Personal Development for Smart People^TM

One of the most important relationship lessons I learned was this:  The relationships we have with other people are projections of the relationships we have within ourselves.  Our external relationships and our internal relationships are in fact the same relationships.  They only seem different because we look at them through different lenses.
Let’s consider why this is true.  Where […]

Gratitude equals wealth.  Wealth equals gratitude.  You’ve probably heard one of those expressions before… or at least something similar.  Certainly the connection seems true on an internal, emotional level.  It’s hard to imagine feeling wealthy without also being grateful.  And if you’re truly grateful, you probably feel wealthy as well, regardless of your actual circumstances.
Because of this apparent connection […]

Often people ask me what I think of the latest health study about the benefits of X or the harmful effects of Y.
I usually tell them I consider it meaningless.
Here are four reasons why I don’t rely on “scientific” studies for making personal health decisions… and just to make it more interesting, I’ll splice in some Mark Twain quotes:
1. Everyone […]

As a companion to 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job and 10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed, here are 10 positive lessons I learned from more than 12 years as an entrepreneur.  A few of these are rehashed from the 10 Mistakes article, but most are new.
This list is the result of the liberal […]

One thing that holds a lot of people back from becoming wealthy is the fear that their lives will actually become worse in some ways.
There is in fact a dark side to financial abundance, but it isn’t pitch black.
Here are some items that might genuinely concern you if you dramatically increase your income or net worth:

Your […]

In early 2006 I got serious about the goal of becoming a millionaire, and in this article I’ll share with you five key lessons I learned that may help you increase your financial abundance.
While I’ve long dreamed of becoming a millionaire (who hasn’t?), it was only last year that I began taking it seriously.  What motivated me […]

Often a change in character is a crucial part of shifting your identity to become more congruent with your goals and intentions.  For example, suppose you want to become more successful in your career, and you set a goal to reach a certain position.  Maybe the main reason you haven’t yet reached that position is that your […]

StevePavlina.com Personal Development for Smart People podcast #18:  Faster Goal Achievement
In this podcast you’ll gain insights on closing the gap between your current position and your goals/intentions.
In the language of Intention-Manifestation or the Law of Attraction, these ideas address how to come into resonance with your goal or to become a vibrational match for it.  If you […]

After my last article on experiencing creativity, there was a question in the resulting forum discussion about how to enter this highly creative flow state, the state where you lose all sense of time, your ego vanishes, and you become one with the task in front of you.  Is this peak creative state a rare chance event, or […]

The act of creating something, whether it be an article, a poem, a website, a computer program, or some other creative human expression, is one of my most cherished activities.
It usually takes a while for me to fully enter the highly creative flow state, but once I’m there I lose awareness of everything but the present moment and […]