Tag Archives: Abundance

Set an Incompatible Goal

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One way to shift your character – and your life – in a new direction is to set a goal that’s incompatible with the limitations of your current character.

In other words, set a goal that you would would never set. Then work diligently to pursue and achieve that goal.

Thinking you can’t do something because it’s out of character for you is still just a thought. You can change your thoughts, but sometimes it’s easier to change your actions and behaviors and let you thoughts play catch-up. Sometimes thoughts of who you are just get in your way and slow you down.

When you try to change yourself at the level of thought first, sometimes that works, but other times it will just lead you into a circular trap of thinking, thinking, and more thinking – and never actually doing, exploring, and experiencing.

Pay special attention to where you have desires that you tend to quickly suppress, especially with respect to ambitious goals and lifestyle experiences.

What experiences are other people having that you secretly envy?

What do you secretly daydream about doing or experiencing, but you could never tell anyone?

Have you ever thought about pulling one of those crazy ideas out of the dream space and setting it as a real goal to accomplish? Other people have already done that.

There’s something transformational about writing down a goal that doesn’t feel like you.

I encourage you to try this: Write down some goals that you would never set as goals. If you have a system for tracking your goals and projects, add those new goals to that systems. Create stub projects for them. Slot them right alongside your other goals. Notice how this feels. Does it seem unreal? A bit edgy perhaps? Realize that you could actually achieve those goals. You could make them real. They don’t have to just haunt you in the idea space.

One example is starting a business. Some people grow up believing that they aren’t cut out to run a business. Having been an entrepreneur myself since 1994 and having met hundreds of other entrepreneurs, I can tell you that a lot of people feel that way. Many still feel that way even after they’ve been entrepreneurs for years. Lots of people don’t think they’re cut out for it, even after doing entrepreneurial activities for 10 or 20 years. So if you have doubts about whether or not you can do this, join the club – you’re way more compatible with this goal than you think.

It’s odd that even after years of doing something regularly, it can still take a while for a person’s self-image to catch up. People think they need to meet some arbitrary standard of achievement before they can claim certain labels. But the labels don’t matter that much anyway. The actions and the results matter a lot more.

Another example would be to have sexual experiences that you feel are beyond you. For some it’s losing their virginity. For others it’s having a threesome or participating in an orgy. For still others it’s having a regular sex partner with whom there’s a strong mutual attraction.

If you’d like to have a lifestyle or sexual experience that you haven’t had yet, it should be on your goals list, written down plain as day. It doesn’t matter if you don’t see yourself as “that kind of person.” Add it to your goals anyway. Take action and use your problem-solving skills to move the goal forward, just like any other.

The notion that anything is beyond you is just a thought pattern. It’s not the actual truth. There are plenty of people who are less intelligent, competent, and attractive than you are who regularly experience what you rule out. You’re probably putting some of them on a pedestal; if you met them in person, you might be far less impressed.

That’s what nudged me to set a lot of stretch goals. I met people who achieved some of my stretch experiences, and I realized that a lot of them aren’t the amazing people I assumed they were. They’re just people.

When I started ruling in those kinds of experiences at least at the level of goals that I could freely set, that made all the difference. That made my mind do a double-take: Wait… we’re actually setting these as goals? Ummm… okay, why the hell not? This could get interesting!

When you set an incompatible goal as a real goal, it pushes your brain to start asking some really good questions that you should be asking, like these:

  • Is this goal really impossible for me?
  • Is this goal really incompatible with who I am? Does it have to be?
  • Why can’t I pursue this now?
  • Could I become the kind of person who could have this experience?
  • If so-and-so can have this experience, why not me?
  • Do I want this? Can I admit that to myself?
  • Why am I so afraid of this goal?
  • Are there people who would regard my resistance and hesitation as silly, unnecessary, or cowardly?
  • Are there people who’d encourage me to go for it if they knew the whole truth about my thoughts and feelings on this?
  • If I could be sure that this reality is a simulation, would I let myself have this experience?

That last one is a nice way to weave in the subjective perspective.

The goals you’ve ruled out will often be the most fun, the most growth-oriented, the most motivating, and the sexiest. They’ll also be the scariest because you’ll have to stretch who you think you are to get there. That’s good. An empowering goal ought to stretch your self-image. It ought to challenge you. It ought to push your buttons.

Take a possibility you’ve been dismissing, and just try setting it as a real goal. Put it on your goals list. Then let yourself feel the resistance and self-doubt. Call it ludicrous if you must. And then say: Yeah, okay, there’s some resistance, hesitation, self-doubt, shame, fear, and so on. But I still kinda want it. It would still be an awesome experience to have. Then let the goal remain on your list. Just keep looking at it when you see your other goals and projects. Just keep leaning into the realization that you could actually do it.

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Pleasure Is Not Addictive

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Here’s an interesting frame for thinking about the connection between pleasure and addiction. It’s not the only frame you can use, but I think it’s a useful perspective to avoid some confusion.

The Experience of Pleasure

Pleasure is a frequency of experience. By itself it is not harmful or addictive, just as water isn’t addictive per se. Pleasure can be a worthy pursuit when approached with some degree of respect, sacredness, or reverence. You can enjoy the deliciousness of pleasure without getting into trouble.

Please do not see pleasure as anything naughty or perverse. It is absolutely fine to explore pleasure. There is beauty in it.

There are risky attachments to pleasure, like drug or sex addiction, where the person is no longer in control, and subconscious drives are controlling the person’s behavior.

There is no inherent need for pleasure though. It is a drive but not a need. When someone loses control in an addictive way, it is not because of a need for pleasure. There is another way of looking at this that reveals deeper truths.

The Reward of Pleasure

Pleasure is simply a reward. It’s an algorithm. It’s an energy. When certain conditions are met, pleasure is activated. You understand how to meet some of those conditions and activate some pleasure whenever you want. Other activations may be within reach too, but you may not have explored them yet.

Pleasure is like a carrot dangling in front of certain experiences. You feel it in sexual experiences but also during a shopping experience that you liked or upon reading an engaging book. You feel it when you get on a plane to go somewhere interesting.

You may have been conditioned to believe that pleasure is something naughty, dark, or sinful. It’s indulgent. It’s a side excursion. It’s a form of procrastination. It’s unnecessary. It’s addictive.

But such assumptions are inaccurate and will only create extra stuckness. Pleasure isn’t addictive.

Pleasure and Addiction

If pleasure itself isn’t addictive, then what is addictive?

The way you frame pleasure can be addictive. It’s addictive to see it as naughty, dark, or sinful. It’s the shame that’s addictive.

How so?

What is addiction? An addiction is a repetitive behavioral pattern that seems outside of one’s control. Such a pattern is typically activated subconsciously, right? What are those activators? They’re also algorithms. They’re energy forms too, but let’s think of them as algorithms for now.

What would those algorithms look like? What is their internal code? They are not complex.

Here’s the basic algorithm of addiction, reduced to one line of code:

If there’s something I don’t want to deal with, pursue pleasure instead.

You could frame this in a variety of other ways too, like pursuing lesser pain instead of pleasure, but this is a pretty straightforward way to understand addiction.

It’s the avoidance pattern that’s addictive. The person doesn’t feel free to go against pleasure because that means going into the unpleasant.

Engaging with the Unpleasant

So the solution to addiction is more courage? Or more tolerance for the unpleasant?

The solution is more willingness to engage with the unpleasant. More desire to deal with the ugliness of life. More desire to go into the muck.

The irony is that the person may see their addiction as dark and shameful, so they feel they’re going into the darkness when they’re in the thick of it. But really what they have is a cheap substitute. What they’re doing isn’t particularly shameful, but it helps them hide from the bigger shame – like the shame of wasting one’s life, the shame of being a virgin longer than expected, the shame of being afraid of social interactions, the shame of facing awkward and difficult personal growth challenges, the shame of not making “enough” money, the shame of feeling like a failure, the shame of falling behind one’s peers, the shame of being physically unhealthy or out of shape, the shame of past traumas, and so on.

It’s easier to feel ashamed of a simple addiction, and this kind of small shame is also a convenient distraction. By hiding in the darkness of an addiction, the bigger darkness is avoided.

Can Rock Bottom Be Avoided?

What does it mean to hit rock bottom? It means that the delusion of the addiction cracks, and real life seeps in. The bigger shames must finally be dealt with and can no longer be suppressed.

How can a person crack an addiction instead of having to hit rock bottom?

One must turn and face the bigger shames. Process those feelings. Engage with goals and actions in the direction of greater shame. And that in turn requires transforming one’s relationship with these areas of shame or resistance.

This doesn’t mean these other shames will necessarily be massive. They may be just a little bigger than the addictive shame. But they still represent neglected areas where progress is weak. Decide to kickstart progress in those areas by transforming how you relate to them, and the shame of the addiction will naturally fade because the bigger shame is finally being dealt with.

The bigger reframe here is to walk towards shame, not to run from it. Shame is a delusion waiting to be cracked. What cracks the delusion is to flow energy into it. Face it and confront it, not to do battle but by seeking the beautiful invitation hiding in what you were previously avoiding.

Must You Confess Your Addiction?

People often step into this confrontation by socially acknowledging and admitting their addiction. They confess the dark secret to other people. That is a good step for some, but it can also be a distraction. That addiction isn’t really the core issue, so over-focusing on it as something to be overcome can just create more rounds of avoidance of larger issues.

Just as the phase of addict is a distraction, so is the phase of recovering addict. Note that many people permanently overcome addictions without ever labeling themselves as recovering addicts.

The risk here is getting caught up in further cycles of overcoming the addiction instead of pressing forward in other areas. Trying to overcome the addiction can be just as much of a trap as hiding the addiction. The addiction stems from a larger problem, and focusing so much energy on the addiction itself, including debating whether or not to admit it publicly or fussing over how to overcome it, is for the most part a distraction that keeps your mind focused on the addiction. But the addiction (and recovering from it) is still a petty problem relative to the bigger challenges that life is inviting you to face.

Another trap is that you won’t really solve this problem by focusing on your relationship with pleasure, such as by trying to distance yourself from the pursuit of pleasure. You can have a lovely relationship with pleasure and not get addicted to it. Pleasure can be a fun part of your life, and it needn’t control you. Pleasure isn’t the problem.

Instead of trying to resolve your relationship with pleasure, as if it’s something demonic that keeps ensnaring you, focus on improving your relationship with pain instead – with areas of shame, trauma, sorrow, fear, anxiety, etc. Develop a healthier and stronger relationship with the bigger darkness that you’re hiding from. See that it’s not actually so dark as you imagined. And your relationship with pleasure will be much transformed.

The Circular Trap of Resisting Addiction

Even when seemingly addictive physical substances are involved, it’s the darkness, naughtiness, and demonization of those substances that creates the bigger trap. This framing encourages you to devote more energy into overcoming a pleasure-based addiction again and again, all the while doing circular activities that keep you from attending to the bigger, scarier, and juicier challenges of life.

Addiction is a solution to a problem: How can I avoid dealing with life’s greatest challenges?

Answer: I can repeatedly lose myself in a recurring loop of succumbing to, resisting, and then overcoming an addiction. I can turn that endless cycle into my demon, so all scarier demons can be ignored indefinitely.

Life’s big demons may tempt you into retreat. Often that may be a retreat into pleasure, but it can also be a retreat into a lesser pain. Not all addictions are pleasure-based.

Haven’t you ever indulged in some seemingly addictive pleasures without getting addicted to them? You can enjoy pleasure by choice, and it needn’t become addictive.

Note that addictions are most seductive when there’s something much bigger and scarier to be avoided.

You can enrich your life with plenty of pleasure. But don’t treat it like a private shame to escape into. See it as a healthy, positive, and enjoyable experience to have.

Your Relationship with the Unresolved

You do not need immediate solutions to life’s biggest challenges. What’s needed is an improvement in your relationships with those challenges. Instead of seeing them as curses or demons to be avoided, try framing them as invitations to learn, grow, and improve.

Even if you don’t overcome all of those challenges, that’s okay. You can still maintain a healthy and engaging relationship with them. You needn’t allow the unresolved to beat you down.

How do you overcome an addiction?

Identify and face the bigger shame, and the addiction will crack. Be willing to face, reframe, and deal with whatever you’re avoiding. Then you won’t need to hide out in the cozy corner of addiction and recovery.

When the urge to engage with an addiction arises, ask: What am I avoiding? Why must I avoid it? What’s so scary about it? How can I face it now? How is this an invitation to growth and beauty?

That will help. Face the difficult and the frightening, and addictions will no longer serve as escapes. Look for the beauty behind your fear and shame.

The Gifts of Pleasure and Pain

Transforming your relationship with the shame and pain of life will also upgrade your relationship with pleasure. Pleasure is a gift to be enjoyed, but if you try to treat it as an escape from pain, the pain will soon find its way inside of that pleasure.

Notice how delightful a pleasure can be when you approach it with purity of intent – just for the sake of enjoyment, not as an escape from pain or difficulty.

Face the pain of life. Accept the invitation and the challenge of it. And also embrace the pleasure of life. Accept the invitation to feel good. Just don’t pursue a relationship with one at the expense of the other.

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Inspiration Doesn’t Run Out

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Recently I saw a NaNoWriMo participant complaining of running out of inspiration. Their writing had hit a wall, and the lack of inspiration was to blame.

That strikes me as an odd and hugely misleading way to think about inspiration, like it’s a resource that can run dry. Truthfully it never runs dry.

Saying you’ve run out of inspiration is like saying you’ve run out of sights or sounds. You could become blind or deaf, but the sights and sounds are still present. There are visuals to look at and sounds to be heard, and they don’t run out – or at least they won’t run out during your lifetime.

Inspiration is much the same. It’s always present. It’s a collection of signals that are always broadcasting – all the time and on multiple channels. Inspiration never switches off. This resource is always available to you. For all practical purposes, it is infinite.

Just as you will never run out of sights to see or sounds to hear, you can never run out of inspiration. There is more inspiration available than you can possibly channel, even if you write, speak, or create 24/7.

When people can’t access inspiration, it’s like this scene from The Three Stooges:

Larry: I can’t see! I can’t see!

Moe: What’s the matter?

Larry: I got my eyes closed!

Moe pokes Larry in the eyes.

If you can’t access inspiration, the inspiration itself isn’t the problem. Those signals are broadcasting loud and clear all the time. The problem is with your equipment.

Inspiration and Brain Health

Almost always the problem is physical in nature. It’s a health issue.

You use your eyes and your brain to see light. If you can’t see anything when there is light hitting your eyes, that suggests a problem with your eyes or brain.

You use your ears and your brain to hear sounds. If you can’t hear anything when sounds are entering your ears, that suggests a problem with your ears or brain.

You use other parts of your brain to tune in to the flow of inspired thoughts and ideas. If you cannot perceive anything when you attempt to tune in, that suggests a problem with your brain. Something is preventing you from properly accessing this natural ability.

If you have a problem with your eyes or ears, you can go to a doctor to get diagnosed and treated. If the doctor is competent and the condition treatable, you may be in luck. Unfortunately doctors cannot cure all cases of blindness or hearing loss, and in some cases they cannot even agree on a diagnosis of the cause. Nevertheless, they still typically consider the problem to be physical in nature. Even if the problem is labeled psychological, it’s still a physical problem with the brain instead of the eyes or ears. Some part of the brain is preventing the signals from being interpreted correctly.

Many writers love coffee, tea, and other stimulants. Why? These substances temporarily change the brain’s normal functioning, which can make it easier to tune in to the flow of inspired ideas. It’s like an eye poke to force your eyelids to open. Of course if you rely on this method too much, it can be like getting too many eye pokes, which probably isn’t good for your long-term eye health.

Just as modern society can strain our eyesight and hearing, it can strain our inspiration circuitry even more. That flow of inspiration tends to be more sensitive to degradation when the brain is stressed, especially by poor diet, lack of exercise, and environmental toxins.

We don’t commonly hear laments about lacking inspiration from people who eat super clean diets, such as raw foodists. Hang out with such people for a while, and you’ll generally witness the opposite – an abundant flow of inspired ideas, available at all times.

Treat the Causes

When there’s a lack of inspirational flow, don’t think of it as a psychological or motivational failing. Don’t think of it as a self-discipline problem. See it as a health warning that you should take seriously.

Losing one’s ability to tune in to the flow of inspiration is the canary in the coal mine. It suggests that you’re heading down the wrong path health-wise. Your brain’s loss of ability signals danger. Treat this as seriously as if your eyesight or hearing starts to go. Your lifestyle is degrading your brain’s capabilities.

If I want to reduce my sensitivity to the flow of inspired ideas, that’s relatively easy. I can just eat more processed food , fewer whole foods, and fewer fruits and veggies. If I want to increase my sensitivity, I can stick with whole foods and eat lots of fresh fruits and veggies.

For a short-term boost, one or two green smoothies a day is great. A 45-minute cardio workout is also great because it rebalances hormones and neurotransmitters.

One of the most powerful habits for a high-functioning brain, especially when it comes to tuning in to inspiration reliably, is daily cardio exercise. A good minimum is 45 minutes.

If you ever run into writer’s block, try doing a one-hour cardio workout. Then drink a green smoothie (or sip on one while you write). Can’t do an hour-long cardio workout? That’s probably why you have writer’s block. If your body is that out of shape, so is your brain. Cardio doesn’t just exercise the body – it exercises and strengthens the brain too.

Our brains simply do not function well without regular exercise.

You may notice a difference in inspirational flow just from taking a day or two off from exercise. Take a week or more off from exercise, and the degradation of this natural ability will likely be significant.

For a really powerful long-term boost, eat 100% raw for a month or longer. The difference is undeniable. The cleaner your brain, the better it functions.

Maintain Your Inspiration Interface

Your brain is your interface for tuning in to the flow of inspiration. If you don’t maintain that interface, it’s predictable that you’ll run into problems with degraded performance. And if you’re already running into problems, there’s your invitation to permanently upgrade your health habits.

If your lifestyle involves feeding your body low-quality ingredients or disregarding your body’s need for regular exercise, creative blocks will serve to remind you that there’s a price to be paid.

Brain degradation is often cumulative. The longer you maintain habits that degrade your mental functioning, the more trapped you may become. You still have to use that same brain to work your way out of that trap, so don’t bury yourself so deeply that you can’t climb back up again.

Inspiration is a valuable personal resource. It’s a source of opportunity. It’s a way to connect with people. It’s readily convertible into other forms of abundance, including plenty of money if you so desire. But you need a properly functioning brain to intelligently leverage this resource.

One of the best decisions you can make is to permanently raise your health standards, and decide to never go back to a degraded level of functioning. Going vegan was a key turning point for me. Committing to regular exercise was another. I made both of those lifestyle improvements back in the 1990s. Those prior commitments are why my one-year blogging challenge for 2020 has been pretty easy. It’s straightforward to access the flow of inspiration every day – much like seeing and hearing – so I’m really just doing a typing challenge. 🙂

Struggling with creative blocks is like straining to see or hear. Step back and fix the underlying health issues. More strain isn’t a wise solution.

If your brain is healthy enough, you need never deal with writer’s block or other creative blocks. Or at least if they do arise, you know how to fix them. Imagine if you could just create, create, create as much as you want, whenever you want. Instead of trying to come up with ideas, you can enjoy the endless flow and dance with it as you please.

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How to Overcome Your Feelings of Neediness

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Why do you feel needy sometimes?

You feel needy because your own brain doesn’t believe you.

Your brain sees what you want. It also sees what you don’t want. And it genuinely expects that you’re going to keep getting what you don’t want. It doesn’t believe that you’re going to get what you want.

Your brain believes that your efforts to get what you want will ultimately provide inadequate. It believes that you’re going to fail.

So you feel needy when this happens. That’s actually a good signal, but you have to interpret – and act on it – correctly.

You can solve the problem of neediness today. You absolutely don’t have to wallow there.

Your brain is just being honest with you. That isn’t a problem per se. It’s just honest feedback, so take it as such. When you feel needy, accept that your brain is telling you that your current plans, behaviors, and actions aren’t going to work. They’re too weak or too misguided to succeed.

Despite this feedback coming from your own brain, don’t take it personally. This doesn’t mean that you’re weak. This doesn’t mean that you aren’t good enough as a human being. But it does mean that your current approach sucks and that you’re going to have to change it.

From Neediness to Abundance

In any area of life where you feel needy, ask yourself this key question:

What would it take to objectively create measurable and observable abundance in this particular area, so it would be really difficult to feel any further neediness?

Also ask:

What would it take to solve the neediness problem for life, permanently?

If you need sales in business, and customers are flooding you with purchases, it’s pretty hard to feel needy for more sales. So one priority in business is to get really good at generating sales consistently, so there’s no longer any neediness in that area.

If you need toilet paper and buy some at Costco, you’re likely to feel pretty secure about having more than enough for a while. When that sort of neediness is no longer present, you can focus on other parts of life.

Show your brain a true solution, and it will very likely stop generating feelings of neediness – if it also believes that you’re really going to implement that solution.

So to overcome neediness, you must show your brain the following:

  1. A practical solution that looks solid and workable, even if it may take a long time
  2. True evidence that you’re seriously committed to actually solving the neediness problem, even if your initial plan doesn’t work

If you could only pick one, the second item is more important than the first. While a plan can be good and convincing, what matters more for overcoming neediness is the personal commitment to create and experience abundance in that area of life. You have to convince your own brain that you’re absolutely going for the gold and that you’ll never give up.

If you convince your brain that you’re going to give up at some point, you can expect to feel pretty damned needy.

Recognize that replacing neediness with abundance is a long-term problem that deserves a thoughtful, long-term solution. Otherwise it will probably still be in your life decade after decade. Whatever neediness you’re dealing with in your 20s will still be haunting you in your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond. Problems of neediness usually don’t just go away. You will drag them forward year after year. Your brain knows this, and it’s trying to warn you NOT to do this.

It’s wise to see just how nasty long-term neediness can be, so you’ll frame the stakes as worthy of a long-term commitment to create a real solution, even if it requires a five-year investment or longer.

Solve the Problem for Life

Just reaching the point of making a real decision regarding your level of commitment to REALLY solve the problem for life is transformational. That alone is usually enough to significantly reduce or eliminate the neediness.

Consider this: What really makes you feel needy is that you aren’t committed to doing WHATEVER IT TAKES to create abundance in that particular area.

Your brain knows when you aren’t committed. And it can predict long-term failure and lack when there’s no clear evidence that you’re actually going to do what’s necessary to solve the problem once and for all. So it’s going to generate some negative feelings to communicate that you don’t have a real solution yet.

Your brain is doing you a great service here. It’s trying to grab your attention, so you’ll prioritize solving this problem and prevent a lifetime of regret.

As soon as you truly make a firm and solid commitment to a new course of action that has a decent chance of long-term success, your brain can finally be satisfied that you’ll eventually get there. It can start predicting success, and so it will very likely start generating some positive emotions. You won’t feel neediness anymore. Instead you’ll feel confident, motivated, excited, curious, and other empowering emotions.

Stop disappointing your own brain with your egregious lack of commitment. Your brain isn’t fooled by your half-assed efforts. It can see plain as day that you’re going to fall short.

What About Intentions?

Are mere intentions enough? Ask your brain. It will tell you when it believes that you’re doing enough and when you’re just practicing wishful thinking and deluding yourself.

If your goal is basic enough that just holding some positive intentions will create abundance, you’ll feel great just holding those intentions. Maybe your brain has seen enough evidence that this approach works for you, and it can predict success when you apply it under certain conditions.

But if your brain isn’t convinced, you can hold those cutesy intentions all you want, and much of the time you’ll still feel anxious, worried, and needy because your brain doesn’t believe that the power of intention alone will be enough.

How will you convince the universe to give you what you want if you can’t even convince your own brain?

When your own brain demands more from you, give it more.

Remember that when you feel needy, your brain is saying: I don’t believe you.

Whatever It Takes

So what can you do today, right now, to overcome feelings of neediness and replace them with certainty and confidence?

Do WHATEVER IT TAKES to create the EVIDENCE that you are 100% committed to solving this particular problem for life. Convince your own brain that you’re serious.

One of the greatest transformations I see in my readers who change their lives for the better is when they finally decide to get SERIOUS about solving a problem that’s been plaguing them for a long time.

Some frame it as: no more playing small. It’s like graduating to a new level of maturity.

Instead of resisting the bigger effort required for success, you can accept the invitation.

Say to yourself something like this:

Okay, so my previous efforts have been wholly inadequate. If I keep doing what I’m doing, maybe I’ll get some incremental gains here and there. Maybe I’ll get lucky. But I’ll never get to experience anything close to the level of success I’d really like in this area of life. And if I don’t do something about this right now to change course, I’ll be dealing with this same crap year after year for the rest of my life. It’s just not going to get much better than it already is, and it may even get worse. The only way to succeed is to up my game. I can’t keep playing this the way I’ve been playing it – that is just never going to work.

You can even dialogue with your brain through journaling. Converse with it to see what it actually needs to see from you in order to stop generating feelings of neediness. Listen for the truth, not for the feel-good answer you’re hoping for.

Through practice and observation, you’ll learn what it takes to convince your brain that you’re going to succeed, and you’ll recognize when it doesn’t believe you.

I can tell by how I feel that I’ve convinced my brain that I’m going to write a novel in November (or at least the first 50K words of it). I feel certain and confident that I’ll actually do it. That’s because I’m all-in committed. Other people can see evidence of this too, like my blog posts about this commitment, my NaNoWriMo profile with the book project already created, social media updates about it, recent books I’ve been reading about writing, research I’ve done on story structure, etc. The external evidence may help to convince other people that I’m serious about this, but what really matters internally is that I’ve convinced my own brain that I’m all-in and that I will actually do this. I’ve done enough for my brain to signal loud and clear that it believes me.

Where in your life do you want certainty, confidence, and abundance? Start by convincing your brain that you’re 100% all-in committed to reaching a certain level of abundance and moving beyond scarcity. You can do this in any area of life: money, relationships, professional achievement, creative self-expression, lifestyle, and more.

What will it take for your brain to believe that you’re absolutely going to do enough to succeed?

If you don’t know, then ask your brain what it needs to see in order to be fully convinced. The answers may be simpler than you expect, like: join NaNoWriMo, join the local NaNoWriMo group, buy a half dozen audiobooks on writing and start listening to them, share the commitment publicly, invite others to join in, research story structure, create a novel project in Scrivener, start brainstorming story ideas, etc. Even before doing all of those items, my brain grew convinced when it saw sufficient evidence that I was going to do them and not stop – and that’s before I’ve written a single word of the actual novel.

Beyond Your Comfort Zone

You can’t fool your own brain. It sees right through you. If you feel needy, that’s your brain telling you LOUD and CLEAR that it doesn’t believe you and that it doubts your sincerity. It’s predicting that you’re going to fail because it’s not seeing enough evidence of any real and true commitment. So it’s calling your plans and intentions out as B.S. that won’t work.

That is a call to change – to immediately and powerfully alter course. That can be done in a day. It’s a decision – not a needy one but a strong one that proves to your brain that you’re making a commitment and that you absolutely won’t quit till the job is done.

Convince your brain that you’ll do whatever it takes to succeed. If you haven’t done that yet, then your “whatever it takes” is going to require that you stretch beyond your comfort zone. Don’t confuse “whatever it takes” with “whatever feels comfortable.”

Be willing to do what feels awkward, uncomfortable, and scary. That’s all part of doing whatever it takes.

If awkwardness is enough to stop you, you’ve lost. If discomfort is enough to stop you, you’ve lost. If fear is enough to stop you, you’ve lost.

Your path to abundance may very well take you through awkward, uncomfortable, and scary experiences. Be willing to experience all of that. Surrender to that possibility. Make it clear to your brain that you won’t use those as excuses to quit. Then create some real evidence by deliberately doing something awkward, uncomfortable, or scary. Prove that you’re serious.

Alternatively, you can continue to wallow in neediness – month after month, year after year, decade after decade – until you don’t even cling to false hope anymore, and your neediness is replaced by permanent regret.

Note finally that neediness is actually a positive sign. If you feel needy, it means that your brain still believes you can succeed, but only if you change your approach, raise your commitment, and finally get serious.

Neediness is an invitation; don’t leave it unanswered.

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For the Experience

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One framing that I find empowering is to do something for the experience.

If you choose not to do something, you don’t get the experience, which means you miss out on a lot of potential benefits.

When you lean into new experiences, you’re likely to gain some or all the following:

  • New lessons
  • More character growth
  • Perspective shifts and reframes
  • Insights
  • New friends
  • Maybe a whole new social circle
  • New income-generating ideas
  • New invitations
  • New opportunities
  • New memories
  • More knowledge
  • New skills
  • More emotional depth
  • More emotional resilience
  • A more optimistic attitude
  • More excitement and passion
  • Less boredom
  • A sharper, fitter, less fragile brain

New experiences make you smarter and enrich your life in so many ways. Even a relatively short one-time experience like going to a lecture or a concert can change the direction of your life or give you a strong memory you’ll cherish for decades.

Sometimes you’re choosing between one interesting experience and another, but more often it’s a choice between something new and something familiar.

New experiences are uncertain though. They can seem scary, even when they aren’t truly threatening. It’s actually good and healthy for you to be knocked off balance now and then – it makes you stronger.

When you don’t lean into new experiences, you miss out on the wonderful romance that awaits you.

How fragile do you want to be as a human being? How crusty and set in your ways do you wish to become as you age? Do you want each day to be the same – safe and cocooned till death finally comes for you?

Are you living with that feeling of pep in your step? Do you feel excited for what you get to learn and experience each day? Or has your life become an endless barrage of sameness?

Don’t blame the virus for the sameness. There’s still plenty to explore right now without risking your health or the health of others. You can access a treasure chest of new experiences from your home.

Beware the trap of courting the same old familiar experiences. Stretch your ambition in the direction of some bigger ones now and then. Reach further into the possibility space.

This time is a gift. You could remake your identity during this time. You could develop new skills that you’ll cherish for the rest of your life. You could undertake the biggest creative project of your life – something that stretches beyond your current abilities.

Do it for the experience.

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The Point of No Return

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In Act 1 of a story with a 3-act structure, the protagonist often reaches the point of no return. Their old world crumbles, and they stumble forward into a new world, often reactively at first. There is no going back to the old world.

In a novel or movie, there may be multiple progressive points of no return, each creating a deeper level of commitment and increasing the protagonist’s risk as well.

Once Neo takes the red pill in The Matrix, he can’t go back to his old life. The old reality has ended, and now his world is permanently changed.

Once Harry Potter learns that he’s a wizard, his world is never be the same again. He must continue on to Hogwarts. Even when he goes home afterwards, it’s not longer the old status quo.

When it comes to personal transformations, we can make progress faster by deliberately aligning ourselves with certain plot beats that are guaranteed to advance the story. One of those beats is the classic point of no return.

Many people get their stories stuck in Act 1 because they just think about the end goal – if they even have a clear one at all – and they never reach a point of no return that moves their story forward.

When you keep your options open and allow yourself to retain access to your Act 1 world, you remain stuck in Act 1. That’s what Act 1 characters do. They resist the call to adventure, to risk, and to change. They are not committed to change, so real change doesn’t occur.

Are you currently living as an Act 1 character in your story?

Suppose someone wants a more independent lifestyle, but they keep showing up to work at a job they dislike. That’s Act 1. We’re seeing the initial status quo. To advance the story, something must perturb and eventually destroy that status quo. A catalyst is needed.

Are you waiting for a catalyst to magically appear in order to progress your story? Are you waiting for Hagrid or Trinity to show up? Are you waiting for your cell phone to cough up a hologram of Princess Leia? These types of events happen in movies, but in real life you may end up waiting a very long time, perhaps years or even decades.

Are you waiting passively for a catalyst, or are you actively looking for one? Better yet, when you need a catalyst, you can create your own. Why wait?

If you want to advance your story, a good first step is to focus on graduating from Act 1, so you can progress to Act 2. Work on reaching your point of no return. Your old world must die, and you must come to accept the obviousness of that. As long as you still think you can keep your old world humming along safely, you’re still thinking like an Act 1 character, and you aren’t ready for Act 2.

In your personal Act 1, realize that your dead-end job, your dead-end relationship, or your dead-end health habits must come to an end. You cannot keep living in Act 1 unless you want your life story to remain perpetually stuck.

With any powerful personal goal, focus first on raising your commitment level. Make it inevitable that you’ll at least get moving in that direction. A good place to begin is to accept that your old world must collapse. You’re going to have to leave it behind.

In order to do this, you must lean your character towards growth, mystery, and risk. Yes, that will probably seem scary at first. Acts 2 and 3 are way more risky and dangerous than Act 1. Act 1 is cozy and safe – and also boring if it goes on too long.

In a typical 100-minute movie, Act 1 is around 25 minutes – just the first 25%. If you remain stuck in Act 1, you’re leaving most of the value of your life untapped and unlived.

This takes courage of course. What also helps is knowing how awful it will be if you grow old and die while your character is still in Act 1 of your story. If you really want to live, you’ll go through multiple story arcs during your lifetime, and these story arcs can overlap. So sometimes you’ll be in Act 1 of one part of your story while you’re in Act 3 of another.

Do you already have regrets about how much time you’ve spent stuck in Act 1? If so, work on progressing to Act 2 by creating the death of your old world. Engineer your own point of no return, where change becomes inevitable. Demand more courage from yourself. Don’t wait for a catalyst to appear. Reading this can be enough of a catalyst if you want it to be. You’re fully capable of making a real decision to change. That starts with realizing that you’re finally done with Act 1.

One of my personal story arcs that spanned many years was a progression from financial scarcity to abundance. My transition from Act 1 to Act 2 happened in 1999. The decision wasn’t the surface idea to stop being broke financially. It was a decision to stop pretending that financial scarcity could stop me from having a fun, happy, and rewarding life. I resolved to stop stressing over money and to start having way more fun in life. I stopped giving my power away to some number in a computer database. That was the real decision that progressed me to Act 2. It was a decision to change how I related to life and money.

The point of no return is really a decision. It’s when you decide to progress your story, and you also decide that there’s no going back. The dead-end job is done. The dead-end relationship is over. The dead-end health habits are finished. The dead-end relationship with money must die.

Other people will see your outer journey, but these decisions have more to do with your inner journey. You don’t just decide to leave your job for surface reasons. You decide that you’re no longer going to be the timid and needy person who will show up for a job that isn’t right for you. You’re not going to keep being the coward who will continue taking orders from a misguided boss. You’re not going to be the drone who works for a company for misaligned values. It’s time to construct a new identity that fits who you’ve ready to become.

A real decision is harder than action. A real decision progresses you into Act 2 of your story. You’ll know when you’ve made the decision because you’ll feel this deep acceptance – and often even some sorrow – that Act 1 is finally over and done with.

Don’t wait for an external catalyst to get your story moving forward. Invite or create whatever catalyst you need to progress your story. Don’t keep living as an Act 1 character when you’re ready for Act 2.

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Why You Should Make a Video in Your Bathrobe

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I love mental and emotional resistance training because it has done so much for me over the years. It’s a fabulous way to think about skill-building when you’re diving into new territory, especially when you feel anxious, uncomfortable, or off balance.

Consider learning how to record and publish videos online, for instance.

So much of this is about how you model the experience in your mind.

A video can be a performance. It can be a conversation. It can be a form of play. It can be a gift. You can frame the experience however you like, but you won’t really feel free to choose your framing until you crush the automatic frames foisted on you by society, like the performance framing.

A simple way to break the automatic frames and discover greater freedom is to notice what you’re resisting about an experience and deliberately do those very things with the intention of losing your fear and resistance.

So don’t fuss over trying to provide value when you begin. Focus instead on shedding your fear, anxiety, and discomfort with the medium. The value will come through more strongly as you do that.

Suppose you want to get comfortable with making online videos. For many people that can feel very awkward and uncomfortable when you first start out.

Even after years of practice, some people still feel awkward and uncomfortable – sometimes even more than when they started. Partly that’s because they didn’t deliberately chase down the resistance. They mostly tiptoed around it, so the resistance remains. Sometimes the resistance even grows as you gain experience.

Consider this type of goal:

Make and publish 50 videos.

That’s an okay goal to gain some experience, but it’s not the same as deliberate practice. You can make hundreds of videos and not practice in the direction of your true resistance. You can still end up trapped into being a bit of a perfectionist, not feeling truly free. You may find that the conditions have to be just right before you’re able to hit the record button. You may procrastinate a lot too.

Consider this way of framing an initial goal instead:

Explore and discover how to make videos anytime, anywhere, under any conditions, on a variety of topics, off the cuff with ease and lightness – without feeling any fear or anxiety.

So the goal isn’t just to gain experience with making videos. The goal is to crush fear, so you become free. Then you can fully express yourself through that medium.

Once you’ve framed your goal in terms of crushing fear and resistance, you can break it down into practical subgoals like these, which immediately suggest action steps you can take:

  • Make a video when you don’t feel like making a video.
  • Make videos in lots of different locations, including some locations that are far from ideal.
  • Make some videos where you feel ugly or unattractive, like when you haven’t showered and your hair doesn’t look right.
  • Make some videos with bad lighting.
  • Make some videos where the audio isn’t as good as it could be.
  • Make some videos while walking with a selfie stick.
  • Make some videos out in public around other people.
  • Make videos in one take, and publish them with no cuts or editing.
  • Make some videos with no pre-set topic or mental script, and speak entirely off the cuff.
  • Make a video in your bathrobe or pajamas.
  • Publish a video that you really wanted to redo because it didn’t turn out well.
  • Make some videos on controversial topics that will surely invite criticism.
  • Share something about yourself in a video that you’ve never shared before and that makes you cringe to share it.
  • Make videos when you’re hungry, tired, sleepy, etc.
  • Make videos when you feel nervous or anxious.
  • Make videos with other people.
  • Make a video when you catch yourself making a justifiable excuse not to make a video.
  • Make videos when you feel like an impostor and have zero value to give.

Whatever makes you feel self-conscious, do exactly that.

Whatever makes you feel like hiding, lean into expressing yourself.

Remember that this is just a training phase. You don’t have to live this way all the time. Just do it while you’re deliberately training through the resistance. You can even split that into multiple phases with breaks in between.

Look for the resistance in yourself, and then resolve to face it. Brainstorm a list like the one above of all the angles that make you cringe a bit. That becomes your to-do list.

It’s not just a matter of checking each item off your list once. Do them once if that’s all you need. Or do them repeatedly. But do them until you realize that it’s not a big deal to do more of them. You can feel that the resistance is either gone now, or at least it’s low enough not to stand in your way anymore.

Maybe you only need to record and publish one video in your PJs to realize that it’s not a big deal to do more videos like that. Or maybe you still feel so self-conscious after the first one that you realize that you have to do more videos like that, maybe the next one in your bathrobe and slippers, to feel comfortable being so casual on video.

You know you need to do more when you feel fear, anxiety, or worry, suggesting that the idea still appears stressful to you. You don’t need to do more when you feel bored over an idea because there is no meaningful stress anymore. What you once feared may eventually feel boring, as it should because the stress was created by a false framing anyway.

Making a video in your PJs isn’t actually stressful – it’s actually a pretty boring goal and a low bar to clear. So once you’ve cleared that bar, and it would seem boring to continue doing more in that direction, turn your attention back towards more fear-busting. Where is the resistance now?

Claw your way out of the pit of fear one step at a time. It’s a gradual process. Keep building on what you’ve done. Keep leaning into the fear wherever you find it.

This is a form of resistance training. When you train up by facing the resistance, you get stronger, and the resistance seems lighter.

Another benefit is that you build up a collection of reference experiences that you can lean on for the rest of your life. You’ll always know that you can make a video in your pajamas. You’ll always know that you can still record and publish when the conditions are far from ideal.

I know that I can make a video in my bathrobe. I can make a video when I haven’t shaved for many days, in my exercise clothes, with salty skin after a sweaty workout. I can make a video when I’m really not sure what to say or if I’m even being coherent enough. I deliberately courted those experiences a few years ago, so I could feel comfortable and be fully myself through that medium. Now it’s been years since I’ve gone more than a few weeks without being recorded on camera somewhere – CGC coaching calls, interviews, YouTube videos, etc. Most weeks I’m recorded on video at least once or twice. So it’s really useful to feel comfortable on camera without being perfectionist about it. Just show up and go.

When you do this in one medium, you can stretch it to others too. One of my best stretch goals was to do a three-day workshop with no plan, no prepared content, and no pre-chosen topic. Just do all three days off the cuff with the flow of inspiration and audience suggestion all the way through. And most importantly, do it with no fear or nervousness – just playfulness, fun, connection, curiosity, etc. It was a beautiful experience, both for myself and the attendees. It helped me reframe public speaking even more than I already had, allowing me to see it as a rich and playful form of co-creation.

What medium of expression would you love to really pwn? (Not a typo, look up pwn if you don’t know the word. It’s in modern dictionaries now.)

Gaining experience alone won’t necessarily get you there. It’s all too easy to keep dodging the scariest parts. Then you might become a control freak who can only express yourself under narrow conditions, and when something throws you off balance, you’re back to fear and anxiety again.

On the other side of your fear is freedom and expansion. You know this. Now you must summon the will to act on that knowing, or you’ll never gain access to those gifts. If you commit to such a process, you can gain access to a new medium of expression that you’ll cherish – and be able to leverage – for the rest of your life. And you can do this repeatedly with a variety of expressive forms. You can be a true multimodal creator then.

When I was younger, I was afraid of many forms of expression that involved speaking off the cuff around other people, other than a small group of close friends. So much opened up when I finally decided that this was no way to live the rest of my life, and I resolved to conquer these fears step by step. You may look far down the road and assume there’s no way that you can reach such distant goals. Don’t worry so much about the distant goals unless they really inspire you. Just focus on the immediate steps you can take right now, like sending me a link to your next YouTube video that you recorded in your bathrobe. 😉

You might figure that you’re doing people a disservice by recording and publishing some material that isn’t your best, but there’s value in that too. You’re encouraging other people not to hesitate so much and wallow in perfectionism. You teach people that it’s okay to just go. You can even weave that lesson into the video. My bathrobe video is about overcoming perfectionism, for instance.

You also never know where your self-expression experiments will lead. During his youth Stephen King submitted a short story to a magazine, and his story was firmly rejected. Years later after King became famous, the guy who’d received that story went up to King and asked him to please autograph the original copy, which the guy had kept all those years as part of a massive collection of Hollywood memorabilia. What may just be a small stepping stone today could have a totally different meaning a decade or two from now.

You’re not the true judge of the value you provide. Other people will receive value in ways you cannot predict. The crappiest video imaginable can still provide plenty of value to people in ways you wouldn’t expect. Let others decide if they’ll watch past the first few seconds. Don’t deprive them of the opportunity to soak up some of your light.

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Universal Timing Alignment

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I’ve noticed that when I get an idea for a big new project, the timing often doesn’t feel good right away. It’s as if the idea wants to get my attention, so I can start thinking about it, but it also needs time to incubate.

If I try to force the idea forward faster, it’s like pushing through molasses. It takes lots of discipline, and I have to forcefully re-engage with the task again and again. The inspiration to move it forward isn’t present. These projects don’t succeed. If they ever get completed, the results are disappointing.

On the other hand, if I conclude that the idea isn’t right for me because the inspiration to take action isn’t there yet, that could kill the idea completely. I may never get around to doing it if I force the “now or never” attitude.

There’s an empowering alternative approach, which is to say yes to the idea and then to invite the alignment that can move it forward powerfully without having to force it. You can say yes to the idea and invite the inspiration to act. Then you wait.

I think of this as aligning with truth first, then love, and then power. I often see the appeal of an idea – the truth aspect – first. Then I need time to dance with the idea for a while. I have to play with it and explore different permutations of it. I need to discover what it wants to become and how I can bring it to expression. This phase of aligning with love for the project could take months, sometimes years. It’s very personal too – I must discover what the project means to me and why I’d want to do it. So this phase is really an exploration of deeper meaning.

This meaning doesn’t have to be so grandiose. Often it’s a very simple framing. Where’s the fun? Where’s the play? Where’s the growth? Why would I want to invest weeks or months of my life in this? What’s the point?

The answer is never money, by the way. If that’s the main reason for doing a project, the idea is lifeless.

The real key to discovering what a project means to me is exploring how it will affect my relationship with reality. Once I see the invitation to explore a fresh and expansive way of relating to reality, the idea starts generating a lot of its own energy. It becomes a power source. I feel waves of motivation and invitation drawing me forward, almost irresistibly so. That’s when I can fully enter the power phase, and I know it’s time to move forward strongly. The power isn’t really mine though. I don’t have to push forward with lots of discipline and force. It’s like surfing waves that are being generated. I just have to align with the waves and catch them, and their energy pulls me forward.

At this point it’s actually harder not to take action. It’s like seeing a delicious meal that’s right in front of you when you’re hungry. It would take more discipline not to take a bite. It’s easier to act when the motivation is there.

What’s the difference between an idea that dies and one that enters this power phase? I’d say the key is that I have to say a true yes to it. I have to commit myself. I don’t have to commit to the exact timing. I just have to get clear that sooner or later, I’m really going to do it. I decide that it will happen, not merely that it could happen.

Then I invite the universe to signal when it’s ready, as if it needs time to put all the pieces in place or to write the appropriate subroutines to simulate its parts of the project.

Sometimes I think of the idea as an energy bubble that hangs out in some subspace of reality for a while, and when enough other people are ready for this idea to be birthed, we all collectively combine our energies to make it happen. Even if it seems objectively like I’m doing most of the work on a project, it often feels like there’s a collective intention driving it forward.

This does require trust. It requires patience. It requires not settling for projects that aren’t very motivating. It requires the willingness to embrace a co-creative relationship with reality.

One reason I’ve learned to trust this process is that it leads to a really nice life that I appreciate and enjoy. I don’t have to work, work, work all the time. When I work in alignment with universal timing, it’s so efficient and flowing that it doesn’t feel like work much of the time. It’s more like a feeling of creative juiciness. The results of this approach are abundant, so there’s no need to scramble or hustle throughout the whole year.

When I have some downtime between these kinds of projects, I enjoy that too. I work on smaller tasks and projects. I make upgrades to my life and lifestyle. I enjoy time with Rachelle. I go through lots of books and courses. I do personal growth experiments. I ponder ideas, journal a lot, and develop new insights. I practice. I prepare. I write and share. And I live with the anticipation that another big wave of creative energy is coming up, and I know that when the timing is right, I’ll catch that wave and ride it.

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Curiosity Goals

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Maybe you have some goals for accomplishments you’d like to experience and enjoy. That’s great. Just be aware that you can also set goals for outcomes and experiences that you don’t even know if you’ll like.

One of my current goals is to be able to walk 80 steps at a normal walking pace while comfortably holding my breath. That’s after exhaling and with only relaxed and shallow nose-breathing beforehand, not while holding in a deep breath. I started working on this goal last week, and currently I’m up to 25 steps.

What will I gain by achieving this goal? I don’t know. I’m simply curious what might be different when I’m able to do that. Maybe there will be some interesting side effects like better focus and concentration. I can’t actually predict what difference it will make. After reading The Oxygen Advantage, I have some ideas regarding potential benefits, but I won’t really know if there are any meaningful benefits till I experience them.

I’m not pursuing this goal for known and clear benefits. I’m exploring it for curiosity’s sake. I like giving myself new experiences to see how they affect me.

Same goes for blogging every day this year. That isn’t a goal with clear and obvious benefits. I’d like to know what it’s like to blog every day for a year. Technically I started on December 24, 2019, so today is my 297th day of daily blogging. After publishing this post, I have 77 days left to go in the year. I wanted to know how this commitment would affect me, and now I have a pretty good idea. I doubt I’ll discover anything new in the next 77 days that I haven’t already learned in the last 297, but I suppose it’s possible. I’m almost 80% done now, so it’s a breeze to finish the year. Somehow I picked a good year for doing this challenge.

A goal is a decision to take action in a particular direction. There’s no requirement that you must like the outcome. There’s no requirement that you must be able to predict the results. You don’t have to be excited about the benefits. You can actually just be curious to see how pursuing the goal affects you. That is sufficient motivation to pursue and accomplish a variety of goals.

Have you ever been curious about what it would be like to start your own business? Me too. That’s one reason I did it. I wanted to know what it was like. That alone is a good enough reason to do it.

Ever been curious what it’s like to take a month off and go travel? That’s reason enough.

What about going skydiving? Why not see what it’s like to jump out of a plane? Gravity does most of the work.

Are you curious to learn a new musical instrument? Curiosity is enough reason to try it.

For many goals you won’t have a clear idea of the benefits in advance. You’re unique, so when you pursue a goal, you’ll do it differently than anyone else. Your results will be uniquely your own.

Curiosity is a great antidote for perfectionism. Curiosity is flexible and detached from neediness. Curiosity keeps us wondering about what’s possible. Curiosity encourages exploration in the face of uncertainty. Curiosity is a fabulous teacher and an incredible character-sculpting tool.

Other people (such as your parents) may want you to explain your reasons for pursuing a goal. If they won’t accept curiosity as a valid answer, tell them you’re doing it just to upset them. Or combine both – tell they you’re experimenting to see how your pursuit of the goal will disturb them.

If you’re curious about a goal or experience, let that be reason enough to explore it. You don’t have to be reckless. You can still make rational and intelligent choices regarding what to explore. But do accept that rational argument that you’ll learn more by doing than by standing on the sidelines.

Accept that your mind and your character are trained and developed by experience. Whenever you pursue a goal for curiosity’s sake, another reason you’re pursuing it is for character growth. Exploration creates expansion.

Do a quick review of your current goals. Which goals are curiosity-based rather than results-based? Would you like to consider adding at least one new goal purely because you’re curious about it? Give yourself permission to do that.

Some of my most cherished experiences arose from pondering: Hmmm… what would it do to me if I pursued that? I wonder…

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The Relationship Frame

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One interesting frame shared in the book The Courage to Be Disliked is: All problems are interpersonal relationship problems.

That isn’t necessarily a true statement, but you can think of it as a lens for viewing problems. Personally I think it’s a bit exaggerated as far as lenses go. I prefer a similar but more flexible one: All problems, challenges, and situations can be framed as relationships.

Not everything translates well to an interpersonal relationship, but you can translate any situation to some type of relationship. This can include your relationships with:

  • yourself
  • other people
  • reality
  • life
  • your work
  • money
  • skills
  • your body
  • and more

Moreover, when working on your goals and habits, it’s helpful to translate your goals and habits into growth experiences for one or more of your relationships with different parts of life. This helps goals feel more personal and meaningful, so they aren’t just the mental “stuck in your head” types of goals that don’t really get accomplished.

For example, I could frame my daily exercise as a discipline-based habit that I have to push myself to do each day, but that’s a lame approach that isn’t very sustainable. That mindset looks especially weak when viewed through the relationship lens. Who wants to maintain a habit if the relationship is based on force and struggle against some kind of resistance? That kind of relationship is headed for a breakup sooner or later.

Instead of pushing myself to exercise more or exercise harder, I focused on improving my relationship with exercise. I asked questions like these:

  • What would make this relationship better?
  • What could I do to increase the enjoyment of exercise, so I naturally want to do it without having to force myself?
  • Where is there friction in the relationship, and how can I reduce or eliminate that resistance?
  • How could I keep improving this relationship over time, so it keeps getting better year after year?

This approach worked nicely. I have a very positive relationship with exercise, and it’s improved even more this year. Here are some aspects of the relationship that I focused on improving:

  • Running different routes for variety and different levels of challenge, so it doesn’t feel too routine or stale
  • Continuing to develop new routes that I’ve never run before, so I feel a sense of abundance in having different routes to pick from
  • Tuning into my body and mind to decide which route to run based on what kind of experience I want (a run with more people, a more solitary run, a run where I’ll see the sunrise, a run where I can expect to see plenty of rabbits, a run with more parks, running near the baseball stadium, running along the western edge of the city, etc)
  • Listening to really good audiobooks while I run, on topics that appeal to me, including sometimes listening to audiobooks about running from runners who love to run
  • Enjoying the views while running through the hills that overlook the whole Vegas Valley
  • Investing in quality running shoes and testing different kinds of shoes to discover my personal favorites
  • Heading out before dawn and being greeted by the rising sun
  • Sometimes picking out planets like Venus or Jupiter when I look up at the dark sky while first starting out
  • Using an Apple Watch to track my progress as I go (time, distance, pacing, heart rate, etc) – and getting a new one each year, so I always have the latest version
  • Mostly running for the enjoyment of it but occasionally setting interesting goals for distance or speed
  • Feeling a sense of accomplishment for sometimes running to spots farther out than I’ve run to before
  • Waving or nodding to other runners and cyclists I pass along the way, which gives a little feeling of social connection with the people in the neighborhood (it’s encouraging to see people exercising)
  • Feeling good when I finish running and switch to a cool down walking pace
  • Enjoying the alone time, which feels more like being than doing
  • Reminding myself to feel grateful that my body can do this (seeing it as a beautiful gift, not to be taken for granted)

Lately I’ve been running 60-70 minutes most mornings. Interestingly it feels more motivating to run for an hour or more than it used to feel to run for 30-45 minutes. One reason is that as I increased the duration, I focused more on the relationship with running rather than the discipline or habit of running. Another reason could be that these longer runs do an even better job of rebalancing hormones and neurotransmitters, so I feel even happier.

Instead of pushing myself to run farther, which I’ve done many times before but which didn’t lead to sustainably longer runs, I sought to connect more deeply with the love and beauty of running. I focused on improving my relationship with running. I leaned towards the principle of love more than the principle of power here. This worked very nicely.

There are so many other ways to apply the relationship frame to create and maintain improvements in different areas of your life. Instead of pushing yourself to work harder or with more discipline, you can focus instead on improving your relationship with your work. Same goes for your relationships with any other kinds of tasks.

More than two decades ago, this type of framing helped me a lot with improving the flow of money through my life. Instead of trying to make more money in ways that were only semi-aligned, I worked on fixing my alignment problems with money. I invested in improving my personal relationship with money. That relationship was weak – I saw money as something annoying that I shouldn’t have to deal with. But I learned to appreciate its role in life and to enjoy earning and spending it. These days I think of money as fun and playful – it feels lighter and less stressful than it used to. Having a better relationship with money makes it easier to earn it, and it’s more fun to spend it as well.

Look at an area where you tend to struggle or have a hard time accomplishing your goals. What do you see when you use the relationship frame on that area? Is your relationship based on trying to force yourself to push through resistance? If so, how could you improve the relationship over time, so you naturally enjoy engaging with this area of life? This simple reframe can generate powerful insights that can radically transform your results.

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