StevePavlina.com Podcast #010 – Lucid Dreaming

January 29, 2006

Guest podcaster: Erin Pavlina This podcast addresses the fascinating subject of lucid dreaming, which is the ability to retain full conscious awareness while you dream. And best of all, this one is conducted by my wife Erin, who first taught me how to have lucid dreams when we met in 1994. If you’ve never had…

Understanding Family Relationship Problems

January 29, 2006

One of the most difficult matters to confront with respect to family relationships is that you don’t control the entire relationship yourself. Whether the relationship thrives or withers isn’t up to you alone. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango. When major family relationship problems are encountered, it’s common to attempt a control…

Beyond Self-Delusional Positive Thinking

January 27, 2006 |

A common criticism of positive thinking is that it’s self-delusion. Images of Saturday Night Live’s Daily Affirmations with Stuart Smalley come to mind: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!” I happen to think this criticism is perfectly valid. I don’t do daily affirmations or recommend them to others because…

Goal-Free Living

January 26, 2006 |

I recently read the book Goal-Free Living by Stephen Shapiro. The main reason I read it is that I’m a big believer in the benefits of setting goals, and the title of this book obviously suggests a different approach. When my wife asked me why I was reading such a book, I told her, “I’m…

How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site (or Blog)

January 24, 2006

Since posting my 2005 traffic figures recently, I’ve received many questions about how I was able to start this web site from scratch and build its traffic to over 700,000 visitors per month (Jan 2006 projection) in about 15 months – without spending any money on marketing or promotion. Building a high-traffic web site was…

Rediscovering the Past

January 21, 2006

I’m typing from a PC in the business center of a Bay Area hotel. It’s 2:25am, and my wife is upstairs in our room, sleeping of course. Our hotel has a 24-hour business center with free high speed internet access, which is great for polyphasic sleepers. My wife didn’t seem to like the idea of…

Branching Out

January 19, 2006

One of the most basic ways to grow as a human being is to try something new. Do something you’ve never done before. New situations challenge us. Our brains have to work at full capacity to understand new patterns instead of just rerunning old ones. In completely new situations, we’re like fish out of water.…

Polyphasic Sleep Update – Day 90

January 18, 2006 |

Today is day 90 of my polyphasic sleep experiment. It seems strange to refer to this as an experiment now, since it’s become such an ingrained habit. This will probably be my last update on polyphasic sleep, since the last 30 days were largely uneventful as far as this experiment goes. I don’t have much…

Intelligent Risk Taking

January 18, 2006 |

Risk taking is an integral part of business and life, but so few people know how to manage it properly.  The word risk has a slightly negative connotation to it — it implies danger, tension, and possible loss.  But risk also has a positive side, the chance of hitting a big win, of getting more on the…

2005 Traffic & Adsense Revenue Growth

January 17, 2006 |

Last night I presented a 90–minute workshop to a group of about 60 speakers (some Toastmasters and some members of the National Speakers Association) about how to take advantage of internet and blogging technology. I had a great time showing people what they could achieve by putting their content online, and I received a lot…