Slide Into Your New Reality

Did you ever see the TV show Sliders?

In that show a group of four people would “slide” through a portal between dimensions, spending each episode in an alternate version of earth. For example, they might enter a reality where the Nazis won WWII. Or in another reality one of them might be a famous performer.

Another TV show that can give you the right idea is Quantum Leap. In that show a man spent each episode in someone else’s body in an alternative time and place.

Imagine you’re a Slider or a Quantum Leaper, and you just slid through a portal into your new desired reality — into that new YOU as well. You’re already there living it. The whole reality already exists in some alternate dimension, and you’re now experiencing it as real.

Put yourself in the shoes of that new person. Witness through his/her eyes how s/he goes through a typical day. Imagine that you’re in an episode of Sliders or Quantum Leap.

What time do you get up in the morning? Who’s sleeping next to you? Where are you? How do you feel? What do you eat for breakfast? What do you do in the morning, afternoon, and evening?

You must imagine yourself as already being there. You want to reach the point where it feels natural and normal to be there. After all, this is your reality, isn’t it? So of course it will feel normal in a way. You’re already used to it.

Initially the Sliders/Leapers were freaked out when they entered the new reality. It took them a while to figure it out and understand it. Eventually they got used to it and were able to get things done within that reality.

This is what will happen when you visualize a new reality for yourself. At first it may seem like an alien environment. You’ll have to play around with it for a while before you get used to it and it starts to seem normal to you. It’s very important that you push beyond that freak-out phase. You must shift from thinking about your visions as FANTASY to seeing them as REAL.

A good movie to watch is Being John Malkovich. That will give you more insight into how to slip into an alternate reality and imagine life through the lens of your new character.

Ideally, visualizing your future should be very much the same as remembering your past. Just as you would recall and mentally review what you did yesterday, that’s how you want to imagine your new reality. What are the highlights of your typical day, and how do you feel about them?

Notice that emotional memories are much stronger than routine events. Such memories can draw the past back into your present, but they can also draw a powerful future into your present if you create powerful new memories of the future.

Partial Visualization

One of the most common mistakes people make is that they fall into the trap of doing partial visualizations. They only imagine one or two aspects of their new reality but not the entire big picture. Or they’ll imagine something that makes them feel a certain way, but it wouldn’t actually be a part of their desired reality.

For example, you may imagine seeing a pile of cash on your table and counting the bills. A lot of people suggest this exercise as a way of manifesting more money. I think it’s a lame idea though.

If you really had financial abundance, would you actually have a pile of cash currency in your home? That seems unlikely. If you were already living it, playing with your money or obsessing over it would be silly and immature. That’s the sort of thing someone would do only if they weren’t already living it.

Partial visualizations manifest partial results. You may attract part of what you want, but it will be unstable because you’ve only locked on to some, but not all, of the necessary frequencies required to shift into that new reality. You may be able to visit it briefly, but you won’t be able to stay long.

When I was around 24-25 years old, I read the book Think and Grow Rich, and I started doing partial visualization exercises to attract more money into my life. I imagined having about half a million dollars as a pile of cash on my bed. I felt the texture of the bills with my fingers. I saw it as very real and imagined what it would feel like to have that much cash all at once.

Sometime after that (I don’t recall how long — a few months maybe), I entered into a new game publishing deal with a total advance of $675,000. I soon received the first installment in the form of a check for $50,000, which was the biggest check I’d ever received at that point in my life. It appeared that my intention had manifested.

However, this situation was incredibly unstable. The publisher turned out to be extremely corrupt. First, they screwed up the deal with seemingly insane delays and nonsensical decisions. Then they unilaterally breached our contract. And finally they tried to sue me (unsuccessfully) to recoup the $50K advance. Looking back, it appears that their goal was to tie up my team’s project so that it wouldn’t hit the market… while they had another team developing a potentially competing game. The initial $50K I received was spent on early development for a game that was never released. In the end I was left with a busted project and more debt than when I started. If I could have afforded the legal fees (which I couldn’t at the time), I may have been able to successfully sue them for breach of contract, but that simply wasn’t how I wanted to do business. I wanted to spend my time making games, not giving depositions.

Years later this same publisher was publicly exposed for a massive accounting scandal, and the company and several officers were sued by the SEC. If I recall correctly, their CEO was fined $10 million and had to step down. That came as no surprise to me and many other developers who worked with them.

Not a good manifestation!

Although it seemed promising in the beginning, this attempt to manifest money completely imploded and left me worse off than when I started — aside from learning some very tough lessons, which in retrospect turned out to be quite valuable.

I hope you can learn from my mistakes here and not succumb to the trap of partial visualization. In order to manifest your desires, you need to lock on to the total package of frequencies and the full range of emotions that you’ll experience in your new reality. And one of the best ways to do that is to get really, really clear about what you want.

Complete Visualization

Don’t just visualize one small part of your new reality, such as having more money come to you. Visualize the entire alternate reality you wish to enter, in as much detail as possible.

It’s okay to focus on one area of your life at a time. I personally find it rather difficult to visualize a whole new life for myself that covers career, finances, health, relationships, my daily habits, spiritual development, personal development, etc. So I generally focus on one area at a time, but I do my best to make sure it’s congruent with my desires in other areas too.

A few years ago I focused on creating financial abundance. Then I worked on social abundance (having lots of friends). Now I’m working on intimacy abundance (creating deeper relationships). All of these parts of my life are working beautifully right now. This process definitely works. Sometimes it works so well it scares me a bit.

Career and finances are good areas to visualize together since most people generate income via their careers. Don’t just imagine yourself having more money. Put in some detail about what is sustaining that flow of money. How is it being maintained?

My initial attempts to manifest money flopped (or made things worse) because the big picture was incongruent. I was trying to pull money out of thin air, figuring it would come to me like magic. Well, this isn’t magic… not really.

Similarly, in the area of social abundance, I didn’t just manifest friends with magic. I had to see the big picture. This required thinking about what kind of friend I’d be. I thought about the kinds of friends I wanted to attract, and then I imagined what kind of friend I’d have to be in order to attract them to me — and to maintain good relationships with them. This made it clear that I had to work on myself too in order to step into that new reality. I had to become a better friend to others so I’d be worthy of those new relationships.

I know some people who are working really hard at manifesting new relationships. But all they do is imagine the other person coming to them and loving them. That’s a partial visualization, and it fails consistently. Honestly I don’t think I’ve seen this approach ever really work out. People do attract new partners this way, but the matches aren’t very compatible.

Suppose you’re trying to attract a new woman by visualizing her in your life. She’s everything you desire. She’s a perfect match for you and absolutely amazing as a human being. You can’t help but fall in love with that new reality.

But will she fall in love with you — realistically? A new reality is something you’re going to make REAL — it’s not a fantasy!

If you think your new reality is too good to be true, then well… it is too good to be true.

What do you have to offer this woman? She may be YOUR best possible match, but are you HER best match as well, or will she have better options than you? Will she have to compromise her values and settle for less than she’s worth to be with you? Will you really be able to maintain a relationship with someone like that? Are you worthy of her?

These questions can hit people like a ton of bricks because they reveal our inadequacies. But we still need to address them.

When you visualize your new reality, you must imagine yourself BEING the kind of person who can attract and hold on to all the good stuff you wish to manifest. That means you’re going to have to work on yourself and grow into that kind of person.

I know one woman who’s been trying to manifest the perfect relationship for years. She goes on a lot of dates, yet she remains perpetually alone. It’s obvious to me — and to many who know her — why that’s so. The simple reason is that the man she desires wouldn’t find her attractive at all. I can’t even see that being a remote possibility. She’s a kind-hearted person with a successful career, and she doesn’t have a problem getting dates, but her personality is a total mismatch for the kind of man she wants. She doesn’t fathom what such a man would find attractive in a relationship partner, so she lives in denial of the fact that he wouldn’t be attracted to her. So she’s always dating people where there’s no two-way chemistry. If she keeps doing what she’s been doing, she’ll either remain alone indefinitely, or she’ll eventually settle for an unstable connection with someone she doesn’t find attractive or who doesn’t find her attractive.

In the area of career and finances, what kind of person will you have to become in order to attract and hold on to the abundance you desire? What will it take to be worthy of that kind of flow?

When I was in my 20s, a $50K sum was too much for me to hold on to. I could attract such a sum on rare occasions, but I couldn’t retain it. It would slip through my fingers like water.

Eventually I stopped doing partial visualizations and began seeing the big picture. I realized I’d have to become a man who was worthy of abundance. This may mean something different to you, but to me it meant that I would need to be a kind and generous person who created a lot of value for others. That felt congruent to me. If I were a greedy bastard who was all about me-me-me, I’d feel I didn’t deserve that kind of flow. In my visualizations I felt really good about centering my career around service to others, and I could see that this would be consistent with attracting and perpetuating a constant flow of good stuff through my life — money, good health, low stress, loving relationships, fresh opportunities, etc. The total package just made sense to me.

I had to work a lot on myself to step into that new vision of me, but it definitely worked. In the past five years, I’ve put out enough free content to fill a couple dozen books. That feels really good to me. And resources flow to me so easily that I simply take it for granted that I can relax and enjoy whatever I want to experience in life. This works because it’s a congruent and stable situation. I use my creativity to put out a lot of value for others, so naturally I receive a lot of value in return. But in order to reach this place, I had to go through many internal shifts to step into this new reality.

In the area of social abundance, I do my best to be the kind of friend that’s worthy of having amazing friendships. I support and encourage my friends to pursue their dreams, but I also love to joke around and have fun. Consequently, I attract and maintain relationships with like-minded people. I’m really good at attracting people who are loving life, who enjoy helping people, and who are very encouraging and supportive of me too. And I naturally repel people who wouldn’t make good friends for me.

In order to manifest what you desire, the total package must be congruent. There must be harmony between what you’re attracting and what’s attracting you. Too often people fall into the trap of trying to attract something that would naturally repel them, such as trying to manifest a flow of money without creating any value, or trying to attract a loving relationship without becoming a loving and attractive person.

This is largely common sense, which many people seem to lose sight of when trying to apply the Law of Attraction.

Will a health nut be attracted to a lazy couch potato? Will honest, conscious business people want to do business with someone who creates little value and is in only in it for the money? Will an adventurous growth-seeker be attracted to someone who’s timid and security-minded? Even if these situations were to manifest, they’re unstable and usually won’t work out very well unless there’s a strong attraction in some other area to compensate.

Manifestations can occur very RAPIDLY and POWERFULLY once this harmony is achieved. But until that happens, results tend to be minimal or negative.

Write It Down

Imagining your new reality can be tricky if you try to do it all in your mind.

You may find it helpful to sit down and write out what it will be like to experience your new reality, in as much detail as possible.

For example, if you want to attract a certain type of person into your life, write out a detailed description of that person. Then you can use that as a guide when visualizing. Another option is to create a vision board by assembling a collection of photos or images (physical or digital) that helps you imagine the big picture.

I recently stumbled upon an old journal entry where I wrote out several pages describing in detail what I wanted to experience in life. My life at the time was nowhere close to that reality. I put an incredible amount of detail into it, even including personality descriptions and physical attributes of imagined people, such as how tall they were or that they wore contact lenses or were left- or right-handed.

What really freaked me out is that there is now a person in my reality who matches someone I described about 95% accurately. This person was not on my radar at all when I wrote this journal entry. I wrote it in February 2001. My life was in a completely different place back then.

Most of what I wrote about back then has already manifested. I’m now living it. Other parts of my reality have shifted so much that parts of my vision that seemed so far away are not nearly so distant now. I can actually see steps that would make more of them possible and realistic. The big picture is sliding towards me.

I was talking with Erin about this last week, and she asked me, “Why did you put that kind of detail into it? Why did it matter to you that an imaginary person was near-sighted?”

My best answer is that I found that a copious level of detail made it easier to see it as real. The vision became more believable. If the new reality is to become real, the people within it must be real too, not imaginary archetypes. Real people have height and weight. They may be near-sighted or left-handed. They may have pimples or unshaven faces. They wear certain types of clothes. They have unique personalities.

If you suddenly slid into your new reality, you would instantly observe all of that detail. It would be right in front of you. So put it in front of you now. Create it in your imagination. Clarity creates believability, which gives rise to stronger, crisper vibrations than fogginess.

It takes practice to get good at this, but the more you practice, the richer and more vivid your visualizations will become. That richness makes it easier to lock on to the new emotional states you’re aiming to create.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

The first Conscious Growth Workshop earlier this month was such an unqualified success that I started the process of booking another event less than 48 hours after it ended. It took a little while to select the meeting room and get the paperwork signed, but we’re good to go now.

Workshop Details

All the workshop details can be found on the Conscious Growth Workshop page, including the specific topics we’ll be covering each day.

This will be a very holistic workshop, blending high-level ideas with practical application. We’re going to cover career development, money, health, skill building, habits, productivity, emotions, relationships, spirituality, and more. I’ll be sharing the best insights I have on each of these topics. My goal is not to send you home with pages and pages of notes that you’ll hopefully implement later. This workshop is geared to create many a-ha moments that shift your thinking right there in the workshop.

Workshop Location

The first CGW was at Harrah’s. This one will be at the Flamingo, which is just two doors down, still right in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip.

For CGW #2 we’ll have a significantly larger and nicer meeting room. This new room can hold up to 400 people, so we’ll have more capacity too. I expect attendance for this workshop to be considerably higher than for the first workshop, especially given all the positive buzz about it — and the fact that CGW #1 alumni can attend for free.

Comparison to CGW #1

I’ve received a tremendous amount of feedback from attendees of CGW #1. I didn’t calculate it precisely, but it looks like the average rating was higher than a 9 out of 10. So obviously we did something right. We don’t want to mess up what’s working, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

In the months ahead, I’ll be poring over the feedback in detail and making lots of tweaks to the format, the exercises, the fieldwork assignments, and the way the material is presented. I REALLY appreciate the level of detail people used when sending me their feedback. Rest assured I’m reading every word of it and carefully considering what you shared.

One simple change is that we’ll be doing 2-hour lunch breaks each day instead of 90 minutes. It was obvious that people wanted more time to socialize at lunch, myself included. To compensate for the longer lunch breaks, we’ll be ending 30 minutes later each day (5:30pm on Fri and Sat, 4pm on Sun), so the actual time in the workshop will be the same.

We’ll still cover the seven fundamental principles of growth on Day 1, and then we’ll apply them to different areas of life on Days 2 and 3. The feedback I received suggests that this overall structure was very effective. Most of the changes I’ll be making will pertain to how each individual segment is structured and delivered. I’ve already refined some of the exercises (including the Master-Servant one), and I’ll probably make a lot of changes to how we do the written exercises to make them more impactful. The biggest challenge is figuring out how to incorporate the best ideas into the time we have available.

My goal is to make CGW #2 significantly better than CGW #1 while retaining the elements of CGW #1 that worked best. I can’t yet say what all those changes will be. It’s going to take time to fully review the feedback and re-factor each segment of the workshop.

Workshop FAQ

If you have questions about the workshop, please consult the Workshop FAQ first. It packs in a lot of info.

I did my best to anticipate any questions you may have about the workshop, travel arrangements, hotels, and staying in Las Vegas.

Workshop Forums

A few weeks ago, we added a Conscious Growth Workshop discussion forum. This is a great place to interact with CGW #1 alumni if you want to learn about their experiences. You can read plenty of feedback from them about the experience.

A good place to start is with Alex Wu’s day-by-day review of CGW #1.

You can also use that new forum to introduce yourself to other CGW #2 attendees, arrange social gatherings in Vegas, find people to share hotel rooms, ask questions about Las Vegas, etc.

Additionally, you may enjoy reading through this thread about the workshop results, which includes lots of feedback on CGW #1. Just be aware that it’s pretty long (more than 140 posts). You may find this post from Daan Buckinx especially insightful since he shares the specific changes he experienced.

The CGW discussion forum is also a good place to keep in touch after the workshop. It’s very likely you’ll make some great new friends there. I’ve been seeing CGW alumni continuing to stay in touch on Facebook, Twitter, and sometimes in person.

CGW Alumni Attend Free

As I mentioned previously, anyone who attended the very first Conscious Growth Workshop in October can attend one of the 2010 CGWs for free.

Will there be any benefit to attending more than once? Yes, absolutely. This workshop is designed to meet you where you are right now and to help you grow from there. If you attended the first workshop, you may recall the analogy of the different planets. Next year your Planet A will be different, and so will your Planet B. Even though the material will be similar, you’ll be applying each principle to your current life situation, so your experiences will be different each time. Also, you’ll have many new friends to make and hang out with, so the social opportunities will be unique as well.

If you’re a CGW alumni, and you’d like to register for CGW #2, don’t use the online registration form. Instead, please visit Erin’s contact form, and send her a message letting her know you’d like to register for CGW #2. Please provide her with the following info:

• Your name (as you want it to be printed on your badge)
• Your city and state (city and country if you live outside the USA)
• Your email address
• Your phone number

If you send Erin this info and she confirms receipt of it, we’ll have a badge waiting for you at CGW #2.

There’s one caveat though. We need to make sure we don’t get too many alumni saying they’ll be at CGW #2 and then not showing up. That could mean having empty seats we might otherwise have offered to someone else. So if you request a badge for CGW #2 and you flake for some reason, then it means you’ve used up your freebie pass for good, and you won’t be able to attend another CGW in 2010 for free.

Since there were 115 attendees of CGW #1, we should have enough capacity to accommodate anyone who wants to attend CGW #2 for free, as long as you request a badge early enough. However, if we sell out with paid registrations, then it’s possible we may have to turn away some alumni freebie requests if they wait till the last minute to request a badge.

I’d suggest that if you want to request a free alumni badge, please submit your request by December 1st, 2009. That gives you more than a month to decide. We may be able to accommodate requests after that date, but I can’t guarantee it.

If we do get close to selling out, we may follow up with each alumni freebie request to verify that you’re still planning to attend. That way we can offer your seat to someone else if you change your mind. But please don’t request an alumni badge unless you’re willing to commit to using your freebie pass.

If we can swing it, we’ll use a different color for the alumni badges, so you’ll be able to tell at a glance who’s alumni and who’s new.

I don’t know how many CGWs we’ll have in 2010 — that depends on the demand — but I’d like to do at least 3-4 of them, roughly one per calendar quarter. CGW #2 is the only one that’s been scheduled so far.

Time to Register

It should be obvious that I’m EXCITED about doing another workshop. I had so much fun at the first one that I couldn’t wait to schedule another one.

This workshop has had a huge impact on my own personal growth. I thought I was there to be the facilitator, but it turned out that I was just as much an attendee as anyone else. Together we created a space where many breakthroughs were able to occur. The last two weeks have been – without a doubt – one of the most intense growth periods of my life.

Some of the changes I’ve been experiencing are still creating ripples and will have to be revealed in the weeks ahead. But one of the simplest changes I can share is that I’ve been exercising a lot more, eating more lightly, and sleeping less. My fitness level has measurably improved, and I dropped six pounds in the past two weeks.

But perhaps the most astonishing change is that I did something I’ve never done before. That’s right — I bought a Mac! After 20+ years of continuous PC usage, I decided to switch to a Mac for a while. The fact that my laptop PC and desktop PC both went belly-up within the past 3 months made it a good time to switch. I figure it will be an interesting growth experience to become a Mac guy for a while. I ordered a Macbook Pro online last week, and it’s supposed to arrive on Thursday. I also bought a 24″ Mac monitor, which I received yesterday. Before the workshop I’d never have thought it possible!

So what are you waiting for? Go sign up for January 2010 Conscious Growth Workshop. You’ll love it!

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

The cubicle is the antithesis of doing work you love. Virtually no one pictures a cubicle when they think about doing what they most love.

The cubicle is where you end up when you fall out of harmony with what you love.

The only way you can be stuck in a cubicle is by giving your power away to it.

A cubicle has no power over you. You can empower the cubicle, but it can’t empower itself.

To complain about a job you dislike is an act of giving your power away. You chose the job, and you can just as easily choose to stop showing up.

Think of it this way: If you and your cubicle got in a fight, who would win?

Still not sure? How about this: You plus a chainsaw vs. the cubicle plus a chainsaw. Who’d win?

If you decide to leave the cubicle, it is powerless to stop you. You could smash the thing to pieces just for spite.

So the only one keeping you trapped in that cubicle is you. You’re there by choice. You’re there because that’s the life you chose to create.

“But I need that cubicle because I need money,” you say.

Now you’re giving your power away to money. Money is nothing but a piece of paper… or a number on a computer screen. How can something so lifeless and inanimate have any power over you whatsoever?

If you and $1 million cash got in a fight, who’d win?

Not sure? Ok, try this: You plus a flamethrower vs. $1 million plus a flamethrower. Who’d win?

Is that even a fair fight? You could repeat it for a thousand matches and win every single time.

“But I have bills to pay,” you say.

Now you’re giving your power away to your bills. You do realize you don’t have to do that, don’t you?

What is a bill? It’s a few pieces of paper at most.

You vs. your bills in a fight — who’d win?

Can you see who’s stronger here, or do we need to arm each of you with a paper shredder to be sure?

“But I need a roof over my head and food on the table,” you say.

Now you’re giving your power away to the roof and the food. Those are inanimate objects.

Who’d win in a fight between you and a house or you and a ton of food? I think it’s clear that you’re the fiercer opponent in those matches, and unless you do something stupid and slip on a banana peel, an easy victory is yours.

Follow this chain of making and busting excuses for as long as you desire. You’ll still end up at the same place. Each rationalization is just another instance of giving your power away.

Giving your power away is stupid. Who would use their creative powers to create a trap for themselves and then complain about being stuck in the trap afterwards? That wouldn’t be very bright, now would it? I mean… you’d have to be really, really stupid to do something like that, wouldn’t you?

Do you realize that you don’t actually have to give your power away to anything? Really you don’t.

You don’t actually have to create a trap for yourself, fall into it, and then spend years complaining about the trap.

It’s not like your traps are very strong anyway. A cubicle isn’t a particularly strong cage, now is it? You can walk away from it this very second, and it’s powerless to contain you.

An unfulfilling relationship isn’t much of a cage either. Again, it’s easy enough to just walk away.

Even now, you have the ability to withdraw your power into yourself and reclaim it.

That power is your creative ability. Your power allows you to bend reality to your will. If you want to experience a different reality, you have the power to create it.

If you desire a roof over your head and food on the table, you can use your power to create that.

If you desire to have bills in your life and also have them be paid on time with ease, you can create that reality too.

If you desire to have money flowing through your life, that is also within your power.

And if you desire to live your life outside a cubicle, then once again you are strong enough to make that happen.

Do not make excuses. Do not complain about your situation. Complaining and excuse-making are acts of using your power to create what you don’t want.

Whenever you complain about anything, it’s because you do not understand the true nature of power.

Do not pretend you are powerless. You are stronger than any excuse.

Use your power to constructively create what you want. Focus your will upon your desires. Withdraw your thoughts from helplessness and hopelessness.

Realize that you’re the creator in your reality. If you find yourself in a cubicle, who created that reality for you? Who used their willpower to walk up to the cubicle and sit down? You willed that into existence. You thought about it. You felt what it would feel like. You fed that potential reality your power. And so you manifested and experienced it. But you didn’t have to. You never had to. And you never will have to.

Look around your life and notice all that you’ve created. You did all of that. Your repeated applications of power constructed the reality you are now experiencing.

Celebrate that realization. See the good in what you’ve created. Remember the thoughts and feelings you summoned to create it. Do not give your power away by pretending that you didn’t create it.

You may have created much that you no longer desire to experience. In that case, focus your creative energies elsewhere. Stop feeding your power to what you’ve already created, and begin channeling it toward what you now desire.

You cannot uncreate what you’ve already created. Well, maybe if you use the flamethrower. But you can re-create your reality into that which you desire to experience.

Imagine being in the place of experiencing a reality that you created. Actually you’re already there. You’re experiencing that every day. But now imagine yourself enjoying a reality that you very much desire to experience. You can create that too.

What if you don’t know what you’ll enjoy? How do you know what to create next?

Well, start with what you know. If you know you aren’t thrilled with what you have right now, then pick a direction and target your creative energies there. If you know what you’re experiencing right now isn’t what you desire, then the most foolish thing you can do is to use your power to keep re-creating it.

Explore. Experiment. Create new experiences for yourself. It is only through exploration that you will hone in on what you most desire. Be willing to fail.

Celebrate your creative failures. Celebrate those times when you created something you didn’t like. Those experiences are your greatest teachers.

When you know you’ve created something you don’t like, learn from that contrast. Ask yourself, “How does this help me understand what I truly do want?”

If you know you don’t want to spend your life in a cubicle, how does that help you? It helps you better understand what you do want. It suggests other places to explore.

Based on your reaction to cubicle life, perhaps you will see that you desire to spend more time outside. You desire more freedom. You desire to manage your own time without having to be at a certain place at a certain time. You desire to physically get up and move around more. You desire fresh air and sunlight and moonlight. You desire to be with people who are on fire with passion and happiness, not with people who are slaves.

Observe your creations. Take credit for them. Take full responsibility for what you’ve created. And then learn from them. Allow yourself to have an emotional reaction to what you’ve created. Do you love it? Do you hate it? Are you bored with it? How do you really feel?

When you observe the life you’re living, are you blissing out? That’s a sign you’ve created what you truly desire. Or are you bored or frustrated or stressed? That’s a sign you missed the mark and need to try again.

Use your emotional reactions to what you’ve created as a way to re-orient yourself in the direction of new desires. Then withdraw your power from the creations you no longer wish to experience. Realize that you created all of it and that you now have the power to create something else.

Now focus your power in that new direction. It doesn’t have to be a perfectly crystal clear direction. It just has to be a path with a heart, something that feels good to you, something you’d like to explore.

If you can’t find a path that feels good, then look for a path that feels better than what you’re already experiencing.

That path with a heart is a path that requires courage. If you haven’t chosen a path that requires courage, you’ve chosen to create another trap for yourself. In the end you will only create more of what you don’t want.

True desires pull at your heart. But if your application of power has been rather weak, then the mind will resist these desires. This conflict between head and heart is called fear. Fear is what you experience when you turn your inner eye to see the path with a heart, but your mind doubts you have the power to create it and have it feel good.

When you see that path with a heart, it’s okay to feel fear and tension. It will take time to re-awaken your power and apply it to the pursuit of that path.

Imagine power and energy flowing forth from you. Flow your power toward your desires. Imagine them as real. Use your power to create them in your mind and in your heart. See your creations as real. Feel your creations as real. Know that this is an act of creation.

Be careful not to feed your power back to your undesired creations. Let the old creations die. Let go of the cubicle. Disconnect from the unfulfilling relationships. Channel your power toward your desires only.

If this is difficult for you, then strive to minimize the amount of time you spend feeding your power to what you don’t want. Go on a power fast in those areas. Starve out those creations. Keep pulling back and withdrawing more and more of your power into yourself.

Notice when you are channeling energy to something you don’t want. You will know it’s happening because you will be feeling negative emotions. When you notice this happening, withdraw your power and re-channel it toward something you desire. You will know it’s happening when you experience positive emotions. Feeding power to your desires feels good.

Enjoy the unfolding journey as your new desires begin to manifest. Keep following the path with a heart. Turn your body, mind, heart, and spirit in the direction of your desires. Keep facing toward them as much as possible, as you turn your back on that which you no longer desire.

Do not pretend to be powerless. Such behavior is unbecoming of conscious beings.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

If this describes you, then who decided to fixify your income? Who made that decision?

You made that decision, didn’t you? You decided to earn a fixed amount of money per month. You can trace your decisions back to some moment where you said yes to a fixed income.

Are you aware that saying yes was entirely optional? In fact, if you give it some thought (which I’ll encourage you to do in this article), you should be able to see that accepting a fixed income is a rather stupid choice, all things considered. A fixed income is a sucker bet.

How is that choice working out for you so far? Are you blissfully delighted with it? Do you like knowing that you’ll earn the same amount of money month after month? Does it feel comforting to know how much you’re going to make? Or is there some part of you that’s bored and frustrated beyond recognition?

Do you like the stability of it? Is it truly stable, or is your feeling of security rooted in a hopeful illusion? If some individual can decide to turn off your income with the words “You’re fired,” it’s hardly stable. If that’s your situation, it’s safe to say your income is unstable and conditional rather than stable and secure. We can say that all income is conditional, but how stable are those conditions? Does someone else wield the power to turn off your income?

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that your income seems reasonably stable, secure, and predictable. Perhaps you work in a high-demand field, and you’re really good at what you do, so even if you lost your current job, you could quickly find a new one doing similar work for similar pay. That may be a stretch for some, but for the sake of this article, we don’t even need to pluck that low-hanging fruit. There are plenty of other cuts awaiting a splash of lemon juice.

Downsides of a Fixed Income

Aside from its predictability and possible stability, virtually everything else about a fixed income is negative.

First off, a fixed income lacks flexibility. It cannot adapt well to changing circumstances. This means that fixed incomes can get pummeled in a variety of ways.

If expenses rise unexpectedly and surpass your monthly income, then you have no choice but to draw money from cash reserves or investments or go into debt. If your expenses later return to normal, this debt may be temporary, but you’ll still end up paying extra interest or losing interest on your depleted savings/investments, which takes money out of your pocket.

If you spend more, you can’t simply earn more to compensate. This turns unexpected expenses into threats. They become something you relate to with fear or worry about. What if the car breaks down? What if someone gets sick? What if prices go up? Such events are just part of life. It makes no sense to fear the inevitable. Stuff is going to break, including expensive stuff that costs a lot to repair or replace. If getting an unexpected bill stresses you out, your mindset is a mismatch for reality.

If expenses rise above net income for too long, you can sink into debt for a long time and waste a great deal of money paying interest to someone else. Many people remain stuck there till they die. If their fixed incomes are too close to their expenses, taxes, and debt payments, then getting out of debt becomes hopeless. Hope can only be restored by focusing on the income side.

For this reason, people on fixed incomes often spend an inordinate amount of time fussing over their expenses. Otherwise they may risk depleting their savings or going into debt. They want to fulfill their desires, but their income limits their ability to do that.

“I can’t afford it” is practically a mantra for fixed income people. They sacrifice their true desires in order to stick to their budgets, totally oblivious to the fact that no one is forcing them to waste their lives on expense-tracking tedium. If they desire something with a price tag, but they can’t afford it, they rule it out as impossible for them – as if their fixed income is the final arbiter of their desires. Eventually resentment builds. They start resenting the unfairness of the economy, of people who set the prices, of business in general, of money, and so on. The bad guy is somewhere out there. Nope… the bad guy is the stupid choice you made to fixify your income. Wise up and stop doing that to yourself.

People look really pathetic when they act financially helpless. This isn’t how human beings should relate to themselves.

“Hi, there’s something I really want. Actually, it feels like the perfect match for me, but I just can’t afford it because I’m on a fixed income. Help me! Can you give me a price break or something? I really, really want it!”

“How about if you give me a break and stop pretending to be helpless?”

“No, you don’t understand. I’m on a tight budget. I really can’t afford to pay full price.”

“Now you’re just making yourself look foolish. Who fixified your income in the first place? You did! Why are you putting the onus on me to work within the limits you created for yourself? You’re asking me to fit an elephant inside a breadbox. Why don’t you raise your limits? Raise them high enough to be well beyond your desires, so you can easily afford whatever you want.”

“I can do that?”

“Yes, you’ve always been free to do that.”

“Well, I dunno about that. I don’t think my boss will give me more money.”

“Screw your boss then. Why do you want a boss anyway?”

“But that would mean making major changes in my life.”

“Yes, it would.”

“I don’t think I’m ready for that. It’s too risky.”

“There’s no additional risk because you’ve already lost the connection to your desires. You’re already stuck in a situation where you aren’t experiencing what you truly want. Life doesn’t get any worse than that. To do nothing ensures a continuation of the worst possible outcome – being perpetually unfulfilled.”

“But it could get worse. I could be even more unhappy.”

“If you do nothing, it will indeed get worse. That’s a given. Your desires will slip further and further away as you disconnect from your heart even more. Life doesn’t get any worse than that. The only hope lies on the path of change.”

“So it’s to be torture then?”

“Yes, until it kills you.”

“I can cope with torture.”

“Suit yourself.”

“So how about that price break?”

“Fezzik, tear his arms off.”

Foolishly Guarding Fool’s Gold

It’s funny how people strive to protect that which is worthless. The state of being unhappy and unfulfilled is worth absolutely nothing. If that’s where you find yourself, you’re already at rock bottom.

You may think that you’ll have to risk some of your stuff (possessions, money, etc) to make big changes in your life. That may be true, but if you aren’t happy right now, then all of that stuff is of zero value to you anyway. If you try to maintain your stuff at the expense of your happiness and fulfillment, then you are indeed a complete idiot. You’re trying to sell your very soul, aren’t you? You’re entering into an agreement that says, “I agree to be perpetually unhappy and unfulfilled in exchange for cash and goods worth $X.” Add up the value of all the stuff you believe you’d have to risk to make big changes. Does that value of X make this agreement a wise choice?

Risk the stuff. It’s worthless anyway. But don’t make the insane choice of sacrificing your happiness for stuff.

Switching to a Variable Income

Earning a variable income, where you have the flexibility to earn a different sum of money each month, has a lot more to do with mindset than anything else. It doesn’t matter if you have a job, run your own business, or enjoy multiple streams of income. Those are just different vehicles.

The key is to recognize who determines your income. You do. You may have financial and economic realities to deal with, but ultimately you set the prices for what your time and efforts are worth financially, you decide what skills to develop and what kind of training to undertake, and you determine what kind of value to create and deliver to people. The most powerful choices are under your control.

If you deliver pizza for a living, you can expect to be paid for that particular skill based on its market value. Pizza delivery guys are easily trained and replaced, so you can expect to earn very little from such a job. Don’t blame the job for what it pays. No one is forcing you to choose a low-paying, unskilled job. If you try to squeeze more money from a job than the job is worth in the larger marketplace, eventually your boss or customers will figure out that you’re being overpaid, and you’ll be replaced by someone cheaper.

On the other hand, maybe you want to inspire and motivate people for a living. This takes a lot more skill than delivering pizzas, but it’s in much higher demand relative to the supply. In general, people are willing to pay a lot more to be inspired and motivated than they’re willing to pay for a hot pizza (unless you live in Naples). If you develop a high ability to inspire and motivate people, and you build the means to deliver your value to a sizeable number of people, you can eventually earn more in an hour than the pizza guy earns in month.

You not only have the ability to develop your skills within a particular field, but you can also switch fields repeatedly. If you want to earn more, then keep building skills and changing up how you combine and express those skills to maximize the value you’re able to create and deliver, thereby maximizing the income you’re able to generate. The opportunities to do this are endless as long as you remain flexible and alert.

Your income is not fixed unless you decide to fixify it. It doesn’t matter if you’re getting checks from the government as your only income source. Those checks may not increase in size, but they aren’t the only checks you’re capable of earning. If you don’t like the size of those checks, go out and earn different checks.

A Fixed Income Is a Sucker Bet

Take note that while you’re receiving a fixed income, someone higher up the chain of command is enjoying a variable income at your expense. When you receive a fixed income, you’re actually creating a variable amount of value, but the income generated by your excess value is being siphoned off to line someone else’s pockets. They’re profiting from your ignorance. How generous of you! It may seem like they’re taking on more risk, but keep in mind that if they go down, you go down too. You share in the risk, but you don’t share in the upside. You do realize you’re giving away the farm here, don’t you?

If you’re going to work, then why not receive and enjoy the fruits of your labor instead of giving most of your earnings away before you even see them? You’re already creating value, aren’t you? If you want to be generous, consider giving some of your excess value away to charity. I donate some money each month because it feels good to do so. But I donate to non-profits and charities that spend their money on things I want to support, not to stock-holding officers or investors who are already making millions a year.

Stop pretending to be helpless when it comes to how much money you make. Your paycheck has no power over you – except to the degree you give your power away. You may be working in a system where the higher ups have every financial incentive to keep you powerless so they can keep siphoning the value you’re creating, but ultimately you’re the one who chooses to walk through that door each day. You don’t have to keep doing that. You can get up and leave right this minute if you want. Many people are much happier for having done that.

You are the final arbiter of your desires. If you want something with a price tag, you have the power to earn the money to pay for it. You decide how much you earn. You decide how much you spend.

When you realize that you choose your income, you can focus your energies on creating and delivering as much value as it takes to earn whatever you want. Be intelligent and deliberate about it. Make abundance a priority in your life. This is a lot more fun than fussing over expenses and nitpicking your taxes. Once you develop a modicum of skill, you’ll find that it’s a lot more fun to earn an extra $10K than to save $10K. You can earn $10K in an hour if you develop the mindset and skills to do so. No one is stopping you from doing that.

Stop Fussing Over Expenses and Taxes

When it comes to reducing your expenses and taxes, you have to do a lot of tedious work. It’s not fun, at least not for any sane person I’ve met. Yet people with a scarcity mindset spend a lot more time nitpicking their expenses and taxes than they invest in boosting their income. Not a good trade off… not by a long shot.

When you try to minimize your expenses and taxes, you’ll eventually reach the point of having to make tough calls that could reduce your quality of life. On the expenses side, you may have to do extra expense tracking and budgeting, which takes time. Or you may begin to sacrifice quality to save a few bucks on your purchases.

On the tax side, you’ll have to fill out more paperwork and do more accounting to take advantage of more deductions and save more money. Is that really what you want to spend your precious life doing?

Consider that when it comes to expenses and taxes, you have a hard limit of $0 and can go no lower. Once you’re spending the bare minimum, that’s it – you’re done. So your maximum ideal gain is to spend nothing at all. And even if you could take things that far, your quality of life will surely suffer. You’ll be wasting so much time going out of your way just to save a few extra dollars here and there. Sacrifice and scarcity will be your constant companions. That’s no way to live.

In the long run, it’s much more productive to focus your time and energy – not to mention your precious life – on the side of generating more income. You have no hard limit on that side. For all practical purposes, the sky is the limit. With commitment and persistence, you can boost your income by many multiples of what you might save on the expense and tax side.

Working on the income side is a lot more fun to boot. You get to spend your time creating value and receiving money with gratitude instead of worrying about whether or not you can afford to splurge on organic produce.

For my taxes, I pay an accountant to do all the paperwork for me. That costs extra money, but I don’t worry about it. I also procrastinate endlessly when it comes to doing any sort of accounting work. I do the bare minimum I can. I keep everything in good order, but I don’t balance the accounts very often. At tax time I let my accountant work his magic to figure out the best deductions for me, but if I have to do extra work that I don’t want to do just to save a little more money, I simply decline. That way I get to spend more time on the value creation and delivery side, not to to mention the enjoyment of life side. The pay is much better on that side, both financially and emotionally.

Last year my accountant told me I could save more money by deducting the business use of my car. All I’d have to do would be to keep track of mileage when I drive my car for business reasons. There may have been some other ways to claim this deduction, but they still required me to do more tracking, analysis, and/or paperwork. That seemed like a stupid waste of life, so I told my accountant to skip that deduction – not worth it to me. I’m not going to waste more time on stuff I don’t enjoy just so I can save an extra thousand dollars on my taxes. The IRS will surely have no trouble taking the extra money, and I’m happy to spend my time doing more of what I enjoy, which will easily enable me to earn enough money to cover that missed deduction many times over. I’d actually lose money if I tried to take that deduction. It’s yet another sucker bet for those who choose to live in scarcity.

When it comes to my expenses, I don’t maintain any sort of budget, either on the business side or personal side. Budgeting is boring to me, so I don’t do it. I simply spend whatever I feel like spending. When my expenses rise, expectedly or unexpectedly, I don’t worry about it. I don’t have to worry. I know that if I begin to overspend, I can always restore balance by over-earning just as easily.

Earning money is fun. Spending money is fun. Both activities are interchangeable. Fussing over expenses and taxes isn’t remotely fun, so that isn’t part of the equation – that kind of stuff gets triaged.

My latest credit card bill for my business is $1010, which is on the low side. Most of it is stuff that gets auto-billed each month. I was too busy earning money that month and didn’t have as much time to spend money. The bill before that was $6900. Ah yes, the Bermuda conference. I had a lot of fun spending money that month. The bill before that was somewhere in between. My personal credit card bills fluctuate similarly. Every month I pay off every balance completely, so there’s no revolving balance and no interest charges.

I “waste” money on unnecessary expenses all the time. I overspend on little things. I don’t fuss over trying to save money. I assume that whatever I can spend, I can earn. That wasn’t always the case though – it took years to train up to the level where I could earn enough to cover my desires.

Years ago I had a friend who absolutely hated waiting in line. He saw it as a personal insult. He used to say that all stores and restaurants should have a separate cashier for people who are willing to pay 50% more, just so they’ll never have to wait in line. I thought he was nuts at the time, but he was simply trying to maximize the value he got from life. Waiting in life sucked too much value away.

I really don’t know how much money I earn each month because I only look into it a couple times a year. It’s just video game gold anyway – doesn’t really matter what the exact figures are. I have a general feel/vibe for how the cash is flowing week by week, and in terms of spending I do my best to go with the flow. Is my bank account growing or shrinking? I like to see the numbers keep growing. I check my account balances a couple times a week to take their pulse. I earn money from multiple sources pretty much every day, so my checking account is perpetually refilling itself, but I want to make sure there are no big surprises like fraudulent charges. Some months it’s hard for me to guess what I actually earned within +/- $5K. I simply don’t care to keep track. It’s somewhere in the tens of thousands each month, more than enough to live off.

I do the same with my book. I have no idea how many copies it’s sold. Can’t even fathom a guess within +/- 5K copies. I haven’t asked my publisher for a sales update this whole year. It’s great that we’re up to a dozen languages for translated versions, but as for the money and sales, I don’t really care. I’ll sort it out when the royalty statements start coming. It will be more fun to be surprised.

Even though this may sound financially irresponsible, I think it’s just the opposite. My bills always get paid. I’m paying down my mortgage much faster than necessary. My car is 100% paid for. I’m sharing this with you because it actually works, even though it may sound counter-intuitive.

Managing your finances in real life – the fun way – is very much like earning gold in a computer role-playing game. Earning money is play. Spending money is also play. If you aren’t having fun, you’re missing the whole point.

I think it’s truly irresponsible to waste your precious life on things you don’t enjoy, like fussing over your expenses or taxes. Does it feel good to you to sacrifice quality of life to keep a tight grip on your finances, when you could be making plenty of money if you simply spent more time doing what you love and providing value for others? Would you rather do something creative and have plenty of money to splash around, or spend your time dealing with cheap items that keep breaking down? I think you deserve the best that life has to offer you, but you have to step up and claim it. No one is stopping you from doing that.

Cash Reserves

Suze Orman recommends maintaining a short-term cash reserve (not counting long-term investments) equivalent to about 6 months of expenses. I think that’s a wise idea. A decent cash reserve gives you a lot more flexibility, whether your income is fixed or variable.

I maintain a liquid cash reserve at all times to have a cushion for any unforeseen expenses. I like to see that reserve be at least $50K, preferably closer to $100K. That way if something unexpected happens like a wacko filing a frivolous lawsuit because he spilled boiling water on himself while attempting my brown rice recipe… or crashed his car while attempting to drive after a week on polyphasic sleep, I can easily afford a decent hitman.

When your income source is fairly vulnerable, like if you could get laid off or fired and spend a lot of time out of work, you may want to maintain a bigger cash reserve. But when you assert more control over your income and maintain more options for responding to financial setbacks, you don’t need as big a reserve.

If you have multiple streams of mostly passive income, and if it would take a major upheaval to threaten those sources even if you stopped working for a while, you may be fine with a 2-month cash reserve or less. If I suddenly need more cash, I have lots of options that could easily be implemented in less than 60 days. I could do another joint-venture promotion. I could create and sell an info product. I could do another book deal and get an advance. Even so, when I focus on feeling abundant, I naturally attract a bigger reserve than I need.

Cash reserves are useful because there’s a lag between creating and delivering value and receiving income from it. Some income sources have low lag time. For example, when someone registers for my workshop and pays by credit card or PayPal, the money is in my bank account within a few days. Some sources pay monthly, such as affiliate deals. Others pay quarterly, semi-annually, or less frequently, like book royalties. Some pay “whenever.” A cash reserve helps to smooth out fluctuations. It also keeps you from incurring stupid bank fees from bouncing checks. Having a bank balance that’s too low can lead to a lot of time wasted as well as unnecessary stress.

How do you build a cash reserve? You can get there by skimping on expenses, but that gets really tedious and boring after a while, so I don’t recommend it. Focus on creating more value, training up your value-creating skills, and building a bigger client base for whatever service you provide. It all comes down to getting better at creating and delivering value.

I certainly didn’t make sacrifices to build a cash reserve. I just kept doing what I enjoyed. I stayed alert for new ways to express and deliver value to people. Sometimes it was as simple as asking, “What else can I write about that could help people in some way?” I didn’t have to focus on earning money. When you get good at creating and delivering value, money finds its way to you.

Luck or Choice?

Why do I find myself in this “lucky” situation where I get to do what I want, earn what I want, and spend what I want? If you think luck had anything to do with this, you’re crazy, deluded, and otherwise insane. This happened by choice. I created this career and financial situation deliberately. It wasn’t easy to figure out how all the pieces would fit together – it took years – but it was definitely worth it.

How long it takes you to hit your desired financial stride is irrelevant since the time is going to pass anyway. You can spend that time creating the life you desire, or you can stay stuck with something you don’t want. You might as well work toward what you desire, unless you want sacrifice and scarcity to accompany you all the way to the grave.

Recognize that a fixed income is a sucker bet. It’s like drinking soda. It doesn’t matter that lots of people do it – that doesn’t make it any less dumb. There’s no good reason to sacrifice yourself to line someone else’s pockets. Don’t be a sucker.

You’re free to opt out of the fixed income sucker bet whenever you want. When you do this, rest assured that the other suckers in your life will bark at you for pouring lemon juice on their cuts, and the higher ups won’t appreciate that you saw through their scheme. But you’ll be free to decide how much you earn. You’ll be able to write your own paycheck, not with airy-fairy wishful thinking but with a commitment to creating and delivering the best value you can, regardless of how you choose to express yourself.

Of course having a variable income isn’t all fun and roses. It takes time to get the hang of it and to get a good feel for how to balance the flow of earning and spending. It took me about 5 years before I achieved basic competence with it. I made tons of mistakes during that time, but I learned from them. After that it was pretty easy to maintain stability.

If you pursue this path, maybe you can figure it out in 2 years. Maybe it will take 10. Again, the time is going to pass anyway. If you drop the fixed income mindset, you’ll end up in a pretty sweet place once you eventually figure it out.

As you probably noticed, I made up some words in this article. You’re free to coinify your own words too. This is your reality after all. You make the rules. Just as you can subscribe to other people’s verbal patterns, you can also subscribe to other people’s income patterns. But you don’t have to. You never did have to. Just because a pattern is popular doesn’t mean it’s the best pattern for you. Give that some thoughtification.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Communicate like a human being, not a marketer.

If your email looks even remotely like spam, expect that busy people will treat it as such.

If an email looks impersonal at all or seems like it’s being sent to more than one person, busy people will often delete it without reading it. Busy people get enough personal communication that they don’t want to bother with anything that isn’t personal.

Sometimes I get messages sent through my online contact form that start with salutations like “Hi Marc…” I actually prefer these copy/paste blunders, since it saves me from having to read them before hitting delete.

If you’re going to contact a busy person, make sure your message is personal and specific to that person.

Be authentic.

Get clear about why you want to connect with a particular busy person.

Do you want to become good friends? Do you want to do business together? Do you want to ask for advice or mentoring?

Don’t put up a false front, pretending to want one thing while secretly desiring another.

Don’t pretend you want to be friends and hang out if you really just want to do a deal together. Similarly, don’t pretend you’re interested in doing business if you just want to hang out and be friends.

When you communicate inauthentically, other people will often pick up a creepy vibe from you. They may not even notice it consciously, but they’ll feel turned off by you.

Inauthentic communication is a big pet peeve of mine. It’s such a huge turnoff when someone is being fake with me. You may think you’re good at hiding your real intentions, but someone who deals with a high volume of communication has the opportunity to get pretty good at discerning patterns, so what seems invisible to you may be glaringly obvious to them.

Authenticity is the best policy. Putting up a false front simply isn’t necessary.

I’m not suggesting the approach of radical honesty, blurting out whatever you’re thinking and feeling no matter how offensive it may be. I think a little decorum and politeness is reasonable. However, to say one thing while secretly intending something else is a bad idea. You’re a lot more transparent than you realize. People usually won’t call you on it, but they’ll sense that something is off with you, and their shields will go up.

If you want people to lower their shields around you, make sure your expression reflects your intention.

Be patient.

Don’t buy into the myth of the once-in-a-lifetime networking opportunity. If you maintain an abundance mindset, interesting opportunities will come up again and again.

Think of networking like playing in the World Series of Poker main event. You aren’t going to win the whole thing on the first day. It’s a long road. You probably won’t make it to the final table. That may be a goal to strive for, but most of your experience will involve playing the game and making new friends along the way. The try-hards usually just make fools of themselves.

Networking with people is much the same. Sometimes you’ll encounter what appears to be an opportunity, but it doesn’t quite work out. Don’t force it. Be patient and wait for a better spot. Maintain your poise and self-respect, and don’t be a try-hard.

A few years ago, someone from Oprah’s production company called to offer me an “opportunity.” They were looking for someone to help teach Eckhart Tolle’s material for some webcasts they were doing. Was that a good spot for me? Heck no. I have no interest in presenting someone else’s material when I have so much of my own to share. I knew they could find hundreds of people to fill that role, so it’s not an area where I can make a unique contribution. It may have looked like an opportunity, but it wasn’t a good spot for me. To say yes to that would have been to act out of desperation. So naturally I turned them down. The “better spot” is to share my own material in the form of a 3-day workshop.

When you network with people, do so from a place of abundance. Know that opportunities are everywhere. When a good opportunity comes your way, accept it. But when the opportunity isn’t right, just relax and let it go.

Realize that the rules change once you’re in.

Once you’re “in” with a busy person, it’s still important to be respectful of their time, but if you’ve made it past the slush pile, your status will likely change, and their shields will go down when they’re communicating with you.

Once I’ve established a solid friendship with a person, my rules change. Now my attention shifts from processing their emails and voice mails to managing a relationship.

There’s a continuum here of course. I might spend one minute typing an email to one person, an hour on the phone with another, and a half day in person with someone else. When I’m typing emails, I normally want to process them fast and move on to something else. But when I’m talking to someone face to face, I’m just going with the flow and having fun, not looking at my watch and worrying about the time investment.

Almost every busy person I know experiences a similar dichotomy. Busy people are usually tight with their time in some areas but much looser with their time in other areas.

The people who will send you a one-line email to save a few minutes are the same people who’d have no qualms shooting the breeze with you for hours under different circumstances.

I think the reason for this is simple. Typing emails and returning voice mails isn’t much fun, especially if you have to process a high volume. I certainly don’t want to spend hours each day typing emails. But I like connecting with people face to face – that feels much more natural, and it isn’t tedious at all.

Sometimes when people pop over to my house to visit with Erin and me for the first time, they start feeling anxious after a while. They might look at their watch and say, “Oh I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I just chewed up two hours talking with you. I’m sure you’re very busy and have better things to do.” I have to reassure them that it’s okay for us just to hang out and chat.

I’ve had one-on-one conversations that have lasted as long as eight hours. I’ve had people hang out at my house for days at a time. Why? Because it’s fun. I enjoy it. But if I spend more than an hour answering emails, I start feeling squirmy.

I’m certainly not alone in feeling this way. Other busy people behave much the same way. Even so-called productivity gurus will sit around drinking coffee and chatting for hours about the most mundane things. Why? Because they enjoy it. They apply their productivity tactics to efficiently process the tasks they don’t enjoy much, so they can free up more time to do what they enjoy most.

Therein lies another good lesson. If you try to communicate with a busy person through a channel they don’t enjoy much, you’re going to get processed. But if you use a channel they enjoy, you have a much better chance at connecting.

***

This was a long series, and it should be largely common sense, but these tips aren’t commonly practiced. I hope that by sharing what it’s like to network with busy people (from both sides of the fence), I’ve helped you gain some distinctions that will help you become a more effective networker – and a better friend as well.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Don’t apologize for reaching out.

Never begin your first contact with an apology.

Every week people send me emails that begin with phrases like, "Sorry to bother you, but…" What does this tell me about the other person’s expectations for connecting with me? It tells me they expect to bother me. Who am I to argue with them? Delete… next.

If you hint that you’re about to irritate or annoy someone, they’ll assume you’re right. Why should they do otherwise?

You might think that you’re just being polite and respectful. Are you really? Or would it be more accurate to say that deep down, you don’t feel equal to the person you’re contacting?

If you have to apologize for bothering someone, maybe you shouldn’t be contacting them at all… at least not until you do a bit more work on your self-esteem.

“Excuse me…” is another weak opener. Why do you need to be excused? Are you doing something wrong?

If you’re going to approach a busy person, do so as an equal. Don’t act like an equal. Know you’re equal.

It doesn’t matter which person on this planet you wish to connect with – the President of the USA, the Dalai Lama, Oprah, etc. Don’t chode yourself with anyone. We’re all equal. We’re all part of the same whole. Why should you feel intimidated to meet another piece of humanity?

Don’t put busy people or celebrities on a pedestal. They may have a lot of accomplishments under their belt. They may be famous. So what? They’re still human just like everyone else. Don’t mistake the public image for the real person underneath.

Be secure in who you are. Know that whenever you reach out to connect with someone, you’re offering something of value. The value is who you are. If you don’t think you’re worth knowing, you need to spend more time getting in touch with your own value. Of course you’re worth knowing.

If you want to be worthy of a busy person’s time and attention, then know that you deserve it.

The surest way to have your communication devalued is to signal up front that you’re a low-value contact. High-value contacts don’t apologize for reaching out.

Get to the point.

If you conclude that making friends isn’t right for you, and you opt to communicate some kind of offer straightaway, then do your best to be concise and direct.

Never ever begin your emails with a paragraph like this:

I know you get a lot of emails, but I just had to send you this message. I’m sure you must be very busy, and I definitely respect your time, so I’ll try to be as brief as possible. This request will take a bit of explaining though. But please take the time to read it all the way through. I’m sure it will be worth your time to do so.

This is the point where a busy person will often hit delete. When I see a paragraph like this, I probably hit delete at least half the time without bothering to read the rest of the message, regardless of length. Historically speaking, such messages have rarely been worth the time to read. Also, when I answer the phone and someone offers up the verbal equivalent of the above paragraph, I know it’s best to get off the phone ASAP.

Plainly state the purpose of your communication in the first sentence. Get to the frakkin point as quickly as you can. Let the other person know the context for the rest of your message.

If you really don’t care to connect on the basis of friendship, then don’t act like you do. That’s inauthentic. You’re better off sending an android-like email and cutting out the fluff. Keep it short and sweet.

Never send a wall of text.

More than two paragraphs is usually overkill when you’re trying to solicit business. If you send long-winded emails, busy people will hit delete long before they make sense of your offer.

Making an offer or suggesting a deal doesn’t require sharing the entire history of your business. Really it doesn’t.

Some people think they should include as much detail as possible in their first message to a busy person. That way the busy person will have all the important info up front. They figure they’ve only got one shot to make a first impression, so the more words they use, the better. So they send first-contact emails that are upwards of a thousand words.

This is a mistake.

If your first contact with a busy person is to send them a wall of text, you immediately give the impression that you’re going to be a time drain. This makes it much harder for a busy person to want to follow up with you.

Make your first message to a busy person as short as you can. Busy people are more likely to read and reply to a 100-word email than a 1,000-word one.

People send me wall-of-text emails every week, but I stopped reading such messages a long time ago. I don’t even skim them anymore. I’d be afraid to reply to them for fear of receiving another wall of text in response.

If you already have a close relationship with someone, a wall of text is questionable but ok I suppose. I’d still suggest you pick up the phone if you have more than a couple paragraphs to communicate – it’s usually a lot faster. But definitely don’t send a wall of text as your first contact to someone new, busy or not.

If you want to share the history of your business or the complexities of your business model or your personal history, it’s inappropriate to do that in an email. Instead, offer to schedule a phone call or face to face meeting, and share the details then. Don’t propose marriage before you’ve had a first date. If the busy person is interested, they’ll follow up with you.

Keep your personality switched on.

The way you normally behave with your friends and family – that’s how you should behave when connecting with busy people. That’s what it means to be yourself.

I’ve seen people act like a deer caught in the headlights when meeting someone they consider famous or popular. It’s like they switch off their personality and freeze up. They can still talk, but it’s not how they normally communicate.

No one wants to connect with an automaton. That kind of communication is very boring.

I think a lot of people hide their personality because they’re worried they might say or do something that will lead to rejection. Can you see that this is a very fear-based way of thinking? You’re going to create exactly what you fear.

Don’t worry about getting rejected. It’s really not a big deal. If you’re secure in who you are, it shouldn’t matter whether or not someone else likes you. It’s much better to relax and be yourself instead of tensing up and worrying about every word that comes out of your mouth. It’s not like such mistakes are fatal. In most cases they’re easily correctable.

When you make a social faux pas and then become aware of it, brush it off if it’s minor. If it’s more serious, acknowledge the mistake and apologize for it. Most of the time the other person will appreciate your candor, and you’ll form a closer bond because of it.

A few years ago, a friend with a very “switched on” personality treated me in a way that some would regard as slightly rude. This happened in front of a bunch of our mutual friends. He didn’t notice it at the time, and I simply brushed it off, but someone else noticed and pointed it out to him later. He quickly realized that he goofed, and he took me aside and apologized. I was touched by the gesture and actually came to respect him even more because of it. He and I are still good friends to this day.

People tend to be very forgiving of personality quirks when they see you’re just being your natural self.

As a human being, you’re going to make social mistakes. That’s perfectly okay. Don’t expect yourself to be perfect. And definitely don’t assume that other people expect you to be perfect. They don’t. When you take things a bit too far and screw up, fess up to it and move on. Learn from your mistakes. This is much better than tensing up or using fake routines and communicating like a social robot.

Keep your real personality switched on, even in circumstances where you might feel inclined to clench up. You’ll make some mistakes now and then, but the honest social feedback will allow you to hone your personality over time. “Being yourself” is not a static state. You’ll continue to evolve.

You can’t grow if you hide your real personality whenever you encounter unusual social situations. The uncommon situations are often the best teachers.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Meet in person.

It’s hard to create much of a connection with someone via email. Email just isn’t expressive enough. Email is communication stripped of its emotional context.

Instant messaging is a step up from email because it’s real-time instead of asynchronous, but it’s still a very thin channel. Consequently, I virtually never use IM. It feels like trying to communicate underwater.

Text messaging is a close cousin of instant messaging and email, depending on how it’s used and how quickly people respond.

Phone calls are a big step up because now you can pick up some emotional context from tone of voice. You can build a halfway decent connection over the phone. But you’re still missing out on body language, and when it comes to creating a strong connection, that’s a pretty big deal.

The best way to communicate is face to face and belly to belly. Nothing else compares to it.

If you do a lot of networking by email and phone calls, but you never go outside and meet people face to face, you’re probably only 20% as effective as you could be – and I think that’s being generous.

Face to face communication is very efficient in terms of the bonds it creates and the value that can be exchanged. Many people can create a strong, intimate connection with someone in a matter of minutes when communicating face to face, but that may never happen via email.

Sometimes when I meet people in person, we can get an amazing connection going in just a few minutes. It’s like our souls recognize and acknowledge each other. If I tried to form these kinds of connections via email or phone, it still wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as face to face, even after years of back and forth contact.

I know a lot of networkers who love to work the phones and email. Personally I find that a huge waste of time. It may seem more efficient at first glance because you can reach more people in less time, but is it really more efficient? What about the quality of those connections? Email and phones are okay for maintaining relationships, but they’re poor choices for building relationships.

I’m not saying that you can’t build some decent connection when communicating remotely. I’m just saying that face to face communication is about a couple orders of magnitude more effective if your goal is to create an authentic connection.

I dare say that if you’ve never met me in person or talked to me one on one, you really can’t claim to know me all that well, even if you’ve read every article and listened to every podcast I’ve created. Many people who’ve met me after “knowing” me online for years have said something like, “This is weird. You’re not like I expected.” That’s because only a small slice of me can really be communicated over the Internet.

I’ve experienced this from the other side as well. At the leadership retreat I attended in July, I finally met some people in person where we’d previously communicated only by email or phone. In every case my expectations of what they’d be like in person were off. Sometimes my mental model of the person was wildly out of sync with the reality, and it took only minutes to realize that.

When you communicate remotely, much of the connection you feel is rooted in illusion. You may harbor very deep thoughts and feelings when typing an email, but only some dull text gets delivered to the other person’s inbox, not the whole mental and emotional context that spawned that text. Similarly, when you read someone’s reply, you’re adding your own mental and emotional context to it, which is going to distort the message quite a bit. Most of the connection you feel with the other person is just you connecting with different aspects of yourself.

Sometimes I meet people who seem really gregarious and vivacious online, but in person they’re so shy and quiet. Other times I’ve seen people who seem very woo woo from a distance, but in person they’re highly intelligent and grounded. My assumptions about people I’ve never met face to face are never accurate, so I do my best to keep an open mind about people I’ve only communicated with remotely.

One of the best ways to meet busy people face to face is to go to conferences, seminars, and workshops where they’ll be, especially multi-day events where you’ll have multiple opportunities to meet and talk to them. Ideally, volunteer to be a speaker at the same event if you can.

If you spend a lot of time networking through technology, spending hours at your desk, make a point of going outside to interact with people face to face. You’ll find that life becomes much more fun and fulfilling when you do this.

Earlier this week I did a live interview for an online radio show. I could have done the interview by phone like I always do, but since the studio was only 15 minutes from my house, I opted to go there and do it in person. It was so much more fun and lively than other interviews I’ve done. I could see the hosts and read their body language from a few feet away. This made it so much easier to interact with them. It made the interview flow much better. There’s just no substitute for face-to-face communication.

Meet people when their shields are down.

Timing plays an important role in meeting busy people. The worst time to try to create a connection is when the other person’s shields are up.

If you try to talk to people when they’re “on stage” or in public performance mode, you’re not really connecting with them. You’re only connecting with their public image. Some speakers are still very human and authentic in those situations, but most have a hard time being fully themselves when there’s so much energy coming at them. They shield themselves in some fashion to avoid being overwhelmed. When you talk to them, they may seem nice enough and be very charming, but you can sense that you’re not really connecting with them at a deep level.

I’ve met some interesting authors and speakers just by hanging out in the speakers lounge for a conference I was speaking at. It’s a great way to meet people and connect as friends. Speakers typically drop their shields when they walk into the speakers lounge. It’s a place for them to just relax. I often hear them sigh as they enter the room. “Ahhh… I can relax and hang out with friends now.”

Sometimes fun connections can happen when you least expect them – if you stay open to them.

For example, I first met Gregg Braden in a restaurant bathroom. We were attending a speakers’ dinner last year and just happened to go to the bathroom at the same time. Sort of an odd place to meet, but in that environment the shields are down, and we joked around a bit before returning to the dinner. When we came out, Erin was standing there waiting, wondering what was taking us so long.

During one of the bathroom breaks at the leadership retreat last month, someone walked into the men’s restroom and jokingly said something like, “Well, this is quite a sight… All these transformational leaders lined up against the wall urinating… What would the rest of the world think if they saw this?” Then we all started cracking jokes about it. I guess this was one of those had-to-be-there moments, but the point is that even very busy and successful people are still human, and it’s a lot easier to connect with their human side than it is to connect with their public persona. The best connections happen when the shields are down.

This doesn’t mean you should hang out in bathrooms trying to network with people. The point is to stay open to connecting.

Connect with laughter.

Sharing laughs is one of the best ways to create a fast connection. This can be done over the phone, but it’s much more powerful in person. Laughter is contagious. Much of the time we don’t even laugh because someone says something funny. More often we laugh for other reasons. Laughter is a vehicle for creating a sense of inclusion and connection.

Personally I love to joke around, to tease, and to have fun. My sense of humor is largely spontaneous, so only a small amount of it comes through in my writing. People who’ve never met me in person often expect me to be this very serious and intense guy. They’re often surprised at how much I joke around.

This was something that surprised me when I first became an entrepreneur. I thought the world of business was this super-serious thing. I assumed that having fun and being business-like didn’t mix. My image of business was colored by TV and movies. Unless it was a comedy, the boardroom always seemed like such a serious place.

When I started connecting with other people in a business context, fresh out of college, I was surprised at how much they joked around and had fun with each other. Even lawyers would sometimes crack jokes with each other or their clients (although generally speaking, I found lawyers to be the least fun-loving profession I worked with, perhaps because their clients don’t take kindly to joking around when they’re paying an hourly rate). It took me years to realize that this was normal and acceptable and that I could actually use my sense of humor to good advantage in business.

I’ve noticed that young entrepreneurs tend to be the most serious. They’re so business-like and don’t give themselves permission to express their natural personalities. Experienced entrepreneurs tend to be more relaxed and sociable; they know how to have fun and enjoy themselves, even in serious business contexts where a lot of money could be changing hands. Generally the people who can’t express their natural selves end up quitting. When you can’t lighten up and have fun, the result is that you burn out.

Networking should be fun. You won’t enjoy it much if you’re super serious all the time. You will enjoy it if you learn to express your natural personality. The way you behave among family and friends should ideally be the same way you behave around business colleagues. Otherwise you’re splintering your personality and living incongruently.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Offer genuine friendship, not neediness.

This idea is more about attitude than actions. Busy people are so accustomed to being approached by people who want to vamp their energy in some way, so their shields often go up when they meet new people. In the back of their mind, they’re thinking, “What does this person want from me?”

You’ll get much better results if you approach busy people from a place of giving, kindness, generosity, friendship, and equality – as opposed to coming from a place of neediness, wanting something from them, seeing them as a potential client or prospect or valued contact, etc.

I meet a lot of busy and sometimes famous people through my work in the personal development field. I don’t approach them from a place of wanting or needing anything from them. I prefer to keep my energy flowing outward instead of trying to suck energy from them. This approach makes people feel comfortable, so they quickly drop their shields, and that’s when the real connection and deeper conversation begins. My focus is on enjoying life and having fun, and the rest flows easily from there.

I noticed that I quickly relax and lower my shields when I’m around the same type of person. As a busy person I learned to be very guarded with my energy. On the occasions when I meet someone who doesn’t want or need anything from me and they’re just happy and having fun, it’s immensely refreshing. Those kinds of interactions really stand out. Those are the kinds of people I love to spend time with.

This isn’t about giving so you can get. If you see it that way, you’re missing the point, and ultimately you’re still trying to vamp something from the other person. You’re still holding yourself in a place of neediness and lack.

This is about giving because you’re using your power to hold yourself in a place of abundance, connectedness, and oneness. You don’t need anything from anyone. You’re simply allowing your energy to flow outward, and you’re exploring new possibilities for connection and love.

When you approach people from this place of completeness, you’ll find that most of the time their shields drop pretty quickly, and they feel very much at ease around you. Comfort allows other people to be fully present and fully themselves.

A couple weeks ago, Erin and I were in Bermuda for our first retreat with the Transformational Leadership Council. This group includes a lot of busy people who are used to getting “hit on” quite often. Members of this group include entrepreneurs, celebrities, and multi-millionaires.

I could have gone to this retreat with an attitude of neediness, thinking about all the deals to be made, the potential business partners, the money to be earned, and the coolness of associating with famous people. I could have behaved like a vampire trying to suck everyone else’s energy. I could have treated them like targets instead of human beings. Blech!

Instead I went in with the attitude that we’re all one, we’re already connected, and I’m there to share, to love, to have fun, to explore, and to create. I felt so happy and abundant throughout the week. I truly didn’t need or want anything from anyone. I didn’t need anyone to accept or validate me.

Similarly, I didn’t go around trying to do favors for people or trying to impress them, since that would also require coming from a place of lack. I simply assumed that I was already best friends with everyone there and that nothing had to be earned.

Throughout the week I shared lots of love, laughs, hugs, stories, ideas, and even some tears. I made dozens of new friends – friends I expect to stay connected with for many years to come.

Will I do business with some of those people later? Sure. But the friendship is the most important part of networking.

More than one person came up to me during the week and said something like, “Steve, I just love your energy. You seem so happy.” I believe Erin got similar feedback since her attitude was similar to mine.

The truth is that at this point in my life, I’d rather form an authentic new friendship than cultivate a strategic business alliance.

And interestingly enough, genuine friendship is perhaps what busy people are most starved for. So many people try to take their energy or seek validation from them. It’s much less common for them to be approached by people who just want to connect with them from a place of love and abundance without wanting or needing anything.

In my almost 15+ years as an entrepreneur, I’ve been approached literally tens of thousands of times by people who want something from me – advice, answers, business deals, money, referrals, etc. But how many times have I been approached by someone offering genuine friendship without secretly wanting or needing something from me? I think that has happened only a few hundred times total. In fact, this year it has become a big focus of mine to have more interactions based on friendship and less that are based on want or need.

Which types of people do I want to hang out with most often? Obviously it feels best to hang out with genuine friends who already feel whole and complete and who aren’t needy.

I should mention that my experience at TLC wasn’t uncommon at all. Almost everyone there seemed to have a similar attitude. We all dropped our shields and shared our true selves with each other. If anyone there had gone into sales-minded networker mode, I think it would have creeped everyone out. But since no one did that – at least not that I saw – the experience was very open and authentic.

Of course if you network with the goal of creating real friendship, all the other stuff you could possibly want or need will arise naturally from that. People who become good friends often look for ways to do business together. I know some people say that business and friendship don’t mix. My advice is not to do business with anyone who believes that. I’ve done many deals with friends – in fact, I very much prefer it. I’m very hesitant to do business with someone I don’t feel a good connection with. Some deals just don’t perform well for one reason or another, but as long as everyone behaves with integrity, it needn’t hurt the friendship. A lack of integrity hurts a friendship a lot more than a business deal that didn’t meet expectations.

It’s perfectly okay to meet someone with a desire to eventually do business with them, but if that’s your primary motivation – if that’s truly what’s most important to you – then the relationship will develop very differently compared to when your primary motivation is genuine friendship. Your life will feel a lot emptier and less fulfilling if you value transactions above friendship.

When I think about all the wonderful new friends I made this year, I can’t even imagine putting business ahead of those friendships. I’d rather stay friends with these people and never do business than earn millions of dollars cutting deals but not have the friendships. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that way. Busy people often have plenty of business opportunities coming their way, and they don’t necessarily need more of the same.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a busy person, would you prefer to have lots of money and business partners but few real friends, or would you rather have lots of deep and abiding friendships but little money? I think that deep down, most people would rather have the love and connection. If you pursue money first and foremost, you’re more likely to end up with neither money nor friends. Human beings typically dislike being reduced to transactions.

What do you really want in this area of your life? What kind of network do you want to create? Do you want a network of great friends who like and respect you? Or do you want a network of transaction partners who barely even know you?

Is it possible that the reason you’ve thought about other people as dollar signs or “prospects” instead of as real human beings is that you think money and success will ultimately help you feel more worthy of connection and love? In truth the best way to enjoy connection and love is to connect with others on that basis instead of trying to use money as the middleman.

When you network on the basis of friendship, you take your work to a whole new level. Every deal you transact becomes an act of helping your friends achieve their goals, and your friends do the same for you. Your network transforms into your family of goal achievement partners.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Don’t misinterpret short replies.

Busy people often send very curt replies to emails they receive. Don’t misinterpret one-line replies like "Fine, let’s do it," "No thanks," "Not interested," or "Thanks. " as being a sign of rudeness or lack of caring.

Minimalist replies are common in the business world. Consider them a sign of efficiency, not disrespect. Your message may be one of dozens being batch-processed. The fact that you got a reply at all means the other person considered your message worthy of a response.

If you write back to complain, you become an annoyance. Don’t rant about getting short replies. That’s very low class.

Email simply isn’t the right medium for long-windedness. It’s not the right medium for relationship building. If you want to build relationships, then arrange to meet in person when possible, else by phone. If you spend more than a few minutes typing an email, you really should be picking up the phone instead.

If you send me a 1,000-word email and get a one-sentence reply in response, don’t interpret it to mean that I didn’t care about what you had to say. A more accurate interpretation is that I don’t think a longer reply is a good use of my time, given all the other messages I have to process. Another possibility is that I’m not resonating with your choice of medium. You may be using the wrong channel for what you’re trying to convey.

Sometimes people try to use email to communicate things that don’t translate well to plain text. The camel that gets passed through the eye of a needle doesn’t much resemble a camel on the other side. It’s just a bloody mess of goop.

If you’re trying to compress your whole life story into an email, you’re making a mistake. Your story will be robbed of its essence. Your points won’t be conveyed. The other person grimaces when they see a wall of text. If you want to write so much, either write it in your journal, or become a blogger.

Wait before replying.

If you do get an email response from a busy person, don’t reply back immediately unless you have a really good reason for doing so. Otherwise you may inadvertently annoy the other person. Another possibility is that you’ll be perceived as being too needy or eager.

I suggest you wait at least 12-24 hours before you reply back.

This may seem counter-intuitive, but look at it from the busy person’s perspective. Every day they have a lot of new communication to process. When they process email, they’re anxious to empty their inbox and move on to the next task. For a busy person, it feels great to have an empty inbox, if only for a moment. If you try to email them back and forth two or more times on a given day, they may begin to perceive you as a potential time drain, if only because you consumed a larger slice of their attention that day than their other contacts did. Suddenly you cross an invisible threshold, and they stop replying to you altogether.

The last thing a busy person needs is more urgency. Delivering a rapid response positions your communication as urgent, and busy people know that urgent matters are seldom important. You don’t want a busy person to think of your communication as a candidate for urgency-based processing. It’s better to communicate at a more gradual pace, so you end up in the important bin instead of the urgent one.

Be patient, not over-eager. Let the busy person gradually warm up to you. Work your way in with a few brief, snappy contacts over a period of several days if you can swing it.

The exception is when it’s really important to speed things along, such as if you’re in the process of finalizing a deal before the weekend. With experience you will get a feel for when it’s reasonable to email someone back right away and when it’s wiser to incubate your replies.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Forgive the blow-off.

Busy people are constantly being approached by those who are coming from a place of neediness. This is why busy people often seem a bit aloof when you first talk to them. Their shields are up.

I admit that when I enter new social situations with people who may know me, but I don’t know much about them, I tend to have my shields up. I get approached so often by people who want to vamp something from me that I’ve become pretty resistant to people who approach me on the basis of neediness.

I’ve also gotten pretty good at detecting Trojan horse approaches, where the person acts like they’re offering genuine friendship, but their voice tone and body language betray their underlying intentions. The hand is offered as a ploy to get something. I can often feel an energetic pull coming from such people, subtly tugging at me. Most of the time I’m not even consciously aware of it – it just triggers an intuitive hit that something feels off, and my shields automatically go up. Non-needy people give off a very different vibe.

It can take time to build trust with a busy person who is accustomed to getting “hit on” in some fashion nearly every day. Most likely you’ll be blown off because their shields are up, and they have a habit of unconsciously deflecting advances as a matter of routine. If they didn’t do this, they’d quickly be overwhelmed. In my experience most busy people tend to be aloof and non-committal when first meeting people they don’t know.

Busy people usually prefer not to reject anyone outright because it too often gets misconstrued as rudeness. They don’t want to deal with someone bad-mouthing them to others. Busy people really don’t want to be rude, but sometimes they get overwhelmed, and if you’re the fifth person to approach them about the same thing in a single day, you may get a more forceful rejection than you feel you deserve.

I’ve tried a number of different approaches for saying no to people who want something from me that I’m not willing to give, so that I let the other person down easy, don’t leave them hanging, don’t invite them to argue about it, and don’t create bad blood between us. I usually say something like, “I appreciate the offer, but my intuition says no on this, so I’ll have to pass. I hope you understand.” That has worked well for me. It’s an honest and empathetic answer. When my gut feeling says no, I simply want to bow out gracefully and not put the other person into “overcome objections” mode. So far no one has attempted to convince me why my intuition is wrong.

However, you will probably find that most busy people don’t use an approach like mine. My response might seem very simple on the surface, but it seriously took me years of trial and error to come up with it. Other approaches I tried either seemed too harsh and would too often be misinterpreted as coldness or rudeness on my part, or they’d be too wishy-washy, leaving the door open for endless follow-up attempts.

I would say that the most common strategy busy people use to deflect unwanted advances is aloofness. Their words may indicate mild interest, but they aren’t being sincere. In practice this does tend to work pretty well, at least from the perspective of the busy person. I dislike this method, however, because it can leave the other person hanging, making them feel they’re being strung along. I always hated it when people did this to me.

Much of the time, when you request something from a busy person, you won’t get a straightforward no because they find that too confrontational. Busy people learn from experience that it’s a bad idea to simply say no. When they say no, it makes people try to convince them, and that becomes annoying very quickly when it happens over and over. This happened to me a lot when I first started blogging. People would ask me for things I wasn’t willing to give them, so I’d simply say no, sometimes with a reason, sometimes without. Unfortunately many people are conditioned to treat a no as a potential yes, and they go into persuasive mode and try to identify and overcome objections. This is really, really annoying when it happens repeatedly – a huge waste of time.

You could try being really forceful when you say no, but that creates some backlash. It comes across as being too harsh, and people start badmouthing you for behaving like that. This is one reason you’ll hear stories about certain executives being hard-nosed a-holes or “dragon ladies.” In reality they’re simply trying to be efficient.

To avoid being so confrontational, many busy people will employ a simple blow-off technique. They may say something like, “Sounds interesting. Why don’t you call my publicist and give her the details, and we’ll see if we can work something out?” If you’re an astute observer, you’ll notice that their voice tone and body language are incongruent with their words. The truth is that they have no intention of following up with you. If you do contact the publicist, you’ll simply get stonewalled. This way the busy person preserves their reputation – you might assume the publicist was the one who messed up your chances.

This happened to Erin several years ago when she was running VegFamily.com, her online vegan family magazine. We were attending an outdoor vegan festival in L.A. called World Fest. Several vegetarian and vegan celebrities were there to show their support or to speak at the festival, including Woody Harrelson and Ed Begley, Jr. We talked to Ed briefly, and I took a photo of him with Erin. He was very friendly.

During one of the presentations while we were sitting in a shady spot on the grass, I pointed out to Erin that she was sitting right behind Alicia Silverstone. That didn’t surprise us because we knew that Alicia was a vegan. I told Erin to go say hi, and she introduced herself and chatted with Alicia for a few minutes. I could tell, however, that Alicia was doing the aloof thing. She agreed to do an interview for VegFamily and gave Erin the info to follow up with her publicist. But I could see that Alicia’s body language was incongruent with her words. I wasn’t 100% certain, but I felt that most likely Erin would be stonewalled when she tried to follow up with the publicist. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. The interview with Alicia never took place.

Ed Begley, Jr., however, did do an interview with Erin, which can still be found online at VegFamily, along with the picture I took of Erin and him. Incidentally, Erin has short hair in that photo, a look I really loved, but she thought it made her look too boyish, so she grew her hair long again.

Now I’m not sharing this to bash Alicia and praise Ed – not at all. I’m simply pointing out that different celebrities have different ways of handling attention from people they don’t already know. Although Ed did follow through on the interview, if you actually go read it, you can see that he didn’t put much effort into it – and it shows. IMO it was one of the worst interviews VegFamily ever posted, which is a shame because Erin was excited about helping to promote Ed’s environmental agenda. We were impressed that he biked to World Fest on a very hot day in the San Fernando Valley.

When this played out as it did, I saw it as a sign of great disrespect. Erin’s online magazine had a decent and loyal following, and it was a valued publication in its field. Consequently, my opinion of Alicia and Ed dropped significantly. However, looking back with the perspective of greater experience, I now see their actions in a new light. I still don’t like how either of them handled Erin’s request, but I can understand why they did what they did, and I can’t hold it against them. Their solutions may have been imperfect, but I can empathize with what they must have had to deal with.

If you interact with a busy person and get a response that seems disrespectful or unfair, try not to take it personally. Do your best to forgive any perceived transgressions. It’s very unlikely that the busy person is deliberately trying to be rude or uncaring. Their reality is that they must deal with an untenable volume of approaches. They’re human beings, and their methods of processing such requests are going to be imperfect.

If I gave you the impression that I have a perfect processing method myself, that would be untrue. I’m fairly content given the circumstances, but my solutions are far from perfect. Misunderstandings still arise. For example, people who’ve never met me and who’ve never had so much as a single conversation with me will sometimes write scathing blog posts about me, assuming they must be able to discern my true nature from a single article of mine they didn’t like. Then people email me to ask about the stuff those bloggers post about me that isn’t even true. That’s just part of the reality I have to deal with. How am I supposed to deal with that? What can I do but forgive it and let it go?

Another thing that happens is that people take out Google Adwords ads using my name, crafting ads that falsely imply that I endorse their products. I don’t know them, and I’ve never even looked at their products. This is mild compared to what some people have to deal with. One author/speaker I know has to deal with dishonest marketers taking out Google image ads with his photos on them, advertising stuff in his name and image that he has no affiliation with. Then when customers get ripped off by this scheme, they post nasty rants about him online because they assume he was the one responsible for ripping them off. But in reality he’s a generous, kind-hearted guy who just happens to be a celebrity, and he worked very hard to get there. Is it fair that he should have to deal with this sort of thing?

I think communication in general would improve dramatically if we could all learn to practice more empathy. Do the best you can to see the situation from the other person’s perspective. If you want to network successfully with busy people, it’s important to empathize with them and communicate from a place of understanding. That is perhaps the central theme of this series.

To be continued…

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© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.