Making Peace With Death

While I have a strong drive to enjoy my physical life, I know — really know — it’s just temporary. Against the backdrop of eternity, our human lives are very, very short… little more than a cosmic wink. Some people treat that as a serious problem, but it really doesn’t have to be. When someone…

Spiritual Depth Perception

Stereo vision is one of our more fascinating human abilities. Our eyeballs capture 2D snapshots of our environment, and our brains and visual circuitry rapidly combine them into 3D images. So even though our eyes are perceiving reality in two dimensions, by combining the data from both eyes in a specific way, we perceive our…

Subjective Reality and Nonviolence

The perspective of subjective reality says the entire world — i.e. your seemingly objective physical reality — is a projection of your own consciousness. This perspective suggests the only thing you can really change is yourself. If you want to address the issue of violence in the world, you can only do so by turning…

StevePavlina.com Podcast #019 – Owning Your Dark Side

This first half of this podcast explores the idea of turning your seemingly “dark” life experiences into positive strengths. I tell the story of how being a kleptomaniac in my late teens helped me develop focus and courage, qualities that serve me well to this day. The second half covers the topic of polarity and…

Sex Energy

Napoleon Hill devoted a full chapter to the transmutation of sex energy in his classic book Think and Grow Rich. He found that the most successful people were highly sexed, achieving great success by directing their sexual energy into their work. In this article I’ll explain how to use sex energy to set goals that…

Self-Help Cynics

At the other end of the spectrum from self-help junkies, we find self-help cynics. Self-help cynics are people who’ve become totally disillusioned with anything associated to personal development. They regard the entire field as nothing but a sham populated by scammers and charlatans. Cynics don’t subscribe to the idea that people can actually change by…

Self-Help Junkies

Have you ever met a self-help junkie? A self-help junkie is someone who reads self-help books voraciously, attends seminars as much as his/her budget will allow, and is fluent in self-help lingo; however, when you look at this person’s life objectively, s/he has very little to show for this investment beyond a well-stocked bookshelf and…