Bucket List Challenge – Round 2 Begins

Posted on 19/11/2024 by Boris Clair

Today, November 19, at 11:11 AM Pacific Time, we enthusiastically begin Round 2 of our community Bucket List Challenge. There are 3 rounds total with 4 Zoom calls per round. All the details are spelled out on the Bucket List Challenge page, including the price, which is a very low $333 – so virtually nothing relative to the immense value of massively expanding your experiential range and having some new life experiences that you’d otherwise never get to have.

Yes, you can still join now, and you’ll get all the Round 1 recordings (and those for all three rounds when they’re published). We publish each video to the BLC member portal the same day the live call happens. You can attend any or all of the 8 remaining calls live, or watch the recordings (or both). Same price either way, nice and simple.

Round 1 was a lovely warmup with the encouragement to pick something relatively easy but still richly meaningful. I picked something I’ve never done before, which was to celebrate Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). That was my main one for the first round, but I also had many other fascinating new experiences. Here’s a list I recently shared about it in Conscious Growth Club:

Celebrating Día de los Muertos with Rachelle for the first time ever. This included learning more about its history and roots, acquiring and setting up decorations in our home (including papel picado), creating our first ofrenda, getting a Día de los Muertos oracle card deck and doing many readings with it (including on a CGC call), going to two local festivals on November 2nd and enjoying music + dance troupes + art + food + vendors + more, acquiring some related art, and connecting a lot more with ancestral energy. This was super lovely all around, and I’m so glad we did it. This was my official selection that I chose during Round 1. I wanted to pick something meaningful and flexible but not overly complex. I’d say this was just perfect for me at this time. It was deeper and richer than I expected, precious even, and I love that we can build upon it in future years.
Doing a couple’s MDMA session for the first time ever. We’re still in the ripples of that, which is progressing with more insights and transformations each day. This past week has been the sexiest of my life… so shamelessly slutty. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I seem to be ridiculously happy too. This has really cracked open a ton of fresh insights, shifts, and reframes about relationships, sex, and love – and how simple and natural it can all be when the blocks and filters are swept aside.
Making cannabutter for the first time (from 15 different strains) and testing different amounts of it, ranging from about 100mg to 700mg so far. It’s definitely potent, wonderfully well-balanced, and really useful for deep inner journeys. I like how simple and also precise this exploration method is. It’s such an easygoing and cooperative energy to work with. I’m learning to direct the journeys with it more consciously, telling it what I want to work on and then letting it help me. I feel like I’m pulling out a lot of bent nails and pieces of broken glass that were stuck in my human matrix, like I’m doing energy-level surgery and chiropractic adjustments.
Trying a new cannabis strain called Strange Haze #8, accepting the invite to define and cast my own intentions and expectations onto it before trying it. It really did flow with what I expected of it.
Did a deep cannabis inner journey on a plane for the first time (with two Indica gummies), which was perfect for a 4-hour flight. There was something about being 30,000 feet off the ground that made it extra engaging, whereby the symbolism of being high up was woven into the experience.
Trying a new mushroom variety called Goldmember, which is a hybrid of Golden Teacher and Penis Envy. It was surprisingly gentle and also long-lasting in duration. Since I have access to two other varieties too, this opens up more combos to experiment with as well.
Went to Chicago and had lots of new experiences there, including as a riverboat tour, hitting up a bunch of museums, and seeing two parades. My favorite part of that trip was seeing a 1921 silent movie (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) with a live organist. That was such a unique and memorable night – and not something we’d preplanned. We just stumbled upon the theater while walking around.

For Round 2 I’m not prepping a bunch of mental content to share. That was Round 1’s energy, which gave you a very rich and deep framework for identifying, filtering, probing, committing to, and advancing new experiences you’d love to have.

For Round 2 I’m going to host the calls by sensing and flowing where the energy wants to go at each point. The BLC has a consciousness of its own – formed by the collective intentions of everyone participating – and it’s going to take us on a beautiful journey together. All you need to do is show up and be willing to dance with it. I think what it brings up this time will surprise you. I expect to be surprised too because it’s showing me many of the vibes we’ll be working with, but it isn’t showing me the details yet. That tells me it has some surprises up its sleeve.

So please come dance with us through Round 2 of the BLC. Bring your expectations if you wish, but also be open to having them swept aside, so something even better can emerge for all of us.

And oh you’re gonna have so much fun on today’s call. It’s going to be very divergent and creative – and definitely sexy. Don’t wimp out! Show up and participate, and you’ll have a great time!

Skim the details on the Bucket List Challenge invite page if you want, and then follow your heart and trust your intuition, click the Join button on that page, take a minute or two to enroll, and I’ll see you inside!

5 Not-So-Obvious Signs You Might Be Headed For Divorce

Posted on 07/09/2024 by Boris Clair

Even the healthiest long-term relationships have their fair share of ups and downs. So how do you know when you’re wading through some choppy-but-temporary waters versus when the relationship is seriously in decline?

We asked couples therapists to share some of the not-so-obvious signs a marriage may be heading toward divorce. Here’s what to look out for, according to our experts:

1. You’ve stopped fighting with each other

This one may seem counterintuitive at first because many people believe that less arguing is indicative of a relationship’s strength, said Los Angeles marriage and family therapist Abigail Makepeace.

But when a couple no longer has a desire to hash out their issues, it may indicate they’ve become emotionally disengaged.

“The absence of conflict might suggest that one or both partners no longer see the relationship as worth fighting for or, in a broader sense, as worth saving,” Makepeace told HuffPost. “If one partner stops complaining without any resolution to the underlying issues, it could be a sign that they have given up on the relationship and are preparing to leave.”

West Los Angeles clinical psychologist David Narang said he has observed this while working with male patients in heterosexual marriages. At first, their wives may express their sadness and anger when they feel deprived of emotional connection. This generates conflict and gets the husbands’ attention. But when the wives stop sharing their frustrations, the husbands are often relieved. They figure all is well in the marriage‚ but this assumption is “an error with tragic consequences,” Narang told HuffPost.

“In this situation, the wife has not calmed because all is well, but rather because she has given up, is disengaged, and is beginning to live an emotionally separate life,” he continued.

“This makes the marriage extremely fragile because she has given up getting nourishment from the marriage, and thus, she has less and less investment in it. As such, she is much more likely to react by filing for divorce when something goes wrong,” he said.

2. Your lives have become more and more separate

It’s normal and healthy for partners to maintain some independence within a marriage — whether that’s having their own friendships, career aspirations or hobbies. A “growing sense of division,” however, can be a warning sign that the marriage is in decay, Makepeace said.

“In couples experiencing trouble, the trend toward spending more time apart may not just reflect a healthy balance but rather a preference for living separate lives,” she said. “This increasing separation often points to a deeper disconnect and a diminished desire to share experiences together.”

3. You’re not transparent with one another

Marriage and family therapist Marni Feuerman in Boca Raton, Florida, draws a distinction between privacy and secrecy in a relationship, telling HuffPost: “Privacy is about personal boundaries, while secrecy is about intentionally hiding something.”

If partners have been intentionally keeping secrets from one another, it may signal the marriage is inching toward divorce.

“A lack of trust might be a more obvious reason but there may be more ‘under-the-radar’ type reasons as well,” she said. “For example, one or both of you are more avoidant of intimacy or less willing to take emotional risks with each other so you do not disclose as much about your activities and inner thoughts with your partner. This will certainly erode the emotional connection between you.”

4. You rarely talk about the future

When couples stop discussing their goals or plans for the future, it may indicate a “lack of desire to grow and experience life together,” Makepeace said.

“This absence of future planning often arises from a sense of complacency, where partners become overly comfortable with the present and lose motivation to improve or evolve their relationship,” she continued.

“Consequently, feelings of stagnation can set in, leading to boredom, a lack of personal and relational growth, and general unhappiness.”

Over time, if a couple can no longer imagine a fulfilling future life together, it can “prompt a reevaluation of the relationship, potentially leading to separation,” Makepeace added.

5. You confide more in other people more than you do in your spouse

Another less obvious sign is if you find yourself opening up to a friend, co-worker or relative than you do your spouse, Feuerman said.

“An intimate bond isn’t built with your partner if you don’t bring your inner world to them regularly, including your dreams, hopes, fears, and so on,” she said. “If someone else knows more about you than your spouse, this is a bad sign for the marriage. Perhaps some solid boundaries need to be put in place with others and more emotional energy put toward your marriage?”

One important note here: Too often, unhappy partners don’t tell their spouse how miserable they are “until it’s almost too late,” marriage and family therapist Becky Whetstone in Little Rock, Arkansas, told HuffPost. That’s why it’s so important to speak up when you’re struggling rather than bottling it up. And don’t hesitate to lean on outside resources — such as books and professional counselling — to help you rebuild and strengthen the relationship.

“There is so much to know about having a great marriage,” Whetstone said. “People can’t expect you to wing it; you have to be mindful and deliberate. I tell couples to dig in with a good therapist, let them be their teachers and learn the skills. It’s so worth it.”

Engage 2: Stronger Than Fear

Posted on 17/08/2024 by Boris Clair

Here’s lesson 2 from the new Engage course on creating an experientially rich life. This deep lesson covers how to bypass fear energy, including anxiety, worry, dread, and shyness, so you can access a greater variety of experiences without getting blocked.

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New lessons will be added when they’re ready (42 lessons total).

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Links Mentioned in This Video

Enjoy the lesson!

Bases Loaded Reflections + Videos Now Available

Posted on 15/07/2024 by Boris Clair

I’m happy to report that last week’s Bases Loaded event on Life Balance went exceedingly well. I’m really delighted with how it turned out – mentally and emotionally it was a very heart-opening and connected experience. If you haven’t gone through it yet, I strongly encourage you to get the recordings and watch them this week. It’s only $42 for all four days’ worth – more than 9 hours total. Feel free to watch it at double speed if you like.

I felt very tuned in and enthusiastic all throughout the event. Participation was fabulous, and there were some pretty moving moments too, especially near the end of Day 2.

I’ve been taking a different approach to my work this year – really going much further in the direction of vibrational alignment, which is such a great way to create breakthroughs when nothing else works. Sometimes we reach the point in life where the only practical way to advance is to permanently and meaningfully boost our default vibes and then keep them there. No going back to the old vibes.

Bases Loaded takes this vibrational approach and applies it to the challenge of creating a beautifully balanced and harmonious life. I’ve already been making significant changes to my life since working at this level. I love how simple principles and a focus on the right vibes can open a window to new levels of logical thinking too.

The four bases in Bases Loaded are the key vibes to use for creating balance and harmony in any and all areas of life. Instead of trying to juggle items based on scheduling alone – which doesn’t actually create balance – this approach relies on aligning each area of life as well as each goal, project, and task with vibes that naturally create harmony and balance.

Consider the vibes you’ve used to make many of the decisions in your life already and how those decisions are still impacting you today. What vibes led you to choose your current work, business path, or school, for instance? What vibes did you follow into your current relationship situation? Did you make various choices based on worry, anxiety, pressure, concern, ambition, security, neediness, clinginess, love, connection, oneness, peace, contribution, or something else?

There’s no escaping vibrational decisions. You naturally make such decisions all the time, every single day. Whenever you decide what to wear or what to eat, you’re making vibrational choices. Do you make those decisions harmoniously and with a similar set of vibes each time? Most likely not.

Do you know what the very best harmonizing vibes are? They are Courage, Love, Trust, and Joy. You really just need those four because they’re very robust and very cooperative with each other. To fully align with any one of them is really to invite all four into your life. The Bases Loaded experience guides you deeply through all four, focusing on one core vibe per day. Then we go through examples and stories of how to apply them. And there’s lots of sharing from people who were on the live calls each day. Hearing from others and witnessing their shifts is a big part of the overall experience. It invites you to start making similar shifts in your decision-making too. Get your decisions aligned with the most harmonious vibrational roots. Stabilize your decision-making vibes, and you’ll stabilize your decisions and their unfolding ripples. As you see when you apply these ideas, it’s lovely to experience the ripples of decisions rooted in Courage, Love, Trust, and Joy.

Look at the items on your to-do list for today, and ask yourself: What vibes led to each item appearing on my list? You’ll probably notice that your to-dos aren’t all very well-aligned with these harmonizing vibes. Some items may be on your list due to feelings of anxiety or pressure. Others may have gotten onto your list because they seem creative. And still others may have a tedious “I should do this” feeling to them. Notice how these different vibes impact your productivity and flow. You can also review bigger projects or goals if you’d like. Remember that every decision is a vibrational one. Do this simple check right now and see what you notice.

One reason people struggle with consistency is that they make decisions from different vibrational roots. Then as their vibes shifts, they’re constantly remaking or unmaking those same decisions. That gets messy very quickly.

Your vibes control your state of mind, and your state of mind controls what kinds of thoughts you’ll access. Different vibes lead to different thoughts, including different logic running through your mind. Any logic depends on priorities. Logic alone cannot set priorities. Priorities are set for vibrational (or emotional) reasons. You have to care about something to make it a priority, and there’s no logical mandate to care about anything, not even your survival. So every priority you set in life is really a vibrational decision. If your vibes shift often and then you try to make decisions with different vibes, you’ll surely experience inconsistency. You’ll have a hard time sticking to your past choices. Your life will become chaotically unbalanced and disharmonious.

You may think that too much chaos or stagnation is dragging down your vibes. But the real issue is that you’re not aligning with the vibes you want when making decisions. To create harmonious results, it’s necessary to keep synching with harmonious vibes. I make this super easy for you by giving you the best vibes to sync to in order to create balance and harmony (right here in this post).

There’s a way to make strong choices and have them stick – no waffling afterwards. That’s a vibrational alignment approach, and Bases Loaded is a powerful invitation to practice and apply this. Ostensibly it’s about life balance, but truly it’s about so much more. These vibes are universals that you can apply again and again.

Got a work challenge that’s unbalancing your team dynamics? Use these harmonizing vibes to get everyone on the same page. Got a health or relationship issue popping up? Use these harmonizing vibes to clarify the path forward.

I’ve been working in the self-development field for about 20 years now. I haven’t wavered in that commitment. I haven’t wanted to quit. Same goes for committing to Conscious Growth Club, which is now flowing along beautifully in its 8th year together. My relationship with Rachelle is still going strong, now in our 15th year together. I don’t normally struggle with making big decisions and long-term commitments because I learned the importance of synching to intelligence-raising vibes when making such decisions. I know that if my vibes are inconsistent, I can never really trust my decisions, and I can be sure that my future self will eventually think differently. But I can also know that these four harmonizing vibes will always matter to me. I can trust them because they’re timeless, and synching to timeless vibes is the real key to consistency. You can’t get consistency from what’s temporary and unstable.

Bases Loaded is my ultimate expression of how to make such commitments. If you can’t commit yourself to a certain direction and stick with it year after year, you can’t really benefit from the delights of such long-term investments. You’ll constantly swirl around at ground level instead of really getting somewhere. You’ll often feel like you’re starting from scratch yet again.

The truth is that you can have the best of both worlds here. I love being a beginner too and exploring in new directions. I always want to keep learning and growing. But I also love having some forever projects and directions where I feel solidly committed. It’s so gratifying to be able to really invest long-term and accumulate all the benefits of past lessons. These harmonizing vibes don’t just stabilize and enhance my long-term commitments – they also show me which new directions are truly strong matches for me. When I work with these vibes, I often feel that I’m being lovingly guided by a much greater intelligence. It’s like I’m harmonizing with universal wisdom that’s always broadcasting. I just have to keep tuning in to it.

I’ve priced Bases Loaded ridiculously low on purpose. I want it to be accessible to lots and lots of people. Now that it’s over, it really does feel like a beautiful diamond – a baseball diamond even – to add to this ever-growing body of work. I know I’ll always have fond memories of the experience. The weekend afterwards I was all aglow from so much immersion in these vibes, and Rachelle and I enjoyed a lovely date together on Saturday.

Bases Loaded is very much a vibrational experience for you as you go through it. There’s a reason I did it live on video instead of just writing up a series of text posts. It’s important to hear it and feel it. You’ll notice that my energy is very high and lively throughout. I did my very best to embody and demonstrate the vibes as we went. I didn’t just want to talk about them. I wanted you to see and sense what it feels like when you invite more Courage, Love, Trust, and Joy into your everyday life. Feeling joyful, vibrant, and enthusiastic each day is normal for me, but the flip side is that it’s crucial to keep leaning in directions that require Courage and Trust to maintain this. There is no sustainable Joy or Love without Courage and Trust. Have you figured that out yet?

People so often overlook the harmonizing power of Trust, for instance. They try to be happy without it, thinking maybe it’s not essential, and that approach fails again and again. Do you have high-Trust relationships with the people you engage with each day? Do you keep seeking to build stronger Trust with those people? Do you approach new connections and potential relationships on the basis of deliberately seeking to build Trust? Do you set goals and make decisions based on deepening and strengthening your already powerful Trust in life? Do you keep placing bigger bets in the direction of Trust? We cover Trust in great depth on Day 4 of Bases Loaded, and you’ll see how powerfully and intelligently it connects with Courage, Love, and Joy as well.

Self-Trust is very powerful too. Do you trust yourself to make wise choices? Do you trust in your ability to keep learning and growing? Do you trust that investing in your self-development really pays off over time? I obviously do. Trusting in this direction rescued me from a lot of problems I encountered (and created) when I was younger. Continuing to build stronger Trust in myself, in my intuition, in life, and in the people I connect with daily is delightful. It takes time to get used to it, especially if you need to release low-Trust vibes, people, and situations, but then it feels so natural. High-Trust relationships and communities are very accessible if we make Trust-aligned decisions.

Bases Loaded is a very aspirational experience too. It will likely invite you to reach well beyond your current circumstances. As I shared during the Day 1 call, these harmonizing vibes are demanding. As you invite them in, they will push out whatever doesn’t align with them. A shedding process is inevitably part of the re-alignment process. That takes Courage. It takes Courage just to sign up and press play because you don’t know how working with these vibes will affect you till you’re in the midst of them.

What I can say is that you can trust these vibes. They’re challenging indeed, but they’re on your side 100%. If this invitation is showing up in your life now, that’s surely for good reason. It means you’re ready to start shifting away from struggle, stuckness, or stagnation and into a whole new experience of growth. But it won’t be the same kind of growth experience you’ve had before. This vibes are here to invite you into an uplifting phase of fresh new growth.

When you’re ready.

6 ‘Invisible’ Household Tasks That Drain Mums’ Time And Energy

Posted on 26/05/2024 by Boris Clair

Keeping a household running smoothly takes a lot of effort. There are the more obvious physical tasks like cooking meals, taking out the rubbish, folding laundry and picking the kids up from school. But it also requires a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes planning, organising, anticipating of needs, decision-making and delegating known as the mental load — an invisible kind of work.

In heterosexual relationships, most of these invisible tasks tend to fall on the mom’s shoulders, even when both partners work outside of the home. Men today may be taking on more hands-on domestic responsibilities than they have in the past, but women are still usually carrying the bulk of the mental load.

“Women aren’t just doing more labor, the labor they’re doing is mentally and emotionally taxing: anticipating and planning for how to meet the family’s needs,” Laura Danger, an educator who facilitates workshops on domestic labor, previously told HuffPost.

“When you consider, in cis-het couples, who is usually keeping the social calendar, signing kids up for summer camps and ensuring the grocery list is planned and prepared? It’s often defaulted to mom. Doctors, teachers and coaches often dial mom first. Even the vet usually calls mom before dad!”

Managing kids' clothes, for example, is a much bigger task than it might seem. — Managing kids’ clothes, for example, is a much bigger task than it might seem.

These invisible tasks often take up way more time and energy than meets the eye. One example? Registering a child for kindergarten, which artist Mary Catherine Starr, the woman behind @momlife_comics on Instagram, just did recently for her son.

“What went into this registration was so much invisible labor,” she told HuffPost. “Keeping an eye out for when registration opened, going online to fill out all of the forms — which includes locating all sorts of paperwork and medical history— calling the registration office when a technical issue comes up on the website, booking a registration appointment to turn in the rest of the paperwork, scheduling a ‘kindergarten screening’ for the child, taking the child to said screening, texting normal child care provider about child being late to child care on registration day, and rearranging work schedule to accommodate kindergarten screening.”

“All of this takes three to five hours out of an already busy schedule, and if they’re not a part of it, their partner has no idea what went into this,” she continued. “It’s something you simply can’t understand unless you’ve lived it.”

We asked moms which invisible tasks on their plate are more taxing than they might appear. Here’s what they told us:

1. Staying on top of kids’ clothes

Lina Forrestal, a content creator and host of The New Mamas Podcast, said keeping her fast-growing baby and toddler’s wardrobes up-to-date with items that fit is a “huge challenge.”

“Everything from pants, shirts, socks and shoes,” she told HuffPost. “Then, there’s the load of having to purchase new things, and put away, donate or sell the old stuff that doesn’t fit anymore. It’s the biggest invisible time suck.”

Not only that, you also need to make sure the clothes are seasonally appropriate — i.e., ensuring you have the right-size bathing suits for summertime, and sweaters and pants that fit for the cooler months.

2. Meal planning

Caitlin Murray, the creator behind @BigTimeAdulting on Instagram, said that while there are a million items on her invisible labor to-do list, the most all-consuming one is figuring out what her family is going to eat every day. And that doesn’t just mean coming up with meal ideas, it also means finding balanced, nutritious and tasty options that all three of her kids will enjoy.

“I happen to love food, and I also care very much about the level of variety and nutrition my kids are getting. I’m not super strict ― we have plenty of treats ― but I am constantly struggling to think of new ways to get them to eat all the good stuff, too,” she told HuffPost.

“It’s also important to note that, if kids are not enjoying their food, meal time is going to be hell. I’m personally triggered when there are complaints and dissatisfaction with a meal, which is why it’s never as easy as just grocery shopping and cooking,” she added.

For comic artist Debbie Tung, it’s also taking time to carefully meal plan and create a grocery list so that she’s only buying items she knows they’ll use to avoid wasting food.

“Sometimes I prepare meals in advance if I know I’ll be very busy on a specific day,” she added. “I try to make sure my kid’s diet includes adequate fruits and vegetables daily.”

3. Keeping track of what household items are needed

This one may not seem like a monumental task on its face, but constantly staying on top of which things need to be replaced or replenished — like diapers, toiletries, cleaning supplies, snacks and pet food, just to name a few — requires a fair amount of mental work.

“Why is it usually Mom that knows what products or food items the family is running out of at any given time?” Renee Reina Grenon, host of “The Mom Room” podcast, told HuffPost. “Because, they are the ones packing lunches, making meals, packing the diaper bag, changing diapers, doing bath time, signing the permission slips for field trips, doing the laundry, doing groceries, etc. The list is never-ending.”

4. Managing school schedules, needs and communication

These tasks are just a fraction of the mental load that comes with motherhood.

For Starr, these school-related tasks entail “so much more than meets the eye.”

One example: reading all of the school emails and papers that get sent home and then taking action on anything that requires a response.

“For some of these items, that means checking my schedule to see if I can take time off of work to volunteer in a classroom or at a school event, or marking the schedule because it’s a half day or there’s a field trip or something we need to plan around,” Starr said.

“For other items that get sent home, it means making sure a child does the work associated with the handout, for example, reviewing spelling words each night or filling out a reading log that needs to be returned every Friday,” she added.

Other tasks include, but are not limited to, signing up for after-school activities, helping with school fundraisers, getting doctor’s notes for excused absences, and responding to questions or notes from teachers.

And don’t forget keeping track of special themed days or spirit weeks “ensuring that these days are on the calendar and remembered and planned for,” said Starr. “‘Is my tie-dyed shirt clean? Today is tie-dye day!’”

5. Making and keeping track of appointments

In writer and content creator CJ Kelsey’s house, she’s the one typically tasked with the scheduling and managing of appointments, she said.

“My husband will gladly take them, but I’m in charge of not only making my kids’ doctor appointments but now my parents’ as well,” she told HuffPost. “And it takes a lot of time to make the calls and a headache to keep them all organised.”

Not to mention other associated tasks like filling out the forms that may need to be completed prior to the appointment, and making sure the front desk has your up-to-date address and insurance information.

6. Attending birthday parties

Planning a birthday party for your kid can be a lot of work, but it’s a once-a-year event. However, you may be a guest at other kids’ parties a couple of times a month — or more.

“It doesn’t sound like it, but being a guest is a lot of work,” Forrestal said. “From remembering to RSVP, to buying a gift, the mental math of getting to the birthday party location on-time — usually on a weekend with other events going on.”

It’s Time To Stop Taking All Of This Domestic Labor For Granted

We shouldn’t just assume moms are going to be the default parent for virtually every facet of raising a family. Instead, let’s recognise their unseen, unpaid efforts and discuss ways to distribute tasks — especially the mental load — more equitably.

“When I was younger, my mother did so much for us while working a full-time job,” said Tung. “I never realised that or truly appreciated it until I became a mother myself and tried balancing my job, parenting, household chores and staying on top of my kid’s school work. It’s a huge mental load, and I never stop planning and thinking about what needs to be done.”

“I feel like my husband doesn’t share the same mental load,” she added. “But it would be great if more partners could see things from a mother’s perspective, and show more appreciation and willingness to help.”

“Our society loves to say that raising children is the most important job in the world — but it is never treated as such.”

– Renee Reina Grenon, host of “The Mom Room” podcast

Starr said when her husband handles a family management task that she has historically taken care of, he’ll often tell her he’s surprised it took so long to complete.

“He thinks, for some reason, that it doesn’t take as much time for me because I’m more ‘experienced’ or ‘better’ at handling these kinds of tasks, but the fact of the matter is that these tasks just take a lot of time, no matter who you are,” she said.

“And if you are carrying the entire task and all of the accompanying tasks that come along with it, managing a family and household takes a lot of time and energy. And this time and energy should not fall on the mom. It should be divided between the parents,” Starr added.

Reina Grenon said she wishes people valued the unpaid work of motherhood the way they do a paying job.

“Our society loves to say that raising children is the most important job in the world ― but it is never treated as such.”

One Sentence To My Wife’s Family Ruined Our Marriage. Was I Wrong To Say It?

Posted on 26/05/2024 by Boris Clair

In a recent Reddit post shared to r/AITAH (am I the asshole), site user LowRequirement5182 shared that he’d been having some issues in his marriage.

“Up until about two years ago, things were great. However, a disastrous move, a few family emergencies, and a totalled car have left us in a terrible financial situation,” he wrote.

“All our savings are pretty much gone, 401k’s empty, and we’re haemorrhaging money.”

He added that the couple had bought a three-bed house in a high-cost-of-living area in the hopes of housing their future kids there. Prior to the move, they’d been doing “amazing financially,” he said.

But they became so squeezed that children went on the back burner as “bringing a kid into this mess right now would kill us.”

OP (the original poster) set an ultimatum

Because money was giving the couple so much stress, the poster wrote he told his wife “one of two things needed to happen: We either sell the house or start making more money.”

Both parties were in low-paying jobs at the time, so the poster thought that meant they’d have to find different work altogether.

His wife loved her job and the house, so she tried to get a raise from her boss, which was not given to her. But in the six months since his ultimatum, the poster has found a new job and just signed a contract for 35k a year more than his previous role.

The post author claims his wife got annoyed because after he got the higher-paying role, he stipulated she’d definitely have to find a new job.

He stressed that without an added income on top of his pay rise, “Kids, the whole reason we got this damn house would be entirely off the table.”

Then, he and his wife hosted a dinner

The couple more or less blanked each other after the argument, but then the poster’s wife’s parents came over for dinner.

OP says his wife told her parents that maybe he’d stop complaining about money now he’d gotten his new job ― and what he said next silenced the table.

“I don’t know why I said it, but I replied, ‘Oh, don’t worry, Jen. I won’t have to worry about money a year from now because we’ll be divorced by then,’” he revealed.

“Things got quiet real quick after, and I excused myself. Her parents left shortly after, and she slept on the couch to avoid talking to me.”

He ended his post, “I’ve not talked to [his wife] or her parents since last night. Things are very cold between us right now, and I genuinely wonder if I did something last night that probably ruined my marriage.”

**People had thoughts in the comments**

Redditors didn’t seem to appreciate the poster’s approach to discussing his marriage.

“I don’t know why you’re so worried if you were wrong or not, you’ll be divorced a year from now,” one commenter wrote.

“You know how firearms experts tell people “don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you intend to fire?′ Yeah, don’t say the ‘D’ word unless you’re prepared to get D’d real hard,” another opined.

“I’m sorry, did you say, ‘I genuinely wonder if I did something last night that probably ruined my marriage?’” yet another site user incredulously asked.

“You told your wife you would be divorcing her within the year in front of her parents. If you can come back from that, it is going to be a LONG and HARD road. You have a right to be angry about everything going on, even a right to divorce her, but if you wanted to repair the marriage at all, that wasn’t the way to do it.”

What do you think?

11 Ways Conscious Growth Club Will Expand Your Experiential Range

Posted on 28/04/2024 by Boris Clair

Conscious Growth Club is our primo online self-development club. It’s been running for 7 years now, so we’ve had plenty of time to evolve and improve it.

The new Year 8 version of CGC is especially rich, abundant, and divergent – so different and unique compared to anything I’ve seen elsewhere in the self-development world.

Instead of focusing primarily on content or coaching, in CGC we prioritize crafting and guiding you through unique growth experiences. You’ll learn more through direct experience than you will by just reading and watching videos. CGC includes a strong content library too, including all of my courses as part of the membership, but I really want to downplay that aspect as the key benefit this year because the experiential side of CGC is likely to be way more beneficial to you, especially with the many upgrades we’ve made for Year 8.

Consider the difference between researching traveling (reading about it, watching YouTube videos, talking to people about it) versus actually embarking on a real trip. Instead of studying self-development in CGC, you’ll be doing the equivalent of taking a self-development trip – in truth multiple kinds of trips spread all throughout the year.

Year 8 in CGC will be our most non-linear one – way more divergent and experiential than ever before. Gone are the regular Focus & Flourish check-in and masterminding calls from Year 7 – that was a solid format, but the intentionality behind it stemmed from a fairly linear model of self development, and the flow of each call became too predictable after a while.

Here are some of the ways CGC can help to fuel your growth with its emphasis on self-discovery through guided experiences.

1. You’ll Surf a Massive Variety of Growth Waves

CGC functions as an experiential wave generator, and you’re free to decide which waves to catch and ride. Week after week in CGC, members are invited into unique personal growth experiences, most of them fairly compact (like a one-hour Zoom call), some of them longer, like a multi-day walkthrough event. There’s a tremendous amount of newness and freshness in each of these experiences and not much predictable repetition.

Whereas a typical coaching program will usually run you through the same type of Zoom call over and over, CGC hits you with many injections of varied growth experiences. We still use Zoom for our group calls, so tech-wise that ought to be very familiar by now. But instead of just one or two formats, in CGC we have a whopping 14 unique call formats. Here’s the list of what you’ll get to experience in Year 8:

Explorers’ Exchange
Intention Infusion
Truth Spark
Good Vibrations
Bear Care
Spirit Spire
Contribution Café
Stature Sculptor
Story Lab
Courage Forge
Pure Imagination
Mystery Mixer
Reflections & Revelations
Alien Popcorn

If you want to see the descriptions for each call format, you’ll find them on the CGC invite page. Alien Popcorn is perhaps the most divergent, whereby we invite psychedelic energies to participate in the calls with us. If you attended the Spirit of Money or the Power of Spirit calls I hosted last Fall, then you’ve already had a glimpse of those types of energies. Was that too much for you, or would you like more of that in your life?

These calls don’t just have different names and formats – they all have different intentions, purposes, and vibes. For each call we create a different kind of energy, and we’ll guide you through different types of growth experiences. This allows you to work on self-development from many different angles, such as boosting your daily motivation, getting more attuned to your spirit self, aligning with your purpose, consciously directing the flow of your life story, upgrading your character, and more. You’ll go way behind basic yin-yang balance here.

We very much appreciate creativity and originality in CGC, so you’ll see that reflected even in the names of our calls and experiences. Would you rather attend a call named “Boundary Management,” or does “Bear Care” sound more fun to you? Would you rather take a boring and derivative course on manifesting, or would you prefer to engage in monthly group intentionality experiments with like-minded people, including picking fun intentional tracers each time and then sharing updates, results, and synchronous experiences with each other all throughout the month? Imagine doing that 12 times each year – real intentional practice with combined group energy. That’s only one small slice of what you’ll be doing in CGC each year.

CGC focuses on the doing and experiencing side of self-development, and we hit it from many different angles with a lot more range than you’re likely to see anywhere else. This is not one of those linear, step-by-step “proven” programs with a fine print disclaimer at the bottom. CGC Year 8 is very non-linear, matching how people actually grow and change. We know it’s foolish to try to promise specific results because that aspect is way too unpredictable, but we can promise to provide you with experiences, and these experiences can stimulate a lot of growth and change if you engage with them.

CGC is designed and intended for people who are mature enough to know that direct, experiential exploration is a powerful way to stimulate growth. But we must also acknowledge and accept that this growth cannot easily be predicted. The gains people make in CGC often come from surprising directions.

There’s something remarkably powerful about engaging with self-development through nonlinear exploration combined with massive variety, instead of trying to over-linearize it, control it, or force it. This approach has many benefits too, particularly in terms of flexibility. It works whether you have clear goals or not, a sense of purpose or not, a plan and schedule or not. It simply meets you where you are and works on you from within, much like a psychedelic does.

How well has trying to push yourself to advance down a straight, compartmentalized path actually worked for you? Is that actually helping you create the kind of life you truly want to experience?

What if you approached self-development with an open-minded explorer’s attitude instead? What if you invited some deeper levels of wisdom and energy – especially some fiery wisdom – to act upon you this year? What if you loosened your grip on the old linear mindset and opened yourself to creating a very different kind of relationship with life? And what if you did that with dozens of other people together – people who are also opening themselves to a new relationship with life? As you’ll soon see if you join us in CGC this year, these changes make a world of difference.

2. You’ll Get Regular Infusions of Heart & Spirit Energy

How easy is it for you to consistently make decisions that feel powerfully heart- and spirit-aligned? Are you fully engaged with your work, your living situation, your relationship partners and friends, and a powerful purpose? Does the flow of money through your life feel nicely aligned, and is it as abundant as you want it to be?

Did your prior investments in self-development help you reach the point of living as a fully self-actualized person? You know there’s so much more to keep exploring and discovering beyond this point, right?

If you’re currently falling short of this standard, worry not, my friend! There’s a community where you can infuse your life with abundant heart and spirit energy. By engaging with such energies regularly, you can keep these priorities top-of-mind and start making better decisions – i.e. decisions that prioritize long-term alignment and harmony over surface gains that eventually drag down your energy and enthusiasm.

This year our CGC theme is Fire Infusion. This represents the vibes of courage, intensity, full engagement, initiative, and boldness. Fire energy directs you to stop tolerating the misaligned and burn it to ashes. It’s a summons to make wiser and more intelligent decisions that serve your whole being harmoniously instead of forcing you to make unbalanced sacrifices. We’re inviting this energy into CGC to play a meaningful role in our unfolding story arcs this year. Do you see this kind of fire energy as playing a role in your life during the next 12 months too? You can still engage with other energies, such as peacefulness and relaxation, so the fire energy isn’t the only energy you can work with. It’s just a question of whether you want to engage with this kind of energy more directly this year. It’s an especially good energy for navigating tricky transitions, making bolder decisions, aligning with a strong purpose, creating positive ripples, and doing character-level and lifestyle upgrades.

Fire energy is inherently fearless. It can help you see what’s on the other side of fear. I can tell we’re going to collectively burn off a lot of fear energy in CGC this year. Do you sense that some fear energy is getting ready to depart this year? Haven’t we all had enough of it? Why don’t we do this together?

You can engage with CGC’s overall thematic vibe of fire infusion, or you can shift into a different mode. You’ll likely experience more oomph into your life when you allow yourself to participate in the group vibe. Then your story and the group’s story can harmonize with each other as we forge ahead together.

We also have quarterly vibes that we focus on as well, so this creates a very rich vibrational arc throughout the year. These are listed on the invite page as well.

3. You’ll Face and Upgrade Your Weak Areas

For the first 6 years of CGC, I often described it as a coaching club. Hundreds of coaching calls later, we graduated from that model to explore other possibilities. This has evolved into a training-based model for Year 8.

The calls and experiences for this CGC year are much more hands-on, so you’ll be directly doing a lot of guided inner work this year in the club.

Growth work like reading, courses, workshops, and coaching will only get you so far. Those are all reasonable ways to get started, but if you really want to advance your character and your life, sooner or later you’ll need to step into the zone of direct, experiential training.

It’s the difference between watching YouTube videos about dancing versus signing up for dance lessons and regularly going dancing. You’ll make some gains from both approaches, but there are some gains that can only be made through direct experience. The second approach is more challenging but also more powerful and effective.

One of the primary self-development benefits we can provide you with in CGC is access to potent and engaging growth experiences with other growth-oriented people. You can start having those experiences this very week if you want. Take advantage of the 7 years of effort we’ve put into building and refining that for you, not to mention 20 years of working in this field in other ways. Even my prior 10 years of experience designing and coding computer games has played a part in crafting CGC’s experiences. I love designing and guiding people through creative and varied growth explorations.

On many, if not most, of our CGC Zoom calls, you’ll be actively training through direct experience. This will surely raise your awareness of some weak areas that are holding you back. CGC is gentle and supportive, but we also focus heavily and character growth and advancement. It’s not for people who’d rather cling to their old excuses.

This Tuesday, April 30th at 11:11 AM, we’ll be having a new Courage Forge call. I’m calling this one “Center of Attention.” Do you have any fears about or resistance to being the center of attention? Great! Let’s burn off that fear and get you past it. Or do you still want to cling to it? Is that you who want to be?

Every call and experience in CGC is by your consent. You always have the option to opt in or opt out of anything you desire. See how much you’re able to take on and experience in one year. Then if you continue in the club for future years, you can keep stretching yourself to advance beyond what you’ve done in the past.

4. You’ll Replace Your Somedays & Maybes with Real Memories

Do you have some items on your “bucket list” that you still haven’t gotten around to experiencing yet? This year in CGC, we’re hosting three different bucket list walkthrough experiences, where we’ll all work on selecting, advancing, and experiencing items from our bucket lists.

It’s entirely possible – I’d say probable – that some CGCers will want to team up and have some of these experiences together. I’ve already been hearing some suggestions from people, such as going on a trip together. I can’t predict which way this will go because it’s an all-new feature we’ve added for Year 8. And since we’re running it three times during the CGC year (September, November, and then again in February 2025), we can use what we learn during each run-through to make it even better in the next year. And of course CGCers can also use the CGC forums and our 24/7 Zoom lounge to help coordinate plans, if they want to sync up their bucket list explorations. I imagine this aspect of Year 8 will be a lot of fun to experience. Rachelle and I will be actively participating as well.

I’m a self-development explorer first; a guide, trainer, and experience designer second. That prioritization is crucial for me since my active and ongoing explorations give me the experiential base for serving others. Continuing to advance my own self-development explorations keeps me feeling super jazzed and enthusiastic about my life and work, and this energy flows into the guidance, training, and experiential side of CGC. I love delving into fresh growth experiences with our members each year. I don’t sit on the sidelines and merely instruct – that approach would just kill my spirit. I need to be in the arena with you.

If you engage with and follow through on this “bucket list adventure” aspect of CGC, you’ll create some beautiful memories this year that you may otherwise never have experienced during your lifetime. Let us help you cross the threshold into the land of real experiential wonders.

5. You’ll Gain a Growth-Oriented Friendship Circle

CGC is a friendly and supportive place inside, and the extended CGC network consists of hundreds of members and still growing. Even if you join for only one year and then leave, you can still consider yourself part of this extended network. As we keep seeing, the friendships people make in CGC can really endure. We often see CGCers and former CGCers traveling together, even getting into relationships together. Recently I just heard from two former members who traveled to seven different cities in India together. How marvelous!

How would you like to explore hands-on growth and training experiences with other growth-oriented people – people that eventually become good friends of yours? Just imagine what it would be like if this was part of your normal day. This has been my reality for many years. And I will tell you that it’s a super motivating way to live.

Do you feel any bolder when you’re in the company of good friends versus when you’re alone? Most people do. When you’re immersed in a field of solid support that you can rely on, it’s normal to start reaching for bigger, bolder, more expansive goals.

Once you fill your friendship network with conscious, growth-oriented people – as opposed to NPC types (non-player characters), you’ll probably never want to go back. Just having this kind of social energy in your life can create such beautiful positive ripples.

Remember that people are energy sources too. What you experience socially isn’t neutral, and you can’t simply override the effects of your current social sphere just by trying to apply more individual intentionality. Your own intentionality field is infused with your social circle’s energy and intentionality too. Joining CGC can really help you upgrade your social field, which harmoniously strengthens and extends your individual energy field. Is the current social energy swirling through your life amplifying and extending your own energy in the directions you want it to flow?

If you aren’t vibing with the people in your life or the social media services you routinely engage with, please don’t ignore their impact. It really does matter. This is more than just social drag – you’re likely experiencing significant levels of intentionality drag as well. That can really slow you down and keep you stuck if you don’t consciously address it. If not by joining CGC, then please get yourself involved with a strong social circle that aligns with your values and desired vibes and experiences, whatever it takes. I assure you that it’s worth the effort, even if it takes decades.

6. You’ll Have a Sanctuary From Social Media Insanity

In CGC you don’t have to deal with the – let’s call it bullshit – that you’ll endure on typical social media platforms. I don’t do Facebook, X, Instagram, etc. because those platforms feel too dreadfully misaligned to me. For the most part, the people I connected with on those platforms were great, but the energy and intentionality behind those platforms was all wrong and corrupted the experience of connecting.

I felt torn leaving such platforms – at first – but I don’t think I’d have invested so much in developing CGC if I’d stuck with the old social media models. I had built up sizable audiences on some platforms, but I decided to trust my inner signals and let them go. I deleted my Twitter account in 2014, labeling it a cesspool back then. What’s it like there now? Given what I’ve heard, it makes me feel so glad I trusted my intuition 10 years ago. I really feel like life tested me by asking: Do you want to cling to the numbers while tolerating the creepy misalignments of those platforms, or do you want to trust your intuition and follow a path with more heart and spirit, not knowing where it will lead yet? I took the second option, which has worked out beautifully.

I don’t miss those old platforms and don’t need them because I’m active in CGC every day instead. My #1 everyday social network consists only of very growth-oriented people. But additionally, we get to socialize on a super clean platform of our own.

Do you feel genuinely motivated and empowered to live your best life when socializing and connecting with people in the spaces controlled by Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg?

Musk + Zuck = Muck

Notice the part of you that feels creeped out by those services. There’s a good reason for that. The intentionality behind those platforms isn’t aligned with your highest good. In CGC we don’t have to make that kind of compromise. We’re able to do what’s right.

Think of me as the bear guarding the entrance to CGC that keeps out the bullshit, so you don’t have to deal with it or tolerate it inside the club spaces. Most people will see a friendly teddy bear as they stroll right in. But this bear is very good at sniffing out misaligned intentions, and those with ill intent will encounter a ferocious bear guardian instead.

Trump supporters don’t get to join CGC. We have a strict “no assholes” policy too (and it’s not lost on me that this largely covers the first item as well). CGC’s annual dues are lower this year at $1111, which still ought to be enough to deflect most people who aren’t a match, and which shines as a beacon to very aligned people. This works well, but I keep ferocious bear mode on standby just in case. Honestly I haven’t needed to use it for a few years now.

Within this space, members have tons of freedom to explore whatever interests them. Having meaningful discussions with other smart people is really nice when you don’t have to tolerate any ads, affiliate promos, trolling, manipulative algorithms, hollow AI content, conspiracy theories, general outrage, clickbait, and other nonsense you have to deal with elsewhere.

Inside CGC you have tons of freedom to explore whatever aspects of self-development appeal to you, but this is also a protected space, guarded by some very conscious and alert bear energy. Those who’ve tried to attack or degrade the community inside have all been vanquished by that bear energy. Really they never stood a chance.

I’ve also seen plenty of validation that CGC is the beneficiary of a significant amount of spirit-level protection and assistance, which seems to keep growing stronger each year. I’m not entirely sure how this is all unfolding, but there’s definitely a spirit-level calling aspect to CGC’s creation and existence, especially with respect to protecting it and nurturing it.

If you pause for a moment, close your eyes, and attempt to tune in to CGC’s vibe as if it’s a conscious entity of its own, what do you sense? Are you able to feel a presence or energy form reaching out to you? And if so, does it have anything to communicate to you – verbally, emotionally, energetically, or otherwise? If you’re the kind of person who’s willing to at least try this, I encourage you to do so. I often engage with CGC’s energy through meditation or journaling, such as by asking where it wants to go next. It usually has a lot to say.

I’d even recommend asking CGC’s energy if it thinks you ought to join us this year if you’re open to receiving an answer from it.

7. You’ll Release What You Need to Stop Tolerating

My prediction is that this year in CGC, there’s going to be a lot of purging and releasing, as members who are finally ready to let go of significant misalignments take some big steps forward to do so.

What misaligned energies do you still engage with semi-regularly? What do you sense is getting ready to leave? Is it fear, worry, anxiety, stress, overwhelm, depression, shame, guilt, grief, loss, imbalance, etc?

Some misalignments can be tricky to identify. One of the trickiest patterns for many people is loyalty. Loyalty sounds good, but it creates stuckness more often than not, and it deserves a place on the list with the other misaligned energy patterns, like this … shame, guilt, loyalty…

This kind of tolerance (of the misaligned) isn’t loving or compassionate. Some decisions may have felt reasonably intelligent when you first made them, but if you’re a growth-oriented person, you’ll eventually outgrow the desire to keep experiencing the effects of those old decisions. For growth-oriented people, there are always some old decisions begging to be revisited and upgraded.

Let CGC help you go through this process, holding a space of caring invitation while you identify, thank, and release those old energies that are ready to leave you. CGC can also help you consciously choose and explore the new energies and experiences that call to you, when you’re ready to invite them in and engage with them.

8. You’ll Build a Base of Consistency and Balance

Maintaining a harmonious and balanced life can be very challenging today. How are you doing in this area so far? Are you pleased with the way you balance work, play, exploration, and rest? Is your life abundant in experiences that you savor and appreciate? Does your to-do list feel motivating, inspiring, and harmonious? Do you enjoy a steady and energizing flow of stimulating action and satisfying results? Are you engaging with the types of energies, people, and situations that uplift and fulfill you? Do you feel you’re on the right path with your life?

If you gave yourself a 1-10 score for your overall life balance, what would it be?

Is your answer pleasing to you? Do you want to maintain a similar level of balance for the next 10, 20, 30 years? Remember that you only have power to change in the present – right now.

A healthy minimum standard to reach and maintain here is an 8 out of 10. It’s definitely not the dreaded 7, which is what many people choose when the truth is really much lower. Most people fall well short of this standard though.

How would you like to create long-term balance across all important areas of your life? Training on such fundamentals is a big part of what we do in CGC, and it’s an even more significant part of Year 8 because this new CGC year, we have a special event in July specifically designed to walk you through developing, mapping out, and implementing a fresh new way to manage your time and energy while keeping everything in balance.

One counterintuitive challenge with life balance is that if you focus on balance itself, you’ll likely fail at it. It’s like riding a bicycle – you achieve balance through forward motion. If you sit on the bike without moving forward and try to balance yourself, that’s way harder and unlikely to work.

As you’ll soon discover during the July training event in CGC, there’s a better place to focus your attention if you want to create more harmony and balance. Once you learn and understand it – it’s actually quite simple – you can use it to good effect for the rest of your life.

What balancing on a bike and balancing your life have in common is that in order to balance yourself efficiently and effectively, it’s important to understand the forces at play and how to work with them instead of having them work against you. When people try to balance on a bike from a static position, the force of gravity is working against them, making it very difficult. Same goes for life balance – most people can’t properly balance their lives because they approach this in a way that leaves stronger forces working against them, so it won’t be sustainable.

As with riding a bike, the solution to life balance is technically simple, but it takes some practice to get the hang of it. So we’ll walk you through the approach and help you get started applying it too. I’m really looking forward to this because I expect it will be a lot of fun to go through this together. Living a life that feels nicely balanced is such a daily delight, especially if you’ve endured many years of imbalanced living previously.

When you ride a bike properly, how much do you think about balance? Very little most likely. You’re probably too focused on where you’re going. It’s the same with life balance. Once you have it dialed in, it becomes mostly automatic, and then you can focus more attention on where you’re going.

9. You’ll Strengthen Your Intuition and Self-Trust

A common problem that many growth-oriented people succumb to is premature convergence. You make erroneous, half-hearted decisions. You settle for misaligned paths. In the long run, even seemingly small misalignments can come back to bite you. You may even remember noticing – and probably dismissing – a subtle background sensation that tried to warn you and that didn’t want to settle for the option you chose. That part of you was already sensing that there was a better option wanting to come through, even if you weren’t aware of that option yet… or not patient enough to wait for it.

Lots of people suffer from low intuitive sensitivity these days. They make misaligned decisions, such as taking a job that’s a mismatch for them when a better option was possible, because their inner intuitive guidance is muted, suppressed, and/or under-developed.

Such people often find it difficult to fully trust themselves. They can’t properly sense and lock onto the signals of the correct path for them. Consequently, they may hesitate to make certain decisions, especially big ones. This keeps them stuck for lengthy stretches, at least until they’re ready to begin seriously developing their intuitive sensitivity.

Many people turn to psychedelics to help them advance here. Psychedelic substances can help turn down mental chatter and amplify signals of intuitive knowing. That’s the fast route, often creating breakthroughs in a matter of hours.

A much slower route is to adopt a consistent meditation practice, which can quiet the mind and make it easier to hear those subtler inner signals. This path normally takes a few decades, but it does work.

Another option that I’d put somewhere in the middle is to lighten up your diet, making it plant-based and high in raw foods. If you want to go faster, then all raw, at least for a while (like 6 months minimum). This can be noticeably effective within months, with compounding gains over the course of years. I like to think of raw foods as slow psychedelics. It has always amazed me that when eating all raw, I experience a much greater frequency of synchronicities.

Different foods have such different energy patterns. A good way to understand how different foods will affect your intuitive sensitivity is to consider the intentionality that brought those foods to your plate.

If you want to mute or downgrade the sensitivity of your intuitive senses, that’s readily achieved by eating foods with desensitizing energy patterns like animal products and processed foods. Consider the intentionality behind slaughtering animals for sustenance or making nutritionally compromised “foods.” Notice the swirl of energies infecting those foods: dominance, entitlement, profit, greed, deception, shame, sadness, fear, loss, and even murder. Notice what’s missing there too: caring, health, kindness, honesty, compassion, sustainability, etc. Also notice the difference between narrow-spectrum foods that have had many natural qualities removed versus full-spectrum whole foods. What’s the intentionality behind the shift away from whole foods in their natural states?

Consider what you’re adding to these experiences with your own intentionality too. When you prepare a meal or reach for a snack, pay attention to your intentions in the moment. That matters tremendously.

I especially love eating meals with the intention to feel energized, clean, and alert. I eat a lot of fruit, especially in the morning, because I can do it with the cleanest intentionality. It’s like eating pure sunlight. It’s the least violent because the plant can keep on living after the fruit is harvested. And yet there are still misalignments present, like the treatment of the workers in the process. It’s not 100% pure, but it’s much better than most other foods. It’s a great match for creative work too.

Moreover, these options aren’t mutually exclusive – you can combine them. Meditation and psychedelics and diet upgrades all work very synergistically together. It’s just a matter of how quickly you want to advance and how much it matters to you to develop really strong self-trust and clear intuition. This enables faster, bolder decisions, which in turn speeds up the flow of life – no need to wallow in indecision. You can just keep advancing, almost like a character running and jumping through one of the Matrix movies.

CGC, however, can provide you with yet another option, which is to directly engage with your intuitive senses and train them up. Those senses are particularly attuned to intentionality as well, so if you engage with them with the intention to increase your sensitivity and to connect with your best inner wisdom and knowingness, that can also help you advance. It won’t be as fast as with psychedelics, but it can be much faster than going the decades-long meditation route. This works even better when you combine intentional practice with meditation – and ideally with a very clean diet too.

I’ve invested a lot in increasing my intuitive sensitivity, especially in the past year, and it has served me incredibly well, allowing me to choose options I wouldn’t have otherwise spotted. Keeping these senses strong and crisp is important enough to me that I personally use all of these methods: food choices, meditation, intentional practice, and psychedelics (mainly micro- and mini-dosing). It’s all additive and synergistic.

Are you ever confused about what to do with your life? I encounter a lot of people who seem perpetually stuck in the land of “I don’t know.” I don’t have that problem. I dwell in the land of “I do know,” which is a lot more fun, engaging, and stimulating. There are still plenty of mysteries to engage with, especially regarding timing signals and coordination with others, but it’s really nice having perpetually strong clarity about one’s own path. I’m right where I want to be, going where I want to be going, and experiencing what I want to be experiencing. It’s a very joyful, heart-aligned path. I invite you to explore your own pathway into the land of “I do know” as well, so you can really get into the flow of living your best life.

It’s beautiful what even a modest amount of intuitive sensitivity can do for your life. I haven’t had a job or a boss in 32 years… not since I was 21 years old. I haven’t needed anything like that. I’ve learned how to go with the flow of my best inner knowingness over the years, which brought plenty of great opportunities to my attention and helped me get aligned with them. One example was shutting down my computer games business and getting into self-development blogging back in 2004, a decision other people in my life thought was risky or even foolish. Yet my intuition was plenty loud and clear that it was the right path for me. It clearly was – it’s been such a magical journey and still going strong. Instead of burning out on it, I feel even more excited and aligned with this path today.

CGC is my forever project – a project that will keep evolving and will never be complete. There’s no way I’d have been willing to take on a forever project if I didn’t have really good clarity and trust. As you develop and strengthen your inner senses, you’ll probably find yourself becoming less commitment-phobic. You’ll sense when a long-term commitment is truly right for you.

10. You’ll Learn the Value of Divergent Exploration

Lots and lots of divergent exploration is a big part of CGC’s flow this year.

Have you ever been through other programs that felt over-converged to you? You’re presented with a mostly linear path to follow. That can be comforting and accessible, and it’s a good place for beginners to start, but sooner or later you’ll find yourself feeling disengaged from such an experience because it will fall out of sync with where you want to go.

CGC is extremely flexible. There is no singular linear path through it. As noted previously, it’s very wave-like, experiential, and diverse. You get to decide which experiences to engage with, which helps you build more self-trust and get attuned to your inner guidance instead of leaning on someone else to dictate your flow of discovery. We’ll keep providing the experiences and inviting you into them all throughout the CGC year. You just show up when it feels aligned.

Divergent exploration has some powerful benefits. It can help you connect the dots and discover openings for advancement that you hadn’t noticed before.

Convergent experiences are easier for the mind to trust. Those are the experiences that look good on paper. It’s like watching a preview for a movie that basically shows you the story arc in advance. Then when you watch the movie, it’s rather predictable and formulaic. It’s akin to making small incremental gains in self-development. No major surprises. No big breakthroughs.

Which do you really prefer? Do you like convergent movies that follow predictable patterns, such as the typically well-done but unremarkable Netflix movies? Or do you prefer divergent movies that surprise you and take you on a wild ride?

Take the recent Dune movies, for instance. I know they were well-rated: 83% and 92% from critics via Rotten Tomatoes. I watched Parts 1 and 2. I thought they were well-made and checked all the boxes for what was expected. But I also thought they both pretty much sucked. My physical senses were semi-engaged, but my spirit was saying, “This is shit,” while throwing popcorn at the screen. Did you see those movies? How did you feel about them? Did they inspire you?

By contrast, I loved David Lynch’s version of Dune from 1984. It had many flaws, and he didn’t get final cut, which really pained him in the end. That movie has 37% on Rotten Tomatoes. But I saw sparks of real creative genius in it. I thought it was groundbreaking at the time. I didn’t fully understand it, but it made me want to read the book, which was awesome. Then I watched and rewatched the movie more times over the years, including buying it, and I found it even more incredible. There are some modern movies that I really like too, so this isn’t a question of preferring older version for the sake of them being older. I love movies that seem to keep engaging me long after I’ve seen them. David Lynch’s Dune had that effect on me. The newest remakes felt mostly forgettable.

Do you tend to prefer movies and other experiences that satisfy your expectations or that violate them? For me, and perhaps the answer for you as well, is that it depends on what kind of violation of expectations is occurring and how it impacts me. I can say that it’s disappointing on some level when an experience fully satisfies my expectations with no meaningful violations. If there are no surprises, there’s no growth, and so I’m left with a semi-hollow feeling afterwards. Usually I’d rather take the risk of being surprised because then there’s the potential for a different kind of stimulation that leads to growth.

Rachelle and I are currently rewatching Twin Peaks (a David Lynch series from the early 1990s). We’re a few episodes into season 2 now. It’s one of the most incredible, fun, and engaging shows I’ve ever seen in my life, and it’s very, very divergent. I’ve never seen anything that comes close to Twin Peaks. It’s a true original. While my mind is thinking, “This is really weird,” my spirit is saying, “This is so fucking brilliant. How was he even allowed to make this?”

This type of divergent energy is a big part of my future aspirations for CGC. I want to invite way more creativity into the club this year and beyond. It’s not linear. It’s not predictable. It will make your mind do double-takes sometimes. But your spirit will know that you’re connecting with something truly special that you’re meant to be a part of.

Some of CGC’s divergent surprises won’t do much for you. That’s to be expected. But some are going to land in ways that haunt you, inviting you to process aspects of yourself that are ready to surface.

The over-converged path is Deadsville for me. The coaching-based model we began with back in 2017 is over and done with. Year 7 was a really important transition year, but it still had some anchors to the old convergent energies. This year we’re releasing those anchors and setting sail into a year of abundant divergent exploration together.

If you prefer highly converged, linear modes of learning, then CGC is definitely not for you. If you’re feeling a bit done with that tired, old approach, I invite you to join us for a very divergent kind of year.

11. You’ll Experience the Equivalent of a Yearlong Psychedelic Trip

You don’t have to take any substances because I’ll be doing that for you, and I imagine that some other members will want to partake and help to invite those energies into the club too.

In terms of actual psychedelics, I anticipate personally weaving in at least 4 different ones this year, so that’s going to open up a lot of variety. You might even feel some of this energy already reaching out to you now. Do you feel any unusual sensations as you read this? Hehehe.

The substances serve as doorways and amplifiers, but they aren’t essential. I’ve connected enough with some of these energies that I can connect with their energies without taking any, just by thinking about them. That isn’t uncommon at all in this space.

These energies are hyper-sensitive to intentionality. There’s a BIG difference between using them for recreation and using them for Re-Creation. This year in CGC we’re inviting the latter, although there’s nothing wrong with weaving some fun and playfulness into our intentionality too.

Do you want this to be a powerful year of Re-Creation for you? Think carefully about that because it’s truly a big deal. If you join CGC this year, it won’t be like the experience of previous years because this Re-Creation energy is acting on CGC itself. I can share that it’s already affecting the club as we go through this transition week from Year 7 to Year 8. I can tell you that this is an especially wonky and disorienting time for some Year 7 members who are in the process of deciding if they want to re-up for Year 8. A bunch have already done so, and some have voiced their intention to do so, while others have opted to jump ship at this time – all perfect. And we have new members flowing in and introducing themselves in the club now too, receiving warm welcomes on the inside.

I can feel these swirling energy patterns going through this transition since it affects me too. Part of me is still linked up with the flow of Year 7 while I also feel the strong pull into the different energies of Year 8. Every weeklong transition into a new CGC year feels like a storm of shifting energies to me, which is sometimes difficult to experience. But I know this phase is temporary, and there’s always such an amazing sensation of freshness and wonder when we’re a day or two into that new CGC year. It’s like a feeling of peacefulness, relief, and excitement. I’m so looking forward to reaching that point, this time more than ever, but for now I’m still in the maelstrom of this transition.

I can also share that psychedelic energies were used extensively in designing the “trip” that is CGC Year 8, which is a key reason for so many experiential upgrades. If you join the club this year, you’ll be engaging with these kinds of energies all throughout the year, and let me tell you they can really send your life down some very different paths. These energies are also immensely loving and supportive, but they best support your truest, deepest, highest self – not the layers of self-deception that may have been layered on top of it.

I know this was a lot to read, but hopefully it gave you a lot more clarity, not just about joining or not joining CGC this year but also about your own intentions and path ahead. Whether you decide to join us or to take a different route, please receive my intention for you to have a truly beautiful and wondrous path of growth and happiness this year.

If you want to be a part of CGC Year 8, you know where to find the full invite, and here’s the direct link to the sign-up form. Be sure to decide by the end of May 1st. You’ll get into the club as soon as you join though, so if you do join now, you can get started right away, and we’ll get you into the CGC forums today. Trust yourself.

The Real Sign That Somebody Is Lying To You And No, It’s Not Body Language

Posted on 08/04/2024 by Boris Clair

We have all lied and been convinced that somebody is lying. Whether it’s your partner keeping a secret from you or even somebody close struggling to keep a surprise secret.

However, research has revealed that some of the things that we believed to be indicative of lying are, well, lies.

Associate Prof Timothy Luke and colleagues at the University of Gothenburg looked at the past five years of research by 50 international experts on lie detection to truly define how to tell when somebody is lying.

To clarify, when speaking to BBC Science Focus, Prof Luke explained that when they discuss ‘lies’ they don’t mean the white lies that we all tell. Instead, they mean intentional deception.

He said: “The construct of deception is more complicated than a lot of people think,

“There are many kinds of psychological processes that can underlie it. We’re not talking about the same thing. Even superficial things, such as the length and type of communication, matter.”

He said that the core of deception is the intention to mislead another person.

The common misconceptions about lying

While one of the most common beliefs is that avoiding eye contact is a sure sign of a liar, 82% of experts agreed that liars are no more likely to avoid contact than people telling the truth.

This is worth remembering when you consider that according to the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community, some people who have autism actively avoid eye contact and appear confused and anxious when it occurs.

Pär-Anders Granhag, a professor of psychology at the University of Gothenburg and one of the study’s co-authors said: “the only single issue that a large majority of the experts agree upon is that gaze aversion is not a diagnostic cue for deception.”

Additionally, liars don’t tend to be more nervous than those telling the truth.

Another common belief is that people shifting and constantly touching themselves are likely lying.

This is something experts are still in debate over. While some believe that liars do these things more often, others say that liars actually do them less and others believe that fidgeting doesn’t indicate anything specific, either way.

Prof Aldert Vrij, an expert in the psychology of deception at the University of Portsmouth, spoke to BBC Science Focus about this study and he believes that people thinking that non-verbal lie detection works is the most prevalent misconception about lying and deception.

He added that people trying to use non-verbal lie detection should proceed with caution. This includes famous technology like lie detectors, video analysis, or even looking for changes in vocal pitch.

So, what is the biggest sign that somebody is lying?

72% of experts believe that a very effective method of identifying a liar is actually in their words.

That is to say, if there is a surprising lack of detail in what you’re being told, the person could be lying.

Prof Vrij agrees with this and added that if the number of details in a story, or complications that occur in the story seem concerning, this is something you should examine more than, say, body language.

He added: “Statement-evidence inconsistency is another cue. A liar’s statements are less consistent with the available evidence than statements from truth tellers.”

It seems that thinking critically about what we’re being told is far more important than the behaviour of the person telling it.

Interesting.

I Went To A Brothel With My Boyfriend. It Was Nothing Like What I Expected.

Posted on 03/02/2024 by Boris Clair

My boyfriend, Rod, is passionately kissing another woman.

Little fingers of jealousy squeeze my insides, and I’m not sure where to look or what to do. The woman senses my discomfort and immediately stops, pulling me up beside her with a big, warm giggle and a squeeze. I relax and remember: This is why I chose her. I like her, I love that giggle, and I know she has absolutely zero interest in poaching my boyfriend.

How do I know this? Because I picked her out of the lineup at one of Nevada’s most storied legal brothels. We hired her to join us for a threesome for an hour, and when our time is up, she will go back out to the bar and charm someone else with that sexy laugh, and we will go home.

I’d never had a “real” threesome before, other than some fairly benign fooling around in college. It had been a lifelong fantasy, but the emotional politics of threesomes always seemed so forbiddingly complicated. Surely someone would get hurt, someone would feel left out, someone would get jealous ― surely, maybe, definitely me? Plus that third-wheel ― would she turn stalker? Would we get an STI? Would an angry boyfriend show up out of nowhere and make us the unfortunate stars of a true-crime show? Just too risky. So I had resigned myself to the fact that some things are best left to fantasy.

When I met a lover who knew his way around a paid hookup, however, a whole new possibility presented itself. Rod and I headed to the brothel outside Reno, Nevada, to celebrate my upcoming birthday. And it was not at all what I expected.

We took a cab from our hotel in downtown Reno to the brothel’s bar, all flashy neon outside but classic sticky floors and bare-bones Old West saloon inside. Escorts chatted among themselves on bar stools or lounged on velvet banquettes against the wall. It was early ― around 4 p.m. ― and we were some of the only patrons. A few old men sat at wooden bar tables, eating out of plastic foam TV trays and silently sipping beer. Women who obviously knew them would pop by periodically to pick them up, a scene much more akin to medical assistants ushering patients to the exam room than participants embarking on a sexy encounter.

Rod and I were the subject of great interest ― couples are a fairly rare event ― and we had many friendly women cruise by our table, asking if we had any questions and offering to show us around. Before we had a chance to chat with anyone in detail, the “lineup” bell rang, and every patron who had not already initiated an encounter with a woman went through a forbidding dungeon-like door into a cavernous hunting lodge space.

In front of a giant stone fireplace the women lined up. They were every kind of everything ― all different races and body types and styles of dress. I found myself in a rare moment of simply admiring the beautiful diversity of their bodies without that knee-jerk need to compete or compare myself. I winced a bit self-consciously, however, when I realised that none of them were as old as I was. Would they be turned off by our middle-aged bodies? Wait, was I actually expecting them to be turned on? I was momentarily stumped.

The author and her boyfriend, Rod, on the plane to Reno, Nevada.

The house manager ― a business-suited woman who was my age ― introduced each woman, who then stepped forward for a moment, gave a little wave and a smile, just like at a beauty pageant. A handsome young guy in the chair beside us made his pick immediately. His woman grinned and sashayed over to sit on his lap and gave him an enthusiastic greeting ― this was clearly not their first time together. The manager then asked any women who wanted to entertain couples to step forward, and about half of the line did.

Rod and I had made an agreement before we arrived: I got to choose. I already knew that I wanted Carmen, the curvy, dark-haired woman in a fishnet dress and thong who had been the first to say hello to us in the bar. She was flirty and seemed happy. She was pretty and she had that giggle. So I pointed at her, while my nice-girl upbringing screamed at me silently: Pointing is so rude! The women without dates headed back to the bar and I felt another guilty stab as they filed past us. Had I made them feel rejected? Did they take it personally?

I didn’t have time to think about it because Carmen was shimmying on our lap, or, more specifically, on my lap as I sat on Rod’s lap. Pulling me up by the hand, and looping an arm around him, she led us to the negotiation room. It was a small room with dim lighting that resembled a hall closet and was just big enough for us all to sit knee to knee while we discussed what our hour might look like and what the price tag would be.

Depending on what services we wanted, our time with Carmen could easily total a thousand dollars or more. She laid out her ground rules (condoms were always required; kissing was OK) and asked if we had any specific requests. Not really, we just want to have fun, we told her. We negotiated a price ― I gulped and Rod agreed. Then we offered up our genitals for inspection, a quick once-over she conducted with a sly sense of humour while she detailed the rigorous STI testing she undergoes every week. Oddly, the whole thing was reassuring and funny rather than awkward. STIs are taken very seriously at the brothel, which is obviously a good thing.

The unusual formalities over, we headed to the pay window and forked over the cash. Once we were finished, we followed Carmen down a maze-like hallway — a literal red light glowed everywhere ― and she pranced along ahead of us with a Champagne bottle in an ice bucket.

When we finally got to her room, a tiny, semi-personalised space, I was thrilled to find it was toasty ― I’m always freezing when I’m nervous. Carmen pointed out condoms, towels, the fresh sheets on the bed, and the adjoining bathroom (which she shared with the woman in the room next door). The little tour was a strange combination of straight commerce and flirtation.

Carmen seemed to be a naturally touchy-feely person and she held my arm or tapped my back as she showed us around. I noticed that she focused her attention much more on me than Rod, which charmed me, but the cynical observer in me noted that it is an undoubtedly smart, practiced move — she is obviously well-versed in disarming the female competition and jealousy aspect of these encounters.

The author and her boyfriend hanging out at the bar in their hotel, where she says they, "enjoyed shocking people by telling them our destination." — The author and her boyfriend hanging out at the bar in their hotel, where she says they, “enjoyed shocking people by telling them our destination.”

Things flowed effortlessly between Carmen and me, from our intro chatter to getting into the horizontal action, and within minutes Rod enthusiastically joined in, the three of us rotating around in a surprisingly fluid give-and-take. While he nominally took charge ― after all, a threesome needs a little direction ― it was overwhelmingly female-centered sex. I smiled to myself. Threesomes are such trite male-fantasy territory, but Carmen and I were a girl party of teamwork, exploration and celebration. I even joked at one point that we hoped Rod didn’t feel excluded. (He decidedly did not.) The whole experience was fun and sexy ― all I had hoped it would be ― with none of the awkwardness I had feared.

Carmen was unfailingly charming and enthusiastic, but I never once mistook her warmth for actual sexual excitement. There was no pretence on anyone’s part that this encounter was expected to include satisfaction for her.

I asked her about this later, as we all lounged naked on the bed, sipping Champagne and chatting. She batted the question down with a polished little sidestep ― she explained that she has enough fun just making her clients happy, and it’s too much work to have orgasms all day long anyway. We asked her where she grew up (Venezuela) and how she got into this line of work. (She was initially a stripper but found brothel work safer, with less harassment and more money.) When I wondered aloud whether the post-coital chat was the best or worst part of the job, Carmen assured me she looks forward to connecting with customers and that the old saw is actually true: She often has clients who pay just to talk.

Way too soon, an intercom buzzer rang and a female voice let us know our time was up. I had wondered about security ― surely there was a network of bouncers and cameras and intercoms and emergency buttons to protect the women, but everything was so discreet, we didn’t notice any of it. We jumped up and bustled around, helping Carmen strip the bed and straighten up (even though she insisted we didn’t have to) and then the three of us spilt out into the hallway.

We returned to the bar where we began our adventure for some final chatter and a drink. We were sitting cozily together at a table and laughing at our own newly made inside jokes, when a young woman who looked fresh off a farm joined us. She clearly had a friendly relationship with Carmen and was eager to know, “What exactly do you do in a threesome?” As we happily shared our insights, she turned to me and said with a wink, “This is what happens to a girl when you raise her in a really strict, controlling religion!” I raised my glass and said, “That makes two of us, girlfriend! Amen!”

A drink suddenly arrived at our table for Carmen. It was sent from a gentleman at the bar, and she smiled and raised a toast to him. She got up immediately and, after squeezing my leg in a little goodbye, strutted over to him. I watched as they chatted for a few moments and then she linked her arm in his and led him over to the big lodge door. The last thing I heard as it swung shut behind them was that warm, bubbly giggle, and I found myself sad to see her go. I guess I was jealous after all.

Melissa Duge Spiers is an award-winning screenwriter and memoirist, whose memoir-in-progress, “The Glory Whole,” won the Book Pipeline 2021 Unpublished Manuscript Non-Fiction award. She is represented by Dani Segelbaum/The Carol Mann Agency. For more from her, visit her Instagram at @mdugespiers.

Looking For True Love? First, Find An Orange Peel

Posted on 04/12/2023 by Boris Clair

Professionals will tell you to be on the lookout for lots of green flags when it comes to romance. Patience? Check. Consistency? Double check.

But now, TikTokers have added another sign of true love to look out for ― and it involves orange peel.

If you’re not familiar yet, the orange peel theory “is pretty much how it sounds,” TikToker @neanotmia explains.

“You may really like eating an orange, but some people find peeling the orange to be an unpleasant task,” they shared (*nods in long nails*.)

So, you might ask someone ― your partner, a friend, a family member ― to peel it for you. And how they react can indicate where your relationship stands, some TikTokers think.

How? It’s just an orange

Well, that’s sort of the point ― it’s all about how your loved ones respond to the tiny, everyday problems we all encounter.

“The possible reactions are, ‘no, you can peel the orange yourself,’ or ‘(scoff) fine, like, you’re welcome,’ or ‘I’d be happy to peel your orange for you, no problem,’” the TikToker continued.

“Or maybe they proactively peel the orange for you because they already know that’s a task you don’t like to do.”

She then points out that you, yourself, might be bewildered by such a request, wondering why the person asking for your help can’t handle such a seemingly small deal.

But, as she says, “it’s not literally about the peeling orange ― they’re asking you for a small favour to see your reaction, to see if later, they can ask you for bigger favours.”

It’s about how you make each other feel when you’re in need, @neanotmia says. “It may be baby steps to building that trust.”

Some app users called a woman who went viral for sharing that her boyfriend brought home egg whites after learning she hated separating them for her baking a prime example of the theory.

In short, it’s all about making your partner’s life a little easier, and anticipating your needs when you can ― be it egg whites or orange peels. Aww.