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

Posted on 01/05/2023 by Boris Clair

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

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

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

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

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

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

[embedded content]

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

[embedded content]

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

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

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

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

Join CGC Year 7 Now

To your continued growth and success! 🌟

20 Powerful Benefits of Joining Conscious Growth Club

Posted on 01/05/2023 by Boris Clair

The deadline to join Conscious Growth Club is tomorrow, May 1st, and we always get a surge in sign-ups that day. To make your decision easier and give you even more clarity about CGC, I recorded a succinct new video, focusing specifically on the personal impact of being a part of this vibrant community. This is a follow-up to our previous video, which highlighted the community aspects of CGC. Now, let’s dive deeper into how CGC can help you flourish, transforming your life in meaningful ways.

[embedded content]

Seize this once-a-year opportunity to join CGC during our annual enrollment period, which comes to a close at the end of May 1, 2023.

Discover more about the enriching personal benefits of joining Conscious Growth Club and how it can support you in developing focus, consistency, and accountability; enhancing your personal growth journey, and cultivating a life filled with abundance, joy, and authentic experiences. Visit our invitation page for more information:

Learn More About CGC

I’m genuinely excited to welcome you into our community and embark on this transformative journey together! Here’s to an awesome Year 7! ❤️

Get Fired as Quickly as You Can

Posted on 18/04/2023 by Boris Clair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Special Advantage in Using ChatGPT

Posted on 15/04/2023 by Boris Clair

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

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

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

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

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

ChatGPT Knows Me Well

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lesson Summaries

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

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

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

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

Motivation

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

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

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

Strengths & Uniqueness

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

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

Reviewing the Past

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

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

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

My response to the above was:

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

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

Using AI for Sales & Seduction

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

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

Let’s see how it does if I try this…

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

What if we try this on the personal side?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ask AI What to Watch

Posted on 28/03/2023 by Boris Clair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Using ChatGPT for Self-Development

Posted on 09/03/2023 by Boris Clair

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

Clarify Your Values

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

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

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

Generate a list of values related to awareness.

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

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

Suggest other values that would complement these values.

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

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

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

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

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

Predict Where Your Values Will Take You

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

Here’s a prompt you can use for this:

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

From my values I got these kinds of predictions:

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

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

Here’s another interesting prompt to try:

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

I got this list in response:

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

Here’s a good follow-up prompt:

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

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

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

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

Set Goals

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

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

Or:

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

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

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

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

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

Additionally, try this prompt with ChatGPT:

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

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

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

Create Positive Affirmations

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rewrite these affirmations in the voice of a Ninja Turtle:

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

Compressing Ideas

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

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

Presence
Simplicity
Joy
Flow
Kindness
Collaboration
Connection

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

Presence
Simplicity
Joy
Flow
Kindness
Collaboration
Love

Now compress it down to just 3.

Presence
Love
Growth

Now 2.

Presence
Love

And now just 1.

It included some extra commentary here too.

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

Love.

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

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

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

Discovering Your Ideal Audience or Social Circle

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

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

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

Here’s the response I got:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dealing With ChatGPT’s Nanny Mode Filters

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just a couple more questions…

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

The Beauty of Conflict

Posted on 21/01/2023 by Boris Clair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What It’s Like Being Me

Posted on 01/01/2023 by Boris Clair

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

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

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

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

Centeredness

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

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

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

Energy & Enthusiasm

One of the main emotions I experience is enthusiasm.

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

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

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

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

Raising Vibes

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

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

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

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

Thinking Algorithmically

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

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

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

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

Belongingness

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

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

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

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

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

Appreciation

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

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

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

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

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

Love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Freedom & Creativity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Curiosity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Order

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

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

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

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

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

Optimism

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughtfulness

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

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

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

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

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

Relationships

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

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

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

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

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

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

Defending Against Misalignments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

High-Trust Relationships & Audience Engagement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Caring

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

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

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

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

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

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

Support & Cooperation

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy New Year! 🥳 🎉

Frequencies of Experience

Posted on 30/11/2022 by Boris Clair

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

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

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

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

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

Anchor Frequencies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossover Frequencies

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

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

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

Transitioning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abundance-Aligned Frequencies

What are some of the abundance-aligned frequencies then?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Investment & Surrender

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How I Think About My Life and Work

Posted on 16/10/2022 by Boris Clair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guided by Inner Experience

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

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

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

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

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

Beyond Happiness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Serving the Flow of Life

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

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

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

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

Fresh Vibrational Combos Create Fresh Solutions

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

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

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

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

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

Vibrational Practice

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

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

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

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

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

Confidence Doesn’t Matter

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

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

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

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

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

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

Personalizing Vibes

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

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

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

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

Exploring Harmonious Co-Creation

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

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

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

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

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