Personal Development for Smart People^TM

Our feelings are a natural response to our thoughts and intentions.  We don’t really choose our feelings directly.  Our feelings are a feedback mechanism.  They indicate whether we’re moving into alignment with our true desires (positive feelings) or out of alignment (negative feelings).
Simply put… we feel good when we’re moving towards what we want, and we feel bad […]

StevePavlina.com Personal Development for Smart People podcast #20:  Creative Self-Expression
Many people have been socially conditioned to believe that a career or job should be chosen based how well it pays and how qualified you are to hold it.  This podcast will explain why that approach is completely backwards.  Paradoxically by selecting a career based on money and skills, your financial […]

This is perhaps the simplest way I can explain the perspective of subjective reality at present — and why I’m such a strong advocate of it.
First… some definitions:
Objective Reality (OR) is the perspective that you’re the character in the dream world, and the dream world is solid, real, and objective.  An OR person wouldn’t normally think of […]

Just a quick note that Learning Strategies has agreed to extend the PhotoReading discount for StevePavlina.com readers for two more weeks.  This discount will end on Friday, October 5, 2007.
The discount is 59% off the regular Internet pricing, so the basic course is $99.95 instead of $245, and the deluxe course is $218.95 instead of $530.  See the PhotoReading page for details […]

David Schirmer is one of the experts featured in The Secret.  Within the past hour, I watched a rather disturbing YouTube video clip about him after a forum member posted a link to it.  Some of David’s seminar customers accused him of taking money he was supposed to be investing on their behalf (to the […]

John Assaraf is an international best-selling author, speaker, and entrepreneur. You may have seen him as one of the experts in the popular movie The Secret (as well as in The Secret book), talking about how he manifested his dream house. What’s most amazing is that he lived in that house for quite a while before discovering it was the exact same house he originally posted on his […]

The Sensei in my martial arts studio often reminds us during sparring to respond but not to react.
When you react you’re not being authentic.  You’re sparring on your opponent’s terms.  You’re thinking too hard about what your opponent will do next.  You’re thinking, “If he does A, I’ll do B.  But if he does C, then […]

Authenticity has become the modern currency of blogging.
Unlike traditional media sources, most bloggers aren’t beholden to any puppeteers.  To some people this is a whole different kind of problem, but it’s also clearly a key strength of the new media.  With 175,000 new blogs launching every day, blogging is becoming a popular alternative to the filtered, agenda-driven drivel that passes as news […]

Readers often ask me, “Steve, how do you know if the whole subjective reality belief system you describe is accurate?  Do you really believe in this stuff?  It just seems so… you know… out there.”
Behind such questions is usually an assumption that reality is in fact objective and that accuracy is an objective standard.  But in […]

I want to make a distinction between subjective reality and solipsism, since many readers still confuse the two.  I think the best way to explain the difference is by way of a simple analogy:  lucid dreaming.
Imagine you’re having a lucid dream.  This means you’re lying in bed having a dream, and while still within the […]