Tag Archives: Abundance

Declining Vibrational Mismatches

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Do you ever get invitations that are vibrationally (or emotionally) out of sync with what you’d like to experience?

Do you get invited to boring events when you’re in the mood for some excitement?

Do you get invited to tediously slow experiences when you’d prefer faster pacing?

Do you get invitations that feel obligatory when you find freedom and flexibility more appealing?

Do you get sucked into disempowering invitations (like a pity party or whinefest) when you’re shifting into empowerment mode?

Why does this happen? Why do you get invitations like this?

The answer is pretty simple: You haven’t seriously opted out of them. You haven’t educated people to stop sending you those invites. People are inviting you because you’re letting them invite you.

During my 20s I used to get plenty of misaligned invitations. People would invite me to events that seemed disempowering, obligatory, slow, boring, tedious, and blah. The problem was that I kept saying yes to them. Even begrudgingly I’d still agree to show up now and then. I’d endure the events. I’d tolerate the invites. I trained people to feel okay with continuing to invite me or to feel entitled to obligate me.

At some point I finally realized how foolish that was and that it was just going to be endless if I didn’t make some changes. If I was running this ridiculous pattern in my 20s, I’d still be doing it in my 30s, 40s, and beyond if I didn’t cut it loose. So I updated expectations, first for myself and then by communicating them to others. I opted out of those mismatched invitations.

I prepared myself for a negative response, figuring it would eventually blow over and then I’d be free. All I needed to do was to get my message across. I didn’t need to get into long-winded explanations about it afterwards. And I didn’t need to own other people’s reactions.

And guess what happened? At first people squawked a little bit. And then they stopped inviting me – no more invites to hours-long boredomfests, no more obligatory rituals, no more disempowerment galleries to attend.

How long did it take? Oh… five or ten minutes to write an email and click send. Maybe I did that more than once for different people and situations.

How long does it take to write something like this?

After giving it some thought, I realize that these kinds of invitations are a mismatch for me. So I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t send me more invites like this. I appreciate that you’re thinking of me and would like to spend time together. I just don’t feel aligned with engaging in these kinds of experiences. Hope you understand.

That’s a very basic version, so of course you can embellish with more details if you want.

When you opt out from misaligned invites, you can finally invest in doing what it takes to get yourself invited to aligned experiences. You’ll want something to replace that emptiness. You can seek out playful, fun, ambitious, purposeful, and growth-oriented invites – or whatever appeals to you.

Now it’s hard to remember getting the kinds of misaligned invites that used to be plentiful in my 20s. People just gave up – because I instructed them to give up. Even if they continued for a while, I had already moved on and wasn’t planning to show up, so sooner or later they were going to surrender to that fact. That’s the key – people will usually surrender when they can sense your certainty.

Which is better? To show up grudgingly to misaligned experiences, not being fully present and wishing you were somewhere else? Or to show up with gratitude, appreciation, excitement, and positive anticipation for an experience you’re eager to share with people? Which is more caring and compassionate? Which is more intelligent?

Which type of invitations are you currently getting? You know why you’re getting them. And you know what to do to change them if you want.

Go where your appreciation wants to go. Leave the misaligned invitations in the past, so your present and future can be rich in aligned ones.

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The Alien Mindset of a Fixed Income

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One really weird mindset I notice among certain readers looks something like this:

My wife and I are both teachers. Our combined salary is $___. And in about five years, we’ll be earning $___. So based on this, we’re able to afford ___, but we won’t be able to afford ___.

So the basic idea is that the couple’s income is fixed and predictable. It’s not really up to them. Their family income is largely determined by the system that they’re in.

Okay, this is an alien mindset for me. I’m impressed that people can hold this mindset and not have it fall apart on them.

Here’s what I actually hear within the statements above:

My wife and I choose to get jobs working within a system where we get paid fixed salaries with modest but predictable increases over time. We’re pretending that we don’t have other options for earning more income, so we can have the experience of a fixed income for a while to see what that’s like. And we’re also pretending that we can’t afford anything these two streams don’t directly cover, so we can see what it’s like to experience that form of scarcity as well.

Remember that this couple choose to engage with this system. Even while they’re engaging with it, they still have an enormous range of options available to them. Their income isn’t really fixed – they’ve simply chosen to have the experience of earning a fixed income. To maintain that situation, they have to deliberately ignore or dismiss other opportunities for income generation, which are everywhere.

How do they tune out all those other opportunities? How do they avoid the temptation to create other income streams on the side? That’s hard!

It must take a tremendous amount of discipline to hold themselves back and keep their income from going up. I mean… how do they avoid accidentally making money some other way?

What if one of them gets inspired by an income-generating idea, and they’re tempted to take action on it? How do they stop themselves?

What if they get seduced by some new item they want to buy, but it’s not in their budget? How do they avoid earning more money to cover the expense? How do they get themselves to pretend not to want it or to settle for less than what they want?

I’m really impressed with people who can deliberately cap their income, especially if they can keep this up for years. Most of the people I hang out with regularly are really bad at this. They’re always succumbing to the temptation to make extra money. If they tried to limit themselves to earning a teacher’s salary, I don’t think they could do it. They just don’t have the discipline or the resolve.

I tried having a job with a fixed salary myself, back when I was 21 years old. I didn’t even last a year… couldn’t do it! I have no idea how some people can manage to do this year after year – and make it look easy. Their discipline must be through the roof!

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How to Invite Emotional Consent

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In my previous post, I addressed the importance of emotional consent. In this post I’ll share how to ask for emotional consent when you want to have a heart-to-heart with someone.

It’s pretty straightforward in terms of the words. The intention behind it is what matters most.

You could start with a line like this:

  • I want to share my thoughts and feelings about ___.
  • Something’s really bothering me, and I’d like to discuss it with you.
  • I’m feeling stressed/worried/anxious/____.
  • I’m stuck on ____.
  • I’d love some help with ___.
  • I had a really difficult experience a while back.
  • There’s something I think you should know about me.

Then add something like this:

  • Is this a good time?
  • Can we have that kind of discussion?
  • Do you want to hear about it?
  • Is it okay if I tell you about it?
  • Are you in a good place to hear about this now?
  • When would be a good time to talk about this? (if it’s already a normal part of your relationship to have these discussions, so there’s at least some pre-consent for that)
  • I need to vent my feelings to someone… can you play that role for me?

And then if the other person consents willingly, you can have that kind of discussion.

It’s also important to let the person be free to withhold consent or to get clarification, so honor their choice if they follow up with something like this:

  • This isn’t a good time. How about ____?
  • I’m not up for that. Maybe you could discuss this with ____ instead?
  • How deep do you want to go?
  • Do you need a certain kind of response?
  • Are you wanting empathy and understanding, a solution to a problem, both, or something else?
  • Unfortunately I’m too tired/distracted to do that now, so I don’t think I can be a good listener at this time. I hope you understand. How about ____?
  • Do you sense this would be a 20-minute discussion or a 2-hour one?
  • If I’m not available, how would you handle this instead?
  • What’s your intention for such a conversation?

The words are just to give you some examples. It’s best to use your own words and match them to the situation and to how you feel.

What’s important here is that you invite the other person to enter freely into an emotional discussion or connection with you. Don’t demand it. Don’t assume that you’re entitled to it. Don’t try to make the other person wrong for declining. Give the person space to say yes or no without trying to box them in. Think abundance here, not scarcity, even if you’re feeling emotionally needy.

If you make emotional invitations with a hidden agenda or some attachment to how the other person responds, you’ll probably pick up some resistance when making such invites, especially in the person’s tone of voice or body language. People can often sense when you’re trying to manipulate them instead of honorably asking for their help.

Some people are really good at this. They respect that sharing emotional intimacy can be risky or draining, and they know it’s best if the other person can say yes genuinely and not feel baited or trapped.

Other people could definitely stand to improve in this area, especially by letting go of entitlement and attachment to outcomes.

Hearts connect best when they choose each other freely, not when one tries to manipulate or control the other.

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Do Nice Zombies Make Worthwhile Friends?

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Some people have asked me why I don’t engage with Trump supporters, try to understand them better, invite deep conversations with them, or something along those lines. I think it’s a valid question, and the answer is simple: I don’t see any real potential in such relationships. For me they all land somewhere on a scale that spans from dumb to dumber to dumbest.

It’s not the people that are the issue per se, but the behavior pattern of supporting Trump during this time is so rotten to the core that I don’t see anything redeeming there. There’s no hint of depth, value, or worthwhile discovery. To the extent that I’ve engaged with such people over the past few years, the result has been various degrees of being creeped out.

Some people have said, “But some of them are nice people.” I disagree. In order to frame such people as nice, I have to stretch the definition of nice way too far for it to work. At best I’ll end up with some version of “nice and dumb” or “a nice moron” or “a really nice pile of crap.” I can’t really think of anyone as nice once they’ve been Trumpified. The Trumpification of anyone trumps any niceness, rendering it far removed from anything nice.

Imagine the nicest person you know being bitten by a zombie and turned. Will you still regard them as nice while they try to eat your brain? Does the nice zombie label really work? No, all zombies are zombies. The closest they get to nice is when they’ve been rendered mostly harmless, such as by having their lower jaws removed, so they can’t bite you. It never really makes sense to see them as nice.

Really the closest I can get to labeling such people as nice is to go with mostly harmless, which does indeed apply pretty well to some. But that’s still a pretty crappy connection offer.

When an offer is so horrendously bad, I find it best to say a blanket no to it. Toss those cards in the muck, and let’s see the next hand.

Does this mean if I went earnestly digging for nuggets of goodness among Trump supporters that I wouldn’t find anything worthwhile at all? No, I’m not saying that. Maybe there is something decent in there, but there’s just such a huge mountain of excrement, falsehoods, and ignorance to dig through that a few diamond shards aren’t gonna cut it. The stench is too repulsive to engage with.

One reason I’ve leaned in this direction is that I explored other possibilities first, and nothing quite felt aligned till I thought, Hmmm… what would happen if I took the evil exit here and just declared the whole lot of them to be a stinky pile of excrement?

At heart I’m an explorer, and I’m willing to keep trying different approaches to life to see what works best for me.

Am I saying that you have to use my approach too? Not at all. I think you should find your own path here, and if your approach is different from mine, I celebrate that difference. Don’t clone my approach. Find your own path to alignment through this. But do keep asking if what you’re doing is working well for you, and if not, be willing to change your approach repeatedly till reality seems to affirm your choice.

I noticed that when I was more tolerant of Trump supporters, their presence in this reality kept bugging me. I kept thinking, Are millions of people really this dumb? Seriously, WTF…

And 30,000+ lies later, that attitude starts wearing thin.

It’s easier to deal with a pile of shit when you see it as just a pile of shit and not as a pile of shit that might have some gold or diamonds in it. It’s the feeling that maybe it’s worth digging through that stench that causes problems. Interestingly, this stems from a scarcity mentality, right?

Do you see that? Why deal with Trump supporters socially at all, even if you think they may have some redeeming qualities? Why deal with the smell? What you’re missing is that in a different social direction, there are way more gold and diamonds that aren’t covered in shit. You just need an abundance mindset to see them.

A Trump supporter isn’t going to be a good social match for me by any stretch of the imagination. The smell is always going to be an issue, and the gold and diamonds they may offer socially will never compensate for the smell. So as I see it, it’s a sensible response to just call this a “hell no!” all around.

Once I realized that engaging with Trump supporters had to be a hell no for me, it did feel a bit extreme at first, but I’ve since gotten used to it. And the more I’ve gotten used to it, the more a different direction of social abundance started opening up to me.

I’ve been seeing a gradual increase in positive results from this mindset, which is why I continue to double-down on it. By saying no to the stenchiest stench of the social realm, reality no longer has to simulate this kind of nonsense in my close-up presence, so it can devote more resources to expanding the aspects of life that resonate with me. Consequently, I’ve seen more opening and expansion in directions that feel aligned and intelligent.

It was like I said to reality: Stop wasting resources simulating the dreadfully dumb and stinky. Reassign those resources to more aligned connections, opportunities, and invitations – anything that smells good.

And that’s been working well indeed.

As a simple recent example, yesterday I just loved the livestreamed script reading of The Princess Bride, which was also a fundraiser for the Wisconsin Democratic Party (as I mentioned in yesterday’s post). That was a superb treat! There were more than 100,000 people on the call.

I think that’s the first time in my life I’ve made a political contribution, and I was happy to finally lose my political donation virginity. I love how this invite showed up in the form it did – a chance to engage in a fun way with my all-time favorite movie and many of its cast members. That was an easy yes.

It was great to see actors standing tall against the current Trumpian nonsense too. I felt a stronger sense of oneness from that, like we’re all in this together, pushing back against a zombie horde of 30,000 lies. It’s time to shift this reality in a more positive direction. It was really wonderful to see so many comments coming in from people who are similarly aligned with creating a positive future.

By saying a firm no to 100% pure crap and the people who are wallowing in it, I see beautiful doors opening in the part of reality that isn’t crap.

I felt tremendous respect and admiration for Cary Elwes for making the event happen – one actor stepping up to bring us together in this way.

Lately I’ve been experiencing a rising sense of hope and optimism. I’m feeling better and better about the direction this reality is going.

This is common when we step up our boundary management. Say a really bigger no to the misaligned and stop engaging with it. This doesn’t mean denying the existence of the misaligned. It means acknowledging: I see that you exist – and that you really are a pile of shit that doesn’t belong anywhere near me!

When you see a pile of crap on the sidewalk, do you feel inclined to talk to it and see if you might improve your relationship with it? Or is the sight and smell enough of a turnoff for you to simply call it as you see it and step around it, or shovel it off to the side, so no one else steps in it?

Now there is a nonzero chance that some crap contains gold or diamonds. Is that enough for you to go digging into it each time?

When I label the shit as shit, I needn’t give it as much attention, which frees my attention to focus on legitimate sources of social gold. Engaging with the real gold is fun and rewarding and way less stinky.

So my preferred approach to dealing with Trump supporters isn’t to engage with them – I have zero interest in subjecting myself to the vapid nonsense they spout. I prefer to marginalize the hell out of them. Squeeze them to the borders of my reality, so I barely notice them anymore. Send them back to the simulator to repurpose as something more useful, like fresh spatulas.

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The Trepidatious Concertgoer

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Fragile Objections

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Suppose you’re sitting in a Toastmasters meeting where members are practicing their speaking skills. Suppose there are about 20 members in the room, which would be pretty typical for a Toastmasters club.

Now suppose you hear a fellow member give a speech that you find objectionable, and it bothers you to hear such words spoken within your club. The topic is permitted within the club though.

What do you do?

Do you stay quiet and keep your thoughts and feelings to yourself?

Do you voice your objections to the speaker privately?

Do you privately share your concerns with some other members about the speech or the speaker?

Do you stand up during the meeting and voice your objections in front of all the members, including the speaker?

Do you sign up to give a speech, so you can disagree with the first speech?

Do you call for a vote to kick the member out?

Do you switch to a different Toastmasters club?

Do you quit Toastmasters altogether?

How you handle this depends on your personality and how you frame the situation. Your response depends on the meaning you assign.

Some assignments of meaning will cause you to have a more fragile relationship with your club, with its members, or with Toastmasters. Other meanings will give you enough resilience to maintain a long-term connection to your club or the organization.

Here’s a very fragile assignment of meaning:

What that speaker shared is totally out of line and should never be heard in this or any other Toastmasters club. If I stay in this club (or in Toastmasters), it means I’m personally condoning what this speaker said. I cannot stomach that.

That framing is pretty inflexible. It frames you into a corner, giving you few options. This sort of framing is incongruent with a long-term membership in Toastmasters.

Here’s a more resilient and flexible assignment of meaning:

A Toastmasters meeting is a growth-oriented practice space. Toastmasters is where members go to learn and build their skills. We don’t expect perfection there. We expect and even encourage mistakes. It’s expected that some members will share disagreeable ideas. It can even be good to have our viewpoints challenged sometimes. Variety can be nice.

If you’re in Toastmasters long enough, there’s a good chance you’ll encounter an objectionable speech or speaker. If you want a more resilient relationship with Toastmasters, it’s important to take these situations in stride. If you get worked up over them, you’ll have a more fragile relationship with Toastmasters, and sooner or later you’ll find a reason to ring the bell and quit.

From the outside looking in, the difference between these frames is pretty striking. You may look at the first frame and think that of course it’s not going to work long-term if someone adopts that frame. The second frame provides way more flexibility.

Here’s a key point: You always have a choice of framing. You can lean towards resilient frames, or you can choose fragile frames. By choosing a fragile frame, you increase the likelihood that you’re going to have to ring the bell and quit eventually. With the first framing above, quitting Toastmasters becomes pretty much inevitable; it’s just a matter of time.

So consider that by adopting such a fragile frame, you’re really choosing ring the bell and quit as well. Using a fragile frame is a way of inviting the final straw moment to present itself, often before you can identify a viable final straw event.

Why do this fragility dance then? Why pick a fragile meaning when it leads to such a predictable outcome?

One reason is that people often prefer a final straw objection. It provides a neat and tidy justification for a sometimes complex decision.

Like any growth-oriented space, Toastmasters is uncomfortable at times. You invite some risk when you show up. You may feel anxious at a meeting. You may face embarrassment. Now and then you may leave a meeting not feeling good about how you did. You may feel envious of peers who seem to be progressing faster than you.

It’s hard to keep showing up and facing that discomfort. It’s also hard to say that you’re leaving because you no longer want to deal with that discomfort.

Truthfully there are lots of reasons that people may choose a fragile frame. A common reason is to speed up the arrival of a final straw moment, so quitting can be justified without having to offer up a reason like, “It’s too uncomfortable” or “I felt too anxious” or even “My heart is calling me in a different direction.”

The downside of using fragile objections is that other people often won’t buy into them. While you may feel they’re solid enough reasons to explain your bell ringing, it’s fairly easy for many people to see them as self-created justifications, just as easily as you can spot the fragility of the first frame above. People will generally let you off the hook when you produce your fragile objection, but they’ll also likely conclude that it wasn’t your real reason for ringing the bell.

Ultimately fragile objections are a crutch. This crutch begins with the adoption of a fragile frame. A key personal growth challenge is to graduate from needing to use fragile frames that inevitably lead to fragile objections. If you’re going to ring the bell, can you learn to do that without needing to engineer any justification for it.

In any area of life, you can ring the bell and quit without having to explain or justify your actions. You can quit Toastmasters at any time and for any reason, for instance. You can quit your job today just because you decide it’s time.

I think another reason people use fragile objections is that it’s a less scary way to transition. Some decisions involve a lot of uncertainty, and it isn’t perfectly clear which way to go. To decide without a fragile objection, you need to trust reality or your intuition a lot more. You also have to accept that a big decision involves risk. If it feels like you have little or no choice in the matter, it takes some of the pressure off and makes you feel less responsible for the choice and its outcome.

So one solution I’ll provide is this: Be willing to be wrong. Be willing to make mistakes. Be willing to sit in the muck of bad outcomes that resulted from your decisions.

Consider that this life is much like a Toastmasters meeting. It’s a growth-oriented space where you learn by doing. You will make mistakes. You will make some decisions that leave you shaking your head afterwards. And that’s okay. It’s part of the reason you’re here.

You do not need to engineer fragile objections to ease the burden of those decisions by artificially narrowing your options. You can choose flexible frames that give you lots of options, and you can still make decisions even when facing a minefield of risk. Now and then you’ll choose wrong. Celebrate that you’re free to do that because that is an incredible gift.

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Why I Like My Life So Much

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I did some reflection in my journal about why I like my life so much. Here’s what I came up with:

Space for Reflection

I like that my life isn’t overloaded with so much activity. Sometimes I get really busy, but over the course of a year and during most months of the year, I have plenty of time to think, reflect, and ponder.

This month a number of friends told me how much I seem to be a person of deep thought. I do love to think deeply about many different topics, and I’m genuinely curious about so many aspects of life. For someone like me to be happy, I absolutely need abundant space to engage in deep thought.

I can’t really help doing this. Most of the time I’m not even aware of it. It just seems normal to me to keep asking questions about the nature of this reality. I’m always trying to connect more dots and deepen my understanding of how life works.

I feel less happy when I fill my schedule with too much activity and don’t have as much time to think.

I especially love morning runs because they carve out an hour of thinking time each day. One reason I like going for longer runs is that I gain more time to think and ponder.

I find thinking to be a gloriously rewarding activity. It’s been super important for me to create a lifestyle rich in time to think. It definitely makes me happy to have this kind of lifestyle.

Money on the Back Burner

The world of money sometimes interests and excites me, but much of the time I find it rather mundane and boring for my tastes. So I usually prefer to keep this aspect of life in the background instead of the foreground.

I still consider money when making business and life decisions, but I prefer not to base decisions mainly on financial concerns. I’d rather make decisions based on other forms of value, such as appreciation, exploration, or growth.

For me to be happiest, I’ve found it best to see income generation as a problem to be thoroughly solved, so financial concerns don’t get in my way too much.

I like having years’ worth of savings, so even if all of my income switched off suddenly, I could coast for a long time – plenty of time to create new income streams, even if I had to start over in a whole new field from scratch. And even if the savings evaporated, I’ve invested enough in a variety of income skills that I feel that I could replenish it as needed.

“Get the money problem solved once and for all” was something I worked on for many years. I like having this area of life solved well enough that I can give more attention to other aspects of life.

Exploration

I love to explore. I get bored easily, so wandering through different learning experiences is a big part of my life. This also gives me plenty of source material for connection more dots.

Centering my life around exploration and discovery was a terrific choice that has made me way happier than investing in a traditional corporate career.

Interesting Friendships

Friendships are a big source of value for me. I especially like connecting with people who are a bit unusual. I’m often sponging mindsets and ideas from other people, testing them for myself to see how well they work.

I’m good at making new friends quickly. I tend to just assume friendship with new people instead of feeling like we have to go through a long building phase together. I think life is too short to do otherwise.

Having dozens of growth-oriented friends (and hundreds if not thousands of looser connections) makes me a lot happier than when I used to have no growth-oriented friends. I especially like that lots of interesting invitations and ideas flow to me through my friendship network. I appreciate the ongoing stimulation this provides, even though sometimes it feels like the flow is a bit too high, and I have to withdraw a little.

A Wife I Adore

Last but definitely not least, my marriage to Rachelle is a key source of happiness. I appreciate her every day. Being in love for 10+ years is absolutely wonderful.

Every day I get to share the words “I love you” multiple times with someone. What’s not to like about that?

We spent a LOT of time together. It’s rare for us go more than a few hours without interacting, verbally and through touch and affection. Somehow we naturally make each other happier. When people see us together, they can tell we just belong with each other.

Even when we aren’t doing any particular activity, we enjoy each other’s beingness. Spending time together doing just about anything is very satisfying for us. This makes us optimistic for the future too. It’s a special feeling looking forward to spending so many more days together.

These are just some aspects that create happiness in my life that came through while journaling. There are others of course – a healthy lifestyle surely helps – but these have been more top-of-mind for me lately.

What makes you happiest? If you have a happy life, be sure to pause and appreciate what’s going well. And if you’re still working on getting there, see if you can identify what specific changes need to happen to increase your long-term happiness. Then do what it takes to truly solve those problems one by one. Even if it takes years or decades, the time is going to pass anyway. You may as well give the gift of happiness to your future self by investing where it counts.

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Core of Play

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While pondering an update to my mission statement, I was thinking about how to frame relationships, and this line popped into my mind:

My relationships are based on play.

My relationship with Rachelle fits this like a glove, and I think it’s why we’ve had 10+ happy years together. Same goes for my best friendships.

This applies to more than human relationships, like my relationships with work, creative projects, personal growth experiments, writing, speaking, courses, coaching, hobbies, etc. There’s a core of play when the flow is strong and healthy.

When a relationship loses its core of play, it seems to be on its way out and won’t endure, or it devolves into something not worth preserving.

What happens if you reflect upon past relationships with the lens of play? Any insights generated from that?

If you’re considering a transition in some area of life, could it be that the old path lost its core of play (or never had it to begin with)?

Consider the lens that a healthy relationship is really about play. I’m not saying that this is absolutely true. Just look at your past relationships through this lens, and see if it sparks any interesting realizations or reassessments. When you reflect upon the story arc of the relationship with respect to its changing level of playfulness over time, what do you see?

Also consider that you have a relationship with your work. When that relationship loses its core of play, does it ever work?

Consider the ripples that play generates – connection, caring, bonding, happiness, enjoyment, appreciation, respect, cooperation, etc. Those can be valuable in any relationship context – both in work and your personal life.

Injuries can still occur, but in a context of play (like a game), they’re quickly forgiven. When people lose sight of the play aspect, then an injury may be taken more seriously though.

What can be objectively accomplished with a frame of seriousness that can’t also be accomplished at least as well with a frame of play?

One way to think of play is that it maintains the intensity of seriousness but ditches the attachment. It lightens the experience of full engagement, allowing you to focus on the present moment activity without worrying so much about the outcome. The lens of play removes the clinginess without being forced to descend into goofiness.

I’ve always appreciated playful relationships more than others. That’s been true of romantic and sexual relationships, connections with colleagues, coaching or mentoring relationships, friendships, and even random acquaintances. Playfulness elevates the mundane, making it more stimulating but not stressful.

Play can be a tough value to respect unless you test it enough and see what it does for you. When you observe that investing in play generates strong results with good consistency, it’s easier to trust it. Also observe the results you get when you lose the connection to the core of play. Which results do you prefer?

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Appreciation Density

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In the past 11 weeks, I’ve lost an average of 1.15 pounds per week, mainly just by logging what I eat. This simple practice has helped me tweak and adjust my meal choices even though I’m still eating the same foods as I was previously. I’m eating less food in terms of calories, but my current diet is actually more satisfying than before. Since there’s no sense of restriction or deprivation, it’s frictionless to maintain this approach.

Let’s say that the appreciation density of a meal is your overall physical and emotional satisfaction with it, divided by its calories:

Appreciation Density = Satisfaction / Calories

I don’t exactly know how to calculate physical and emotional satisfaction though. Maybe we could rate the satisfaction of meals on a 1-10 scale, but fortunately that isn’t necessary. We can just compare based on equivalent calories by asking whether one meal is more or less satisfying than another. We can also do this at the level of individual ingredients.

Through food logging and a little reflection, I saw that some meals (and some ingredients) are more satisfying than others for the same number of calories.

I’ve learned that roasted eggplant is really satisfying relative to its calories. Peaches and strawberries are super satisfying as well. Steamed broccoli and zucchini with some hummus is a delightful meal – very satisfying for so few calories.

Some foods have diminishing returns if I include too much of them. For instance, 10g of olive oil on a salad may be pretty satisfying relative to the 90 calories it adds. But would 20g of olive oil be twice as satisfying? No, definitely not. Doubling the olive oil might only increase the satisfaction by an extra 20%, so it’s probably not worth it.

Adding 1/3 of an avocado to a salad can be really nice. But if I use a whole avocado, is it 3x as satisfying? Nope. I find that the sweet spot is to use about 1/4 to 1/2 of an avocado on a salad to get the maximum satisfaction relative to the calories.

Through lots of experimentation, I’m gradually figuring out better balancing points where I eat quantities of foods that raise the satisfaction level of a meal but where consuming more would lead to diminishing returns. So when I compose meals, I require each ingredient to pull its weight by meaningfully contributing to the overall satisfaction.

Note that satisfaction is mainly an emotional assessment. It’s based on how I feel during and after eating. How satisfied I’ll feel isn’t perfectly consistent. One day I may find 100g of some item optimal while I might prefer more or less of that item on a different day. By paying attention to my logs and connecting them to my inner sensations, I’m getting better at predicting what kinds of meals to make based on how I feel.

I don’t try to hold back from eating. I eat when I’m hungry. I just put a little more thought and care into making meals very satisfying relative to their calories.

Suppose you eat a 500-calorie lunch today. Have you ever considered how you might compose a 400-calorie lunch that’s actually more satisfying? If you could figure that out, you could shave off 100 calories per day while actually enjoying your lunch more. Now scale this up for every meal and snack, and come up with more solutions and variations. You could enjoy your food more while actually eating less.

I already eat an all vegan, mostly whole foods diet that typically includes 10+ servings of fruits and veggies per day, so take that into consideration. Making this diet highly nutritious isn’t an issue. But I don’t think I’d feel as emotionally satisfied if I tried to adapt this approach to a junk food diet. Whole foods leave me feeling better emotionally and physically.

I’ve been including some small indulgences, but I use them where they really add to the satisfaction. For instance, if I slice up two peaches (100 calories), and I add 50 calories worth of coconut whipped cream, that treat has a high appreciation density for its 150 calories, more than eating three peaches without the topping.

Another nice dessert is one date plus four pecan halves (80 cal). Split the date in two, and push two pecan pieces into each half – it’s like eating raw pecan pie. For this small addition of calories, it’s super satisfying as a little snack.

I don’t worry about empty calories in terms of low nutrition. I frame empty calories as too little satisfaction per calorie, which could include adding too much of an ingredient beyond a certain sweet spot of satisfaction.

By focusing on enjoying and appreciating my meals relative to their calories, I’m getting more appreciation per calorie today than I was when I started. I really enjoy the foods I eat. It feels like I’m doing the opposite of dieting, but I’m losing weight by eating this way.

This useful frame can be extended to other areas of life by generalizing the definition of appreciation density, like this:

Appreciation Density = Satisfaction / Cost

Cost could be your investment of time, energy, money, or some other factor.

So you could use this frame to select work projects, choose which friends to engage with, or decide how much time to spend on social media each day. Which investments satisfy you best? When does the satisfaction start to diminish?

Imagine what you could discover by combining this frame with time logging. Is 30 minutes of social media twice as satisfying as 15 minutes? How much journaling or meditation time is optimal for you? Would you feel more satisfied with an extra hour in the morning or the evening?

If you’re feel unsatisfied in some area of life, look at your appreciation density. Are you deriving enough satisfaction from your investments? If not, where’s the waste? Where are the empty calories? Where are you investing time, energy, money, or other resources and not getting much satisfaction in return? Obviously that waste needs to be cut if you want to increase your appreciation density.

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How to Extract 5-10x More Value From Your Personal Growth Investments

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We’re used to thinking about “receiving value” as a passive endeavor most of the time. We expect items and services that we purchase to provide value to us. We pay the price up front, and then we feel entitled to just relax and enjoy the value we’ve purchased.

It’s easy to expect that if you spend the money, your purchase should cough up its full value to you. I paid for you. Now give me what I’m owed.

But only some parts of life work that way, like if you buy and enjoy a nice latte. Buying it is the hardest part of the transaction. Drinking it is easy.

But have you ever made a major purchase that you were a little hesitant about because you knew it would require extra work, like buying a new phone or computer? Or maybe you paid for a trip. Or you stretched yourself to go to a seminar. What happens in those cases? The value delivery isn’t totally passive.

There’s an active element in many purchases. You must do your part to fully extract the value you’re paying for. You have to learn and set up the tech you bought. If you go to a seminar, you have to pay attention, take notes, and do your best to apply what you’ve learned afterwards; the ideas don’t automatically implement themselves. Even if you buy a fun video game, you still have to become skilled enough to enjoy it; it takes some effort to extract the fun.

Recently my wife and I bought some new adjustable pillows. They came overstuffed (as expected), so we had to remove some of the stuffing to adjust them to our desired firmness. It took extra work just to receive the full value of a pillow.

Some personal growth value can be derived passively. You can read articles and books, listen to podcasts, and watch videos. You may learn some interesting ideas this way, including many useful reframes. You may make some easy tweaks here and there. You’ll gain some clever hacks as well. But there are much bigger gains to be made that require extra effort to extract and apply.

Passive value is great. It’s just limiting. It would be nice if we could transform all parts of our life through easy consumption, but that isn’t the case.

I must have consumed about a billion words of personal growth content by now in the form of books, articles, audio programs, videos, speeches, seminars, and more. I’ve also created a lot of it. But in terms of the value I’ve received from personal growth, I’d say that the passive value benefits are no more than 10-20% of the total. The other 80-90% is on the active value side, requiring non-trivial effort to extract it.

Joining Toastmasters is a good example. You may gain some knowledge by showing up for the meetings. Sit in your chair, listen, observe, and maybe jot down some notes about anything that strikes you as interesting. I’ve seen members approach Toastmasters in this way, and they generally progress very slowly. It’s hard to even notice that they’ve improved much after a year or two; it’s like their skills are mostly frozen in time.

The members who advance fastest embrace the extra work to extract the value. They write and deliver speeches. They enter speech contests. They volunteer for different meeting roles. And they generally progress a lot faster. For $60 in dues, these members extract thousands of dollars worth of value.

But of course it takes more work to do this.

I’d say this is just something to accept about personal growth. If we acknowledge in advance that we’ll have to do this extra work, we won’t resist it so much, and we’ll be paid back with a much bigger avalanche of value.

Which is better? Buy a fancy new phone and barely learn how to use it… or buy a fancy new phone, master it, and enjoy more value from it just about every day? I’d say the answer depends on your priorities. Which areas of life are really worth mastering?

In my own business, I’ve found that people who accept this basic fact about reality make for much better customers too. They’ll do the work of extracting the value, such as by fully completing every lesson of a course. Some go through each lesson multiple times. They’re happier too because they get good results this way. So it’s win-win to focus on such people. It’s a very sustainable business model. I love customers who will go all-in to extract the value and then tell me about their great results afterwards. What’s not to like about that?

I think this also explains why some content creators burn out when they mainly serve people who are looking for passive value. You’ve probably heard of YouTubers who’ve called it quits due to frustration or overwhelm. I think one reason is that it’s less satisfying to try to help people get results through passive value, like if they’re mostly just watching videos. Such people may only be receiving 10-20% of the value that active value seekers would be able to achieve, so they may not be as appreciative or supportive of the work because they aren’t getting as much out of it.

Contrast this with serving an audience who will work harder to extract the value, so they may receive 5-10x as much value from the same amount of material. They’ll be a lot more appreciative, supportive, and forgiving, and it will be more rewarding to serve them.

It’s so much easier to satisfy and delight people who are willing to invest some extra effort to receive the full value of your contribution. They don’t just consume content. They actively test and apply ideas. They explore and experiment with you. They engage with the work. And they often reflect ideas back with improvements.

I’m this type of person myself. I’ve learned the hard way that being too passive doesn’t pay off that well. I get better results from personal growth investments where I have to do extra work to extract the value. Consequently, I’ve been beyond satisfied with some of my personal growth investments over the years because I’m willing to do a lot more work beyond just making purchases, watching videos, and showing up to calls.

I’m the kind of person who will spend $10K on someone’s coaching program and get $100K in value from it – hence I LOVE $10K coaching programs because I get such terrific results. The passive value is worth perhaps $10-20K. The other $80-90K of value is from the extra work I do to squeeze more value out of it.

When buying a piece of software that I’ll use a lot, I’m the kind of person who will watch every tutorial video and spend many extra hours learning the interface and practicing with it, so I can extract more value from using it over the years. I grew up using software where reading the manual was often essential because the interfaces were much less intuitive, and there was no Google to look things up.

Here’s a simple tip for extracting 5-10x more value from your personal growth investments: Decide in advance that you won’t be outworked when it comes to extracting the value. Show up with a pick and shovel.

Don’t just go a few steps beyond passivity. Ask yourself what standard is expected of you for extracting some decent value from your investment. Then beat that standard – by a lot.

If you buy a book, for instance, we could say that the baseline standard is that you’ll at least read it. But what standard did you apply for the books where you got the most value? Did you discuss them with others, take notes, test ideas, read them multiple times, bookmark pages, etc?

You’re severely limiting your progress if you focus on passive value through osmosis. Don’t wait for value to seep in. Go squeeze the full value from your investments.

Be like an outstanding juicer. Don’t leave wet pulp behind.

Now it may not be realistic to always apply this standard, but when it really counts, it’s an awesome standard to use.

When I was in my 20s, I wouldn’t just buy an audio program and listen to it once. I’d listen to some of them 50+ times (for a 6-hour program), to the point where I had them virtually memorized. I can still hear the voices of Earl Nightingale, Brian Tracy, and Denis Waitley echoing in my head sometimes. Additionally, I kept testing the ideas from those programs in a variety of ways. I didn’t have a lot of money to spend on personal growth materials, so I did my best to squeeze all the juice out of what I could afford.

This approach paid off very well. I juiced one $60 time management course for all it was worth, applying the ideas to go through college faster, thereby saving a few thousand dollars just in tuition. (College was a lot less expensive in the 90s.)

The truth is that a lot of personal growth ideas work amazingly well, but it takes work to extract and apply the best ideas. Don’t lament this fact. Do your best to accept and then embrace it.

Despite the pandemic I’ve learned that many readers of my blog are having an amazingly good year. Some directly credit their active application of personal growth ideas as being instrumental in helping them stay positive, overcome setbacks, navigate career pivots, and spot aligned opportunities. It’s great to see them adapting and thriving by being so active during these months.

We’re surrounded by tremendous opportunities for growth, learning, and improvement in life and business right now, but those who show up with picks and shovels are extracting a lot more value than those who are mostly relying on their eyes and ears.

How have you been showing up this year?

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