Why Some Goals Make You Run in Circles

Why is it that sometimes you can be really clear about a goal, make a plan to get there, and take action on it, but even after years of pushing yourself, you still have little to show for your efforts?
Maybe you made some progress, but perhaps it wasn’t enough to justify the effort. Meanwhile it seems like so many other people are able to achieve similar goals much more quickly. This can be frustrating.
What is it that causes you to run in circles?
A common goal achievement strategy looks something like this:

1. Define your outcome.
2. Make a plan to get there.
3. Take lots of action.
4. Refine your approach as needed.
5. Persist until you succeed.

This method will indeed work for certain types of goals. But for other goals, it will actually cause you to run in circles. You’ll burn a lot of time and energy, but you won’t reach your goal in a reasonable period of time.
The method above tends to work okay for goals that don’t require much inner change. Your current thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors are well aligned with your outcomes. You don’t have to change on the inside. You just have to take certain basic actions that you’re already comfortable with, and you’ll get there.
For example, if you set a goal to organize your home office, and you’re already a fairly neat person, and you know how to organize, and you like the feeling of having everything in its proper place, then you can use this process to achieve that goal. You can imagine your home office the way you’d like it to be. Then make a to-do list of the action steps to get there. Then set aside a weekend to make it so, and go through the steps one by one until you’re done. If something unexpected happens, you can adjust your plan on the fly. This is an achievable goal for you, and if you feel motivated to make it happen, it’s clearly within your power to get it done in a reasonable period of time.
On the other hand, suppose you set that same goal to organize your home office, but your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings aren’t aligned very well. Maybe you’re not particularly happy with the work you do, and having a cluttered office makes it easier to distract yourself from depressing thoughts and feelings. Maybe you worry about having more responsibility. Maybe you fear that your life lacks variety. Maybe you’ve been eating a crappy diet, and it’s bringing down your energy levels, making it hard to feel motivated to de-clutter your office. Maybe you’ve piled up so much clutter that you now view it as a monumental task. Maybe you’re a habitual pack rat and have a hard time throwing things away, even if you haven’t used them in years.
For this second person, the goal achievement process previously described usually won’t work. It may look good on paper, but it can actually have an adverse effect, causing you to run in circles. You may set a goal to have a neat office and make a to-do list just as the first person did, but it won’t yield the same result for you. Even if you make a dent in the clutter, you’ll re-clutter it within a few weeks. Then you’ll beat yourself up, resolve to “stop procrastinating” and “finally get organized,” and try again. Fast forward five years, and your cluttered office still looks pretty much the same, despite investing a lot of mental and emotional energy in trying to improve.
This doesn’t mean you’re broken, lazy, or impotent. It means you’re using the wrong process for your particular goal. If this process isn’t working for you, stop using it. A good process produces good results.

A Tale of Two Vibrations

Albert Einstein is famously quoted as saying that we cannot solve problems at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
In the case of our first person organizing her home office, she already thinks of herself as a neat and organized person. She likes being organized and feels good about it on the inside. When she sees clutter in her environment, she immediately recognizes it: “This isn’t me.” It feels wrong to her. It’s below her standards to tolerate it for long. Perhaps she just got busy, and things piled up temporarily, but she knows that being neat is congruent with who she is. She may have been at a lower level of thinking when she created the clutter problem (stressed, overworked, tired, etc.), but that isn’t her normal state of being. Once her life is “back to normal,” she feels a strong desire to fix the clutter problem. Clutter isn’t congruent with who she is.
We can say that it’s part of her vibe — her collection of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs — to be neat and organized. While clutter may arise from time to time, it’s in her nature to return to a state of order again and again. Something must knock her down to a lower level of thinking, such as stress or illness, in order for her to take actions that create clutter. And even then, she knows she’ll eventually clean it up when she’s back to her normal self.
With our second person, however, being neat and organized isn’t part of his vibe. His normal, default experience is to create and tolerate clutter, even if he doesn’t like it. He’s a match for clutter. His thoughts, feelings, and beliefs all support the creation and maintenance of a cluttered environment. When he does feel like getting organized and he’s able to get himself to take action, it’s a peak state, and it usually doesn’t last for more than a few days. Even if he can get himself to hold that state long enough to organize his office, he’ll simply re-clutter it in the following weeks when he’s back to his normal level of being.
Can you think of goals in your own life where your experience was like that of the first person? And other experiences that were more like the second person?

Are Your Goals Congruent With Your Vibe?

You can use the previously mentioned goal achievement process (or something similar) when your situation is like that of the first person. But it doesn’t work well in the second situation.
Think about some of the goals and projects you’d like to accomplish. Which ones are already a good match for your current level of being? Which ones are not a match for your current vibe?
For example, if you set a goal to earn $1 million this year, but you’ve never earned more than $50K in a year before, it’s safe to say that the first goal achievement process will cause you to run in circles. That’s because your vibe is incongruent with that goal.
However, if you’ve earned $400K, $600K, and $800K in each of the last 3 years, and it feels normal to see your income increase significantly each year, then the first goal achievement process can work just fine. Your current vibe is already a good match for this goal.
Foolish Plans
When your default level of thinking and feeling (i.e. your current vibe) is not a good match for one or more of your goals, don’t try to use the first goal achievement process. It will almost certainly run you in circles. The reason that happens is that you’re trying to achieve a goal at a level of thinking at which it cannot be achieved. You may come up with a nice-looking list of action steps, but they’ll be the wrong actions. When you try to work on that list, something will feel off. You’ll find yourself procrastinating massively, for instance. This doesn’t mean you don’t want the goal. It means you’re trying to use the wrong process to get there. You’ll probably experience lots of clunky starts and re-starts to try to get yourself moving, but you won’t move much.
For example, if you’ve never earned more than $50K in a year, and you decide to earn $1 million this year, but your vibe is stuck below the $50K level, then when you make a to-do list for how to achieve your million-dollar goal, it won’t be a realistic plan. It will be a fantasy. Your plan will be like a child’s plan to build a space ship. It won’t be something you can realistically implement, and it won’t look much like the plan that a true soon-to-be millionaire would use.
Your plan will probably be cluttered with actions that don’t even need to be done, at least not by you personally. It will include a lot of unnecessary busywork. It will focus on actions that won’t produce strong results under real-world conditions.
If someone who was already earning $1 million per year looked at your plan, they’d likely see it as unbalanced and off-base. Even if they were starting from scratch, their plan to earn that first million wouldn’t look very much like yours.
Don’t bother to create plans for goals that you aren’t already a good match for. Such plans won’t work in the real world. First you have to get yourself to the level of thinking at which your goal can be achieved. After you get to that level of thinking, then you can start identifying action steps, and those actions will make sense.

Vibrational Goal Achievement

So what do you do if you have a goal that doesn’t mesh well with your current level of thinking and feeling? How do you bridge the vibrational gap between where you are and where you’d like to be?
You need to use a different goal achievement process for that. I’ll share such a process in my next post.

Stay the Course

When you begin any sort of vibe shifting work, such as shifting from a scarcity vibe to an abundance vibe, expect to feel out of sync with your current physical reality for a few weeks. This is challenging to be sure, but it’s a normal part of the experience.
As you shift your inner self, you begin exerting new forces on your outer reality. It takes time for the various elements of your reality (your relationships, finances, daily routine, etc) to reveal the cumulative effect of these forces and to shift themselves around to achieve equilibrium with your new vibe.
Old opportunities will dry up. New opportunities will begin to appear.
Invitations that once attracted you will seem boring, while others will become interesting to you.
People will change how they relate to you. Some will become more distant while others will zoom closer.
Things you used to tolerate will no longer be tolerable for you. Things you used to merely dream about will begin to seem possible for you.
This is also a test of sorts — to see if you’re really committed to holding the new vibe. If you allow the old reality to get the better of you, and you swing you back to the old vibe due to feelings of guilt, regret, fear, attachment, and so on, you’ll simply reinforce the old reality and cancel the shift.
This can be a very chaotic time to endure, but stay the course and it will pass.
It can also be a lonely time because you’ll most likely be going through this shift by yourself. This doesn’t mean you’ll be saying goodbye to all your previous relationships, but you may be relating to those same people a little differently on the other side of this shift. How this plays out depends on the nature of the shift. For instance, if you’re shifting to a more abundant vibe, you’re likely to repel people who are deeply mired in a scarcity vibe, but some people in your life may find your shift exciting and may be supportive in watching you go through it.
Also, during the shift you may want to stay focused on the new vibe until you’ve had a chance to reach the other side in physical reality and re-ground yourself there. Sometimes, but not always, it’s just a little simpler to go through these kinds of shifts without being too heavily influenced by other people.
Watching your reality rearrange itself right in front of you can be a bit disorienting at first. I liken the experience to moving to a new city. When you first arrive, it takes a while to familiarize yourself to the next territory. For me it usually takes about 3 weeks before I feel like I’m used to it.
You also have to loosen your attachment to the old city and say goodbye to it in a way. Otherwise you’ll want to cancel the move.
It can be hard to predict which aspects of the old city will still be present in the new one and which you’ll essentially be leaving behind. There will be some experiences you can recreate there and others that you need to let go. You’ll also discover new experiences that simply weren’t available in your old city.
Once you’ve moved, you can still go back and visit the old city, but it won’t feel the same once you’re firmly established in your new residence. You’ve been looking at your old reality from a new perspective.
It’s extremely tempting to cancel the move along the way, especially during those first two weeks. It takes a big inner commitment to shift your vibe and let your physical reality catch up, just as it takes a big commitment to move to a new city. Some vibrational shifts are so big that they’re akin to moving to a new country with a different language. Expect it to take longer to adapt to these bigger shifts as well, perhaps months or even years instead of weeks.
If you’re truly committed to the shift, then stay the course. Your outer reality will catch up eventually. Just be prepared for a bit of chaotic restructuring along the way. Do your best to relax and breathe through it. Keep going back to your new vibe and reinforcing it, even when it seems like your outer world is screaming at you.

Allowing Yourself to Receive

The vibe of financial abundance is very similar to that of open relationships. It invites and welcomes from a place of flow, and without attachment to outcomes.
We’re surrounded by opportunities to invite and receive love, money, and more. But when we’re stuck in scarcity thinking, we squeeze this field of possibilities down to a narrow part of the spectrum. And sometimes our intentions are simply too big to be compressed without losing their essence, so we effectively block them.
We intend to increase the flow of love, and then demand that it must come from our primary relationship partner only. We desire more money and require that it must come from our one and only job — or that we must receive a singular job if we don’t have one already.
This attachment to such thin bands of reception pollutes our intentions with fear. Yes, we actually fear receiving through other parts of the spectrum, parts that lie outside our comfort zones.
What if getting paid what I’m worth means that I have to quit my current job? What if there are other beautiful relationships to enjoy than just this one?
We resist the consequences of such changes, and so we resist the changes themselves, thereby receiving the perpetuation of stuckness.
The universe cannot deliver the full package of your desires if your mailbox is too small.
When we open up and allow ourselves to receive through all parts of the spectrum (or at least a bit more of it), we reduce the blocks attached to our intentions, and the flow quickly increases.
Is it really so terrible to welcome multiple income streams… or multiple lovers? Can we not simply relax and allow our desires to show up, without presenting a list of fear-based demands that constricts the flow?
Can you allow yourself to receive through all parts of the spectrum of potential, including the bands that expose your limiting beliefs and make you feel vulnerable and afraid? If you can do that, you will soon forget what it’s like to experience scarcity.

How to be Free from Frustration

If you’re feeling frustrated, it means you’re holding a vibe that aligns with a reality that you don’t want.
How do you create the vibe of frustration? It’s pretty easy. Simply observe your reality, and then resist or reject some aspect of it. Look at your financial situation, and resist it. Look at your job, and resist it. Look at your relationship (or lack thereof), and resist it.
Once you’re holding the frustration vibe, you’ve locked in your resistance. So reality responds accordingly. It says, “Oh… you’re holding a vibe that aligns with what you don’t want. So here’s plenty more of what you don’t want. You’re welcome to experience that for as long as you like!”
You may think that the solution is for reality to adjust itself first — or for you to make changes in your external world — and then you’ll be able to let go of the frustration. But does that actually work? Nope.
The more you try to work on the external world, while still resisting parts of it, the longer you perpetuate frustration. Even if you manage to seemingly fix some part of your external reality, another part will soon break. Or you’ll pull ahead and then fall back… again and again. Ever experience this?

There Is No External World

The reason this approach doesn’t work is that there is no external world, as least none that you can directly access. Where does all your knowledge of the external world exist? It exists in your mind… or in your consciousness. That’s where you hold all your memories, knowledge, and experience. That’s where your feelings are. That’s where your vibe is felt.
Think about your experience of reality as objectively as you can. Where are all your observations being processed? Where are those apparent 3D visual images you see around you being simulated? Where are the sounds you hear interpreted? Where are your feelings being experienced? All of this is happening in your brain and in your body.
Where is the frustration? Obviously that’s in your mind (or brain) too.
Moreover, where are all those frustrating experiences? Do they really exist “out there”? If so, then point to them. If you can’t point to them or identify their location in space, then they exist only as memories and mental projections, which is all clearly in your mind. And if you believe you can physically point to them right now, then what are you pointing at? You’re observing yourself gesturing within a visual construct that’s being simulated in your brain, which is still an internal reality.
Once you realize that there is no frustration out there — and there are no frustrating experiences out there in the world either — you’re one big step closer to releasing frustration altogether. If these experiences are internal to you, which in truth they are, then perhaps you have the ability to release that frustration without needing to change anything at all outside of you.
You are indeed capable of doing this. A good start is to realize that it’s rather silly for one part of your mind to resist another part of your mind. To create frustration, for instance, the part of your mind that observes must disagree with the part of your mind that predicts.

Observation vs. Prediction

If your observations and your predictions disagree, does it really make sense to have them do battle inside your mind?
What’s the simplest way to end this inner conflict? How about if prediction surrenders to observation? Let observation win, let reality be what it is, let your observations be as they are, and decline to fight yourself if your predictions disagree. Instead, let your predictive abilities learn and grow in response to your latest observations. Don’t cling to inaccurate predictions.
When you allow yourself to wallow in frustration, you’re continuing to wage war between prediction and observation. And wars of this nature have a tendency to self-perpetuate. This means that you’ll continue to find new sources of conflict even as old ones dry up. As long as you believe that it’s okay for prediction and observation to fight, your mind will continue to feed the battle with fresh troops, ammo, and supplies.
When you realize that this conflict is pointless, which indeed it is, then you can consciously end it. To do this, one side must surrender, and the losing side must be prediction. Otherwise you’ll just fall further out of alignment with truth, and you’ll attract even greater frustrations as you widen the gap between prediction and observation. It’s better to correct your predictive errors when the fighting isn’t so intense.

Surrender

Once you surrender, both sides will put down their weapons, and the fighting will end. Instead of feeling frustrated, now you can start to vibe with acceptance… and eventually, with peace and flow and happiness.
As you continue to surrender the unwinnable battles of frustration, you’ll gain access to even more resourceful vibes. When your predictive abilities and your observational abilities cease fighting, you have more resources to devote to your creative abilities. Instead of having your creativity diverted to the conflict, you can create what you desire instead.
Resisting your observations is not a path to manifesting your desires. You can’t create if you deny what you’ve already created. You can’t elevate your vibe if you won’t accept what you’re attracting with your current vibe.
If you want to speed ahead even faster, then allow yourself to love what you’ve already created. No matter how nasty it looks, love it like a frog prince. Find some way — any way — to see the beauty behind the apparent ugliness.

Resisting Scarcity

When I was broke and in debt many years ago, initially I resisted that outcome. With each new year, I grew ever more determined to resist my observed reality… and to recommit myself to creating wealth instead. After a while I had to conclude that this internal battle wasn’t working. I kept losing money for 5 years straight. Resisting brokeness with all my might did not summon abundance into my life. Resisting brokeness just made brokeness a bigger and bigger part of my reality. Eventually I had to sell off most of my possessions, lose my office, and lose my apartment. The more I fought against being broke, the more broke I became.
Finally I came to my senses. I recognized that resisting brokeness was draining my creative energies, leaving  me with little power to create and experience what I actually desired. While my predictions were fighting my observations, I simply didn’t have the inner resources available to create what I desired.
And so I gave up and surrendered. I stopped fighting. I acknowledged and accepted my utter brokeness. I let myself wallow in it, like I was taking a bath in a tub full of broke.
I declared prediction’s unconditional surrender, and I proclaimed observation the final winner of this years-long war. My many attempts to create wealth were clearly not working, nor were they ever likely to work. The goals, projects, actions, and attitudes that I predicted would lead to wealth and success had taken me in the exact opposite direction. It was an extraordinary failure, one of my life’s biggest. Finally instead of resisting this observation, I celebrated it. What a spectacular failure it was!

Relief

When this war finally ended, I expected I might feel rather depressed about the whole thing. Maybe there was some of that present, but it soon faded, replaced by feelings of relief and even some elation — feelings not uncommonly associated with the end of many wars.
As my inner soldiers returned home from the battlefield — some victorious, others defeated, but all of them relieved that the fighting was over — I put them all back to work. Instead of working on weapons and battle training and military pursuits, I put them to work in construction. With no more war to fight, I had plenty of inner manpower to attend to fresh creative projects.
And those projects succeeded. Without the vibe of frustration rooting me to a reality I didn’t want, I allowed myself to gently glide over to a reality I did want. By declining to resist what I’d already created, my creative powers went up a level or two… or ten.

Abusing Your Creativity

It was difficult to learn the lesson that when I resist what is, I’m destroying my own creativity. Now I understand that if I want to create and attract what I desire, I must encourage the heck out of my creativity now. I must allow myself to see the beauty in what I’ve already created… to lavish heaps of praise on my creativity for what it’s done thus far… to keep noticing its strengths and its potential, not its shortcomings.
If you deny, resist, or condemn what’s already showing up, you’re shaming your creativity into oblivion. That’s like trying to train an athlete by constantly saying, “OMG you frakkin loser! You suck!” and offering no encouragement or positive feedback whatsoever.
When you resist what’s showing up in your life, you’re abusing your creativity. Is that really the relationship you desire? Will it really benefit you to bash and berate your creativity into becoming ever more helpless and powerless?

Aligning with Abundance

Since those hard-earned lessons, I’ve had a relatively easy time staying in the flow of abundance — and continuing its expansion into other areas like the delightful enjoyment of open relationships. The core of this abundance-creating philosophy is absolute acceptance of what is.
Whenever I see observation and prediction getting snippy with each other, I give them both hugs and tell prediction to sit down and listen more carefully to observation. Once those two are back to being best buds, then plenty of fresh energy flows into creativity. And creativity is really good at manifesting new desires.
I also praise my creativity for what it’s already summoned into my life. I look for any excuse to give it a poth (pat on the head).
Look at that beautiful article you just wrote. You’re such a wordsmith!
You really helped that woman feel loved and appreciated. You’re doing a great job of connecting from your heart!
You’re on an airplane again. Kudos to you for traveling — this is fun!
What if you’re having a bad day? Again, find any excuse to praise your creativity, which is the same thing as finding something to appreciate in your reality.
Who just made popcorn without burning it (mostly)? YOU did!
That was a nice hug you gave your daughter. She really had to strain not to crack a smile!
So you sent your ex-wife a text message intended for your girlfriend. What a stimulating way to start your day!

Taming Prediction

If you want to invite more abundance and flow into your life, you’ll likely get much faster results not by pounding away on your desires but by releasing your resistance to what’s already showing up — as well as any worries or concerns about what might happen next.
It’s easier to start a business if you don’t worry about going broke. It’s easier to invite loving relationships if you don’t worry about potential rejection. It’s easier to write interesting articles if you don’t worry about criticism.
I’m very happy with my life right now. This has been an amazingly beautiful year, and I’m excited about what’s coming up in the next month or two. I’m looking forward to cool creative projects, lucrative business deals, warm and loving cuddle sessions, exciting travel adventures, yummy sex, new friends, new growth lessons, and more.
But I’ve learned that it’s usually disastrous to let my predictions get too far ahead of my observations. I allow myself to enjoy the vibe of being already aligned with my desires, but I don’t let myself get clingy with it.
If I become attached to certain predictions, then what happens if and when my observations fall short of my predictions? What happens if an expected business deal falls through, or a cuddle partner cancels, or a beautiful trip gets postponed? If I get clingy with my expectations, I’m inviting frustration.
I allow myself to make predictions — I can’t really help that — but I let them float around continuously without declaring a solid lock. Only observation has the privilege and the responsibility of declaring a lock (and even then, that sometimes needs to be tamed as well). Prediction never gets to wield the baton of certainty. Prediction can only suggest, never assert. Prediction can only declare what may be, never what will be.
By releasing my attachment to what might be, and simply resting with my intentions, I avoid a great deal of frustration. Sure I screw up from time to time. But when I come to my senses, I tell prediction to surrender. I put him back in his proper position and remind him that he’s a scout, not a general.
This requires patient practice. I often have to go back and remind myself of the ideas I’ve shared above — that my predictions and observations are both internal and that it’s foolish to permit them to fight within me. Fortunately perfection isn’t necessary. Even a small improvement in this relationship can attract some very nice outcomes.

Creativity’s Trainers

Maybe I’ll enjoy a lucrative business deal or two in the weeks ahead, but maybe this won’t actually happen. Maybe I’ll go to Canada and Norway this month, but maybe those trips will get canceled for some unpredictable reason. Maybe I’ll have some delightful cuddle sessions and a threesome or two, or maybe I won’t.
Even when I have seemingly solid plans for these welcome experiences, I do my best to avoid clinginess. They’re still just possibilities, regardless of how likely they may be.
Whenever prediction wants to shout, “Let’s celebrate in advance. This is totally a done deal!” I don’t grant it the authority to declare itself an accurate authority on the future. I allow it to suggest, and I listen to its suggestions, but I retain an attitude of “perhaps, but perhaps not” when listening. I know from experience that prediction can wield tremendous confidence even when it’s dreadfully wrong.
The irony is that when I keep prediction from ascending to the level of hubris, it tends to be more accurate than otherwise. By keeping its station humble, it perpetually feels it has something to prove, and so it does its most reliable work.
Think of prediction and observation as creativity’s co-trainers. If the trainers are yelling and screaming at each other, that doesn’t benefit the student. Having the trainers on equal footing is too tricky a balancing act. The most sensible approach is to have one Master trainer (observation) and one assistant trainer (prediction). When there’s a disagreement about the training regimen, they can first attempt to hear each other out and try to achieve consensus, but if that isn’t realistic, then the Master trainer has the authority to make the call.
By loving and accepting your current reality as you invite new desires, you can create what you desire faster and more easily. You can prevent new wars from breaking out between prediction and observation… and ensure that they work cooperatively as co-trainers of your creative abilities. This means more energy flowing into creation, and less energy squandered on frustration.
Moreover, by releasing these inner struggles (or at least toning them down), you can free up more time to enjoy the deliciousness of receiving.
Who just made popcorn without burning it (mostly)? YOU did!

Let the Old World Collapse

I frequently receive emails from people contemplating major career and lifestyle transitions. Their stories have many variations, but they typically have these elements in common:

• dissatisfaction with their current work or lifestyle (or lack of meaningful work)
• feeling that they’re on the wrong path (possibly for years)
• feeling of being on a treadmill that goes nowhere
• feeling of stress linked to their situation (sometimes dreading going to work)
• feeling that something needs to change and that the clock is ticking
• feeling of pressure to get something going
• desire to contribute in a way that that feels inspired, meaningful, and fulfilling
• desire to make a decent income that at least covers their expenses

Much of the time there’s also a pattern of stuckness that includes one or more of these elements:

• feeling of financial pressure (especially linked to bills or debts)
• feeling of obligation to financially support others like a family, spouse, finacé(e), parent, sibling, or roommate
• worries that if they do what they love, it won’t pay much, or it will take a long time to pay off financially
• worries that they don’t have the skills to earn a better income elsewhere
• feeling of low or inconsistent energy
• feeling unmotivated
• feeling down and despondent
• feeling frustrated

Notice that the items on both lists are feelings.
Interestingly, when such a person finally does get unstuck and starts moving on a new career path, they frequently report the following:

• feeling relieved
• feeling of freedom
• feeling smarter, like they made the right decision
• feeling hopeful about the future and expecting further improvement
• feeling done with the old path and having no more loyalty to it
• feeling of resignation and surrender to the challenges ahead
• feelings of strength and courage
• feeling of finally being on a sensible path
• feelings of excitement and optimism
• feeling of high energy and alertness
• feeling more attractive (with people and opportunities)
• heightened sense of awareness (feeling more awake, alive, and conscious)
• increased feelings of control over circumstances
• cascading flood of new desires in other areas (improved relationships, becoming healthier, etc)
• wondering why the transition seemed so scary in the first place (and sometimes wishing it happened much sooner)

Now here’s the rub. Sometimes the fears and worries the person originally had about leaving their old lifestyle actually do come to pass. They may have less money for a while. Some bills may go unpaid. Their fiancée might freak out and leave. They may lose their house.
Sometimes those experiences can be avoided, but other times they happen pretty much as expected.

Recovery

Once the fear, worry, frustration and other negative feelings are replaced with more positive, forward-moving feelings like courage, relief, surrender, and freedom, an interesting shift happens. The shift is that the person stops resisting these events from happening and finally accepts that they may come to pass. Furthermore they finally realize that if the worst happens, they’ll still be okay.
That’s really the key to navigating these kinds of transitions. When you can resign yourself to accepting that your various fears and worries may indeed come to pass, when you no longer hold them over your head as something that must be avoided, you can make a smarter choice that frees you from the stuckness.
You may feel that your possessions and relationships are so important that you have to cling to them for dear life. But of course that isn’t true. The other side isn’t hell and death. It’s recovery.
If you’ve built your possessions and relationships upon an unstable foundation, then there’s a very good chance they’ll crumble when you stop straining to keep them in place. Let them collapse anyway. It’s okay to do that.
Some people view this situation as a disaster. It’s not. It’s an opportunity. Once your old world collapses, you can recover and rebuild. Now you have the chance to start fresh and do things more intelligently.

The Worst Case Probably Isn’t That Bad

I built my first business on an unstable structure. I kept it going for years and finally threw in the towel on the old model. Predictably, the business collapsed. I had to break my office lease and sell off all the furniture and equipment. I got kicked out of my apartment because I couldn’t pay the rent. I couldn’t pay my bills or debt. I declared bankruptcy.
For years there was the worry that this might happen if I didn’t keep straining to keep the business going. And my worries were right. Pretty much all the stuff I worried would happen did happen.
But you know what? Going through that experience wasn’t really so bad. It was interesting. Some of it was actually pretty easy. Throughout most of it, I felt increasing relief and a renewed sense of freedom and possibility. All the old baggage was gone. No more office. Fewer possessions. Fewer obligations. No more debt.
Most of all, no more straining. Life became a lot easier.
I got a cheaper apartment and downsized tremendously. I became debt-free. I learned to live within my means. Those were actually good things. Where was all the hell and death? Those were just feelings. The reality wasn’t actually painful.
After that, I kept going with the same business but radically changed the business model. I avoided the earlier mistakes, and that business recovered just fine and worked great. It was profitable every year thereafter. But I had to go through the collapse first to reach that point.

Stop Straining

Years later the same pattern played out in my marriage. I did my best to maintain an unsustainable path for as long as I could. But when the strain finally became too great, I threw in the towel and let it collapse. I recovered. My ex-wife recovered. We don’t have the same relationship we once did, but we’re still friends and not enemies. The worst case outcome wasn’t so terrible to live through.
By allowing my old lifestyle to collapse, I cleared the slate to build a new one.
And again, the worst part was resisting the collapse. Actually going through it was challenging at times, but it was definitely doable, and there was this increasing feeling of relief over time.
I’ve gone through this same collapse pattern on other occasions too, enough times to know that there will probably be many more iterations of this in my future. I don’t see it as a bad thing to be avoided. I see it as a natural part of living, learning, and growing. From time to time, these experiences are necessary to clear out the stuckness and start fresh.
If you’ve been feeling out of sync with your current work or lifestyle, and you’re currently straining to prop it up and keep it going, consider letting go. Try allowing the old world to collapse. Many or all of your fears and worries might actually come to pass, but that’s okay. You’ll cope with them, one step at a time. Other people have lived through something similar and felt better on the other side. You will too.
You can always make more money and repurchase possessions that you really liked. Better yet, you can replace those items with things you like even more. Or you may choose to live more lightly and not replace them at all.
You can always attract and form new relationships. There are lots of fascinating people in the world, and without so much straining, you’ll become more attractive. You may be surprised at just how easy it is to make new friends and relationship partners when you’re no longer straining. Even if you’re really attached to one or more relationships right now, and even if you may lose those relationships if you stop straining, you’ll find love again. And you’ll be happier in the new relationships than the old ones.
You don’t have to keep the old world alive. If it keeps falling apart on you, let it collapse. Experiencing the collapse isn’t as bad as fearing the collapse.

Don't Pay your Bills

What if you really want to quit your job and go independent, but you’re worried about paying your bills?
Today I’m able to enjoy the best of both worlds. My bills are easily paid from my passive income streams, and I get to do work I love and enjoy tremendous freedom. But when I was first starting out, it was often an either-or situation. Sometimes I had to not pay credit card bills, legal bills, utilities, rent, etc. Many times I just didn’t have the money.
Obviously not paying bills creates consequences. My credit rating was trashed for many years. I had to sell off a bunch of my stuff for food money. I lost my office. I got kicked out of my apartment. I had to declare bankruptcy. But I wasn’t willing to get a job to remedy any of that. Better to lose an apartment than check into a cage.
I never stiffed individuals, but I certainly stiffed some corporations. They took a risk on me and lost. It was their risk to take. I doubt any corporate employees lost sleep over my unpaid accounts.
Eventually I learned what I needed to learn. But in the beginning, I was too inexperienced to earn enough money without a job to cover my bills. I picked the wrong strategies for earning income and got dismal results. So I didn’t pay all my bills, and I accepted the consequences of that.
A bill is just a number. It has no meaning other than what you assign to it. You may determine that not paying a bill is a deplorable act of dishonor. To me it’s simply a learning experience — a lesson. It’s a small oops.
If my bills ever get in the way of my path of growth, the bills lose.
Do you know how many bills I didn’t pay in order to pursue the path I’m on? Dozens, maybe hundreds if you include all the late notices. At least $150,000 of bills were never paid. That was many years ago, long before I started blogging, and of course I had to deal with some consequences.
Negative consequences can be great teachers, but don’t assume that they’re punishments that must be avoided at all costs.
Not paying a bill gets you a slap on the wrist. My wrists have been slapped many times. Wrist slaps are nothing to be afraid of. You get used to them. If you’re committed to a path of growth, expect your wrists to be slapped many times.
Most of the time when I didn’t pay a bill, the first wrist slap came in the form of an overdue notice. Ouch! Those RED ALL CAPS LETTERS make me quake in fear. Or I could just toss it in the trash and go on about my day.
Sometimes I’d get phone calls from collection agencies… up to 10 of those per day. A good solution there is to not pay the phone bill too.
Initially I truly did find these consequences stressful. But when it became such a flood because I was so ridiculously in debt that it just didn’t matter anymore, I discovered a newfound freedom on the other side. I stopped worrying and just accepted the consequences for what they were. The fear was much worse than the reality. I realized that my overdue accounts were being processed by a corporate machine. And the psychology employed to try to get me to pay was all based on fear, shame, and guilt. Collection agents would try to make me feel like a loser for not paying. Once I realized what they were doing, I stopped letting them treat me that way, and the debt collectors became much less powerful. Sure they could mess up my credit rating, but they couldn’t make me miserable or worried or stressed without my permission.
Eventually the whole thing became like a game to me. All this fuss over a number in a database? When collection agents would call, I’d ask them about their personal lives, or I’d come up with silly answers to “When can you make a payment?” When I got kicked out of my apartment, I moved to a much cheaper one. When I didn’t have much furniture, I used a large cardboard box as a table. I realized that my stuff was vulnerable to loss, but my attitude didn’t have to be so weak and timid, despite my screwed up financial situation.
This was an amazing time of growth for me. I learned to be a lot less attached to money and possessions. I learned to stand up for myself and my right to make mistakes without being treated like a loser for screwing up. Those lessons have stayed with me ever since. Now that I do have some money flowing through my life, I don’t fear losing it. Money has no power over me like it once did. I’m not afraid of going broke again.
Earning money also became much easier. Since I was already broke, I decided to focus on doing what I enjoyed, expressing my creativity, and making a contribution without worrying about how much I’d earn. Ironically, that’s exactly the kind of attitude that can generate abundant income. Every year since then has been financially abundant (almost 15 years now). Go figure.
One reason employee culture often leads people to be so afraid of wrist slaps is that such cultures are often fear driven. That’s how people are kept in line and conditioned to do work they’d rather not do. Sometimes it’s really hard for me to have interesting connections with long-term employees because so many of them are afraid of their own shadow. It’s like talking to someone via one of those prison visitation phones. Some are scared of being reprimanded for placing the wrong type of item on their desks. Last year I wrote up a mock version of such a conversation in an attempt to point out just how absurd the employee mindset sounds to an independent.
My independent friends never seem to ask, “But how will I pay my bills?” My independent friends know that if they can’t pay their bills, the bills won’t be paid, they’ll deal with the consequences, and life will go on just fine. But my employee-minded friends have often been conditioned to believe that not paying a bill is the worst sin imaginable — a massive failure to be avoided at all costs.
Am I suggesting that you become wildly irresponsible and spend money like a crazy person? Not at all. But don’t be so afraid of betting on yourself and taking some risk. You’re going to lose some of those bets. That’s okay. Just dust yourself off, and try again. How else are you going to learn if you don’t make the attempt? And you get more than one attempt — a LOT more!
So the answer to the question “What if I quit my job and can’t pay my bills?” is pretty straightforward. If you can’t pay your bills, don’t pay them. Rest assured that if you don’t pay some bills, the universe will not actually explode.
Is this against the rules? Yes, it’s against the rules.
If you don’t pay your bills, it obviously means that you’re a dishonorable, rotten scoundrel, and you’re surely going to hell. But I’ll be rotting there right along with you, in that extra toasty domain of hell reserved for rule breakers. You should be able to find me if you look for the bonfire of overdue notices, with a bunch of crazy folks dancing around it in celebration of their freedom. The rising smoke from our bonfire will probably annoy all the obedient collection agents playing their harps in heaven, and whatever RED LETTER NOTICES they send us in response can be used to keep the fire going.
P.S. Thank you, WordPress, for including bubble-help with the names of the colors over the color squares. It makes it possible for a color blind person like me to know which color in the palette is actually red.

How To be an Early Riser

It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
- Aristotle
Are morning people born or made? In my case it was definitely made. In my early 20s, I rarely went to bed before midnight, and I’d almost always sleep in late. I usually didn’t start hitting my stride each day until late afternoon.
But after a while I couldn’t ignore the high correlation between success and rising early, even in my own life. On those rare occasions where I did get up early, I noticed that my productivity was almost always higher, not just in the morning but all throughout the day. And I also noticed a significant feeling of well-being. So being the proactive goal-achiever I was, I set out to become a habitual early riser. I promptly set my alarm clock for 5AM…
… and the next morning, I got up just before noon.
Hmmm…
I tried again many more times, each time not getting very far with it. I figured I must have been born without the early riser gene. Whenever my alarm went off, my first thought was always to stop that blasted noise and go back to sleep. I tabled this habit for a number of years, but eventually I came across some sleep research that showed me that I was going about this problem the wrong way. Once I applied those ideas, I was able to become an early riser consistently.
It’s hard to become an early riser using the wrong strategy. But with the right strategy, it’s relatively easy.
The most common wrong strategy is this: You assume that if you’re going to get up earlier, you’d better go to bed earlier. So you figure out how much sleep you’re getting now, and then just shift everything back a few hours. If you now sleep from midnight to 8am, you figure you’ll go to bed at 10pm and get up at 6am instead. Sounds very reasonable, but it will usually fail.
It seems there are two main schools of thought about sleep patterns. One is that you should go to bed and get up at the same times every day. It’s like having an alarm clock on both ends — you try to sleep the same hours each night. This seems practical for living in modern society. We need predictability in our schedules. And we need to ensure adequate rest.
The second school says you should listen to your body’s needs and go to bed when you’re tired and get up when you naturally wake up. This approach is rooted in biology. Our bodies should know how much rest we need, so we should listen to them.
Through trial and error, I found out for myself that both of these schools are suboptimal sleep patterns. Both of them are wrong if you care about productivity. Here’s why:
If you sleep set hours, you’ll sometimes go to bed when you aren’t sleepy enough. If it’s taking you more than five minutes to fall asleep each night, you aren’t sleepy enough. You’re wasting time lying in bed awake and not being asleep. Another problem is that you’re assuming you need the same number of hours of sleep every night, which is a false assumption. Your sleep needs vary from day to day.
If you sleep based on what your body tells you, you’ll probably be sleeping more than you need — in many cases a lot more, like 10-15 hours more per week (the equivalent of a full waking day). A lot of people who sleep this way get 8+ hours of sleep per night, which is usually too much. Also, your mornings may be less predictable if you’re getting up at different times. And because our natural rhythms are sometimes out of tune with the 24-hour clock, you may find that your sleep times begin to drift.
The optimal solution for me has been to combine both approaches. It’s very simple, and many early risers do this without even thinking about it, but it was a mental breakthrough for me nonetheless. The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night.
I go to bed when I’m too sleepy to stay up. My sleepiness test is that if I couldn’t read a book for more than a page or two without drifting off, I’m ready for bed. Most of the time when I go to bed, I’m asleep within three minutes. I lie down, get comfortable, and immediately I’m drifting off. Sometimes I go to bed at 9:30pm; other times I stay up until midnight. Most of the time I go to bed between 10-11pm. If I’m not sleepy, I stay up until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. Reading is an excellent activity to do during this time, since it becomes obvious when I’m too sleepy to read.
When my alarm goes off every morning, I turn it off, stretch for a couple seconds, and sit up. I don’t think about it. I’ve learned that the longer it takes me to get up, the more likely I am to try to sleep in. So I don’t allow myself to have conversations in my head about the benefits of sleeping in once the alarm goes off. Even if I want to sleep in, I always get up right away.
After a few days of using this approach, I found that my sleep patterns settled into a natural rhythm. If I got too little sleep one night, I’d automatically be sleepier earlier and get more sleep the next night. And if I had lots of energy and wasn’t tired, I’d sleep less. My body learned when to knock me out because it knew I would always get up at the same time and that my wake-up time wasn’t negotiable.
A side effect was that on average, I slept about 90 minutes less per night, but I actually felt more well-rested. I was sleeping almost the entire time I was in bed.
I read that most insomniacs are people who go to bed when they aren’t sleepy. If you aren’t sleepy and find yourself unable to fall asleep quickly, get up and stay awake for a while. Resist sleep until your body begins to release the hormones that rob you of consciousness. If you simply go to bed when you’re sleepy and then get up at a fixed time, you’ll cure your insomnia. The first night you’ll stay up late, but you’ll fall asleep right away. You may be tired that first day from getting up too early and getting only a few hours of sleep the whole night, but you’ll slog through the day and will want to go to bed earlier that second night. After a few days, you’ll settle into a pattern of going to bed at roughly the same time and falling asleep right away.
So if you want to become an early riser (or just exert more control over your sleep patterns), then try this: Go to bed only when you’re too sleepy to stay up, and get up at a fixed time every morning.

Social Bankruptcy

After shutting down the discussion forums a week ago, I took some time to think about my major focus for 2012, as I like to do at the beginning of each new year.
To wrap up 2011 and transition to 2012, Rachelle and I went to Phoenix for Raw Spirit Fest, and then yesterday we took a side trip to Sedona to meditate in one of our favorite spots. This retreat gave me time to reflect on the past year and to understand what I want to experience next.
During the past few years, I’ve been very active in the social circles surrounding my work, including connecting with people in the forums, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, email, talking face to face, doing consultations, holding workshops, hosting meet-ups in various cities, and so on. I maintained a strong community-oriented focus for much of this time.
For a while it was my conscious choice to immerse myself in all this social energy and to bring people together in various ways. I enjoyed it.
Eventually I began to feel a bit trapped though. Instead of choosing all this social interaction, it became an ever-present part of my life, whether I wanted to engage with it or not. It no longer felt like a choice. I’d engage in social networking simply because I’d been doing so for years. It became unconscious and very routine. Consequently, I developed quite a love-hate relationship with it. When I freely chose it, I loved it. When I felt like I was being sucked into it, I resisted it. I’m well aware that this influenced my interactions with people as well.
I now understand that it’s time for me to move on from this community-centered focus. It was a nice thing to experience, and it stimulated a lot of growth for myself and others, but I know it’s not the best choice going forward. If I keep doing it, it will only hold me back, and it will also suck others into more unconscious socializing.
Getting wrapped up in other people’s energies (thoughts, feelings, beliefs, etc) on a daily basis can be stimulating and rewarding, but the endless repetition can lead to resentment. That isn’t how I wish to feel about my social life, nor do I wish to serve as that kind of model for others.
If I continue actively immersing myself in the social community surrounding my work, I’ll become a victim of my own past. People are typically drawn to my work based on what I’ve written about in the past, but that isn’t who I am today, and it doesn’t accurately reflect where I’m going. When I keep connecting with people who are interested in discussing ideas that I explored years ago, it means I’m not keeping pace with my own path of growth. It’s like trying to drive while looking in the rear view mirror — after a while you begin to hate driving, even if you’d otherwise enjoy it when looking forward.
I’m delighted that so many people resonate with my work. Last month my web traffic hit a new all-time high: 12.4 million page views. Yet all of those pages contain content that was created in the past.
Essentially I’m faced with a question of priorities. Do I continue to actively engage with the social community surrounding my work and allow myself to keep getting re-immersed in past ideas, past energies, etc? Or do I let it go and focus on my own present and future path of growth?
For quite a while, I tried to do both and strike a balance. My efforts along those lines thus far have failed. Maybe a balance is possible, but I can see now that this balancing point isn’t going to be on the side that invites daily social connections that tie me to the past, such as emails, article feedback, private messages, questions, etc.
All this social energy has been acting like an anchor. When I try to move forward, it keeps tugging me back to old ideas I’ve already explored. It re-introduces old problems I’ve already solved but that other people are just beginning to solve. It tempts me to engage in old discussions that have no growth value for me today.
This month is my 15-year anniversary of being vegan, for instance. Is there any value in having the “why vegan” discussion with someone who hasn’t even done a 30-day trial of it yet? Will it be helpful to do more interviews on polyphasic sleep? Do I care to engage with people who think organized religion is the path to salvation? No… that’s looking to the past. I’d rather connect with people who can inspire me to keep growing. To make room for empowering connections, I’m consciously cutting connections that encourage me to keep looking backwards.
I love helping people grow, but I’m not willing to do that at the expense of my own growth.
So in 2012 I want to recenter my life on my path of conscious growth. I want to disengage from all the discussion surrounding my past work and free myself to explore life on my own terms once again.
The forums are closed. My online contact form is closed. I deleted my Facebook page a few months ago. I follow zero people on Twitter, so no one can send me a direct message there. My Google+ page is now closed to comments. If you wish to discuss my work, you remain free to do so; just don’t try to involve me in such discussions.
Socially I’m only keeping open the doors that I consciously choose to keep open, such as my workshops. But I’m closing the doors that encourage too much unconscious communication, such as feedback and questions related to past articles.
Part of this shift involved preparing for the upcoming Conscious Success Workshop, which starts in 11 days. One reason I enjoy creating workshops is that they push me to keep raising my standards. My vision of success involves consciously pursuing my own path of growth, and I want to know that I’m solidly living that vision before delivering this workshop.
As I clear out the mental and social clutter, I’m feeling much lighter and more enthusiastic about this coming year. I’m anticipating new experiments and experiences. I especially love this fresh opportunity to fully engage in what captivates me without regard to other people’s feedback.
In some ways I feel like I’ve been assimilated by the Borg collective for the past few years. There were so many voices in my mind that it was difficult to stay connected to my own desires. Now that those voices are quieting down, I’m enjoying the bliss and peace of reconnecting with what I love most — conscious growth experiences.
Disconnecting from the social elements that didn’t serve me doesn’t mean I’m disconnecting from the world. I love to write and expect to continue doing so. Reading people’s feedback on my writing, however, is something I can live without. I feel I’ve digested enough feedback about my writing to last me a few lifetimes, so I’m cashing in some of those credits to opt out for a lifetime or two.
In addition to refocusing on my own path of growth in 2012 and closing the door on daily social networking, I’d like to reorient my social life to spend more time connecting with others who have similar priorities when it comes to pursuing growth experiences. I had hoped I might meet such people through the social networks surrounding my work, but that didn’t happen. One reason is that such people would rather engage in growth experiences than in discussions about growth. They’d rather travel than talk about travel… would rather speak than discuss speaking… and would rather start a business than talk about starting one.
I don’t want to connect with such people in order to have more discussions about growth. I’d rather connect with people who are up for pursuing some growth experiences together — like traveling together, conducting experiments together, or tackling projects together. We can always talk to each other in the car, on the plane, etc.
Most importantly, when I connect with people, I want to do so from a place of conscious choice, not from a sense of habit, obligation, or routine. What’s most important to me in life is pursuing my path of growth. That comes first. But when this path meshes nicely with another’s path for a while, then why not explore our paths together if it’s something we both enjoy?

Getting Back to Growth

After shutting down the discussion forums a week ago, I took some time to think about my major focus for 2012, as I like to do at the beginning of each new year.
To wrap up 2011 and transition to 2012, Rachelle and I went to Phoenix for Raw Spirit Fest, and then yesterday we took a side trip to Sedona to meditate in one of our favorite spots. This retreat gave me time to reflect on the past year and to understand what I want to experience next.
During the past few years, I’ve been very active in the social circles surrounding my work, including connecting with people in the forums, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, email, talking face to face, doing consultations, holding workshops, hosting meet-ups in various cities, and so on. I maintained a strong community-oriented focus for much of this time.
For a while it was my conscious choice to immerse myself in all this social energy and to bring people together in various ways. I enjoyed it.
Eventually I began to feel a bit trapped though. Instead of choosing all this social interaction, it became an ever-present part of my life, whether I wanted to engage with it or not. It no longer felt like a choice. I’d engage in social networking simply because I’d been doing so for years. It became unconscious and very routine. Consequently, I developed quite a love-hate relationship with it. When I freely chose it, I loved it. When I felt like I was being sucked into it, I resisted it. I’m well aware that this influenced my interactions with people as well.
I now understand that it’s time for me to move on from this community-centered focus. It was a nice thing to experience, and it stimulated a lot of growth for myself and others, but I know it’s not the best choice going forward. If I keep doing it, it will only hold me back, and it will also suck others into more unconscious socializing.
Getting wrapped up in other people’s energies (thoughts, feelings, beliefs, etc) on a daily basis can be stimulating and rewarding, but the endless repetition can lead to resentment. That isn’t how I wish to feel about my social life, nor do I wish to serve as that kind of model for others.
If I continue actively immersing myself in the social community surrounding my work, I’ll become a victim of my own past. People are typically drawn to my work based on what I’ve written about in the past, but that isn’t who I am today, and it doesn’t accurately reflect where I’m going. When I keep connecting with people who are interested in discussing ideas that I explored years ago, it means I’m not keeping pace with my own path of growth. It’s like trying to drive while looking in the rear view mirror — after a while you begin to hate driving, even if you’d otherwise enjoy it when looking forward.
I’m delighted that so many people resonate with my work. Last month my web traffic hit a new all-time high: 12.4 million page views. Yet all of those pages contain content that was created in the past.
Essentially I’m faced with a question of priorities. Do I continue to actively engage with the social community surrounding my work and allow myself to keep getting re-immersed in past ideas, past energies, etc? Or do I let it go and focus on my own present and future path of growth?
For quite a while, I tried to do both and strike a balance. My efforts along those lines thus far have failed. Maybe a balance is possible, but I can see now that this balancing point isn’t going to be on the side that invites daily social connections that tie me to the past, such as emails, article feedback, private messages, questions, etc.
All this social energy has been acting like an anchor. When I try to move forward, it keeps tugging me back to old ideas I’ve already explored. It re-introduces old problems I’ve already solved but that other people are just beginning to solve. It tempts me to engage in old discussions that have no growth value for me today.
This month is my 15-year anniversary of being vegan, for instance. Is there any value in having the “why vegan” discussion with someone who hasn’t even done a 30-day trial of it yet? Will it be helpful to do more interviews on polyphasic sleep? Do I care to engage with people who think organized religion is the path to salvation? No… that’s looking to the past. I’d rather connect with people who can inspire me to keep growing. To make room for empowering connections, I’m consciously cutting connections that encourage me to keep looking backwards.
I love helping people grow, but I’m not willing to do that at the expense of my own growth.
So in 2012 I want to recenter my life on my path of conscious growth. I want to disengage from all the discussion surrounding my past work and free myself to explore life on my own terms once again.
The forums are closed. My online contact form is closed. I deleted my Facebook page a few months ago. I follow zero people on Twitter, so no one can send me a direct message there. My Google+ page is now closed to comments. If you wish to discuss my work, you remain free to do so; just don’t try to involve me in such discussions.
Socially I’m only keeping open the doors that I consciously choose to keep open, such as my workshops. But I’m closing the doors that encourage too much unconscious communication, such as feedback and questions related to past articles.
Part of this shift involved preparing for the upcoming Conscious Success Workshop, which starts in 11 days. One reason I enjoy creating workshops is that they push me to keep raising my standards. My vision of success involves consciously pursuing my own path of growth, and I want to know that I’m solidly living that vision before delivering this workshop.
As I clear out the mental and social clutter, I’m feeling much lighter and more enthusiastic about this coming year. I’m anticipating new experiments and experiences. I especially love this fresh opportunity to fully engage in what captivates me without regard to other people’s feedback.
In some ways I feel like I’ve been assimilated by the Borg collective for the past few years. There were so many voices in my mind that it was difficult to stay connected to my own desires. Now that those voices are quieting down, I’m enjoying the bliss and peace of reconnecting with what I love most — conscious growth experiences.
Disconnecting from the social elements that didn’t serve me doesn’t mean I’m disconnecting from the world. I love to write and expect to continue doing so. Reading people’s feedback on my writing, however, is something I can live without. I feel I’ve digested enough feedback about my writing to last me a few lifetimes, so I’m cashing in some of those credits to opt out for a lifetime or two.
In addition to refocusing on my own path of growth in 2012 and closing the door on daily social networking, I’d like to reorient my social life to spend more time connecting with others who have similar priorities when it comes to pursuing growth experiences. I had hoped I might meet such people through the social networks surrounding my work, but that didn’t happen. One reason is that such people would rather engage in growth experiences than in discussions about growth. They’d rather travel than talk about travel… would rather speak than discuss speaking… and would rather start a business than talk about starting one.
I don’t want to connect with such people in order to have more discussions about growth. I’d rather connect with people who are up for pursuing some growth experiences together — like traveling together, conducting experiments together, or tackling projects together. We can always talk to each other in the car, on the plane, etc.
Most importantly, when I connect with people, I want to do so from a place of conscious choice, not from a sense of habit, obligation, or routine. What’s most important to me in life is pursuing my path of growth. That comes first. But when this path meshes nicely with another’s path for a while, then why not explore our paths together if it’s something we both enjoy?