploring other vibes like fun, curiosity, adventure, compassion, wonder, service, etc. I rekindled an adventurous spirit, which has served me well.

That makes sense to me because when I think of abundance, I think of spaciousness and freedom, and those vibes seem more proximate to playfulness and curiosity than they do to a hard-ass focus on success. If I’m vibing with abundance, how much do I really care about traditional business success? That kind of success usually seems boring, stressful, or shallow to me. It lacks nuance.

I think the reason that kind of success doesn’t appeal to me is because it’s too rooted in this physical reality and doesn’t translate well to the spiritual side. When I think of spiritual success, I imagine being able to float freely across a wide range of interesting vibes and having the ability to explore them adeptly in many diverse combinations. So it’s a much broader framing of success. It’s also more resilient because I can develop these skills with or without money. Money often seems to enjoy participating in these explorations, but money doesn’t fuel them. The vibes summon the experiences, including the experience of financial flow.

Vibrational Practice

A key skill is to deliberately practice experiencing vibes that seem interesting. I still like to do this by relaxing on a couch and just imagining scenes that encapsulate certain vibes. I try to go beyond overly simplistic vibes like happiness, and I like to imagine more sophisticated combos playing out. It’s the difference between visualizing a very on-the-nose scene from a straightforward action movie versus visualizing a multi-layered dialogue from a movie like Casablanca, where characters communicate a great deal through subtext and body language.

I realize now that my inner visualization skill was pretty weak when I was younger. I imagined my goals coming through very directly, like an action movie explosion or car chase. But I eventually realized that reality appreciates vibrational richness and complexity. People like this too. I think that most of us don’t want overly simplistic and routine lives. We want to explore many different subtleties with lots of variety.

I love to think about life and business in terms of vibrational range. When I see a part of the vibrational space that I haven’t explored yet, I feel drawn to go explore it sooner or later. This gradually expands my vibrational range.

It’s like training to be a chef and learning to work with a greater variety of ingredients, so many more delicious meals can be created, not just for oneself but for the benefit of others as well.

When I think about serving others, I figure that a good way to help people is to encourage and invite them to expand their vibrational range. Help them to explore areas of the possibility space where they haven’t explored very much yet. Show them where the open waters are. Play the role of tour guide for the areas that are familiar to me, and also encourage people to keep exploring beyond that, so they can serve the expansion of life as well.

Confidence Doesn’t Matter

In addition to the success vibe, another vibe that I consider to be overstretched is confidence. Many people seem to think they need more confidence to get what they want. I find this vibe overly blunt and shallow though. What’s actually interesting about it? Not much. I generally see confidence as a pretty lame and uninteresting vibe.

When I’m really engaged with life in ways that resonate with me, I’m not really vibing with confidence. If you told me I seemed confident when speaking, for instance, I might give you a confused look. I really don’t care about feeling confident or being seen as confident. For whatever reason that vibe just looks and feels really dorky to me.

Instead of confidence, I’d rather explore more interesting combos like curiosity, playfulness, and honesty. Confidence is a confusing vibe because when a person looks confident, that may not actually be what they’re experiencing on the inside. In situations where I might appear confident, like while coaching someone, I’m actually experiencing something quite different internally, such as curiosity or compassion. Or I’m tuning in to a flow of inspired ideas. Or I’m focused on co-creating solutions together. There’s no need for confidence there – that isn’t part of my framing.

Telling yourself to be confident is like eating bread for every meal. You can surely concoct more interesting vibrational meals. Even if you sense that some form of confidence is present, it’s probably the least interesting part of the experience.

Vibes can be funny that way. Some vibes that seem popular in the outer world just don’t align with my actual inner experiences. Paying too much attention to popular vibes tripped me up a lot. It took years to unload enough of that social conditioning, so I could figure out what actually worked for me and which vibrational combos I enjoy and appreciate.

Once I know which vibes I want to move towards, it becomes much easier to choose external experiences then. In those cases it’s mainly a matter of identifying accessible actions to shift my outer reality into alignment with those vibes. To do this I get into resonance with the vibes I want, and then I let them guide my actions. I pay attention to what I feel naturally inspired to do when I’m connecting with those vibes. This leads me to take a lot of action, and my reality gradually shifts.

Personalizing Vibes

I like the exploration process of personalizing vibes and figuring out how they best resonate with me. Consider a vibe like wealth. Do you want to feel wealthy? What does that vibe mean to you? I had mixed associations to that vibe for a while. I associated it with greed, unfairness, and injustice. So of course I couldn’t get into resonance with it. But I also liked some things about it, like how it could connect with freedom, abundance, and more possibilities. So I pulled this vibe away from the negative associations, and I framed my version of wealth as being about gaining more access to possibilities. So it’s not material wealth per se. It’s experiential wealth. My version of wealth isn’t about acquiring. It’s about living and experiencing.

I also like to pull my version of wealth further into the service side. I think about wealth as enriching people’s lives, sharing a wealth of ideas, and inviting people into worthwhile experiences together. This helps my mind explore this type of vibe within an appealing range, so it doesn’t conflict with other vibes I like.

Otherwise if I don’t personalize a vibe to strip out the unwanted bits, those mixed associations can block me from exploring it altogether. Then I have to take a deeper look at my objections to a vibe and resolve those objections. I see this as part of the personalization process, so I take my objections seriously and treat them as problems that need to be solved. I don’t try to ram a vibe into my life when I don’t feel aligned with it. I prefer to sculpt a misshapen vibe into one that looks beautiful to me, so it naturally harmonizes with other vibes that I like.

Productivity is another interesting vibe. My objections are that it can be boring, stressful, or overly routine. I might even associate it with being caged and losing freedom. So I have to pull this vibe to better align with fun, freedom, and exploration. That’s why I like to work in waves that align with motivation and inspiration as opposed to following a rigid routine. This approach works well for me. When I want to be lazy, I give myself full permission to be intensely lazy. When I crave adventure, I go out and explore. And when I’m inspired by fascinating creative ideas, I love to intensely focus on the creative process and see it all the way across the finish line.

Exploring Harmonious Co-Creation

One experience I really want to have next is to do this kind of exploration socially with other people who resonate with it. That’s why I’m hosting a fresh deep dive into the Submersion course soon. We’ll be starting on November 1st and running through December 30th, with weekly Zoom calls along the way. On those calls we can practice together, pooling our collective intentions to summon interesting vibrational combos to invite into our lives. If you’re signed up for my email newsletter or if you already bought the Submersion course, I’ll email you an invite for this between now and November 1st. It’s free for everyone who bought the course already, and for everyone else, all you need to do is get the course between now and November 1st, and you can participate in the social exploration for no extra cost. This is one of our most popular courses, so I imagine that a lot of people will want to explore it as a social experience.

I’m especially curious to see what effect it has if we focus our intentional energy for our good and for the highest good of all. Imagine lots of people holding the intention to help uplift each other. Imagine people sending you love and healing energy from all around the world. And let’s also send vibes of peace, healing, forgiveness, freedom, and positive transformation to the people on earth who most appear to need it right now. Let’s send more energy into the vision of a world we want to create and experience together. I’m really craving this kind of collective exploration right now.

On the inside I want immerse myself in the feeling of all of us stepping into our collective power and intentionality together. I want to mash-up the vibes of oneness, power, love, connection, abundance, and creativity. I want us to harmonize beautifully together. This is a really nice fit for going through the Submersion course together because the course is about upgrading your relationship with reality. I’d love to go through this upgrade process with a very aligned group who resonates with doing this together.

I want to have the experience of co-creating a renewed sense of hope and positive energy flow. I want to invite people to release misaligned vibes and to shift back into alignment with lightness, creativity, and optimism. Remember that we’re all powerful creators here.

So that’s how I’ve been thinking about my life and work lately. I see life as a flow of vibrational explorations. Reality offers a vast field of possibilities to navigate. When I create vibrational clarity – by understanding what kind of inner experience I want next – that level of clarity trickles down to all the low-level decisions and gets me into a lovely and sustainable flow of action.

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.

Why It’s Unwise to Be a Minimalist

Posted on 25/05/2022 by Boris Clair

When I first heard about the concept of minimalism many years ago, I was intrigued but also a bit hesitant. As I looked into it, I found that my hesitation towards it was well-founded, and I don’t consider it a particularly intelligent strategy for life or business.

“Less is more” can be an interesting heuristic to use sometimes, but it doesn’t work well for many classes of problems and challenges. Sometimes it will point you away from opportunities and solutions instead of towards them.

Human beings have invented a wide variety of tools and services, and many of those can be useful and worthwhile under the right circumstances. The key is to evaluate and assess these tools and their costs and consequences to see which ones we can maintain a healthy, productive, and appreciative relationship with. That assessment is going to be different for each person.

Sometimes a good solution will look like minimalism, sometimes it will look like maximalism, and sometimes it will be elsewhere within the spectrum of possibilities.

The Standard of Appreciation

A better approach than minimalism is to use the standard of appreciation, especially long-term appreciation.

Ask yourself: How much will I likely appreciate this over the next 10 years? This question can really help you size up your relationship with a tool or service.

For example:

How much will I appreciate using a cell phone over the next 10 years?
How much will I appreciate being active of Facebook over the next 10 years?
How much will I appreciate my home office over the next 10 years?
How much will I appreciate my car over the next 10 years?

For some questions, you may realize that the appreciation is low and that you wouldn’t necessarily miss having something in your life if you dropped it. When I ask people the Facebook question above, no one says they appreciate it very much on a personal level, at least not enough to feel committed to it for another 10 years, although some people do appreciate it for business reasons.

For other areas you may realize that you could increase your appreciation not by downsizing but by upgrading. For instance, I upgraded my home recording studio earlier this year by adding even more to it. Now I like it so much that I keep wanting to do extra work in there, even when I’m not actively recording, partly because I like playing around with the lighting to create different moods.

Less isn’t always more. Sometimes more is more. Sometimes better is more. And sometimes different is more. Using any one of these heuristics as your gold standard for all classes of problems is a mistake. Reach for the standard of coming up with intelligent solutions that generate long-term appreciation. If you realize that your solution isn’t satisfying that standard, go back and refactor your solution.

Fitting the Solution to the Problem

This standard of appreciation encourages us to look at the big picture and think about how to solve problems intelligently instead of relying on oversimplified standards like minimalism. Minimalist solutions are simply unwise to use with certain classes of problems.

When it comes to social media, I may look like a minimalist since I deleted my accounts with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter a long time ago. But I made those choices based on appreciation, not on any commitment to minimalism. The long-term promise of appreciation with those services just wasn’t compelling enough.

I kept my YouTube account, however, because I saw a promising path to long-term appreciation with that service. I also click “like” on videos that I appreciate in order to train the algorithm to get better at serving me, which does indeed work very well. YouTube has been a fabulous educational platform for learning about certain topics quickly. I expect that I’ll continue to appreciate YouTube, however it evolves, over the next 10 years, and I intend to invest more in this platform as a creator too.

Many years ago, however, I did turn off my YouTube account, and I regretted it. That was overly minimalist. So I brought it back.

With Facebook I also went on and off the service at different times, which helped me see that I prefer not having a Facebook account. That decision frees up extra energy, and I’m happier for it too.

For email I like to maintain the standard of inbox zero. I appreciate email when I follow that standard. I never ever let my inbox fill up with unprocessed messages because that would ruin my appreciation of email as a communication tool. So I didn’t need to downsize email. I just needed to use the tool in such a way that it doesn’t become burdensome. If I ever get “too much” email, I just don’t reply to as much. I prefer to limit it to 15 minutes per day or less.

I see minimalism as misguided. It’s a cutesy standard that works for some limited range of problems, but it’s not at all difficult to find problems where a minimalist approach actually makes things worse.

Maximalism Works Better Sometimes

In some areas of life, it would be fair to say that I’m closer to a maximalism. I like having excess well beyond my immediate needs. I like having access to more of the possibility space.

Sometimes more doesn’t feel too complicated. Sometimes it feels rich and abundant.

One area where I appreciate a bit of maximalism is with creative tools. I appreciate good tech. I appreciate having lots of colored markers and index cards. I appreciate having lots of drawers and shelves. I love the feeling of having way more than I need because it removes barriers and distractions. I prefer creating from abundance rather than from scarcity. I like feeling that I have better tools and more support than I need.

Sometimes I buy extra redundancy, so I can keep what I need accessible in different locations. I have duplicates of some tools in the garage and the house… or upstairs versus downstairs. Each tool has an assigned home, so I always know where I can access the closest copy.

I learned that when buying running shoes, instead of having to research for a good pair every time my old pair runs out, it’s more efficient to buy a few pairs together. Then I have backups for when one pair runs out. So I’ll spend $500 on running shoes and then not have to worry about buying more for a while. Somehow it makes me feel more committed to running too when I see fresh pairs of shoes lined up and ready to use when I need them. It serves as a message to myself that I’m going to run through pair after pair with many more miles.

I also like overpaying for more web hosting capacity and faster servers, so our websites are fast and speedy for people accessing our courses and the Conscious Growth Club forums.

I can think of many situations where a maximalist approach works better in practice than a minimalist one. More exercise (and more variety of training) is often better than less. More income streams are better and more resilient than just one. More skills and more education can be better too.

* * *

Minimalism has its place, but be careful not to overplay it. You’ll be better served by intelligently considering how to match a solution to a problem or challenge, such that you create long-term appreciation. Sometimes you may appreciate a minimalist solution, and sometimes a non-minimalist solution will give you superior results.

Be especially careful not to self-identify as a minimalist because wrapping this narrow heuristic into your identity will constrain you to a limiting subset of the possibility space, guaranteeing that you won’t develop intelligent solutions for some classes of problems and challenges that you’ll surely encounter. Retain access to your full range of intelligence by regarding minimalism as one of many problem-solving tools in your toolkit. You are neither a minimalist nor a maximalist though. You are much more flexible.

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.

Join Conscious Growth Club by May 3rd

Posted on 26/04/2022 by Boris Clair

Conscious Growth Club is now open for you to join, from now through May 3, 2022. First started in 2017, this is our most comprehensive personal growth program and support group.

We’re about to start our 6th year together, and you’re invited to join this week. This is the only window during which you can join CGC in 2022. We open for new members once a year, and that’s it!

What Is Conscious Growth Club?

Conscious Growth Club is a private online club and coaching program to help you make faster and more consistent progress. It turns personal growth into a team game.

The essential purpose of the group is simple: We help each other grow into smarter, stronger human beings, whatever it takes.

CGC is an annual membership that includes:

A private member forum – Our forum is active every day (118,000+ posts so far). Members share intentions and goals, update progress, help each other solve problems, and encourage the heck out of each other. It’s ad-free, spam-free, and troll-free.
A 24/7 video chat channel – We call this the CGC Lounge. Imagine a continuous group video call that never ends. Any member can connect immediately to talk live with other members at any time. Meaningful conversations with conscious, growth-oriented friends are always available. Members also regularly use the Lounge to mastermind with other members on specific topics.
Member progress logs – A popular feature for support and accountability, members can maintain progress logs to share their actions and results. I also record progress logs for my own creative projects such as the deep dive courses, so you can see how they’re developed. This is great for people who love seeing how goals are accomplished behind the scenes.
Group video coaching calls – Get help solving tricky personal and professional challenges. We do live group coaching calls 33 times per year – on different days and times to accommodate all timezones. I happily provide personal help and guidance to any members who want it. Calls are recorded, so you’ll have an accessible copy of your coaching session to review as well.
Quarterly planning sessions – Every quarter we invite members to participate in a structured 5-day process to assess recent progress, set fresh 90-day goals, define action steps, and build momentum going into each new quarter. These quarterly beats will help you stay on track towards your goals, as you align yourself with the ambitious energy of people who are committed to improvement.
Course library – Members get access to all deep dive courses past, present, and future, including Deep Abundance Integration, Submersion, Stature, Amplify, and our all new Guild course. We add a new self-development course each CGC year, included as part of your membership.
Monthly challenges – Similar to my well-known 30-day trial experiments, we invite members to do 12 different challenges (any or all) per year for exploration, skill building, and habit improvement. Then we support and encourage each other as we go and compare notes on what we learned or gained.
Club emails – We send a few emails per month to remind members of upcoming coaching calls, share forum highlights, and to keep everyone in the loop on upcoming happenings. We include the latest forum highlights, so you can keep up on recent activity with ease, even when you’re busy.
New for 2022 – This CGC year you also get the full recordings of our recent 3-day online workshop, The Octo Intensive: The 8 Keys to Self-Motivation.
Many extra bonuses – CGC includes lots of extra support material, including a 10-day creative challenge mini-course.

Consistency Is Key

Conscious Growth Club is a unique program that was carefully designed and tested to help growth-oriented people support and encourage each other to keep improving their lives. I know of nothing else like this anywhere.

This group serves a powerful need that many of my blog readers have expressed – the need for a strong, stable, conscious, and ambitious peer group to support and encourage them every day. People especially need help staying focused and making consistent progress. I realized that this was a problem I could realistically help people solve – a significant yet achievable goal. Hence Conscious Growth Club was created to serve this need.

I’ve done the heavy lifting for you, so you can instantly add a growth-oriented social circle to your life simply by joining us.

Rachelle and I are very active in the CGC community – especially the forums – every day. CGC is a huge part of our lives and lifestyle. We’ve met many people from this community in person too.

CGC isn’t one of those outsourced operations where the founders barely engage at all. As anyone who’s been in CGC can easily attest, we’re super present and engaged in CGC daily. So if you join and participate actively, you’ll surely get a chance to interact with us a lot.

Most people who join CGC are long-term readers of my blog, some going all the way back to 2004 when I started. What we have in common is a keen interest in exploring personal growth and living more consciously. This means you’re likely to have a huge amount in common with other CGC members already, and that can lead to some delightful syncs and surprises as you get to know other members.

Learn More and Join CGC

Here’s a web page to learn all about Conscious Growth Club, so you can decide if you’re a match for joining us:

Enrollment Is Open Through May 3rd

We’re opening enrollment for a short window only (about 8 days), from now through Tuesday, May 3rd. This will be our only enrollment period for 2022. So if you want to join this year, now is the time. Visit the Conscious Growth Club page to learn the details.

The reason for opening just once for the year is so we can welcome new members all at once. Then we can focus on serving them well for the rest of the year.

CGC Capped at 125 Members for Year 6

Please note that we’re capping CGC membership at 125 members maximum for Year 6. That’s so we can provide abundant coaching and attention to all members who want to use those resources. The tech-based aspects of CGC (like the forums and courses) are scalable, but my personal attention and coaching aren’t scalable beyond a certain point. Last year we grew in membership by 20%, and for quality reasons I want to make sure we don’t grow too quickly in any single year.

At the time of this posting, we have 95 spots left and still more than 8 days to go. So please join soon if you want to be in CGC this year. If all the spots go early, we may need to close for the year before May 3rd.

I invite you to join us. It’s fun inside. 😃