Committing to the Stretch

Posted on 13/05/2020 by Boris Clair

One thing I love about blogging is that by writing about many aspects of personal growth, I improve and deepen my understanding of those aspects. Writing helps me glean fresh insights connect the dots in new ways.

This has been especially true of workshops and courses. Initially such projects felt daunting, but eventually I got the hang of them. Now a big part of my motivation for selecting such projects is the rich personal gains I’ll make in my ability to understand and apply the material.

The next major deep dive I want to create is a course on creative productivity called Amplify. I expect to start working on it this summer. Just knowing that this project is coming me up is making me extra observant of my daily habits and workflows. I’ve made a lot of tweaks and improvements to how I work this year as I seek to better understand how to flow through a variety of creative projects, large and small.

One frame that works especially well is committing to a project before you know how to complete it. It’s extremely limiting to only say yes to projects when you can already see the finish line. Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the growth and challenge?

When you demand that you’re going to have to teach something where you aren’t 100% certain about the outcome, that kind of commitment feels edgier. It keeps you on your toes, feeling awake and alert.

You don’t have to fake it. You don’t have to overextend yourself. You can challenge yourself to make a commitment at the edge of your comfort zone while still feeling confident that you can pull it off.

This kind of confidence goes beyond your belief in your own knowledge and skills. You have to stretch further into trusting reality, expecting that if you take on something bold and worthwhile, reality will back you up.

I’ve noticed that when I set well-aligned goals, reality meets me halfway. The goal has to include some kind of personal stretching though. It can’t be too easy. If reality thinks that I’m copping out and taking it easy, it won’t lend a hand. But if reality sees that I’m offering to stretch into the unknown, it just seems to love that kind of offer.

Sometimes I think that this is a big part of our collective life purpose here. We’re here to explore the unknown, and that requires stretching ourselves beyond the familiar and the comfortable. We have to push into the dark areas of life that we don’t 100% understand.

Life opens the floodgates of support when it detects a real commitment to exploring the unfamiliar and the uncomfortable. When we play it safe, however, life just yawns at us.

People often struggle to achieve easy and accessible goals. What they don’t often realize is that this is why they’re failing. They set their sights so low that life (and other people) mostly ignore them. And no fire burns within them for pursuing life’s low-hanging fruit. Stretch for the upper branches; don’t just hug the trunk.

Consider your biggest upcoming goal. Are you playing it safe by setting a small and easy goal? Are you playing it safe by keeping your options open and not really committing to it 100%? If you’re playing it safe at all, you know it, and life knows it. There’s no hiding. Life won’t reward you for playing small.

What’s the goal that scares you a bit? What’s the goal that stirs up some desire when you think about it, but you also think it could be too much? Where are the edgy goals?

Have you committed to the edginess? What would life say about that? How would you know what life thinks? Well, has it clearly indicated that it accepts your offer? Or does it seem to be ignoring you?

When you make a good offer to life, life responds. It demonstrates that your offer is accepted. When you get no response, make a stronger offer.

Your goals are offers to life. Life will respond well if it likes your offers. If life doesn’t respond, it doesn’t mean that you’re unworthy or that life doesn’t like you. It just means that life declined your offer.

It takes time to discover what types of offers life appreciates from you. So make a lot of offers. Learn what life accepts and what it ignores. The pattern I keep seeing is that life loves stretch offers backed by a clear willingness to commit.

More, Better, Different, Purpose

Posted on 08/05/2020 by Boris Clair

In his book Road to Purpose, Kenneth Behring shared how his life went through four phases.

The first phase was more – more money, more success, more friends, etc.

The second phase was better – a better home, better possessions, better vacations, etc.

The third phase was different – new experiences, new possessions, etc.

And the final phase was purpose – meaning, fulfillment, contribution, and making a difference in other people’s lives.

Behring claimed to have moved through these phases in linear order, but you have more flexible options here. You can shift among these four different types of growth throughout your life. You could be living a very purposeful life and still want to explore more, better, and different, for instance.

If you think about which type of growth most appeals to you now, which of these four would you pick? What feels most important to you? Where do you sense the greatest need or desire?

For me it would depend on when you ask me. This year I’m mainly focused on better. Lately I’ve been investing in creating better habits, developing better systems, and especially making Conscious Growth Club even better. My wife Rachelle has a similar focus. Afterwards we both agree that it would be nice to explore some different, especially when traveling becomes viable again.

When you have a primary desire or focus, do your best to avoid opportunity blindness to the other three modes of growth. Realize that different could lead to better. Purpose could lead to more. And so on.

If you get stuck trying to make progress with your preferred mode of self-development, try broadening your perspective, and consider the other three modes. One of them may hold the key to releasing that stuckness.

Pushing Yourself

Posted on 04/05/2020 by Boris Clair

This morning I went for my usual run, starting before dawn. Lately I’ve been going for 45-50 minutes. This time, however, I was listening to the audiobook Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins. After hearing the part about his 100-mile run and how he had to push himself to get through it, I felt like I should push myself more as well. So I kept running for an hour, then 75 minutes, and finally decided to stop at 93 minutes.

This was hill running since my neighborhood is very hilly, so almost all the running I do nearby is either uphill or downhill.

Normally after a morning run, I feel pretty good. It gives me a sense of accomplishment early in the day and gets me off to a good start. I see a strong link between focus and productivity and cardio exercise. No matter how much I’ve experimented with other types of exercise, nothing takes the place of cardio in terms of the mental and emotional benefits.

This morning instead of feeling a modest sense of accomplishment, it felt way better to run twice as far as I normally would. I’ve done many 90-minute runs before, but not lately and not this year. It felt so nice to stretch beyond what I’m used to. It wasn’t physically difficult, but I had to nudge myself mentally to go beyond what feels normal to me now. Running for 45 minutes feels pretty routine. Running 90 minutes feels different though, somehow beyond normal. It makes the whole day feel special.

There’s something magical about pushing beyond normal, going outside of the usual zone of comfort. The barrier is usually mental or emotional. Even if it’s a physical challenge, the mind wants to stop before the body needs to.

This got me thinking about other areas of life where I’ve had to stretch myself mentally in order to improve my results. I remember when making an extra $1K seemed like a big deal. Then I eventually reached the point where $1K seemed easy, and I projected those earlier limitations onto $10K. Then I stretched that limit to $50K, and eventually $50K felt easy to earn, like in a week or a month. Now $100K feels easy and seems like a modest amount. And $250K is starting to feel like it’s probably not that hard to earn in one chunk. I just need to be a bit more creative. Earning $500K in a week or so is starting to look like it might be even more fun. It seems within the realm of reach, not inaccessible but a bit more of a stretch to get there.

What I like about financial stretching, as I shared in yesterday’s post on overcoming financial pressure, is that it’s very measurable, and the mind has different associations to different amounts of money. The way you feel about $10K won’t be the same as you feel about $100K or $1M. Some amounts will seem small. Others will seem big. But those judgments have nothing to do with the actual sums; they just expose the limitations and blocks of the mind.

The fun part that leads to breakthroughs starts with deciding to do something financially that’s on the other side of a mental block. Take a clear goal like earning $100K in a week. How does your mind classify that? Is it accessible and doable for you? Is it trivially easy for you? Or is it on the other side of a mental barrier that says it’s inaccessible, out of reach, or unrealistic to even think about?

If you don’t push through your mental barriers and challenge them, they become real for you. Your life becomes boxed in because you don’t push beyond the walls of the box.

To keep progressing in any area of life, we have to stretch the mind first. We have to decide to do something that seems like it’s too much, too far, or too out of reach. The mind will initially resist, but the resistance can be overcome.

Many aspects of my life that feel normal used to feel out of reach. Getting up at 5am daily was one of those. I struggled with that habit for a long time, but the main barrier was mindset. Initially I framed it as something hard to do, something barely accessible for me. But when I just decided to absolutely do it no matter what, the resistance crumbled. Now it’s easy. If the decision is made to get up at 5am daily, it’s a done deal. A long time ago, I broke the part of my mind that said I couldn’t become an early riser by proving it wrong till it finally surrendered.

I used a similar approach to figure out how to make a living without getting a job. The key was to decide not to get one and to figure out some other path. One the decision was made, there was no looking back and no second-guessing. Now I’ve gone almost three decades without a job. And the 2006 article 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job has inspired countless other people to discover that they too can do just fine without ever having to get a job (unless they really want one).

I feel like I enter a different zone of being when I push myself. Doing what’s expected and satisfying my own expectations feels good, but it’s nowhere near as satisfying as going beyond my comfort zone and stretching.

What limits are holding you back right now? What would you like to experience or achieve, but your mind tells you that’s out of reach? Prove your mind wrong. Go pursue the goal that’s out of reach. Decide that you’ll find a way.

Here’s a personal challenge for you: Do something within the next 24 hours that breaks one of your mental barriers. Find a way to push yourself, and notice how satisfying that feels.

How to Overcome Financial Pressure

Posted on 03/05/2020 by Boris Clair

We just wrapped up the 2020 launch of Conscious Growth Club, and our next opening will be in April 2021. The launch did very well. We have 87 members enrolled in our next CGC year together. Financially this was our second six-figure launch of the year, the previous one being for the Stature course in January.

I received some feedback from people who really wanted to join CGC this year (some of them waiting months to sign up) but couldn’t do it because of financial challenges, especially related to the virus. Some had been recently laid off. Others have been reporting a business slowdown. Others are uncertain about the economy and want to conserve cash. All of this is totally understandable, and I’d never pressure anyone to join CGC if it would mean overextending themselves financially.

I spent most of my 20s broke and in debt and went through a bankruptcy in 1999. Financial stress was a big issue for me back then. So let me share some insights on how to reframe financial pressure, so it doesn’t keep haunting you and stressing you out for the rest of your days.

Framing Financial Pressure

How do you frame the presence of financial pressure, such as bills or expenses you’re not sure you can cover?

One way is to see such pressure as an annoyance. Maybe it’s something that pushes your buttons emotionally. But if you see it as something that irritates or bothers you, you’ll probably try to avoid dealing with it. Since this framing doesn’t help you resolve the source of the pressure, the pressure just continues.

The annoyance framing often leads to escapism. Many people try to retreat into using the law of attraction to fix their money problems, but that doesn’t usually work when the underlying relationship with financial pressure is rooted in annoyance.

Another option is to escalate it into a threat. Sometimes this will happen as an extension of framing financial pressure as an annoyance. If you avoid dealing with financial problems, they can multiply, and eventually the pressure becomes great enough that some part of your livelihood feels like it’s under threat. Maybe you’re at risk of losing your home, for instance.

Beyond that, you could try surrendering, which can grant some temporary relief emotionally, but by itself this doesn’t resolve the financial pressure either. You may feel a bit better, but you could still lose your home.

There’s also the obligation framing. I think this is mostly the annoyance framing in disguise. You may see financial pressure as a part of life where you just have to suck it up and deal with what arises. It’s not pretty, so just grit your teeth and handle it. But this framing tends to result in punting the problems to the future. You’ll do the minimum necessary to handle the immediate pressure, but it will just keep coming back for another round.

A Framing That Works

A framing that worked very well for me was to see financial pressure as an invitation. I imagine that reality is trying to help me train up my character in a positive way. The existence of financial pressure is an important part of the character training.

Imagine hiring a personal trainer to help you improve your fitness, and then framing your workouts as annoying, threatening, or obligatory. Are these really the best frames to use? How would your trainer feel about that?

It would make more sense to reconnect with the purpose for hiring the trainer and then connect with that purpose-driven frame as the reason for doing your workouts. This would establish a better relationship with your trainer as well, one based on mutual respect.

Do you respect the trainer that is financial pressure? Do you frame its presence as purposeful? Or do you treat it disrespectfully, like it’s some kind of scourge?

Having a strong purpose is a good motivator. Seeing the greater purpose behind a challenge makes the challenge feel more engaging and less stressful.

Be Trainable

When I was in my 20s, I wasn’t very trainable. I was most uncooperative when financial pressure made its presence known. I rejected its offer again and again, repeatedly slamming the door in its face. I kept trying to run from it and find respite. If only I could somehow make enough money, then it would stop chasing me.

Because of my framing, I believed that the solution to my problems was to make more money. But this is like saying that the best way to avoid doing difficult workouts is more fitness. If only you could become fit enough, then you wouldn’t have to workout anymore, and you’d no longer have to deal with that annoying personal trainer. So forget the trainer and just become more fit. Then you can ditch the trainer. Yeah, that makes sense. 😕

That sounds pretty silly when we look at it this way, right? Can you also recognize just equally silly it is to imagine that more money is the solution to financial pressure?

Embracing your financial pressure and respecting its purpose in your life is the solution. Say yes to the training invitation.

Do Your Financial Workouts

Just as I learned to accept and embrace the importance of physical exercise, I learned to embrace the importance of doing financial workouts too.

And just as it’s helpful to find exercise that you’ll like, it’s also helpful to discover the financial workouts you like. You have many options.

A financial workout could mean getting all of your accounting in good order. That’s pretty basic, but if that’s all you do, it will probably get a bit boring. There are people, however, who like this kind of financial workout, including updating their accounts daily. I’m happy to do these kinds of workouts monthly or quarterly though.

The financial workouts I enjoy most include exploring and testing creative and purposeful ways to generate income while serving others and enjoying the process. So they’re compound workouts that hit a lot of muscle groups.

I started small and worked my way into bigger workouts, just like you might do with physical training.

In the mid-1990s, I started learning how to generate income without having a job – badly at first and eventually with some modest degree of competence. I remember launching a computer game in 1999 that sold 50 copies at $10 each in its first month, so $500. The next month it did $1000… and $1500 the month after that. That was an exciting experience. But the real workout was to stretch my creative skills to design and code a game that could generate that result. Then I had to stretch myself to promote it widely.

I didn’t really frame it quite like this at the time, but looking back I realize that I kept giving myself interesting progressive training challenges with respect to money. I kept doing financial workouts of one kind or another. And the more I did that, the more my finances improved.

If you want to survive in business, then of course you have to find ways to generate income. But I think it’s especially helpful to frame these activities as financial workouts.

Doing your financial workouts is an intelligent way to deal with financial pressure. Build up your financial skills, so you can face that pressure from strength. And don’t get complacent.

Slacking Off

Just as we can slack off of exercise, we can also slack off from doing our financial workouts. I fell into that trap too. I could say I was focused on other parts of life, which was true, but I also let myself stagnate in the area of finances for some years. I kept doing token financial workouts (like affiliate deals) that were easy for me, but I wasn’t progressing.

What got me back in the game was to discover financial workouts that looked fun and engaging again. Just trying to make more money doesn’t cut it for me. I find that rather boring.

But if the constraints for a financial workout are just right, then it appeals to me, perhaps even excites me. If the workout looks fun and rewarding, then I’m much more drawn to do it. But if I only see boring workouts being accessible, then I’ll slack off.

And of course where do we find those interesting workouts? We find them outside of our comfort zones. We find them where we don’t dare to look.

Embrace the Training

Training is challenging, whether physical or financial. Don’t expect it to be otherwise if you’re doing it right.

Good training takes us outside of our comfort zones. When we become too comfortable, that’s when we need to mix things up and reintroduce novel forms of challenge.

Daily blogging is a form of training for me. I’ve never blogged every single day for a year, but I’m doing it this year. It’s not always easy, but I like what it’s doing for my character. It’s helping me become more focused, disciplined, and organized. My life and work have much better structure this year than last year.

For my financial workouts, I like doing creative launches. I love to use my creativity, resourcefulness, playfulness, and personal growth experience to create value for people. Then I like to combine that with making honest and ethical offers. This combo is challenging. It stretches me to train in areas that are weaknesses for me, such as advertising. But I like seeing myself continuing to get stronger. This last launch went very smoothly, and I’m seeing the benefits of my skills improving from doing the training – while also spotting more areas where I’d like to train harder.

The money isn’t the reward. That’s like saying that the reward is being able to lift a certain amount of weight. Money is just a number, and the weight is just a hunk of metal. Making more money isn’t the point at all.

The point is to train up your character to grow stronger.

When you use this framing, you won’t have to see financial pressure as your enemy. Allow it to be your friend instead. It’s an invitation to grow stronger.

You have many options for how you train. It matters more that you exercise than what kind of exercise you do, as long as you’re challenged and you’re growing and improving from the training effect.

If, however, you disrespect this invitation, reality isn’t going to reward you for that. The financial pressure will just keep haunting you year after year until you respect and accept its invitation.

Believe it or not, I actually like financial pressure these days. It’s fun. It’s like the invitation to lace up my running shoes and hit the road for a delightful pre-dawn run of a few miles. I used to majorly dislike financial pressure, but since that mindset didn’t work, I opted to befriend the pressure instead. That does work – very well in fact.

Just as there’s such as thing as runner’s high, it’s also fun to experience a high from financial workouts. Having a six-figure week is fun and stimulating. It’s so not about the money though, just as weight training isn’t about the weights. It’s about the experience and the training effect. It’s about being present to the challenge.

Financial pressure is not a demon, so don’t demonize it. If you do that, you’ll just stress yourself out. The trainer isn’t your enemy. Make the trainer of financial pressure your friend instead. Accept the invitation to push yourself. Find the financial workouts that appeal to you, and do them. Keep upping the challenge, so you don’t remain stuck in your comfort zone.

Most importantly, don’t train with the goal of making more money. Train with the goal of strengthening your character. Choose financial workouts that with this in mind, and you’ll make better choices. Otherwise you may try to find shortcuts to circumvent the training, equivalent to lifting heavier weights by using a forklift, which would defeat the purpose.

I chose to develop and launch courses as well as CGC not because these were convenient shortcuts to greater financial abundance but because they’re hard workouts. These projects challenge me deeply. They cause me to spend a lot of time training outside of my comfort zone. And I like the results of that. They’re great workouts for my character.

Making more money isn’t the real progression here. The progression is to transform yourself from a person who tries in vain to stay in your comfort zone into a person who embraces the growth benefits of uncomfortable challenges.

Being Too Quiet

Posted on 25/04/2020 by Boris Clair

When I was younger, I was conditioned to yield to authority. Go to school. Go to church. Obey the parents.

One of the most common commands was: Be quiet. Hush. Pipe down. Silence is a virtue. Children should be seen and not heard.

So I learned to stay quiet – about problems, about desires, about feelings. I developed a rich inner world, but supposedly it wasn’t meant to be shared. My thoughts were to be kept mostly to myself.

On the positive side, that made me more self-reliant. But it also ensured that I didn’t get to experience what I wanted, as the wants and the communication both got suppressed under a blanket of silence.

It took a long time to learn that it was okay to communicate about needs, desires, and feelings. As I got older, I found people encouraging me to open up and share more, such as friends in college. That was difficult to do though. I wasn’t used to it. When people wanted to know more about me, it felt like they were shining a burning spotlight into my soul. I couldn’t go there, so I shared various masks instead. I kept people at a safe distance.

But this left me stuck inside my own thought bubble with no way to break free from it. Because I couldn’t talk about what I felt, needed, and wanted, no one could help me make improvements. Even if people offered support, it was misguided because they didn’t really know what I wanted. They had to guess, and their guesses were wrong.

As I began making a long-term investment in personal development, I read lots of books and listened to many audio programs. I liked it when other people share their stories, goals, ambitions, mistakes, and feelings. Every now and then, I’d come across something that struck me as really honest and authentic. And I silently thought to myself, I could never do that.

What probably helped me shift the most was meeting people who were unconditionally accepting of other people’s wants, needs, and feelings. Around such people I felt like I could open up a little more. I sensed that I could trust them, even though I wasn’t sure why. I just naturally found myself sharing more honestly with them. It would feel off if I wore my masks around them too often. I was surprised when they didn’t judge me for my candor. They actually seemed to like and appreciate hearing the real truth and going deeper than the surface masks. It took a while for me to warm up to that since it was outside of my comfort zone.

There was a long progression with many steps forward and backward, like an awkward dance, but eventually I felt more comfortable sharing more of my inner world with people. I could talk about desires, problems, and feelings openly. I didn’t always feel drawn to do that, but I didn’t feel particularly blocked in doing so either.

And that’s mainly because I got to see the positive shifts in others when I did so. I made more authentic friends this way. But I was also able to experience more of what I wanted.

By saying, “I want to kiss you” instead of keeping silent, I kissed more.

By saying, “I have this frustrating tech problem,” I solved more tech problems.

By saying, “I feel so blah today,” I understood and shifted my feelings more easily, and my default state gradually became happier.

Initially my timing was off though. I was too hesitant to open up when the timing was right because the intensity was too great. But by waiting for the intensity to come down, I was late in expressing myself. I realized how lame I was being when I kept missing opportunities because of that tendency to hesitate.

For a while I got results like these:

Me: I kinda wanted to kiss you last night.

Her: I wish you’d said something. I would have gladly kissed you back.

Me: D’oh!

Me: Last month I had this frustrating tech problem that was a real mess, but I finally got it figured out.

Her: Oh… why didn’t you tell me about that when we last spoke? I had the same problem before, and I could have shown you how to fix it in two seconds.

Me: D’oh!

Me: I was feeling so blah yesterday.

Her: I could tell. I was thinking of offering you a nice head scratching, but it looked like you wanted some space.

Me: D’oh!

Why do we do this to ourselves?

Sharing late is at least better than not sharing. When you see how many opportunities you’re missing due to silence, it’s good motivation to be more courageous and speak up sooner.

Silence can be a virtue, but keeping quiet can be really problematic if you overdo it. How can you tell the difference?

Is the silence peaceful? Does it feel good to remain silent? If so, then enjoy the silience.

Is the silence stress-inducing? Are your thoughts and feelings churning over unresolved issues? If so, then speak up. Get that energy flowing outwardly. Don’t just keep it bottled up inside.

Also be careful not to merely vent sideways. Venting sideways would be doing the equivalent of this:

Me: I wanted to kiss her last night, but I couldn’t bring myself to go there.

Him: I saw the two of you together, and I’m pretty sure she would have liked it if you did.

Me: D’oh!

This is telling the wrong person. When you do this sort of thing, you’re channeling the energy sideways, which isn’t in the direction of resolution. It’s a sneakier form of staying silent. You may think you’re speaking up, but are you?

Sharing needs, desires, and feelings isn’t easy, especially if you were raised to keep quiet about them. It will feel edgy to lean towards opening up, and it will feel uncomfortable to trust that it’s okay to do this. You’ll catch yourself sharing masks repeatedly. And that’s okay. It’s a growth process. It takes time to peel the onion of silence, to find the true voice within, and to overcome expressive scarcity.

The Beauty of Endless Projects

Posted on 19/04/2020 by Boris Clair

One thing that Walt Disney loved about Disneyland was that it was an endless project. He could always continue tinkering with it. He knew that it would never be finished.

In contrast to Disney films like Snow White, Bambi, and Mary Poppins, Walt found it appealing to pour his energy into a project that he could never complete. This allowed him to make continuous improvements. He would walk around Disneyland often, especially on Saturday mornings, and note issues that could be improved. Sometimes he’d even tell team members to relocated trees that they’d planted, so the views for guests would be better. He was good at noticing how small details contributed to the overall experience.

Conscious Growth Club is that kind of project for me. We’re about to enter our fourth year, opening for new members April 27 – May 1. We’ve made numerous improvements to the group since we first opened for early access in April 2017. And there are many more improvements yet to be made.

From one perspective, the list of potential improvements can seem daunting. Whenever I invite members to share ideas for improvement, like I recently did in our private forums, there’s a flow of great suggestions that will take time to implement. I capture these ideas and integrate them into my project planning system, so I can keep track of them. The hardest part is prioritizing what we’ll do next.

For the early months and years of CGC, much of my focus was to get the big rocks in place: the forums, the coaching calls, and some courses. We now have three major courses and a nice flow of three coaching calls per month. We’ve had significant daily activity in the forums since we started. The core pieces have all been working well for quite a while now. And we can maintain a nice flow of continuing to add to these resources.

We’ve also added other stable elements to the group: a 24/7 video chat channel where members can connect (called the CGC Watercooler), new 30-day challenges every month, 5-step quarterly planning sessions for members to clarify their goals, and lots of spinoff projects and experiments that members have come up with, including a writing mastermind group, a CGC movie club, and an online co-working group.

CGC is my own version of personal growth Disneyland. It’s a project that will never be completed. Ideally I’d love it to outlive me – always evolving in different ways. With so many growth-oriented people inside contributing to it, it’s been expanding in interesting directions since we started.

Here are some of the aspects I want to improve for the upcoming year of CGC.

Helping Members Feel at Home

CGC is great for people who are very growth-oriented and have sufficient time to delve into all the resources and opportunities the group provides. But it can feel a bit intimidating to new members, and it takes a while for some people to warm up to it and feel socially integrated into the group, even though the people inside are very friendly and welcoming.

We always welcome new members in the forums after they introduce themselves. Rachelle and I do our best to welcome everyone personally too. That’s a good start, but we need to build upon that to help people feel even more welcomed and to help them feel comfortable enough to start using CGC’s resources regularly, especially on the social side.

After our 2020 opening, I plan to host an orientation webinar in the first half of May. All members are welcome to attend. This may be followed by a video Watercooler welcome party (either right away or shortly thereafter). The orientation will be recorded and added to the CGC member portal, so members can rewatch it whenever they want. If someone has gone inactive for a while, rewatching this could help reacquaint them with the key features quickly and help them re-engage.

As part of the orientation process, I could also invite some members who’ve been in CGC for at least a year to share their tips and suggestions for getting the most out of the group. I think some of our members would be happy to share, especially in terms of what they wish they understood better when they first joined.

I plan to create a nice onboarding email sequence too (instead of just a single welcome email), so when new members join, they’ll receive a series of emails gradually introducing them to different features of CGC one by one. They can reply to these emails to ask questions too. I’ll set it up so that previous members can opt-in to this sequence too if they want a gentle refresher.

Helping Members Build Comfort and Trust

I do the coaching calls personally, and even though I find them fun, casual, and stimulating, for some members it’s still a bit intimidating to raise their hands to participate in a live video coaching call.

Even after a year or more in CGC, many members have never participated in the live coaching (other than watching), and a key reason is that they don’t feel comfortable enough with it yet, especially when it comes to talking about personal growth challenges. We’re pretty gentle and encouraging on these calls, which are geared towards helping people find solutions to their problems. But it can take time for people to get used to this level of intimacy.

I don’t think I could get nervous doing these coaching calls if I tried, and it seems like I’ve been sharing intimate details of my life online forever, so this can be a blind spot for me. It’s easy for me to forget what it’s like to just be getting started with this level of sharing and trust. So I’m looking into adding more intermediate steps to help people bridge this gap.

One idea is to host occasional “office hours” or hangouts in the video Watercooler for members who want to connect and chat with me in a less structured format than the coaching calls. This could help members feel more comfortable talking with me on video if they find the regular coaching calls too big of a step.

There are other ideas we’re considering along these lines as well.

In the beginning our focus was on adding a lot of value to CGC. This year we’ll continue doing that, and I also want to do more to help members leverage the value that’s already there.

When you first enter Disneyland, you have to walk down Main Street. That’s the only way in. Then you get to the round courtyard in front of the castle, and from there you have options. It’s basically a hub-and-spoke design.

For some members the experience of joining CGC is like starting the Disneyland experience right in front of the castle. You’re dropped into the middle of the park, which can seem a little overwhelming. Which way do I go first? Should I go through one of the courses? Hop on a coaching call? Join a 30-day challenge? Start posting in the forums? Just lurk and read the forums for a bit?

So we need to build a Main Street for CGC. I can see that it would be helpful to provide a more linear channel into CGC to help guide people into the experience. Help them warm up to the new reality they’re entering. Then point out the options for further exploration when they’re ready.

Experimenting

I’m also interested in doing more experimentation this year. We already have lots of daily engagement in the forums, and members are finding wonderful ways to leverage CGC’s tools to create extra value, such as using the video Watercooler for mastermind meetups and co-working challenges. I’d love to do more along these lines. Lots of good ideas bubble up from observing how members are using the different tools.

Here are some ideas that I’d love to experiment with:

Investigate ways to add games to make CGC more fun and to help members connect in different ways.
Look into team-based projects, experiments, and challenges in CGC. What about a team-based 30-day challenge now and then? This could increase accountability for those who want more motivation and support to complete all 30 days.
Explore the video co-working idea in more depth. See if more members want to engage with it and if we could do more with it, such as team productivity challenges.
Explore adding some competitive aspects or contests to CGC for members who’d find that fun and motivating. Team 30-day challenges could be one version.
Brainstorm what we could do with multiple Watercooler-type video channels.
Consider having occasional Watercooler check-in chats for the more popular 30-day challenges, so people can discuss progress and sticking points. See if we can help more people finish all 30 days.

Most of these features will be of greatest benefit for the members who feel right at home in CGC and want to keep exploring and growing together. So I want to be careful to balance the addition of new features (including experimental ones) with making sure that we’re doing enough to invite members to engage with these features.

In this next year, I also want to give members more authority to help manage and implement some of these features. I’d like to explore adding some positions with paid stipends, so members who contribute a lot to the community can generate some extra income from their participation. This seems like a good year to lean into that.

I’m excited about the future of CGC. We have a really interesting mix of structure and organic elements within the group. It’s rewarding to have this endless project that can continue evolving year after year.

In some ways the most difficult years are the early ones because there’s so much to figure out and improve. Walt Disney and his team were constantly testing different ideas for Disneyland. They failed early and often, building rides that didn’t work well, tearing them down, and trying something else.

Sometimes I think of CGC as an amusement park of different experiences, although we focus primarily on growth experiences instead of entertainment. When I think about what Disneyland was like when it first opened in 1955 and how much it evolved over time, it helps me understand how far constant experimentation, improvement, and iteration can take us if we simply persist and keep striving to serve our members well.

Sometimes I dream about what it would be like to visit Disneyland in the 1950s or 60s. I’ve been there every decade from the 70s onward, but I’ve never seen the park during its earlier years. By the time I saw it, it had already been evolving for at least two decades. That would be a fun experience to recreate in virtual reality someday. Perhaps a smart enough future AI could build a decent simulation of that experience by researching historical footage and reading first-hand accounts from people who were there in the 50s or 60s. In creating some aspects of Disneyland, Walt realized that the past could be brought back to life. Imagine what past experiences we could recreate and experience with advanced enough technology.

All 65 Stature Lessons Complete

Posted on 11/04/2020 by Boris Clair

Yesterday I finished creating and publishing all of the lessons for the co-creative Stature character sculpting deep dive.

The full course is 16 hours and 20 minutes of audio, with the average lesson being 15 minutes. I wanted to keep the lessons for this course very focused and tight.

There’s also a 138-page workbook to accompany the audio lessons, including a one-page summary for each lesson and exercises to apply each lesson. That’s complete as well.

Additionally we have full text transcripts published for most of the lessons now, and the remainder will be done within the next several days.

And next up there are several more bonuses to create for the course as well, so we’ll add those as soon as they’re ready.

Here’s the full list of published audio lessons:

Module 1: Awareness

Introduction
The Airing of Grievances
The Airing of Commendations
Who Do You Think You Are?
Impossible Invitations
Summoning Your Power
Avoiding Your Power
To the Pain
To the Love
Backstory
Personal Trainers
Self Sculpting
Your Origin Story

Module 2: Harmony

Choosing Harmony
Ridiculous Ridicule
Stepwise Character Growth
Aligned Income
Expressive Alignment
Expressive Commitment
Family
Making Progress
Sweet Surrender
Character Care
Immortality

Module 3: Desire

Opinionated You
Pointers to Desire
The Child Inside
Wanting
Inner Demons
Chorus
Pretending to Care
Spontaneity
Decision Rituals
You Are So Lovable

Module 4: Courage

The Voice of the Heart
Trust
Dancing with Fear
Edginess
Directness
Adaptability
Don’t Get Stuck
Opening the Heart
Courage Training
Defending Your Character

Module 5: Will

Responsibility
The Source of Power
Investment
Balance
Fame
Reputation
Dreaming Sideways
Character in Crisis
Wireframing
Defining Your Core
Fire

Module 6: Voice

Memories
Sculpting the World
Embodiment
Mortality
Experiences
Authority
Self-control
Developing Discipline
Releasing
Journey’s End

While I could say that this was a 3-1/2 month project since I’ve been designing and recording lessons for it since December, it was actually a multi-year project since I’ve been engaging with these ideas and developing this course in some fashion for a few years.

Originally this was going to be conceived as a course on clarity, then it evolved into one on goal setting. But I realized that in order to do those topics justice, we have to get to know ourselves very deeply. In order to set aligned and intelligent goals, we have to know who we are and what matters to us. In order to have clarity about anything else in life, we must create sufficient clarity about ourselves.

Without this depth of self-understanding, it’s very difficult to set meaningful goals and work towards them consistently. If you’ve ever set a goal and then lost sight of it within a few weeks or months, then you’re already familiar with that experience.

To do such deep work into personal awareness, we need ample courage too, so that’s a major part of the course with a whole module being dedicated to it. Sometimes the most courageous acts involve looking deeply into the parts of ourselves that most disturb us.

I’m delighted that many of the lessons were co-creatively inspired by feedback and suggestions from course participants who signed up during the first quarter of the year. Some people provided some really great seeds of ideas that were developed into full lessons or parts of lessons. For instance, I recall that lesson 2.2 on Ridiculous Ridicule (i.e. your inner critic), lesson 3.5 on Inner Demons, lesson 5.5 on Fame, and lesson 6.9 on Releasing were all created because of suggestions received.

I’m absolutely delighted with how this course turned out. It’s been a tremendous amount of work and a huge focus of my life for so long. I’ve been publishing each lesson as soon as it’s ready, so new lessons have been getting added every week since we started in early January. Hundreds of people signed up for Stature in January and have been going through it. Some are going slowly, still on Module 2 or 3. Others are close to finishing Module 6.

I feel pretty happy now that the long journey of creating the core lessons for this course is complete. I have this nice warm feeling in my heart this morning. Even though many of us are in some form of lockdown right now, I feel a strong sense of connection with the people who’ve been going through the course, like we’ve been communicating energetically from a distance. I also feel that what we’ve co-created together is really beautiful and magnificent.

Creating this course is easily one of the top five projects of my life, largely due to the decades of experience it took to create it. It feels amazing to share this unique creative contribution with people.

It’s been transformational for me to engage with these ideas so deeply for so long. I feel that I’ve emerged from this process a different person, especially in terms of my ability to focus well and maintain good self-control. Developing this course refactored my previous ways of connecting the dots among ideas, so now I mentally and emotionally link ideas together in ways that feel fresh and exciting. It felt like going through a gradual rejuvenation process, and some aspects of life feel easier as a result.

While the world is undergoing major shifts right now, I feel grounded and safe in the midst of the chaos. Somehow this course gave me a deep sense of inner peace. That may also be because I’ve improved many of my habits and reworked my entire daily routine along the way.

It’s especially satisfying to know that since this is a timeless course, people can be benefitting from it for decades to come.

A huge thanks to my wife Rachelle as well for helping with the course creation, including compiling and editing the lesson transcripts, many discussions of ideas, and abundant cuddle breaks to recharge along the way. ❤️

Energy Wants to Flow

Posted on 28/02/2020 by Boris Clair

One mindset challenge that plagues many of my readers is an almost obsessive focus on their own needs, problems, and challenges – when they aren’t successfully distracting themselves from it.

I also spent a lot of time stuck there. It’s a great mindset for generating lots of stress. But other results? Not so much.

One mental shift that helped me a lot was thinking of goals, plans, projects, and desires in terms of energy flows that are in motion. My previous tendency was to think in terms of end points and static states.

So instead of fussing over where I am and where I want to be (the end points), I prefer to observe where energy seems to be flowing well in my life and where it’s getting stuck and becoming stagnant. Then I work on getting the stagnant energy unstuck and getting it flowing again.

This is a key distinction. When people focus on getting from A to B, they often run into some problems, namely two main ones:

What if the goal (endpoint B) isn’t clearly defined?
What if the path to the goal (from A to B) isn’t clear?

Then what they tend to do (if they invest enough effort) is figure out what B is supposed to look like, and figure out what the path from A to B will be. But there’s a big problem with this approach because they’re trying to gain clarity while they still have all this stuck, stagnant energy swirling around at endpoint A and not really flowing. And while they don’t have enough clarity to tell themselves that it’s time to move, this stuck energy is causing problems for them.

People often spend years waiting for clarity on these two simple questions, telling themselves they cannot go full throttle till they have stable, believable answers. And that is a huge mistake.

Suppose point A is having a job you dislike and point B is having a job you love. People try to clearly define B and then plot a course from A to B before they start moving, and this rarely works well because the energy at A isn’t flowing. Such people often feel de-energized and demotivated by all the stuck, stagnant energy the job at A. How are they supposed to have the energy necessary to create clarity about B, let alone plot the full course from A to B? Of course what really happens is that they stay stuck at A, often for a very long time – till this energy finally demands release, and they get fired or laid off, quit out of desperation, or succumb to health problems and feel compelled to finally transition.

Feeling needy, stressed, or frustrated is a sign of stagnant energy. So if you notice yourself feeling needy and self-absorbed with your personal concerns and stresses, consider that this is a hint to look for areas of stuck energy.

When energy is flowing nicely, there’s a certain grace and ease to life – it feels more open, fun, playful, loving, and expansive. We feel more connected, supported, trusting, cooperative, and hopeful. We feel more courageous and confident.

Energy wants to flow. It likes being in motion. It isn’t even that particular about where it flows. It just wants to flow somewhere. And if it doesn’t have anywhere to go, it tries to move around in whatever space it has available. When it’s bottled up inside you, that energy goes into creating circular thinking much of the time. You may experience this as worry, confusion, stress, or anxiety. This stuck energy can also manifest as physical illness.

Note also that this idea of energy flows is just a model – a way of thinking about reality. You don’t have to believe in energy flows in order to use this model and benefit from it, much as I explained in the recent article Your Least Favorite Screwdriver. You also have some flexibility in how you frame this. You could imagine electrical currents flowing through your nervous system, spiritual energy flowing through your chakras and astral body, or thoughts and feelings flowing through your mind. I often merge the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual frames when I think about energy flows because this model helps me solve problems no matter how I frame it.

I sometimes find myself stuck trying to plot a course from A to B, especially when I’m not super clear about what B looks like. But when I’m trying to build clarity while my energy is still stuck at A, this can be frustrating. I start feeling impatient after a while. I sense that the stuck energy wants to move, but I’m keeping it bottled up waiting for clarity.

And you know what? This is okay sometimes. It’s okay to have some stuck energy now and then, as long as we’re aware of the stuckness and we’re working on getting it flowing again. It’s okay to keep it stuck for a few weeks while we work on some clarity – as long as we have good reason to believe that we can and will converge on enough clarity to get that energy moving.

If we’re moving towards mental clarity and making genuine progress, this is helping some of the energy to get flowing again. A good indicator that our clarity efforts are helping is that we start to feel a rising sense of hope and optimism. The little bit of energy that’s getting back into flow often generates some mild enthusiasm. We can feel that bigger changes feel increasingly inevitable. Negative stress starts going down, often replaced with feelings of relief or surrender to the unfolding transition.

For instance, I knew a couple of months ago that I wanted to shift up my exercise and social investments this year. I’ve been building towards such changes for a while. But I also felt that I had too much on my plate in December and January. I expected, however, that my schedule would lighten up a bit in February, and I’d have more capacity to make other changes without feeling overwhelmed. So I let the energy of these desired changes stay stuck for a while, knowing that I’d get the energy flowing again. And that’s exactly how it played out. Earlier this month, I joined a new meetup group and a new fitness studio, and I love how the energy is flowing again in new directions.

But I also tried to create a modest relief valve to let the stuck energy know my intention for getting it flowing again. I would visit or walk by the fitness studio before joining, and I’d browse through the classes on their website. Sometimes I imagined doing workouts there. I leaning into the meetup group in a similar manner, signaling an intention. I noticed the telltale signs of increasing optimism and enthusiasm as I did this, as if the stuck energy approved of my plans and was onboard with it. I think this helped the energy remain calm and relaxed instead of creating too much stress.

On the other hand, if you’ve been dealing with stuck energy for months or years, and you aren’t getting any closer to converging on enough clarity to see your path from A to B, then don’t keep waiting for clarity since your stuck energy isn’t going to like that. You have to give it some reasonable hope that it will get flowing again.

If you lack clarity and aren’t clearly converging on a solution, then get the energy unstuck and flowing in any direction. Get that energy back into motion, so you can use it. If the energy gets too stuck, you may feel chronically drained, stressed, anxious, or worried. If you’re already experiencing such states daily or close to it, then it’s time for change without fussing so much about where you’ll land. You’ll be amazed at just how much more becomes possible for you when chronically stuck energy suddenly becomes free and flowing again.

If you’re in a chronically stuck situation, what you may not see is just how stuck you truly are. Long-term stuckness starts to feel normal after a while. It is NOT normal or healthy though. When your energy is trapped for so long, it causes problems for you mentally, emotionally, and physically. It’s so important to just get out of the stuckness any way you can. Sometimes that means taking the evil exit – for your own health and sanity.

Simply using this model of energy flows has been super helpful on my path of growth. It’s helped me in pretty much every area of life. In fact, I often write articles by asking myself: Where does the energy want to flow today? When energy (especially creative energy) is flowing nicely through my life, I can co-create with it. I can summon and ride waves of inspiration instead of having to push myself. The energy carries me forward much of the time.

But when I allow this energy to get stuck, life becomes so much harder. It feels like I have to fuel everything with my own power, yet I lack the motivation and focus to do as much (because the energy is stuck instead of flowing), which leaves me feeling even more stuck.

Energy wants to flow. If you help it flow, it will help you even more.

Conscious Conversation – Steve Pavlina and Martin Rutte

Posted on 25/02/2020 by Boris Clair

Here’s the video of my Conscious Conversation call with author, speaker, fellow Transformational Leadership Council member, and long-time friend Martin Rutte.

We had a lively chat about Martin’s Project Heaven on Earth (which is about how to create a better world for all of humanity), pursuing impossible goals, and many other personal growth topics.

[embedded content]

Here are some related links:

I hope you enjoy the conversation. 🙂

Aligning Rewards

Posted on 07/02/2020 by Boris Clair

We had an interesting discussion on a recent Conscious Growth Club coaching call about making sure that the financial rewards of your career path are aligned with the ways you’d like to be rewarded.

For instance, you may want or expect to be rewarded for some of the following:

devising a creative solution to a problem
successfully completing a project
helping a co-worker solve a problem
reporting a problem that could cost the company if not solved
acting with honor and integrity
telling the truth in a difficult situation
encouraging and/or mentoring a team member
stretching yourself to develop a new skill
working hard

But what people are actually rewarded for often includes:

keeping your mouth shut and your head down
obeying orders without question
agreeing with the boss
looking busy
lying
closing sales at any cost
successfully hiding how distracted and unproductive you are
leaning on team members to cover for you
completing trivial tasks
generating data that doesn’t help the company achieve any meaningful purpose

Misalignments like these can occur regardless of how much control and independence you have over your work.

When I started my computer games business in 1994, I expected to be rewarded for my creativity, programming skills, work ethic, and for project completion. I went bankrupt waiting for such rewards to come through.

What actually generated income was closing deals with publishers, and those deals introduced dynamics which were misaligned with my expectations. Creativity wasn’t high on the list of what publishers wanted at the time.

Eventually I was able to create better alignment, partly by shifting my expectations and partly by shifting the reward structure of my business. That involved changing my business model. No one really cared about my programming skills but me, but at least I could be rewarded for my creative ideas and execution. The area where I most had to shift my expectations was marketing. In order to succeed with that business, I needed to up-level my marketing skills, and I had to adjust my expectations to account for good marketing as an activity that would be financially rewarded. I also had to note that weak marketing was financially punished.

I ran into similar challenges with my personal development business some years later. My initial income streams rewarded me in mixed ways. When I generated income from ads on the site, I was rewarded for blogging, for traffic growth, and also for selling and optimizing ads. I was okay with the first two, but I wasn’t as fond of being rewarded for people clicking on ads and leaving the site instead of sticking around to read more articles.

I dropped that model in 2008 and explored other models that felt more aligned. My current models, such as doing workshops, offering courses, and hosting Conscious Growth Club, are good at rewarding me for helping people achieve positive transformations. The more people get good results, the better it is for me since this means more repeat business. This also financially incentivizes me to keep creating more and better courses, to design and deliver more workshops, and to keep supporting and improving Conscious Growth Club.

In this case too, however, I also have to adapt to what the real-world situation rewards. Almost any business, including mine, rewards good marketing. I’ve wanted to improve at marketing too, so I’m okay with this. I’ve tried to set things up so as to align my rewards with doing marketing honestly and honorably, and that’s been working well.

When the actual rewards are nicely aligned with the desired behaviors, life and business flow more easily. You can focus on doing the work and getting better at your core skills, and you can expect to be rewarded for this because the business model is aligned with rewarding you for such behaviors.

What can really mess you up is when your business or employment situation has a misaligned reward structure, so you get rewarded for behaviors you’d rather not reinforce, and/or you don’t get rewarded for behaviors where you feel like you really do deserve some acknowledgement.

In this article so far, I’ve mainly focused on the financial rewards since those tend to be the easiest to assess and measure. But we can extend this to other rewards such as how you’re being appreciated.

When I generated income from ads, people would thank me for my articles and how they benefitted from my writing and ideas. They wouldn’t usually thank me for the ads, although some people did when an ad helped them discover something personally useful.

These days I normally get thanked for insights and ideas I share, especially those that help people get results. I get thanked most often for course lessons, for blog articles, and for helping people in Conscious Growth Club. So that’s all pretty well aligned because these are all areas where I’m continuing to invest.

I don’t typically receive appreciation or rewards for all the study, research, and experimentation I do in private, unless I share something beneficial to others along the way. I don’t get rewarded for making mistakes or pursuing false starts, such as partly developing something that never ships. But I do get rewarded down the road for the results that these activities eventually lead to, and that seems adequate for now.

It’s important to keep an eye on sustainability too. I can be rewarded temporarily for overworking, for instance, but then I get punished for it when it catches up with me. I can generate surges of extra income when I want, such as by launching something new, but if I overdo it, then I get punished on the lifestyle side when life becomes nothing but work, work, work all the time.

Take a look at how you’re being financially (and otherwise) rewarded in life and business. How well do these rewards align with your desired behaviors? Are you being incentivized to grow, improve, and execute in the ways you like? Is the current reward structure sculpting your character in ways you like and appreciate? How are you being over-rewarded or under-rewarded?

If you like what you see, great. And if not, then you have an important problem to solve. One option is to re-align your personal priorities, and get with the program. See if you can release resistance to how you’re being rewarded, and agree to let those rewards sculpt your character as they will. So if you’re rewarded for sales, then get aligned with up-leveling your sales skills, and accept that you’re pursuing a path of becoming a better salesperson. Sometimes this is workable while other times it’s just too unpalatable.

Your other option is to change the reward structure. This may involve negotiating with an employer for different terms, switching employers to find a more aligned reward structure, or changing the business model you’re using.

It’s important to be proactive here. You do have options. If you don’t like what the current reward structure is doing to you, then get into a more aligned reward structure, even if you have to design the business model yourself.

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