Tag Archives: Abundance

Graduating From $20 Problems to $20K Problems

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One simple tip for inviting more abundance into your life is to elevate the cost of the problems you normally focus on.

Suppose you order groceries online and have them delivered. And suppose the company screws up several items in your order. Maybe you feel inclined to complain and get a refund on those items.

Perhaps you take some time do the following:

  1. Feel upset.
  2. Vent to someone else about it.
  3. Think about following up with customer service, wondering how they’ll respond.
  4. Actually write to customer service.
  5. Feel distracted while awaiting a response.
  6. Read the response from customer service.
  7. Receive a polite apology and $20 refund on your order.
  8. Finally let it go.

So you successfully processed and solved a $20 problem.

That’s fine. You can do that, but be wary of making a long-term habit of this. Ten years from now you may still be dealing with $20 problems. Is that what you want? Or would you like to graduate to more expensive problems?

The more time you spend thinking about $20 problems, the less time you spend dealing with different classes of problems – $200 problems, $2K problems, $20K problems, $200K problems, etc.

Even if you solve lots and lots of $20 problems, you’d have to solve 1000 of them to equate to the financial impact of solving one $20K problem. You can ignore hundreds of $20 problems and solve just one $20K problem now and then, and you’ll still come out way ahead financially.

Of course there are other considerations. Solving lots of $20 problems could add up to a significant mental and emotional impact. It’s not only about the money. But it can still be helpful to consider the financial impact of each problem you’re dealing with to consider if it’s really worth your time.

I still deal with $20 problems now and then, but I try to limit myself to the ones that matter to me. For instance, Rachelle and I recently spent some time considering new pillows to buy for our bed. This was a $50 problem. But since we’ll be spending a lot of time sleeping on those pillows and since a bad choice could cause some angst, including physical discomfort and lower quality sleep, we wanted to take the time to select some really good pillows. Taking an hour to weigh options and make that choice seemed reasonable. So even though it looks like a $50 problem, we could also see it as a $50K problem for the potential productivity and lifestyle impact.

However, if the impact of a decision is really just $20 or $50, then it’s best to work on your framing. Realize and accept that the more time and energy you spend dealing with decisions at this level of financial impact, the more you steal time from investing in bigger, more impactful decisions.

I know it can be hard to let go of $20 decisions, but this is an important skill to develop if you want to progress financially. You can’t keep collecting coupons year after year – unless you start finding $20K coupons.

Here are some frames you may want to progress towards:

  • Your Starbucks points don’t mater. If some of them expire, you’ve lost a few dollars. It’s not even worth caring about. It’s not even worth your time to check their latest promotions.
  • It doesn’t matter who pays for dinner. You can pay. The other person can pay. It’s better not to spend much time thinking about it since that just wastes neural energy.
  • Buy the best quality tech you can afford. Then you needn’t waste time wondering if you should have bought something better. Don’t skimp on your tools.
  • Take all the mental energy you would have spent fussing over $20 decisions, and use it to negotiate a meaningful raise at work, or do a new marketing campaign for your business. Even if you just bring in an extra $5K per year, that’s equivalent to solve 100 $50 problems or 250 $20 problems.
  • Solve fewer, bigger problems. Let lots of little problems die unsolved.
  • Instead of solving lots of little problems, solve the problem of finding someone to solve those little problems for you.

Keep progressing. At some point you have to stop fussing over $20K problems and opportunities, so you can focus on $50K or $100K issues.

At one point a $20K opportunity may excite you, but to progress beyond that level, you eventually have to start seeing $20K opportunities as partial matches and let them go. It’s really hard to see $50K opportunities when you’re still tempted by $20K ones, just as it’s harder to spot paper money when you’ve trained your mind to notice coins on the ground.

When you’re dealing with a problem or an opportunity, pause and ask yourself: Is this a $20 issue? A $2K issue? A $200K issue?

Which class of problems and opportunities feels aligned for you to deal with right now? What kinds of problems make you feel really good when you solve them (versus feeling empty or dissatisfied)? Are you keeping your focus at your desired level? Are you reminding yourself to let go of the partial matches?

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Partial Match Relapsing

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After you’ve decided to move on from partial matches in some area of life and you’ve declared your standards raised henceforth, you can still relapse. The old habits can seduce you back. This is incredibly common. People usually do relapse one or more times before they strongly lock into a new standard of behavior.

You may declare “no more misaligned jobs” or “no more misaligned relationships” and mean it. A few months pass, and you may catch yourself thinking about applying for jobs that would be predictably misaligned… or you feel tempted to lower your relationship standards when nothing aligned is showing up.

One reason is because the new behavior takes practice to fully integrate.

You have to practice saying no to the partial matches, but your mental pathways were previously trained to say yes to them. It will take time to decondition the old patterns and strengthen the new approach. It will feel uncomfortable and awkward to say no to partial matches at first, but it does get easier with practice.

You also have to practice inviting the full matches you really want, but your old mental pathways have grown accustomed to pre-settling for what you think is more accessible. So it will feel uncomfortable to ask for more.

A second issue is that you have to learn to deal with time pressure, social pressure, and financial pressure. Many people bow to pressure by lowering their standards, believing that any match is better than none. But of course if you try to deal with the pressure that way, you’ll remain stuck in the old patterns that didn’t serve you.

So you also have to practice dealing with pressure differently. Don’t lower your standards just because bills are piling up… or your parents are pushing you to get something going career-wise… or you’re seeing your friends pull ahead of you.

You need to create a different relationship with these kinds of pressures. Instead of invitations to lower your standards, see this pressure as a test of your commitment. You pass these tests by standing firm – or even raising your standards higher – not by caving in and retreating to your ineffective past methods.

Really this pressure is internal. A bill is just a piece of paper or an email. A parental nag is just a sound effect. These aren’t real threats, even though they may feel very visceral to you. Your own framing is encouraging the circuitry of your own mind to get in your way, creating internal blocking patterns. To avoid relapsing again and again, you’ll need to change how you deal with these ineffective thought patterns. See them for the traps they are.

If you wish to make your own conscious choices and create a life that aligns with your standards, you can’t let lesser standards continue to rent space in your mind.

If and when you do relapse, it won’t feel good, and you won’t like the results, but you’ll still learn from the experience. Relapsing after you’ve glimpsed higher standards will help you see the problems with your old approach. You’ll better understand just how ineffective your old standards were; you’ll see that they’re never going to serve you well in the long run. So the benefit of relapsing is that it can help you recommit to your new standards and stop investing in partial matches.

Lastly, another shift to practice is to see your higher standards as normal, not as exceptional. Seek to frame your new standards as your default, everyday, run of the mill behaviors and habits. Do your best to stop seeing them as special or extraordinary, or you’ll only push them away.

Take early rising for instance. I like to get up at or before 5am almost every day, including weekends. Most mornings I’ve done at least an hour of running by 6:30am. Some people see this as exceptional, and so did I when I was first training myself to do this. But that type of framing isn’t helpful. It’s best to regard such a habit as normal if this is something you want to do routinely without relapsing.

Seeing any habit as a stretch is just going to encourage relapsing. So do your best to welcome and practice the framing that your new standards are normal and routine, not exceptional. You can still love and appreciate those habits – just see that love aspect as normal too. 🙂

When you see people doing work that lights them up motivationally, contributes in positive ways, and generates abundant income, do you think they’re lucky or exceptional? It’s a mistake to frame it like that. You ought to see this type of experience as normal. That will help you lock it in and not relapse so much.

My world is rich in people who do aligned work, so I actually do see this as normal. The dark and scary part of the corporate world that makes people feel depressed or stressed about going to work – that’s abnormal and weird. The journey away from that world seems like a perfectly normal and sensible path back to health, sanity, and happiness.

One reason people relapse is that they still regard their old approach as normal. If you still think the old path is normal, you’ll be tempted to go back to it. If you frame your old standards as abnormal, stupid, deranged, ineffective, lame, and so on, you’re more likely to avoid relapse.

Do you see it as normal to explore your kinky sexual desires with a compatible and motivated partner or partners? Or do you think it might be a bit perverse to explore the true depths of what you might enjoy? Can you see it as normal to have experiences and partners that turn you on? Can you also see it as weird or perverse not to explore what you really enjoy? Moreover, can you see it as weird, perverse, or repressed for people to judge you for consensually exploring with aligned partners?

Would it feel exceptional, weird, or deranged for someone to call you Master or Mistress each day? If so, then you probably can’t have that experience, and if you did manage to go there for a while, you’d soon relapse back to vanilla life. That’s fine if you want a vanilla life, but what if you’d really enjoy something kinkier that feels like a stretch right now? Well… seek to frame it as normal – the truth is that what you frame as a stretch experience is indeed normal for many people. Why not decide to join them?

Personally I don’t like the kink framing much because it frames interesting desires as abnormal or unusual. A kink is a sharp twist or curve in something that’s otherwise straight, so it’s framed as an abnormality by definition. Consequently, I tend to toss that framing back towards the other side of repression – I think of highly religious people as the kinkiest ones out there; I regard them as the most twisted members of humanity.

Normal doesn’t have to be boring. You can create a fun and lively normal that you appreciate, especially if you regard daily appreciation as normal too. Framing such experiences as normal just makes it easier to invite them and to continue experiencing them.

Remind yourself of why you want to progress to higher standards. One good reason is to make happiness, satisfaction, and appreciation normal for you. Experience more of what you want, and appreciate it each day. Note that your old behaviors didn’t achieve those standards, so it’s time to elevate your behaviors to meet your new standards.

Reality is capable of giving you a lot more, but if you make it clear that you’re willing to settle, it will let you relapse – repeatedly – until you reach the level of inner commitment that makes relapsing essentially impossible for you. Then reality just gives up and brings you what you want.

Other human beings also find commitment appealing and attractive. People are more likely to invest in helping you get what you want when they can tell that you’ve graduated from your relapsing phase.

Relapsing to your old standards should feel as creepy as voting for Trump – not something you’d ever do. If you’re still tempted to do that, you’re one kinky and deranged masochist.

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Add More Constraints for Better Decisions

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It’s tempting to try to keep your options open. People often assume that having more options is equivalent to having more freedom. But actually the opposite tends to be true when it comes to making aligned decisions. When you keep your options too open, you keep your standards too low.

When people have too many options to intelligently assess, they tend to settle for choices that are good enough but not great.

But when you narrow the range to a few options that you can reasonably consider one by one, you’re more likely to go for the best choice, at least among those options.

Consider buying a new piece of tech. If you’re only considering two or three models, it’s easier to identify the best one for your needs. But if you have hundreds or thousands of options available, picking the optimal one for you seems hopeless.

This is a common issue when it comes to finding an aligned career path or an aligned relationship. When you have too few constraints, you have too many options. This can make you feel doubtful or even paralyzed about making a decent decision.

It may seem counterintuitive to narrow your options by adding more constraints, but it works well in practice, especially when you choose constraints that elevate your standards.

When I’m ready to buy a new phone, laptop, tablet, or watch, for instance, I’m only going to consider Apple products. I’ve been using products in their ecosystem for many years, and I’m pleased with them. So when making such purchase decisions, I wouldn’t consider stepping outside the Apple space unless something goes really wrong. My last 4 phones, last 3 laptops, last 4 tablets, and last 3 watches were all iPhones, MacBook Pros, iPads, and Apple Watches, respectively.

This simple constraint creates a pathway to investing more deeply in a relationship with Apple too. I’m on a first-name basis with a member of the business team at the local Apple Store, and she regularly arranges discounts for me. So constraints can lead to more depth and efficiency for related future decisions.

What about finding an intimate relationship partner? First consider how to rule out partial matches and mismatches.

For me to be deeply involved with a woman, she must be a committed vegan. She has to be interested in open relationships. She has to be into D/s play. She must be into personal growth. By narrowing the vast field of possibilities down to a relatively small number of options, I can eliminate many risks related to partial matches, such as the risk of over-investing in a connection that isn’t going to work well.

If you want to date around a lot and aren’t feeling too particular, you can keep your options open, but you may find that approach dissatisfying or disappointing after a while. When you’d rather find a really strong match to invest in, add more constraints to narrow your options and raise your standards. It may surprise you how well this works, especially by helping you quickly decline partial matches.

Same goes for career options and income-generating opportunities. Start by eliminating options that aren’t fascinating, stimulating, and fun. Rule out whatever doesn’t feel purposeful and heart-aligned. Drop ideas that aren’t likely to be highly lucrative. Dump the possibilities that aren’t creative and growth-oriented. Keep narrowing your options till you start wondering if your standards might be too high.

In this particular area, I found it helpful to establish a minimum standard for considering business deals. For a while I didn’t consider any deal that would be worth less than $10K. Eventually I bumped that to $20K. Later I held it around $50K for a while. These days I tend not to bother considering business deals or projects unless they’re financially worth $100K or more. And on top of that, they still have to be fun, creative, stimulating, purposeful, etc.

Interestingly, this makes life easier and improves the odds of discovering really good options. It keeps me from getting bogged down in partial matches.

When thinking about relationship matches, consider the perspective of a really good match who’s looking for someone just like you. Does it make sense for them to remain receptive to less than what you can offer? I’d rather connect with a vegan who’s looking for a fellow vegan, not a vegan with lower standards. Would you rather be what someone is looking for… or what they’re settling for?

You may not be sure about how to identify or recognize an optimal solution, but what can you be pretty sure about? Start by adding some constraints where you are confident in your desires. Relationship-wise I can say it wouldn’t work out if I tried to get seriously involved with a non-vegan woman – our ethics and values wouldn’t align well enough. That by itself isn’t enough to guarantee a good match, but it’s an easy way to rule out a large swath of partial matches.

What are some equivalents for you? What constraints would help to steer you closer to a really strong match and away from partial matches?

If you do this right, you’re going to turn off partial matches. Some may feel a bit miffed that you’re excluding them without giving them a chance. But you’re also doing them a favor. You’re making it clear that you wouldn’t be a good investment in some dimension of life, so you’re saving them time, energy, and false hope. If you want to clarify your investment worthiness for an aligned option, you’d better be willing to disappoint partial matches up front. The smarter ones will actually respect you for this preventative no.

Aim for true success here. Don’t waffle on what you really want. Don’t pre-settle for less. Challenge your brain to figure out how to invite and experience what you really want. Start by ruling out whatever would feel a bit dissatisfying or disappointing – whatever feels like settling. What’s the relationship or career equivalent of a sad Android phone? 😉

Constraints are very freeing – they free you of the nasty traps of partial matches.

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Do Partial Matches Still Tempt You?

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A partial match is basically a 7 out of 10 (or lower) – where you get much of what you want, but at least one significant aspect is missing.

Partial matches include:

  • Finding a relationship partner that you like and respect as a person but aren’t physically attracted to
  • Getting a job that pays well but provides no sense of purpose or contribution
  • Finding a cheap web host that provides incompetent support when you really need them
  • Using a phone that works except that the screen is cracked
  • Hanging out with friends you’ve known a long time but who are overly pessimistic and discouraging, especially when you want to do something ambitious

I’d say that the main areas where people fall for partial matches are jobs and relationships. That’s where people seem to get stuck most often.

A partial match isn’t something minor that you’ll get used to, like having to commute 15 minutes to a job when you really wanted 10 minutes or less. A partial match is missing some key aspect that you consider important and valuable. You’ll never be fully satisfied with a partial match. That cracked screen will always be present, and it’s always going to bug you to some extent.

Partial matches are obstacles to real satisfaction and appreciation.

Partial matches are also part of the scarcity phase of life. In order to accept a partial match, you must be unwilling (or think you’re unable) to create or acquire something better. This is a position of weakness. It stems from a mindset lacking in confidence.

Why would you keep using a cracked phone when you could replace it with a better one or get the screen repaired? That’s a solvable problem.

Why settle for a job that’s missing something important that matters to you when you could get a job (or start a business) that satisfies you properly? That’s a solvable problem too.

Why remain in a relationship that’s missing an important aspect that you care about? You won’t be satisfied with less. You can fix this too.

Partial matches aren’t necessarily easy to solve. It may take more work to find a solid match, but it’s at least possible. Moreover, making a genuine effort to keep looking for a real match is more satisfying than getting bogged down in a partial match. Real searching is more rewarding than settling.

Looking for a new phone feels better than using one with a cracked screen. Looking for aligned work or an aligned relationship feels better than showing up to a misaligned one. People start feeling better when they decide that it’s time to move on from the partial match, even before they find a real match.

It’s hard to engage in more looking unless you expect to succeed. And that’s really a decision. You must decide to move on from the temptation of partial matches and be done with them, at least in some important area of life.

The key step to making real progress here is to decide that you’re done wasting time and energy on partial matches. They don’t satisfy you. They just take up space in your life. They perpetuate scarcity-mindedness. They’re not going to magically turn into better solutions. The cracks won’t just disappear on their own.

As long as you’re still tempted by partial matches, you’ll continue to receive more of them, most likely cycling through more years of stuckness and dissatisfaction. At some point you’ll figure out that partial matches don’t provide the value you seek and never will, and you’ll decide that it’s time to be done with them. You’ll see them as unworthy investments of your time and energy.

When your partial match phase is over, your abundance phase can begin.

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Reassessing Career and Business Opportunities

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In light of the virus situation, is it time to consider a career or business change? For many people this is a good time to rationally re-evaluate your opportunities – instead of merely hoping that things will magically turn around. Hope is not a good career or business strategy.

Many restaurant and retail workers, for instance, now have to field questions like these as part of their jobs:

  • Why should I wear a mask?
  • Why are you even open right now? Do you only care about the money?
  • Can you take a pay cut and do the same work as before?

If this (or something similar) has become part of your job or business, do you really want to continue on these terms for months or years? Is the offer you’re getting from that situation still a good one? Are you still happy with the opportunities? Or are you just spinning your wheels there due to the difficulty of shifting?

Think of your current career circumstances as an offer from reality. See it as a test. When the offer shifts to something unpalatable, will you grudgingly accept it? Or will you pass the test by declining the weak offer and requesting something better? You don’t have to say yes to an offer that’s full of stress and uncertainty.

The virus is suppressing some previous opportunities, not just financially but emotionally as well. For some people the work that was once reasonably pleasant is now a lot less pleasant and more polarized. This is a good time to reconsider whether it’s still worthwhile to invest your life in the same path going forward. You could invest elsewhere instead. Sure it’s challenging to do that, but staying could be a lot worse.

You are not your career or your business. When a line of work is on the way out, you needn’t link your own survival to it. Businesses aren’t born and don’t die. They’re created and retired, and the people live on to create more. It’s not a failure to retire from a business or line of work. It’s simply a choice to reinvest your time and energy elsewhere.

Bet on choice opportunities instead of chasing after bad ones. Many opportunities that looked good a year ago have turned into bad ones these days, and that’s unlikely to change in many fields for at least the rest of the year. Even if everything clears up by 2021, which is unlikely, you still have six months left in this year. Don’t throw that away on non-opportunities and virus denial. Reinvest your time and energy where there are some truly good opportunities, which are still abundant.

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Entitlement

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A common way that people get stuck, especially in business, is that they feel entitled to success before they’ve invested in really earning it.

Maybe you did well in school. Maybe you’ve been told that you’re smart or creative. Maybe you began with some advantages that made you feel like you’re already ahead of the game.

And then you dive into the real world with your grand goals and dreams, and it knocks you on your ass.

This has happened to me and many other entrepreneurial friends. It’s humbling for sure, but the experience of being knocked down a few times helps you admit that you still have a hell of a lot to learn.

Learning computer programming and getting good at it took me many years. I started when I was 10 years old and didn’t begin working on my first commercial product until I was 22 years old. By that point I knew how to program to some extent in BASIC, PASCAL, FORTRAN, C, C++, Assembly, Lisp, Prolog, and a few other languages. I was very good at math too.

But then I had to learn game programming… and Windows programming. There were lots of animation concepts to learn like back buffers and blitting. Then when I started my own business the following year, I had to learn game design, art, sound effects editing, MIDI, and so much more. I also had to learn new graphics interfaces like WinG and DirectX. Finally I figured I had the skills to succeed, but no…

I still had to learn some accounting, contract law, and negotiation skills, which took a while to wrap my head around. And was that enough? Nope. It was able to land some deals, but most didn’t go well. There was still way more to learn.

I had to learn better people skills and to be more discerning in choosing people to work with. I had to learn to manage a small team and to network with other people in the field. Then there were systems to figure out like customer support and shipping. Finally enough? Still no.

On top of that multi-year journey, there was learning sales and marketing. That was a huge one and really took me outside my comfort zone. For many new entrepreneurs having to learn this part of business can be daunting – and humbling. There’s just so much to learn. And once you finally learn it, your “reward” is to realize that you have even more work to do.

Finally my first business started doing well. It took several years, but eventually I had put enough pieces together to make it work sustainably.

The entitlement aspect slowed me down in the beginning, as it slows down many people. This is the expectation that surely you know enough to succeed already, especially when entering a field that you believe should play to your strengths.

Having a good head on your shoulders may help, but the belief that you should be able to succeed quickly can really get in your way. It may be better to approach new experiences with more patience and humility. Be willing to accept that the journey may be longer than you expect.

Among struggling entrepreneurs I know, I often see the same entitlement patterns that I succumbed to. Some feel that when they’re first starting out, they should have everything figured out and running smoothly within six months to a year. Some may be able to go that fast, but most won’t. I think this attitude makes a lot of people give up when they’re actually making decent progress. They have so much more to learn than they realize.

This entitlement issue can come up repeatedly. Even if you’re been doing okay for a decade, you may hit a road bump and feel like you’re losing ground. This can be frustrating. You may look to all the past efforts you’ve invested and declare that you deserve some smooth seas for a change. Surely you’ve earned it, right?

You may encounter some smooth seas now and then, but realize that the weather can still change. Appreciate the periods of wonderful flow when you have them, but try not to get attached to them.

One solution I like is to think of myself as a perpetual student. I accept that the learning game never ends. There’s always more to figure out. I can never declare that I’m finally done learning and just rest on my past skills and accomplishments. There is no entitlement to more success, regardless of how much I think I know or what I’ve done in the past.

Each day is a fresh one. Each new success must be earned. Each year of life and business brings fresh challenges to face.

This year life has thrown some big challenges at some people I know, while oddly for me it’s been one of the smoothest years ever. That doesn’t give me permission to succumb to a forward-looking sense of entitlement, as tempting as that may be. We live in a world of change.

Even if you’ve been through a lot of rough patches in your past, that still doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to a low-challenge future. You may have even bigger challenges ahead.

You have a relationship with life. Entitlement is a way of saying that you have life all figured out and know just what to expect of it. But life won’t necessarily let you pigeonhole it this way. When you try to box it in by willing it to satisfy your expectations going forward, life has a way of crushing the box.

Instead of trying to boxify life, realize that life still has some juicy mystery to it, and stay alert to the possibility of change and disruption. Change doesn’t have to feel punishing if you learn to welcome it and see it as a gift instead of a curse.

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Your Relationship with Failure

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Here are some quotes from J.K. Rowling about the fear of failure:

Part of the reason there were seven years between having the idea for Philosopher’s Stone and getting it published, was that I kept putting the manuscript away for months at a time, convinced it was rubbish.

Fear of failure is the saddest reason on earth not to do what you were meant to do. I finally found the courage to start submitting my first book to agents and publishers at a time when I felt a conspicuous failure. Only then did I decide that I was going to try this one thing that I always suspected I could do, and, if it didn’t work out, well, I’d faced worse and survived.

Ultimately, wouldn’t you rather be the person who actually finished the project you’re dreaming about, rather than the one who talks about ‘always having wanted to’?

The notion that you might fail can really slow you down. But it’s not the failure itself that’s the problem. The problem is your relationship with failure.

Consider the grand opening of Disneyland, which happened about 65 years ago on July 17, 1955. It was supposed to be a press preview day with limited attendance, and it was a spectacular failure.

Here are some things that happened that day:

  • Disney was expecting 11,000 guests because they sent out a limited number of invitations, but 28,000 people showed up. Someone sold thousands of counterfeit tickets. Another guy set up a ladder in the back of the park and charged people $5 to sneak in that way – and many did.
  • The crowds trying to reach Disneyland caused a 7-mile backup on the Santa Ana Freeway. People were stuck in their cars for so long that they had to relieve themselves on the side of the freeway – not sexually, you slut! It was too hot that day.
  • The temperature topped 100 degrees (38 C), hot enough to melt the fresh asphalt on Main Street into a sticky tar that ensnared women’s high-heeled shoes.
  • Some paint in the park wasn’t quite dry, and some people were getting paint on their clothes.
  • Due to the huge crowds, the park’s snack stands and restaurants ran out of food at lunchtime.
  • Due to a plumbers’ strike, the park wasn’t able to install enough drinking fountains before opening, so people weren’t finding enough access to water. Many accused Disney of doing this deliberately to gouge them for the expense of sodas.
  • Due to the heat and the crowds, most of the rides broke down at least once, causing more frustrations.
  • The Mark Twain riverboat was so overloaded with guests that it ran low in the water, and water from the river was sloshing up onto the deck.
  • The park was full of press, who canned the experience, which was referred to as Black Sunday. Some press predicted the park wouldn’t survive.

Things didn’t immediately improve. Disneyland had more problems in the weeks after the opening, including people smashing up most of the cars on the Autopia ride by driving them too aggressively.

But these many failures didn’t matter that much. Disneyland still did a lot of things right. They eventually fixed the problems, which was like a game of Whack-a-Mole since new problems kept arising. Disneyland was always going to be a work in progress.

Our lives are like this too. Just because you have a spectacular failure doesn’t mean the game is over. You take your licks and get right back to working on your goals. Acknowledge and fix problems one by one. Keep learning and adapting.

Imagine being Walt Disney on Disneyland’s grand opening day. Tons of press are there. The park bears your name. It’s been a 20-year journey to evolve your vision for a theme park into a reality. You’ve struggled endlessly just to get the financing in place, and then there were even more struggles to get the place designed and built. So many people have doubted you, including your brother and business partner Roy. You’ve been preparing for and anticipating this glorious day for a long time. And then some asshole screws up your plans by making thousands of counterfeit tickets, and your people can’t tell the real tickets from the fake ones. Your plans for a wonderful opening start falling apart right before your eyes, and all the attention and the cameras are on you – not to mention all the investors who want to know whether investing in your vision was a good idea.

And what do you do? You shrug it off and get right back to work the next day.

Failures happen. This is part of life. While other people may make a huge deal out of it, is it really that big of a deal? So what if you have a spectacularly bad failure! That isn’t the end. It’s just a learning experience, so learn from it. Life continues the next day.

People may criticize you. You may be embarrassed. Accept the consequences, and then get right back to it and re-engage.

You needn’t retreat and slink away in shame. Be proud that you failed. So many people are too cowardly to even try working on something meaningful. They talk themselves out of pursuing bold ideas before they begin. They treat the prospect of failure as a reason to quit before they start.

Many of Disney’s ideas, including some rides they tried, had to be scrapped and replaced. Each ride was a big project unto itself, so some of those failures ended in the death of a project. But the death of a project doesn’t have to kill the big picture vision.

Take this idea to heart. You can fail a lot with your projects, but your big picture goal can remain intact and achievable. Some ideas and projects along the way will be dead ends, and you’ll have to let them go. So you’ll need different projects and ideas to help you reach your goal. Don’t equate the failure of your projects with the death of your long-term goal.

Don’t pursue your goals as if you know you can’t fail. Of course you can fail! But don’t make such a big deal out of failure. It will happen. You’ll rack up plenty of failures if you do anything interesting in life. Let each failure be a badge of honor. It means you’re making a good effort. A good failure is a powerful learning experience.

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My Strengths (According to Reader Feedback)

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Earlier this week I invited my blog readers and customers to share what they considered to be my strengths, and now I’ll share the results with you.

First, I appreciate the feedback. There were many different answers and perspectives, so I looked for patterns to condense the key ideas into a meaningful list.

The subheadings show the main groupings that I was able to identify. In some cases this was a little tricky while in others it was easy to identify clusters because the words and phrases people used were often very similar.

The bullet lists include some short direct quotes from people’s emails, some slightly modified or condensed quotes (such as to make the grammar consistent or to simplify them), and common words or phrases that people shared. I tried to pick representative samples when possible, but this isn’t an exhaustive list. Some of the samples could be shifted to other lists because they match multiple patterns; I did my best to put them in reasonable spots.

The paragraphs after the bullet lists include some extra personal commentary from me.

Note that nothing on this list is based on strengths that I consider myself to have, and none is based on other forms of feedback. This list is only derived from reader and customer feedback that was specifically sent in response to Monday’s blog post, What Are My Strengths?

Here’s what I ended up with. These aren’t in any particular order.

Open-Mindedness / Growth Mindset / Curiosity

  • Radical open-mindedness
  • Openness to new concepts and ideas
  • Capacity to challenge old beliefs, even when it goes against social pressure or conventional lines of thinking
  • Growth mindset, applied to multiple areas of life
  • Giving ideas careful consideration before deciding if they’re right for you
  • Ability to grow and release beliefs that no longer serve you
  • Subjective reality
  • Being a very “unstuck” person (inspirational)
  • Open to trying new stuff and being vulnerable
  • Courageous in quitting what doesn’t work for you (diets, relationships, values, etc.)
  • Willing to try new things and explore new patterns of thought
  • Inquisitiveness
  • Curiosity
  • You have the ability to stay open where most people have been closed off for a very long time
  • To tip a situation on its side and make a different assessment
  • Your thirst for knowledge to evaluate and condense all this into powerful thoughts
  • I love your curiosity and the way you keep exploring new subjects

I was surprised by how many people mentioned open-mindedness as one of my strengths since that isn’t a term I’d usually apply to myself. I definitely see myself as curious though. This feedback helped me see how strongly connected curiosity and open-mindedness are. Obviously our minds have to be open enough to explore unfamiliar territory.

The fact that people would call out open-mindedness as a strength also makes me wonder about the contrast. Does this mean that some of my readers would like to further develop this quality for themselves? This makes me curious about open-mindedness and how to teach or encourage the development of that quality more deliberately. This is probably an area of self-development that I tend to take for granted.

Independence / Freedom / Unshackled by Social Norms

  • Led by your own reflections
  • Internal locus of control
  • Putting yourself out there (seemingly) fearlessly
  • Being fully yourself, genuine, living life by connecting deeper with yourself and your values
  • You practice what you preach, and you don’t make lame or cliché statements
  • Free to explore many different ideas without being tied down to selling a system
  • Willingness to go against prevailing social norms
  • Seeing you go against grain helped me see that the reason I was so unhappy was because I was listening to my social conditioning rather than my heart
  • To constantly reinvent yourself
  • Nonconformist
  • Foregoer

This one didn’t surprise me, but again it makes me think about the contrast. I’m well-aware that many readers feel shackled by social and family expectations and want to break free of that. Wednesday’s article on Misaligned Relationships addresses this issue to some extent – it was partly inspired by the early feedback from this exercise.

Internally I don’t tend to think of myself as having these strengths because I’ve lived this way long enough that they just seem normal to me. Instead I frame this as making choices that feel aligned. What other people may perceive outwardly as going against social norms, I perceive as sensitivity to alignment issues. I place more weight on my inner satisfaction with my decisions than I do on other people’s reactions. This has served me well for many years.

I also like to remind myself that people often regret what they didn’t do. They lament how they kept quiet and didn’t express themselves. People regret being too conformist. I’d prefer to avoid racking up regrets, so I take other people’s warnings about this seriously. I don’t seek to be a rebel, but what feels aligned can sometimes be unpopular.

Range / Breadth

  • Writing about topics others are ignoring
  • I love the frequent blog posts on all kinds of topics
  • The different topics that you talk about that cover all sorts of issues
  • Your willingness to explore ideas on the nature of reality and spirituality without rejecting human needs (money, success, sex, etc)
  • You have an abundance of experience, and it is interesting to see how you have overcome difficult situations: bankruptcy, divorce, stealing, etc.
  • It is interesting to see how you manage current events: Covid-19 for example
  • Prolificness
  • The huge amount of perspectives you offer, in a generous and non-pushing way

Some would see having too much range as a weakness, so it’s nice that others recognize it as a strength. I also see it as a strength to have a lot of different interests, much like Leonardo da Vinci did. A lot of my best insights come from transplanting ideas from one field to another, such as turning 30-day trials that I learned in the software field into 30-day personal growth challenges.

Range is essential for staying motivated and enthusiastic about my work. If I narrowed my range too much, I’d feel trapped and bored. I like being able to mix up what I learn, explore, and create. It’s good to know that there are people who appreciate that. Many experts recommend “niching down,” and the reason I don’t do that is because it wouldn’t satisfy me on the inside to limit myself so much. I’m curious about more than just one niche, and I don’t think that niching down would create the kind of life I want to live.

From my perspective though, this strength tends to emerge from following what stimulates me while avoiding boredom. But this only works when I balance variety with good self-discipline and consistency. Otherwise I could end up bouncing around from one project to the next and never finishing anything (i.e. shiny object syndrome). That was a real problem for me in the past, and fortunately I recognized that I had to build up my self-discipline to compensate. So note that sometimes you need the balance of two seemingly conflicting strengths to access the benefits of either.

Exploration & Experimentation

  • Presenting ideas from a perspective of exploration and testing
  • You encourage people to try things that might be different from what you choose
  • Willingness to explore and experiment
  • Reflecting on your own experience and extracting the universal truths and lessons that you can share with others
  • Connection between exploration and universal truths (grounded in experience)
  • Willingness to learn and experiment with new challenges
  • Balancing consistent structure with flexibility, especially when doing 30-day challenges
  • To thoroughly look at yourself and the world around you, both with your feelings and with your brain, reflect on it, take action, and tell us everything
  • Living a life that sends a message to us all that anything is possible
  • The ability to always find a new perspective on things, to not get stuck in a rut
  • Seeing you do different experiments
  • Risk taking experience (really important you push boundaries)
  • Willingness to explore
  • Exploring the world

This one feels pretty aligned with how I see myself. I do love to explore and experiment. People seem to appreciate that my lessons stem from experience and that I like to test ideas in the real world.

This may seem close to curiosity and open-mindedness, but I list this as a separate item because it’s the sharing of these experiments that provides value for people. Some people find that the explorations I share encourage them to explore more as well, even if they’re doing totally unrelated explorations. It’s good to see that this strength is contagious. The more we explore, the more we influence and encourage others to explore.

Depth & Immersion

  • Immersive coverage from many angles
  • Exploring a challenge from so many different angles that it forces a breakthrough for readers
  • Take a challenge that is common to your readers, and absolutely hammer the problem with endless different tools, perspectives, and actionable ideas
  • Blog series
  • Can always go back and review the basics in your blog – habits, discipline, 30-day trials, goal-setting, purpose, productivity, time-management, health, exercise, and diet
  • Daily nuggets of thought provoking ideas
  • So many good bits of information and wisdom
  • Sharing the insider’s perspective
  • Level of depth you cover in your topics is second to none
  • You clearly show a vast amount of knowledge and passion for personal development which solidifies your credibility
  • Your ability to provide fresh insights into well trodden self-help topics
  • The depth and detail you go into on the issue and lead on to how to tackle the problem
  • Thorough

Because I often write longer articles, I attract readers who like longer articles. Same goes for the in-depth courses – they attract people who like and appreciate in-depth courses. People who want quick sound bites probably won’t be attracted to my work.

Internally I don’t think of depth and immersion as direct strengths. I see these as side effects that derive from wanting to connect the dots between different ideas. Many of my blog posts are explorations of different angles on a topic to clarify my own thinking.

How can we explore open relationships in an ethically aligned way? Is there a non-sleazy way to do online marketing and have it be effective? What modes of generating income are the best for long-term character sculpting? These are the kinds of questions that my mind likes to explore and resolve. So I would identify my underlying strength here as a drive for real understanding and a dissatisfaction with shallow answers.

Some people said they made specific changes in their own lives that were inspired by what they read in my blog. Going vegan and going jobless were the most common changes mentioned. They liked that I covered certain lifestyle changes from multiple angles with an insider’s perspective.

Some people were actually grateful for making changes that they initially resisted. They noted that it was because I addressed a topic from so many different angles over a long period of time that convinced them to finally try it for themselves.

Challenging People to Change / Teaching People to See Reality Differently

  • Challenging people to think alternatively
  • You have an uncanny knack for blogging about issues that I am currently struggling with in a way that gives me a fresh perspective and a new way to think through a problem
  • Revealing blind spots
  • How you destroy my world (i.e. old collections of beliefs and attitudes that aren’t working) -> new world of better results
  • Your ability to get through to people and make them inspired to actually act upon your ideas
  • Encourage well rounded development (physical, intellectual, spiritual, social, etc.)
  • Effective at training me to see reality more accurately
  • The motivation that you inspire to try what you say to do
  • You continue to be a wonderful example
  • Your daily blog posts are good reminders to stay on track with my personal goals and values
  • You consistently give me something to think about/implement in my life, which I love
  • Giving people a fresh perspective on things in a very simple-to-understand and act-upon way
  • Sharing your views and experiments allows me to challenge my views
  • Make us think deeply about all aspects of our existence
  • Ability to see and communicate new perspectives, new ways of seeing reality
  • Disruptor
  • Giving me new perspectives

This one struck me as one of the most interesting items on the list. People actually like and appreciate that I challenge them to think differently. They like that I nudge them to destroy their old worlds, especially if those worlds aren’t giving them the results they want anyway.

Admittedly I didn’t really think of this as a personal strength, but multiple people noted that this is what really provides long-term value for them. Even though they may resist at first, they ultimately like having holes poked in their old models of reality. They like being challenged to raise their standards. They like learning alternative points of view to digest and think about. They like that I don’t play it safe by only writing about topics inside their comfort zones.

I think this strength comes from what I do for myself. I frequently challenge and question my own models, and much of what I write stems from that questioning. This in turn encourages others to ask similar questions.

I love this because it means that by investing in my own growth, I’m providing a good service to others, as long as I continue to share what I learn along the way. This was a big part of my original vision for starting this blog in 2004. I love personal growth and wanted to make it my full-time occupation. I trusted that if I kept learning and sharing that it would provide sufficient value to people. That turned out to be true.

Sometimes I still have to remind myself that this is a key part of my business and lifestyle. I have to keep exploring, experimenting, and questioning because that’s the engine that feeds everything else. Fortunately I’ve always loved doing that, so it doesn’t feel like a burden. I don’t see myself ever losing my deep curiosity about life.

Sincerity / Honesty / Transparency

  • Honesty
  • Transparency
  • Honest and transparent with your readers
  • Your firm inner strength that knows exactly what you believe and hold dear and is as solid as a rock
  • You are tremendously honest and direct
  • Establishing trust with your audience by means of your sincerity of expression
  • Your ability to gain my trust because of your honest, approachable, and intelligent style
  • By being honest and transparent, you bring authentic solutions and connections
  • You tell things as they are and as they seem to you; I have not found hidden agendas to try to get me to buy something

It didn’t surprise me that people mentioned this, but I also see it as more of a side effect rather than a primary strength.

This one is due to sensitivity to how I feel about my life and about the relationships with the people I serve and connect with regularly. I see relationships as a huge part of life, and I want my relationships to be strong, supportive, and growth-oriented. This includes relationships with people, with my work, with myself, and with reality itself.

I find it interesting that no one really named this inner sensitivity as a strength of mine, but it shows up as a key factor in multiple strengths that people experience externally. Perhaps it’s not too much of a stretch to see that being sensitive to your internal states and seeking inner harmony can actually create ripples of value for others. If you seek more alignment on the inside, you may express more of your strengths outwardly.

Sensitivity can be a powerful strength if you honor it as such.

Clear Communication

  • Writing and speaking
  • Your clarity of writing
  • Relaying spiritual or difficult-to-understand concepts in a relatable manner (for a computer-friendly audience)
  • Being able to take a thought and breaking it down and explaining it very well
  • Tying real world examples into your writing or courses are extremely helpful
  • You are concise, and all of your sentences are usually necessary and relevant
  • Very good at articulating and getting your point across
  • Even when you make appeals to emotions, you structure your points in ways that both the logical and emotional parts of my mind can agree with
  • Your ability to bring razor sharp analytical skills to topics that are often dismissed as “woo woo” – and thereby provide your readers with deeper understandings
  • Your ability to convey complex ideas in a simple and straightforward manner
  • Your writing skills. the way you can popularize complex ideas with simple examples
  • Your very clear and easy to follow explanations – I don’t have to read it twice to fathom out what you are saying
  • You have a way of reducing the fluff of personal development
  • Helps shorten the learning curve for me
  • I like how you communicate in clear manner; your writings are easy to follow and enjoyable to read
  • Articulation

This isn’t too surprising. If people didn’t like my communication style, they wouldn’t stick around. So it makes sense that I attract people who like it.

While I could write in a more flowery style, I actually dislike it when other writers do that in their books and articles. It just makes my brain work harder to extract the meaning. I value directness and plain language in other people’s writing, so I try to practice this myself. To me the purpose of writing is to communicate useful ideas, not to showcase clever writing skills.

I also had some high school teachers that pushed me to eliminate verbal flabbiness when possible. So this strength was largely trained through education and practice. Having a background in computer science and math helps too since clarity is essential in both fields.

Rationality & Practicality

  • Your ability to think things through
  • Real world examples
  • You waste none of the reader’s time, and you get immediately to the pragmatic and practical concerns
  • Focus on results, real-world problems and challenges
  • You are grounded and rational
  • Clear-sighted intelligence
  • You are always interesting, thought-provoking, and you provide advice that is applicable in the real world
  • You see reality (as it is and is not) more clearly than I do
  • Logical, intelligent, and honest viewpoint
  • You’re able to come up with models of reality that are actionable as well as effective
  • You do actually offer a potential solution and don’t just leave us thinking, “Well I knew that already, but what do I actually DO about it?”
  • In your hands, Subjective Reality has a structure and is seen as a kind of practical tool
  • Well-balanced mix of your well-developed mental and emotional intelligence
  • Logical

This one also links with a background in math and computer science. Try programming a computer with good intentions and positive thinking. You have to think rationally and logically to get results from coding.

I got into personal development as part of my recovery from self-destructive behavior, so learning to behave more sanely and rationally was a life-saver for me. Consequently, I have a healthy respect for rationality.

While I’ve explored lots of esoteric and woo-woo personal development ideas too, my journey began with an intense need to solve real problems in my life, so this practical grounding has been with me for a long time. I know how valuable an investment in personal development can be because of how beautifully it transformed my life.

I do see value in exploring pure thought experiments, but I still like to link them to real-world results when possible. Otherwise if an idea just hangs there in space and I can’t use it to improve my results in any area of life, I don’t see it as being of much long-term use other than for the entertainment value.

Open-mindedness and exploration help to balance this strength though. Rationality can become a weakness if you overplay it and let it lock you into a linear mode of thinking. I think it’s rational to realize that you always have more to learn, and that means exploring the unknown.

Creativity & Originality

  • Thinking, visualizing, and communicating outside the box, in fact in a different galaxy
  • The outside the box ways of communicating
  • The creativity in the courses I have taken, particularly Stature, communicates concepts in ways that simply don’t seem available elsewhere
  • I see creativity and a lot of clear thinking in you
  • Your freshness and originality
  • You can combine two very different mindsets: analytical and intuitive in a way which is quite symbiotic in nature, and gives rise to solutions that are unique and creative
  • Innovative thinking

This strength feels like one of contrast to me. If we didn’t have school systems and corporate jobs that pressure us to devalue inner harmony, I doubt that I would seem as creative or original.

While the world’s misalignments may create opportunities, part of me wishes this weren’t the case. I think it would be more pleasing and satisfying to live in a world where most people followed their paths with a heart and stayed sensitive to inner harmony.

In the past I valued being an out of the box thinker and deliberately leaned into that. These days I’d prefer to do away with the box altogether, so no one has to be stuck inside of it.

From my perspective, I’m basically trying to live the life I learned about from watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. Explore the galaxy. Keep learning and growing. Have interesting relationships with people from different planets. And always be aware that there’s an empath on board to keep you honest.

Caring / Empathy / Ethics / Generosity / Heart

  • A good heart
  • You come across not only as an expert in the field but also as a friend who cares for others and who genuinely wants to see them improve their lives; not just saying they do. That’s where I get my trust for you from.
  • Giving a lot away for free, including uncopyrighting
  • Accessibility – covering relevant issues readers care about, helping people feel they aren’t alone
  • You’ve transcended the common online business model (AdSense, affiliates, etc.) and have a moral dimension to your work
  • It’s been inspiring, from a distance, to watch your trust in Life pay off
  • Your genuine desire to help
  • You have strong imaginative power which makes you able to empathize more with people
  • You are friendly and warm in your interactions
  • The connection that you somehow convey through your writing, so it feels like you are targeting my own personal problem
  • You seek to cause as little harm as possible
  • You seek to help and heal through bringing knowledge and encouragement to people
  • Generosity and your service-orientation; to put out so much free content is a beautiful gift
  • Being able to offer a lot of quality content on your website without charge
  • Compassion
  • Heart of service
  • Shows that you care about people and surroundings
  • It is heart warming to see how you genuinely want people to grow and develop themselves

Awwww… I do indeed care about helping people. I think this could also be a quality flowing from sensitivity. I often feel like I pick up on energy, feelings, and intentions from the people I connect with, even at a distance.

When I was younger, I didn’t value such qualities, but now I see them as essential to being in tune with the flow of life. I think caring has a lot to do with listening, not just with our ears but with all parts of ourselves. I feel fortunate that some caring influences came into my life at the right time to help steer me in this direction. Going vegan played a significant part in this as well; that really opened up the heart-brain communication pathways.

Some people who mentioned these items also requested that I do more videos or podcasts, so more of the emotional connection comes through. I can understand that, although I still really like the experience of writing. I feel that writing helps me slow down, so I can go deeper into the exploration of ideas.

I still like video too though, especially live video. What some people may not see is that we do live video coaching calls in Conscious Growth Club 36 times per year. We just recently passed 100 of those calls, so from my perspective I’m already doing a significant amount of video.

Personality / Playfulness / Positivity

  • Many people have a growth mindset or focus and discipline, but they can’t bring the playful and unique approach to it
  • Humor
  • I love how you inject your personality into each post
  • It gives your posts that personal touch and authenticity which even the most sceptic of readers can respect
  • As readers we feel invited and brought to your side as individuals who are constantly exploring
  • To not get dragged down by others or bad energy
  • To always stay positive and believe that things will be better
  • To trust yourself and reality
  • Playfulness

In this area I think it also makes sense that people who dislike my personality or sense of humor wouldn’t stick with reading my blog for long.

I often have mixed reactions when other authors inject their personality into their work. Sometimes I really like it, and sometimes I find it cheesy or annoying if it feels like they’re trying too hard. I aim to strike a balance and not force it, preferring to keep the ideas front and center most of the time.

I also think that expressing some playfulness helps to create a stronger connection over time, and it makes the work more enjoyable too. It’s good to know that it’s possible to attract people who appreciate playfulness.

Focus / Discipline / Determination / Work Ethic / Consistency

  • I doubt there are many things in your life that don’t serve clear and well-thought-out goals
  • You aren’t stumbling through life blindly
  • Goals & character building
  • Time management
  • Discipline / self-discipline
  • Hard-working
  • Dedication
  • Determined and disciplined
  • Consistency
  • Balancing with open-mindedness: It seems like tightness and rigidity tend to appear in people who have a high level of self-discipline, but it’s quite the opposite with you
  • Your regular contact; I do like the daily connection

Self-discipline was a hard quality to build, but I did make gradual gains by continuing to invest in it. I feel this is important to balance other qualities that can potentially pull against focus and consistency, like the desire to go out and explore something new.

Self-discipline can also create traps of its own if you overplay it, potentially stifling creativity and spontaneity.

I like to see these different aspects like parts of a song, where each instrument gets its opportunity to shine, and they can all play harmoniously together.

I’m glad I did this little experiment. It gave me some interesting insights and helped me connect the dots between how I think about my strengths and what other people perceive. It’s interesting to realize that outward strengths may come from deeper places that aren’t easy to identify.

This makes me wonder if Leonardo da Vinci would identify the same strengths in himself that other people would credit him for. Did he see his incredible range as a strength? He might have even seen it as a weakness since so many of his works were unfinished when he died. I read the book How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, which was insightful, but that cannot reveal how he actually thought.

Consider that as you develop your own strengths, other people may credit you for how those strengths affect them, but they may not be able to identify the core strengths that give rise to those outward expressions. You may experience and frame your strengths differently. For instance, no one identified writing from inspiration and choosing topics based on inspiration as a strength of mine, even though that’s a huge deal to me and something I’ve invested in greatly for many years. That strength also stems from sensitivity to signals that carry ideas.

Consequently, if you spot a strength in someone else and then try to emulate if yourself, your results may fall flat if you miss the core strength that gives rise to the outer expression. If anyone wants to get good results emulating some of my strengths, they may get stuck if they don’t invest in increasing their sensitivity to inner and outer signals.

I’m grateful for everyone who chose to respond to these questions, so thank you for that. It was an eye-opening and reflective experience for me, and I hope you got some value from reading this post. I also encourage you to think about how inner qualities that you might not even think about as strengths could actually flow into providing value in ways you may not have considered yet.

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Create and Share

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Many people who want to earn a living from creative work get stuck trying to figure out a business model. Meanwhile they’re not actually doing much creating. They’re waiting for clarity.

Waiting for clarity is a waste of time. So is trying to figure out the perfect transition plan in advance. It’s easier to find clarity when you’re in motion.

I suggest that you start simpler. Focus on getting into the rhythm of creating and sharing. Don’t worry about monetization. Don’t worry about the business model – not if that’s a cause of stuckness for you.

If you’re going to focus on anything, seek to find the people who will appreciate what you can create and share. Appreciation is a sign that value is being received and acknowledged. If there’s no appreciation, such as thank you’s and other forms of acknowledgement coming back to you, chances are that little value is being delivered. Don’t mistakenly assume that this implies you’re not creating value. It’s more likely that you’re not sharing with the right people.

If you create something and share it, and the people you share it with don’t appreciate it, stop sharing with them. Someone else will appreciate it, so share it somewhere else – anywhere else. Even if you bop around randomly trying to find the right people, it’s better than wasting your life sharing with misaligned people who will whine at you or ignore ou.

If you’re sharing on social media, I’d go so far as to drop the people who don’t like what you’re sharing or who go out of their way to criticize you. They’ll only slow you down. Clear them out, and make some room for aligned people to get through.

It’s fine if some people in your audience are neutral, but if they’re dead weight as far as appreciation goes, then don’t invest in trying to please them. Just let ’em go.

Trust that you’ll find your audience. You’ll find your real audience faster by quickly firing the wrong audience members.

Seek to create in tune with appreciation, at least if you want to make your creating and sharing sustainable. Money is a form of appreciation, and if the appreciation is there, it isn’t that hard to turn that into income. But it’s pretty damned hard to do that if there’s little or no appreciation.

You can still work on business models. You can still experiment with income generation along the way. But the fundamental piece to get working early on is creating and sharing. No one can stop you from doing that. You can start on that today.

Once you find people who appreciate your work, you can even co-create your business model with them. That’s how I got started. People who appreciated my work shared ideas and suggestions for how I could monetize it. Some gave me examples of how other people were monetizing work that I might adopt as well. All I had to do was follow that flow, and it was the regular creating and sharing that made it sustainable.

You’ll probably have some objections to doing this. That’s fine. My counter-objection is that creating and sharing, even without much of a plan, works a lot better than vacillating, delaying, second-guessing yourself, and perhaps the most popular lament of all: I don’t know how. So if your objections are keeping you stuck, maybe they don’t amount to a hill of beans. If you create and share regularly and you move towards people who appreciate what you share, you can eventually have lots of hills with lots of beans.

Remember how easy it was to create stuff when you were a kid. Just grab some colored paper, glue, scissors, and make a mess with it. Someone will appreciate it if you show it to enough people. I’ve seen displays in modern art museums that look no better than what a five-year old could create, and there are still people who appreciate it. So get your crusty, whiny, cowardly AF adult brain out of your way, and just create and share stuff. If you don’t know where to start, pretend that you’re five years old, and start anyway.

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Exploding Your Mindset Box

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Some of the biggest traps in self-development are mindset traps, usually because they’re invisible to us. We get ourselves into a mindset box but can’t see the walls.

What if the mindset box you’re in doesn’t contain any solutions to your biggest problems? What if those answers exist only outside the box?

A common symptom of this trap is when you think you’ve tried just about everything and still aren’t getting results in a particular area. This is often true of financial, career, relationship, and health challenges.

What you’ve really done is tried many solutions that are accessible within the same mindset box. None of them have worked for you because the mindset box itself is the problem.

For instance, one mindset box is the self-absorption box that I shared in yesterday’s post. When you’re in this box, you frame your problems self-referentially, as if the whole world revolves around you. While that can be an empowering frame for some types of problems, it’s especially weak for overcoming with financial and relationship challenges. Consequently, you’ll often find self-absorbed people struggling with their finances and relationships. And they’re usually blind to how much the self-absorption mindset is limiting them.

Would you want to be in a relationship with someone who’s highly self-absorbed and has a hard time considering other people’s perspectives? Would you want to do business with such a person? When you look at this mindset box from the outside, its limitations become apparent, but when you’re inside the box, you probably won’t realize that the mindset itself is the problem.

This is a key point to understand. You’re in your own mindset box right now, and it’s limiting you. Moreover, you can’t even see how it’s limiting you. What you can see, however, is your frustrating lack of results in a particular area.

Consider some area of your life that stubbornly refuses to progress towards greater results, no matter how much you work on it. Now ask yourself this: How could your own mindset box could be preventing you from making progress? Ask yourself what other mindsets people use to get results in this area. Consider how someone with a different mindset might approach this problem.

Most importantly, test different behaviors that conflict or disagree with your current mindset. Play with them by taking actions that you’d only take if you adopted an opposing mindset. You don’t have to agree with a mindset to test its behaviors. New behaviors can generate new results for you, even if you still vehemently disagree with the mindset behind that behavior.

Which behaviors have you rejected because they don’t agree with your current mindset box? Try some of those behaviors, and see where they lead. This is how you can start exploring beyond your mindset box.

A key limiting belief to overcome here is that you can only test actions and behaviors that align with your current mindset box. That isn’t true at all. You’re free to test behaviors that conflict with your mindset. Your ability to take action isn’t beholden to obey any particular mindset. Behaviors stem from thoughts, and mindsets stem from thoughts, and those thoughts needn’t agree with each other. Your brain is plenty big enough to hold space for opposing thoughts.

So be deliberately disagreeable with the mindset that’s generating behaviors that aren’t getting results for you. Be disobedient. Be willing to explore in direct violation of that mindset.

For instance, if you have a neediness or a self-absorption mindset, those mindsets are traps that will limit your results. What behaviors would be in conflict with such mindsets? How about volunteering? If you’re needy or self-absorbed, you’re not going to volunteer to help others. Only someone who has a mindset of kindness, generosity, or abundance will volunteer their time and energy to help others, right? So this behavior will clearly irritate your neediness or self-absorption mindset. Perfect! That’s exactly what to you ought to do then.

Your old mindset box will raise plenty of objections about why you can’t do a behavior that conflicts with it. Wonderful! Let it object because you have a much bigger counter-objection. Here’s your counter-objection:

Oh yeah… well you suck at getting results!

Let your old mindset chew on that for a while. Now matter how much it whines at you, face it down with the hard truth it doesn’t want to hear: You’re not getting results, old mindset. You’ve repeatedly let us down.

This approach has turned my life around multiple times. I did the volunteering thing when I was broke and going bankrupt. My old mindset objected vehemently, but my attitude was that the old mindset never worked for me anyway, so what did I have to lose by trying something totally different? My finances turned around that same year, and I haven’t had any problems with scarcity since. That was 21 years ago. The old mindset could never solve that problem for me. But a simple new behavior solved it beautifully.

New behaviors will crack your old mindsets that didn’t work, eventually leading you to new mindsets that align with the new behavior. And now you’re outside of the old box, and now your new mindset will generate still more behaviors, and some of those behaviors will help you get better results. Quite often you won’t figure out the new mindset though till you explore the behaviors that lead you to it.

So it’s not always true that your first behavioral exploration outside your old mindset will create breakthrough results, but by cracking the old mindset, you’ll gain access to even more behaviors. You’ll expand the possibility space by tearing down the old walls. This gives you a much better chance of finding and adopting behaviors that generate better results than your old mindset box ever could.

The benefits of exploring beyond my own mindset boxes have been profound. This is a key reason I do so many personal growth experiments that other people would find questionable. I like to explore behaviors that challenge and push the boundaries my mindset box.

Some of these behavioral experiments include:

  • Going to Disneyland for 30 days in a row
  • Eating a low-fat raw diet for 30 days
  • Going skydiving
  • Going vegan
  • Joining Toastmasters and doing speech contests
  • Doing live events on the Vegas Strip
  • Water fasting for 40 days
  • Training for and running a marathon
  • Traveling through Europe for several weeks without paying for a place to stay
  • Doing lots of manifestation experiments
  • Becoming a hugger
  • Going to a cuddle party
  • Learning to play guitar
  • Moving to Las Vegas
  • Learning card counting for blackjack
  • Becoming an early riser
  • Starting a computer games business fresh out of college
  • Seeing 200+ independent theater productions (and assisting in some)
  • Shifting from a fenced relationship to an open relationship
  • Blogging every day for a year (my current one)
  • Inviting and experiencing threesomes
  • Joining the Church of Scientology and going to one of their centers for a few months
  • Going on a 4000-mile road trip
  • Converting to a smart home with cleaning robots, voice-controlled thermostats, and numerous smart devices from Apple, Amazon, and Google
  • Traveling many times with a one-way ticket, not knowing when I’d return
  • Joining an improv troupe for a few months
  • Doing ayahuasca four nights in a row

Did all of these experiments fit neatly into my mindset at the time I tried them? Heck no!

You try walking into a Scientology center without your mind generating a slew of objections. You try showing up at Disneyland with the expectation that you’re going to spend a full month of your life there. You try pulling out your credit card to reserve a meeting room on the Vegas Strip for a 3-day workshop when you’ve never done one before. Of course your mind is going to object when you step outside its boundaries!

I revel in these kinds of experiments though because they keep destroying the walls of old mindset boxes that no longer serve me. Sometimes even a good mindset that generates pleasing results for a while can feel limiting after a while. Maybe you start feeling bored and listless. That’s a good time to mix things up by violating your current mindset with some objectionable behaviors.

One of my next mindset box violations that I want to attempt this year is to write a novel. I’ve never written a novel before, so of course my mind objects to that idea. I have written millions of words of published content, including my nonfiction book Personal Development for Smart People, but fiction feels like a different beast entirely.

So of course my current mindset objects to this idea. What if I write a novel and it absolutely sucks? What if everyone trashes it as the worst piece of crap they’ve ever read? What if it takes way longer than I expect? What if I can’t get the story to converge on a decent ending? Yada yada yada.

When I see objections like that, to me that’s a damned good reason to take action and try out the new behavior. If my old mindset objects so much, then its walls must be feeling vulnerable. Just making the attempt could lead me to some fresh mindset territory. Regardless of how the novel turns out, the path of exploring fiction will be an expansive one.

Probe the limitations of your current mindset. Look for behaviors that your current mindset says you can’t possibly do. Then explore those behaviors anyway. Smash the walls of your old mindset box, and you’ll surely discover more empowering mindsets and behaviors. And don’t stop. Keep smashing!

The key benefit here is that when you violate a limiting mindset, you gain access to new results. Do you want better results, or would you prefer to continue wallowing in freakish misery?

I don’t have to deal with being broke anymore because I smashed down the walls that caused me to get stuck there. I spent most of my 20s behind those walls, but my 30s and 40s were free of them. Have you smashed the walls of brokeness yet? If not, then your current mindset probably sucks and needs to be smashed. So find a behavior that violates that mindset, and go test it for a month or two.

I don’t have to deal with a lack of affection in my life anymore. I smashed those walls too. So I get to enjoy a super affectionate wife who hugs, kisses, and cuddles me every day. Have you smashed the walls of emotional neediness yet? What behavior would violate the old mindset that isn’t getting the job done? Yup, that one!

If I didn’t explore beyond the mindset boxes that limited me, I’d probably still be dealing with crappy, unwanted results in many areas of life. Now whenever I don’t like my results, I have a method for getting past the “I’ve tried everything and none of it works” nonsense.

The best part is that it’s actually fun to do this kind of smashing, once you get used to it. Sometimes it’s fun just to see other people’s reactions. Sometimes it’s exciting thinking about how different life will be for a while. I really enjoyed the 30 days at Disneyland, for instance. Somehow I never got bored, and that experience pushed me to think bigger. I realized that Walt Disney got that whole monstrosity going by stepping into behaviors that made other people think he was crazy. I don’t think I’d have started Conscious Growth Club if I hadn’t done that Disney experiment.

I challenge you to violate a mindset box that limits you. Commit yourself to a course of action that the old mindset box tells you is out of bounds. If the old mindset isn’t generating the results you want anyway, throw that back in its face when it objects. Don’t blame yourself for the lack of results. Blame your old mindset.

When you do this often enough, you’ll start to trust the process more. I know it’s scary the first few times, but that fear is just one more mindset box to blow up. So many awesome results in life can be found on the other side of fear… the other side of worry… the other side of playing small.

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