Category Archives: Relationships

Your Relationship With Text Messaging

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How would you rate your current relationship with texting on a scale of 1 to 10?

A 1 means you really need to improve how you use this tool. A 10 means you’re using the tool in a way that works very well for you, and other people who text you understand and respect your boundaries.

I feel that I have a healthy relationship with text messaging. It’s generally not a distraction, I use it effectively, and my approach works well for me. Boundary issues are uncommon and easily fixed.

So let me share some tips regarding how I use it. See if any of this helps you reassess your own relationship with texting.

  • Define your desired relationship with texting in advance. Instead of addressing issues only in a reactive bottom-up matter, get clear about the role you want this tool to play in your life. What are the justifiable and intelligent use cases for it? What uses would be distracting and should be considered out of bounds? I encourage you to write up your own personal list of do’s and don’ts for the tool.
  • Look at problems behaviorally. Texting is a set of behaviors. If your behaviors are aligned with your intentions, you’ll likely have a healthy relationship with this tool. If you’re not happy with your relationship with this tool, look at your behaviors: what you typed and when. Call out the mistakes you made. Identify exactly what you should have done instead? Example:
    • I initially responded with, “Nice to hear from you.” That was a mistake. I didn’t want to get into a conversation at that time.
    • I should have replied with, “Busy with a project. No texting today please. Thanks for understanding.”
    • Better yet, I should have left notifications turned off and my phone in the other room.
  • Make permanent changes. Review some of your recently texted conversations. Which ones were worthwhile and intelligent uses of the tool, where you used it in the right way and at the right time? Which conversations were distracting or problematic in any way for you? For the problematic ones, state the problem in the most general terms. Then solve that problem permanently with a change in your commitment regarding what you consider fair use of the tool versus off limits.
  • Accept conflict. Your relationship with this tool may not align with how everyone else wants you to use this tool. Decide which is more important: satisfying someone else’s demands and expectations… or having a healthy and productive relationship with the tools and people in your life? If you want the latter, you’ll need to define and enforce boundaries. When someone can’t or won’t respect your boundaries, add them to your blocklist.
  • Finish conversations. How many perpetually open conversations are you having via text messaging? Ideally it’s zero. Open a conversation, have the conversation, and close the conversation. Every conversation that’s left open is an open loop that can distract you. Finish listening to what needs to be heard, and finish saying what needs to be said. Close the loop, and end the conversation. When you’ve closed it, say to yourself, “This is done.”
  • Build a repertoire of conversation closers. Here are a few:
    • Time to get back to work.
    • Bye for now.
    • Glad we figured this out.
    • Glad to be of help.
    • Dinner time for me.
    • Hugs!
    • Ciao!
    • ❤️❤️❤️
  • Keep your phone outside of your workspace. If your phone is your primary texting device, and if your work doesn’t primarily involve texting, leave your phone elsewhere while working. I leave mine in the kitchen while I work in my home office.
  • Respond on your schedule. If you always respond to people immediately when they text you, you’ll train them to expect that. If this works for you, great. But if not, just respond when it’s convenient. I often don’t reply to texts for a day or two.
  • Have the conversations you want. If you don’t want to be having a texting conversation, end it. Say a deliberate yes to the invitations you want. Note that you don’t need anyone’s permission to end a conversation. If you end the conversation on your side, it’s over. If the person keeps peppering you with texts afterwards, ask yourself if you ever want anyone using texting with you in that way. If not, warn them if you’d like, turn on “Do not disturb” for a few hours, and consider the blocklist as a backstop if necessary.
  • Educate people on your preferences. It’s up to you to train people to learn how and why they can text you. If you don’t make adjustments, they’ll likely assume their communication habits are okay. If anything is not okay with you, let the other person know. Don’t blame them. Just specifically share how you’d like them to modify their behaviors. Invite them to commit to that change. Some examples:
    • Don’t text me about typos in articles. Always email or use the contact form on my website for that.
    • Don’t expect an immediate reply from texting. I’m not an immediate reply kind of guy.
    • Text me when you’re about 5 minutes away.
    • Text me after you finish going through Customs.
    • Don’t text me memes.
    • Don’t text me bad jokes. Only good ones. 🙂
  • Practice better texting. For any habits you need to adjust, do a practice texting session by yourself. Use any notes app, and type predictable lines from the other person and your desired responses. Even a few minutes of solo practice can help your brain correct bad habits. Teach your brain how you want it to respond in situations where you need to adjust your behavior.
  • Play is fine, but watch for boundary issues. It’s fine to text playfully when you and the other person are in the mood for it. Same goes for sexy exchanges if they’re consensual. Just consider if you’re engaging for pleasure-based reasons or as a way of distracting yourself from something else you should be doing instead. Playfulness can build stronger relationships, but it can also damage relationships if you overdo it.
  • Trust your instincts. If something feels off to you, it’s off. Sometimes it’s good to verbalize your feelings aloud, like “I don’t want to have this conversation right now” or “I should ask if this is a good time to discuss this first.” Practice acting in alignment with your instincts.

How is your current relationship with text messaging working for you? This type of tool will probably be around for many more years, so it’s wise to make this a healthy and positive relationship. When this relationship isn’t working well, it becomes an added source of stress. When this relationship is working well, it can add meaningful value and connection to your life.

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How to Handle People Who Easily Become Defensive

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I had a great realization when going through Dr. Julie Helmrich’s Science of Conflict course recently. One idea from that course helped me make sense of an issue that had been popping up now and then in my relationships.

She noted that a key reason that people become defensive during conflict is that their inner critic gets triggered. They’ve already gone through many rounds of internal conversation with this inner critic. So when a problem or issue is raised as if it’s new, it’s really not new. The other person is probably well aware of it. They’ve already beat themselves up for it many times before.

Consequently, when you step into a role that resembles their inner critic, this automatically activates the part of them that must push back against that inner critic. They’re really not in conscious control of this. It just happens. They may even catch themselves doing this, dislike it very much, and still feel powerless to stop it.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve triggered a person’s defensiveness, and then my response is something like this:

One time, can we just skip past this whole defensiveness thing? It’s such a waste of time and energy. Why don’t we save ourselves a few hours and just skip ahead to solving the actual problem here? You’re not being attacked. I’m not blaming you for anything, so please lower your shields because this isn’t an assault. I just want a solution to this problem, and I could really use your help with that.

Does that ever work? Ha… I wish!

And oh is it so annoying when I just want to get a simple problem solved, and the other person is taking it personally and reacting like a 5-year old caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Some of these problems could be solved in 5-10 minutes if just a little rational thought and mutual understanding were applied. But if the person’s shields go up, it will take hours, maybe days, if a solution is created at all.

When the person’s shields go up, internally I’m saying to myself:

This is ridiculous. We could be done in a few minutes if s/he would just chill out for long enough to help me solve this. Is a solution really worth this emotional effort? I might as well drop it and find a way to solve this problem on my own… maybe there’s a way to do that. Or I could just ignore the problem for now and try again later.

The Science of Conflict course led me to a different way of framing these situations. Instead of trying to tiptoe around someone’s defensiveness and being annoyed as hell when they began to defend against an imaginary attack, now my attitude is more like Frank Costanza from Seinfeld yelling back:

Oh you want a piece of me?

Trying to avoid the conflict doesn’t work. Oddly it’s better to embrace it. Know there will be a fight, not with the other person but with their inner critic. In a way, I must play the role of the inner critic, so the person can fight back hard against that part of themselves.

If they’re gonna raise their shields no matter what I do, let’s give them good cause to raise them. They expect an attack? Fine… I’ll give them one.

The fight isn’t actually a problem. Just as I was busy thinking that the other person was raising their shields unnecessarily, so was I. I didn’t want to get into an emotional argument, so I pre-shielded myself against that. Their shields were in part a reaction to my own.

It’s very different when you come in with phasers full charged, expecting and even welcoming a fight. Being prepared for a fight is better than wanting to avoid a fight at all costs.

This reminds me of when I trained in martial arts. Practicing self-defense skills with other people made me feel more physically confident and more internally ready for a fight. I’d be walking down the street, almost wanting someone to try to attack me just so I could fight back. I shared this with the other students, and some of them noticed this shift in themselves as well. They also felt that it was less likely for them to get into a fight because they didn’t exude a victim mindset. People are less likely to attack you when your attitude is “I dare you to attack me.”

That may not be quite the attitude that the original course intended, but I do find this framing helpful. If we’re afraid of a fight and would so love to avoid it, we invite the person’s defensiveness to take control and derail the discussion.

The thing is… the other person’s defensiveness never really scared me. I found that aspect of people more annoying than threatening. I found the emotional arguments boring and time-wasting. I felt impatient for faster solutions.

Which is faster though? To ignore someone who keeps trying to bait you into a fight while you’re trying to focus on solving a problem? Or to give your full attention to that annoyance and beat the crap out of it till it surrenders?

Maybe it seems better to avoid a fight. But you could just fight and get it over with. Fight hard. Fight well. Fight honorably. Fight creatively. Fight playfully. Fight till the fighting part is done. Then go into solution mode.

Fights that don’t finish can go on forever. So be willing to fight till the fighting is finished.

I thought that fighting back would be doing people a disservice, but I’m not fighting against them. I’m fighting for a win-win solution.

The other person would like a solution too, and maybe a good pathway to get there is to help them shut down their inner critic, partly by inviting it to spar a few rounds. Then that critic will naturally recede, and we can solve the actual problem.

Martial arts reminds me that fighting can be a lot of fun if you embrace it. It’s especially fun to spar when both people are in the mood for it. There’s something very cleansing about the experience. It moves energy through the body. But if you resist the experience, that energy gets stuck.

This course also pointed out how utterly common it is to activate someone’s defensive response. I always saw this type of conflict as something to be avoided, like I should always do my best to avoid making someone feel defensive. But this only limited my ability to solve problems. Going through that conflict phase is necessary and important.

I can think of some big problems in my past that I punted forward for months or years because I was unwilling to deal with emotional conflict with another person. It was amazing how quickly those got resolved when I finally got sucked into the conflict, which wasn’t necessarily by choice. Getting that stuck energy moving again was such a huge relief.

Like many things in life, when you finally surrender to the inevitable and embrace it, it’s much easier to handle. This attitude of accepting conflict makes it less likely to trigger someone’s defensiveness and less likely to have to invest a lot of time dealing with that defensiveness.

Where in your life are you avoiding conflict because you know it will trigger the other person’s defensiveness? How’s that approach working for you?

Why not try doing the opposite? The path to resolution is through the fire of conflict. The potential for conflict isn’t a threat. It’s an invitation for you to grow stronger. Be a person who will fight for solutions and not settle for non-solutions, and you won’t have to live so much of your life in a cage that’s too small for you.

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8 Cheery Festive Tips For Enjoying A Mini Christmas For Two

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Proactive Boundary Management

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A recent gift from a friend included a question card deck, and one of the questions was:

What is one of the most valuable lessons you have learned in the past year?

I’d say my biggest lesson of this year was to more deeply understand the relationship between intelligent boundary management and investing in deep and meaningful connections with people.

I had understood the importance of saying a firm “no” to partial matches as they arise. It’s necessary to reserve space to say “yes” to those really aligned opportunities, and I can’t do that if I’m caught up fussing with partial matches.

It’s been helpful to see partial matches as tests that I need to pass (by intelligently declining them). I know full well that the most aligned opportunities probably won’t be visible at all till I decline any partial matches that may still be tempting me. This has helped me grow into a person who feels less and less tempted by partial matches and mismatches.

Settling for less doesn’t make me happy, and it doesn’t work well for other people either. We thrive when we keep our standards high. It’s easier to enjoy abundance when we’re very clear about what we want and why,

This year showed me how important it is to do some proactive boundary management now and then. Instead of handling issues on a case by case basis, sometimes we gain enough clarity to do a more involved house cleaning.

One of the big ones I did this year was to purge Trump supporters from my life and work. I realized that their reasons and excuses for such support didn’t matter to me. I could make this evaluation based entirely on their words and actions and impacts. If someone expressed support for the current administration, that alone was more than enough to make us mismatches. It become obvious that I was never going to feel aligned with maintaining relationships with such people, even if they wanted to stay connected.

This wasn’t particularly complicated. There are zero Trump supporters that I feel aligned with enough to feel good about investing in a relationship together, personally or professionally. At best I can tolerate them, but that isn’t good enough. I don’t want to fill my social life with people I’m tolerating.

So this was an interesting invitation of sorts. Other misalignments can be complicated or ambiguous, but this one was super clear, so I went with it and cleaned house as best I could.

Even when there were misaligned situations that I initially had to resolve reactively, I paused afterwards to reflect on why those situations arose and how I could proactively prevent similar issues by making some adjustments. One example was shared in the post about admin baiting, which hasn’t been a problem in the months since I wrote that piece.

What I didn’t expect was just how much this more proactive approach would resolve and transform some social heaviness I felt earlier in the year.

Presently I feel a special kind of lightness, ease, and flow with respect to my social life. I feel more interested in people, and I enjoy connecting with them so much more (even if it’s all online still).

I think this is largely because I feel more committed to protecting my social space against intrusion from nutters and other misalignments. I had some friends I really didn’t know as well as I thought I did, and I realized that I didn’t want to consider them friends anymore. I had lost too much respect for them. Maybe that respect was too easily granted to begin with.

Since we can’t have meaningful relationships with all of the billions of people on earth, we’re always going to be limited to a small social bubble consisting of dozens of people that we could potentially get to know very well… maybe hundreds if we really push ourselves. While we can serve a lot more people, such as through business, we can only truly invest in a much smaller number on a personal level.

I feel like I’ve freed up (or somehow generated) some extra capacity and desire to invest in people close to me. This isn’t from opening myself up to love for all or anything like that. While I can still feel a connection to all people based in unconditional love, I can’t invest my time, energy, and attention in all people, so I have to be way more selective there.

I think some people have been picking up on these energy shifts in me since I’ve been observing more positive outreach from people, especially people who’ve been going through similar house cleanings this year.

I feel this year has made me more attuned to the differences between compatible and incompatible social connections. With the most compatible connections, we energize each other. We amplify each other’s energy.

This has been a draining year for a lot of people. It’s not just COVID that’s causing that. I think it has a lot to do with the social misalignments that have been exposed by our different responses to the health and political situations in the world.

What response did you choose for dealing with exposed misalignments? How has that worked for you?

And moreover, what was your most valuable lesson of the year?

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Thriving Without a God

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In your favorite models of reality, do you include a god or gods? Have you tested models and frames that are god-free to see how well they work for you?

I grew up learning models of reality that include a god, in that case a Christian version of one. Later I went atheist, and I enjoyed the godless style of living – perhaps a little too much. It was way more fun, but it took me a few years to find my footing with it.

After that I explored some New Age models that included angels, spirit guides, Source, and so on. There are many flexible ways to include divinity in our models of reality, but one key aspect is whether or not you include any “superior” beings that are more divine than you are.

Here’s what I learned after lots of exploration and experimenting.

Perhaps the most important aspect of these explorations was to learn how mysterious, fascinating, and inherently unknowable so much of reality is. It was a special turning point when I worked through the logic and truly grasped that no matter what kind of entity I am – physical, spiritual, or otherwise – I will never ever be able to discern the true nature of reality. No god would be able to discern that either. It was really interesting to see that even an all-knowing, all-seeing god would never have the power or ability to know what’s outside of its scope.

Even if this god’s scope of knowingness is infinite, you can always put a bigger infinity around it as a container. Even if the god knows everything, there could always be a bigger everything that contains it. And no god could be certain that there wasn’t some other kind of reality beyond its scope.

A smart enough god would eventually figure this out. And it would probably be damned curious to test and probe what kind of reality it exists within, even as it accepts the unknowability of this.

So this helped me see that if there is a god, it’s never actually going to be as omniscient as a religion makes it out to be. And honest god would have to wonder about the extent of its divinity, and hence it would also have to wonder about a lot more than that.

Why does this matter? I grew up being taught a model of reality that included an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-loving god. This model is inconsistent with any sort of reality that includes conscious beings though. So if I do include such a god in my reality, I have to bump it down a few notches in terms of how I relate to it.

If there’s some other conscious entity with superior knowledge and wisdom, that could be interesting, but then I must also recognize that its knowledge and wisdom will always be limited. Since it can’t understand anything beyond the realm of reality that contains it, it can’t even know if parts of me exist beyond its understanding. There are a lot of fundamentals that it can’t know for sure, such as the nature of its power or the true depth and accuracy of its understanding. If such a god cannot access and understand its container reality, it can never really understand itself or anything else within that reality.

Since I’m a part of this god’s reality, this god also can’t actually hope to ever understand my nature, even if it thinks it created me. So an honest god would have to consider me a bit of a mystery too.

Isn’t that interesting? Even the most omniscient god cannot actually hope to understand me completely. Some aspect of my nature will always be opaque and mysterious to it.

You can flip this around as well. In the domains of life where you have the greatest control and deepest understanding, you have to admit that you’ll never reach 100%. There’s always something mysterious and unknowable if you look deeply enough.

You can never know for certain if your base reality is some kind of simulation or not. You can never know if you’re a real biological being or a simulated character with a simulated body. You can never know if your memories are real events or just programmed into you.

Any god you can possibly imagine, as well as any gods that are beyond your imagining, are subject to similar constraints. That’s just the nature of being aware. Awareness has some inherent limits we can’t hope to bypass.

Consequently, I favor the framing that any god, angel, spirit guide, or other entity that may have superior knowledge and wisdom is ultimately just as perplexed about the nature of their reality as I am. I can imagine that they see things from a different perspective, but I can never assume that their perspective is truly superior to my own personal perspective.

Same goes for any human advisors, coaches, teachers, or mentors. No matter how far advanced they may be in some area of life compared to me, I always have to take their advice with a grain of salt. I can never accept their models and understanding as 100% accurate.

One thing I wanted so desperately when I was younger was for someone or something to play the role of my ideal spiritual advisor. I wanted my own personal version of Mr. Miyagi, someone who could give me the most intelligent answers and instructions for getting better results and living a better life. Sometimes I looked for that in the human realm. Sometimes I looked for it in the spiritual realm. But however I searched, I was always disappointed. No such version of god existed, and I eventually accepted that I needed to outgrow this folly.

When I was wallowing in the depths of stuckness, I often turned to spiritual models for answers. I loved reading books about spirituality because they were so comforting. The authors seemed certain of their models, and certainty is such a tempting drug when you’re stuck. Solutions were presented as: Try this and it will always work (if you’re spiritual enough).

Of course their models felt flat when I actually tried to practice them. The results were sometimes fascinating, sometimes dreadful, and generally inconsistent. A special turning point happened when I got into public speaking and realized that behind the scenes, these teachers are just as confused as everyone else, but they’re good at marketing certainty.

Pick anyone on earth that you might label as a spiritual guru. Then consider the framing that they’re really no wiser than you are. They may have good marketing skills though.

Eventually I found that a more effective way to connect with spirituality isn’t by looking for a wiser entity with the answers I need. It’s better to recognize that uncertainty is universal, and no advice should be swallowed whole.

These days I find it more effective to use models of reality that don’t include any superior beings. I don’t need a god or gods to look up to. We’re all essentially on equal footing. No spirit guide or coach has any guaranteed superior perspective to my own, but they may offer different perspectives for me to sample and test.

This year I received much advice that I could easily have put on a pedestal due to where it came from, but then I kept getting better results when instead of acting on the advice blindly, I chewed on it for a bit, let it bounce around in my thoughts and feelings, and then I made my own independent decisions, often doing the opposite of what the advice was. I really liked the results of that.

Consider that the more faith you put in a god (or in any other spiritual being), the more powerless and helpless you become. This may be good marketing for those who want to fill that power void and insert themselves above you, but it’s not good spirituality.

I’ve also witnessed this from the other side. Sometimes when I share coaching insights or advice, the person I’m coaching will apply the ideas very differently than I expected. Or they may reject the advice and do their own thing. The coaching challenges them to go deeper into their own thinking and figure out what’s likely to work for them.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people take effective actions after coaching, but it’s best when they see the coach as a relative equal, not as someone whose advice should be taken blindly. I’ve seen other people follow a coach’s advice blindly when it’s contrary to their own best thinking. Even when the external results look good, they still seem unhappy and unsatisfied. People who seem happiest keep putting their own spin on what they learn.

We seem to get better results when we behave like co-gods who have no superior. Even if you want to include a divine god in your model, I encourage you to see that god as an equal teammate, not as any sort of superior being. At least try that model on for size if you like having a god to play with. Personally I prefer goddesses, but just the human kind.

Be cautious about adopting a model with a divine being that you presume is somehow superior to you. This type of model keeps people stuck in an immature and child-like relationship with reality. I know it can be comforting, but you can still create those feelings of comfort by relating to reality as an equal, not as some kind of lesser or more limited being.

Do we actually need a superior god in our models of reality? No, we don’t. I fail to see any areas where such models provide benefits that other models don’t surpass, unless you just want to go slower and wallow in powerlessness for a while. Maybe that’s an interesting setup experience, so you can later appreciate the contrast with better models, but I don’t recommend you remain stuck there for too long. Feel free to let go of any superior god once you feel that model has run its course for you. Drop the “levels of consciousness” nonsense too; there are no levels.

When someone suggests or demands that you believe in a superior being, look to their own self-interest, and it won’t be too hard to see why they’re promoting such a model.

Imagine living in a reality where you’re inferior to no one. You have no superiors. There are no spiritual entities that are above you in any meaningful way. There are just a lot of different perspectives.

If you still feel clingy with god-based models, just remember that there are alternatives, and you’ll probably want to explore them sooner or later. I think you’ll like being god-free once you get used to it.

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Listening to Your Energy

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I often begin my days by asking: What wants to come through? What energy wants to be expressed?

Then I listen.

Sometimes I listen with my mind or body. Sometimes I listen with my heart. And sometimes it feels like I’m listening with my spirit.

I feel like there’s a collective idea space where thoughts and feelings are always flowing, like radio waves being constantly transmitted. When I tune into that space, I often get ideas for articles. Or I could pull out bigger ideas like for a new course or workshop.

But I don’t have to aim my internal beam-forming antenna in that direction, scanning the cloud of human needs and wants. I can also listen within. I can can scan my own personal energy field and see what wants to come through.

Then different inner voices get my attention to share their desires.

One inner voice would absolutely love to do more in-person workshops. We haven’t done one since 2016, and I was leaning towards doing one in October 2020, but that got nixed with the virus situation. I hear this voice and agree with it. It’s definitely something to look forward to when the timing is right. Zoom is great for the role it plays, and I use it every week, but there’s really no substitute for connecting face to face.

Another inner voice wants to have a more spiritual 2021. That’s the voice encouraging me to eat raw for the whole year since that way of eating makes me feel the most open, sensitive, and synchronized with life. This voice is pleased that I’m on board with the idea, so it waits patiently for me to begin at the start of the year. Meanwhile it seems to be working behind the scenes to prepare me for this shift.

I wonder if there’s some kind of energy linkage between my inner voices and the collective space of ideas. It feels like my internal energies can communicate with this larger field on their own in the background, such as to coordinate events or to arrange synchronicities. When I create certain harmonies with my inner voices, such as by agreeing with them, it feels like I grant them more privileges to take action on my behalf.

This is a mental model I sometimes use, not anything objectively provable, but it does align well with my personal experience. Do you ever feel like some energy-based or thought-based parts of you make arrangements with the rest of reality on your behalf? I’ve seen so many instances of external changes happening shortly after I make meaningful internal decisions, especially decisions that involve saying yes to some under-expressed part of myself.

One example was connecting with Rachelle. We lived 1300 miles away from each other, in different countries. I sometimes feel like our meeting was arranged, like some part of her energy and some part of my energy linked up behind the scenes and recognized our tremendous compatibility. Then they conspired to make us meet in person by removing obstacles and arranging synchronicities. Fortunately we each listened to those internal nudges that spiraled us into a beautiful connection.

I do feel there’s a sort of spiritual permission grant needed to unlock this type of experience. In my case I specifically recall inviting new connections to come into my life while I was still in my first marriage. That was also a time where I was eating a lot of raw foods, which made me extra sensitive to subtle shifts that I might not have noticed if I’d been eating cooked food. So I don’t think this is just a spiritual effect; I think it’s a physical one too.

It feels like the misaligned energies are continuing to move further away and receding into the background. Somehow the louder they scream, the fainter they sound. I feel like this is creating space for more aligned energies to flow through. It’s like how letting go of a partial match creates space for a much better match to flow through. If you’re sensitive to energy flows, you’ll feel this shifting well before you see it, and with experience you’ll trust your inner senses.

With the daily blogging challenge, 2020 was a deep dive into connecting with lots of personal growth ideas. It was also a year of boundary management and lifestyle adjustments. I feel like I had to be extra firm this year in saying “You shall not pass!” to attempted intrusions from stupidity and insanity. I think I did an excellent good job of defending and cleansing my space from such encroachments. It feels like I’ve relegated those energies to their own corral of idiocy, where they’re mostly harmless going forward, other than continuing to annoy those who care to visit. I’m content to steer clear indefinitely; it’s the smell.

Now I feel the energy shifting in a new direction, especially since the election. As I continue to listen within, another part of me says that it wants to have a caring and connected 2021. Whereas 2020 was predominantly a year of ideas, boundaries, and lifestyle adjustments, I sense that 2021 is setting itself up to be a year of people, relationships, friendships, and emotional depth.

This doesn’t feel like a personal need or desire though. I feel pretty content, satisfied, and non-needy in this area of life. It feels like I’m hearing a collective desire from the larger energy field. I can listen to that energy field directly, and the desire for more human connection and intimacy seems loud and chaotic, overflowing with unmet needs. But when I listen internally, I hear a softer and quieter part of me that wants to help with this.

I feel like the energy flow of 2020 was about testing, challenging, clarifying, releasing, and standing firm. It was a tremendous year of truth alignment.

For 2021 I sense a year of stronger love and oneness alignment, but only with very compatible people, not universally with everyone. I can’t say what form this will take, but it feels like different parts of my personal energy field are picking up on this larger signal, and so they’re offering up their own invitations on how to align with this “big energy” in motion.

I do not see 2021 as a year of healing and reconciliation. I sense that 2020 involved a split that was meant to happen, with some people going one way and some going another way. We’ve made some key energetic choices this year. We’ve said a firm yes to some types of invitations and a firm no to others, and we’ve seen other people make different choices. It’s been a polarizing year, hasn’t it?

This year I was challenged to decide whether I was going to be anti-racist or to continue clinging to the feeble non-racist label. I voted for first time ever. I made decisions that caused some people to reject me or to feel rejected by me, while other people sensed and expressed a stronger connection to me than ever (the feeling is mutual). I think it was important and necessary to go through this. It felt like a year of multiple tests, with answers that will determine the future direction of people’s lives and experiences for many years to come. Has it been that kind of year for you?

It feels like the testing part is essentially over, at least in terms of major alignment decisions. Soon it will be time to co-create something new, and now we’re in an incubation phase before that fresh energy really opens up.

I feel like I’ve released and corrected multiple misalignments this year, so I no longer need to carry those misalignments into 2021 and beyond. I don’t feel that this is for reasons of speed but for reasons of depth. It now seems possible to go deeper in certain directions where misaligned energies would create drag and friction, frustrating the most aligned people who aren’t in the mood for friction and just want to explore flow, abundance, and appreciation together. This year the misaligned have had to step aside so that certain high-alignment experiences can be made real for the people who are ready for them.

I think a key question asked of me this year was: Are you willing to put your energy where your intentions are?

And the companion question: Are you willing to withdraw your energy from the friction and drag?

Letting go of the friction and drag is especially difficult when it’s in human form… when someone you know firmly plants their flag in drag territory, and you have to let them have that experience without you. You have to choose forgiveness so you can lighten up your energy and go where you need to go next. Note that forgiveness isn’t the same as reconciliation or compromise (which could keep you stuck in the drag).

So these are some answers that come through when I ask the questions that I shared at the beginning of this post. Does any of this resonate with you?

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How To Maintain Your Work Friendships – Even At A Distance

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Your Relationship With Unreasonable Standards

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Here’s a simple rule of thumb that I learned at the start of the pandemic:

If you think you’re being reasonably cautious, you’re probably taking on too much risk. If you think you’re being unreasonably cautious, you’re probably doing it right.

This made sense to me, so I aimed to keep my COVID-prevention standards higher than I thought was reasonable. I sought to keep them at a level that made me wonder if I was overdoing it.

Since the start of the pandemic, Rachelle and I haven’t had friends or family over, we stopped doing in-person meetups, and we stopped all travel. We have groceries delivered, or we shop infrequently at late hours when stores are mostly empty. We wash our hands many times per day, including after handling any packages that have been delivered. We wear masks of course. We’ve been very hermit-like and cautious. We began shifting our lifestyles sooner than required. I also began writing blog posts in early March to warn people about what was predictably coming.

Some people wrote to me to say that I was being unreasonably alarmist. Good, I thought. That’s an indication I’m heading in the right direction. Later some people shared that my writings encouraged them to alter their behaviors in some specific situations, including in ways that may have saved some lives.

Under the circumstances, I think these standards have been reasonable, but it sometimes felt unreasonable, and sometimes other people said it was unreasonable. In this case this suggests that maybe it’s an adequate standard, not an excessive one.

In the USA we’re in the midst of the biggest surge of reported infections since this started, now around 200-250K new ones per day. My home state of Nevada just reported 3733 infections in one day, its biggest single day by far and about 10X what we were seeing during the summer. I know someone who is one of those 3733; he and I spoke at some events together in previous years. Now he’s very sick.

When people get diagnosed with COVID, they may seem surprised because they felt that their prevention standards were reasonable. They had already tightened up, It seems unfair that this wasn’t enough to prevent infection.

This strikes me as a pattern we see in so many other areas of life as well.

How could I get diabetes, heart disease, or cancer? I was eating a reasonable diet, surely better than most.

How could I be getting laid off? I’m one of the better employees.

How could my spouse be leaving? Our marriage was reasonably good.

If the reasonable standard is a little bit above average, you will probably still succumb to a major lifestyle disease like cancer or heart disease. You could still be laid off. Your partner could still leave.

In many areas of life, being above average isn’t a very good standard results-wise.

A reasonable standard for COVID prevention will probably seem unreasonably strict. A lot of people are being sloppy while thinking they’re doing just fine. A million people in the USA are being diagnosed with COVID infections every 4-5 days. How many of them thought that their prevention standards were reasonable?

Diet is one area where I wouldn’t want to go anywhere near the standards that other people consider reasonable. Eating what other people consider reasonably healthy means having a ridiculously low standard that invites physical, mental, and emotional degradation. It means living as a shadow of one’s true self, always hampered by unseen layers of mental and emotional sludge.

My relationship with Rachelle seems unreasonably good. Sometimes I feel like we’re unfairly blessed to have found each other. But then I wonder where I learned my old standard for comparison. I learned it from other relationships I’ve seen, including relationships that people felt were okay or pretty good. But given the status of most relationships, is it good enough to have a reasonably good relationship?

If your relationship seems unreasonably good, maybe you’re just doing it right. Perhaps it only seems special because the backdrop of society has a low baseline for what it considers decent. Lots of movies tell us how little compatibility is needed for a couple to fall in love and live happily ever after.

So perhaps I just have a reasonable relationship, and it only seems unreasonably good because I broke away from society’s weak standards for what’s “good enough.” I found someone that I really enjoy spending time with and who enjoys and appreciates me as much as I enjoy her. Is it reasonable or unreasonable to love spending time with your spouse? Even under months of relative isolation together, we still love and enjoy spending lots of time together.

Looking back on my life, I can see that when I broke away from what society taught me was reasonable, and I stepped into the unreasonable, I had a tremendous growth experience. This doesn’t always mean that my standards were higher, but they were different. Sometimes my choices would be labeled as weird or reckless, but in retrospect I was just doing what made sense under the circumstances.

It takes time to get used to a standard that people may find strange or unreasonable. Is it reasonable or unreasonable that I haven’t had a job in more than 28 years? That just seems like a normal and sensible way to live. Why would I want a boss telling me what to do each day? Why would I want someone else assigning me work? It seems reasonable to choose my own projects. But to other people this standard somehow seems unreasonable or odd.

Was it really unreasonable to observe during the early days of the Web in the mid-1990s that there was a pathway to generating income online? Was it unreasonable to conclude that that could be a more interesting and rewarding long-term investment than seeking traditional employment? That wasn’t unreasonable at all. It was actually quite a reasonable decision to make. Lots of people made similar decisions back then.

To follow your own path with a heart and to get better results than you otherwise would, you have to be willing to do what other people think is strange or unreasonable. Since some of society’s rules about reasonableness have surely infected your own thinking as well this means that you also have to sometimes do what you perceive to be unreasonable. You have to challenge your assessments of what’s really reasonable and right for you.

You may tell yourself that a certain path is reasonable, but how do you really feel about it on the inside? Do you think it might be an intelligent bet?

Do you ever feel that your job is dreadfully boring? Do you ever daydream about doing something more purposeful? Does doing purposeful and meaningful work seem reasonable to you? Or it that just a pipe dream? Of course it’s reasonable.

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be in a very loving, caring, affection, and rewarding relationship with a partner who loves and appreciates you too? If you told people what kind of relationship you really wanted, would they accuse you of being unreasonable? It’s actually very reasonable to want and to experience such a relationship. Why should you settle for less?

Consider this: If no one is accusing you of being unreasonable, you’re doing the game of life all wrong.

Standards that may seem unreasonable to other people can yield wonderful results.

I wouldn’t have the business, diet, lifestyle, relationship, or creative flow that I have now if I wasn’t willing to step into unreasonable territory again and again. This includes doing what I previously considered unreasonable too. I had to purge socially conditioned standards of reasonableness and unreasonableness from my thinking, so I could make more intelligent decisions. I invite you to challenge your own thinking here as well, so you can do what’s intelligent for you, regardless of how unreasonable it may seem.

Can you get yourself to do what seems unreasonable? Can you explore that space? That space is where so many juicy opportunities exist, just waiting for you to tap them.

Are your COVID-prevention efforts intelligent under the circumstances? Could you do more? Would raising your standards be intelligent, or would it really be excessive? What if your higher standards prevent just one more death? Imagine someone getting to live a significantly longer life because you took on a bit more inconvenience for several months.

Where else could you elevate your standards? Where else could you dance with the unreasonable?

Note that while some people will accuse you of going too far, you’ll also attract and encounter people who see the value in what you’re doing, and they’ll appreciate you for it. Do you want more people like this in your life? Step into unreasonable space, and they’ll show up.

Here’s another way to frame this: You have a relationship with whatever you (initially) consider to be unreasonable. What’s the nature of this relationship? Will you always shun the unreasonable? Will you always reject it?

I prefer to have a different relationship with the unreasonable. I like to notice it and acknowledge its presence. I like to be curious about it and to explore how I really feel about it. I like to poke it and study it, but it often feels like it’s poking and studying me. Then I may enjoy dating it or dancing with it, even as it continues to tease and seduce me. And if I like it, I may eventually enjoy a long-term, committed relationship with it.

It seems reasonable to go through these phases slowly and gradually. So there’s also the relationship with speed to consider. For certain opportunities, it’s riskier to move too slowly, and it’s more intelligent to go at a pacing that feels unreasonably fast.

How do you feel about your current calibration here? Do you see room for improvement in your relationship with the unreasonable? A good place to start is to simply decide that it’s time to upgrade this relationship. Maybe you’d benefit by developing an unreasonably good relationship with the unreasonable. 😉

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