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 may 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.

It can be very unsettling — and frustrating beyond belief — when our old solutions no longer create the results we expect. We do what we think is best — we know it’s the right thing to do — but our tried and trusted routines seem to be broken for some odd reason. The harder we try, the worse we feel. It’s like sinking into an invisible abyss.

Why does this happen?

At some point in your life, your old patterns of success must break down to make way for something new. The lessons you learned that enabled you to succeed at one level of awareness (even if you consider your success to be moderate) must be shed in order for you to become something more.

Let me share my personal experience with this challenge. It was in the  early 2000s, and I was happily running my computer game publishing business. The business was profitable, I was doing interesting work I enjoyed, and customers were happy. I did a ton of work on the side to help other software developers succeed, including serving for a year as President of a non-profit association. I had a good life, a loving wife, and good friends. I had interesting goals, and my future looked bright.

But very slowly over a period of many months (perhaps years), I began to feel that something wasn’t right. My drive and motivation were slowly sinking. I didn’t feel as happy as I thought I should be. I was getting what I wanted, but it wasn’t enough. However, I couldn’t say what was missing. There were other things that I wanted, but most of what I wanted I already had, or it was well on its way. I should have been very happy and fulfilled, and for a while that seemed to be the case, but little by little, I began feeling worse and worse.

Something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Was I eating the wrong foods? Was I not exercising enough… or not doing the right kind of exercise? Maybe I just needed to mix things up a bit for more variety — take on some new projects. Maybe I needed to read more books or attend more seminars to find the answer. Maybe I needed to spend more time meditating and journaling.

I put in a ton of effort trying to diagnose the problem, but each time I thought I’d figured it out and tried to implement a solution, it never worked. At best I’d be enthusiastic for a few days, and inevitably that slow sinking feeling would return. The best I could do was to distract myself from it with entertainment — novels, video games, etc. But even then I could still feel this sense of dread lurking in the shadows of my consciousness.

Months passed, and I kept trying new ways to diagnose the problem and new solutions. My income started to go down because I wasn’t as motivated to work. Even the simplest tasks on my to-do list seemed unusually burdensome. Intuitively I knew something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

Then in mid-2004, partly on a whim, I decided to attend Hay House’s I Can Do It! conference in Las Vegas. On the first day of the conference, I listened to a 3-hour talk by Dr. Dyer about the power of intention and living on purpose. Instantly I recognized the truth of his words. I was stunned. Throughout much of his talk, I either had tears in my eyes, or I was shaking. It was exactly what I needed to hear. I knew that my life had just been spun off in a totally different direction.

While listening to Dr. Dyer, I had a sudden flash of clarity. It was a glimpse into my future. I knew what I was supposed to do next, but it was too big to accept all at once. I heard a voice in my head say to me, “Your place is on that stage.” I knew it was true, but my reaction at the time was close to panic. If what I was experiencing was really accurate, it would effectively mean dismantling everything I’d spent the last decade building, including the identity I’d created for myself.

The rest of that conference was also extremely eye-opening, not as shocking to me as the first day, but it gave me more of what I needed to know. It was incredibly inspiring to be around so many other people who were also looking for meaning and purpose in their lives.

It took a while to process that experience and to make sense of it. For the next few months, I felt like I was living in two worlds. My external reality continued largely unchanged for a while, but internally I was a different person. I’d been inspired by a greater purpose, and I could see where I was supposed to go next. I knew that I was no longer a game developer. I had something more significant that I was supposed to do, and it was time to get to it.

Later that year I launched StevePavlina.com, not really knowing how I was going to succeed on that path. But success wasn’t that important to me at the time because this new path just felt so incredibly good. It was like being wrapped in a blanket of bliss. I was so happy with what I was doing that it didn’t bother me that my games business was only earning about 25% of what it could have been making… or that my new personal development website only earned $167 in the first six months… about 17 cents an hour since I was working on it full-time.

Fast forward five years. My games business is a thing of the past, and I now run a thriving personal development business. Hay House is my book publisher. I spoke at the I Can Do It! conference twice last year, and I met Dr. Dyer — and many other Hay House authors. The vision I had in 2004 was eerily prophetic.

These external changes serve as nice validation, but they don’t represent the essence of the transformation I had to go through. The real changes were internal — a shift in my consciousness.

Instead of putting success and achievement first in my life, I had to begin thinking in terms of happiness, fulfillment, purpose, and service. It took a long time for me to accept that the simple act of helping other people made me feel very happy, more than achieving a goal I’d set only for myself. Intuitively I could see that this was true, but mentally accepting it was the truly hard part. Logically it just didn’t seem like that’s how life was supposed to work. It seemed like I’d be happier if I worked on my own goals to get what I wanted instead of doing nice things for others.

Eventually I said to myself, “Okay, so I get a kick out of helping people. Maybe I should just focus on that.” And then the voice of fear blurted out, “But you’ll starve. You’ll go broke. You’ll fail. That strategy won’t work. You’ve gotta look out for number one. If you don’t do that, things will turn out very badly.”

For a while I believed those fears. They seemed so sensible and grounded, and the alternative seemed so unrealistic and airy fairy. But I resolved this conflict by getting curious. I admitted to myself that I really don’t understand how life works. Maybe my assumptions about how life works are inaccurate. I opted to try the service-based approach to see what would happen. I decided to accept that the outcome might be bad, but I had to find out for sure. At the same time, I began to recognize a deeper truth: If I don’t absolutely enjoy my life, then I’ve failed as a human being… no matter what else I accomplished along the way. So I began making it a priority to feel good about my life, and I noticed I feel very, very good when I’m helping people, and I don’t feel good when I’m too focused on myself. The more I experimented, the more obvious the pattern became.

But there was something even more significant happening. I gradually learned that when I focused on helping others, my own needs were getting met, and my personal desires were getting fulfilled. In fact, it was practically effortless. I barely even had to attend to my own personal goals because they largely fell into my lap. Money began flowing in greater quantities, and soon I was receiving much more than I was spending. New friends and contacts began showing up with exciting opportunities. What I wanted sometimes literally was delivered to my doorstep.

I realized that the universe already knows what I want and need. It’s not set up to deny my desires. It wants me to be fulfilled. But it needs me to make the first move. I have to hold myself in the state of emitting happiness, and then the universe can send my desires to me. And the way I emit happiness is by helping others be happy.

If you’re unhappy, the universe cannot bring you what you want. Your goals will remain unachieved, your desires unfulfilled. If you think those things will bring you greater happiness, then you’ve created a bridge between those new experiences and a particular state of being. In order to attract those experiences into your life, you must move toward the corresponding state of being. If you don’t do that, you’ll repel your desires instead of attracting them.

I know that I’m happiest when I focus my energy on helping people. That vibration makes me feel blissful, and it draws all my desires into my life. When I keep myself in that space, I feel joyful and fulfilled, and I don’t struggle with stress or depression. But when I stray from that mindset and get sucked back into socially conditioned values like success and achievement as the chief aims of life, that slow sinking feeling gradually returns, and soon it becomes obvious that I’ve gotten off track.

The good news is that when you know you’re sinking and you recognize that you’re not feeling good about your life, you can reorient yourself quickly and begin feeling good again. Just run through a few different thoughts of what you might do next, and notice how each thought makes you feel. Then act on the thought that makes you feel best.

I wasn’t actually planning to write an article today. But while I was reviewing some reader questions and also thinking about the DVD I watched last night, I started getting some ideas for a new article. I jotted down a few ideas, and a few paragraphs later, I noticed the article was beginning to write itself. I observed the thought of writing an article, and it felt very blissful to me. I thought about putting it off for later, and that thought didn’t feel as good. So two hours later, here I am… still writing… and it feels very joyful and effortless to do so. I am starting to get hungry though.

Don’t look to past solutions. Stay in the present. Know that life is always reflecting back to you what you are. If you’re feeling stressed and tight, it’s because that’s the person you’ve become. That is the vibration you’re emitting. If you don’t like what the world is giving you, it’s because what you’re giving the world does not make you feel good.

The lesson here is very simple: Stop acting on thoughts that don’t make you feel good. Keep cycling through different thoughts until you find one that makes you feel good. Then act on it.

Seek to optimize the feelgoodness of the thoughts you choose to act on. Dismiss the thoughts that don’t feel good. Turn toward the thoughts that make you feel best. Let go and trust in those good thoughts, and stop analyzing them to death and killing the good feelings before you have a chance to act on them. Follow the feeling of bliss; it will not lead you astray.

This morning I was feeling a little bit off. I had a mild sense of tightness and stress in my body. So I asked myself, “How can I feel blissful and happy again?” And the answer came back, “Do something to help someone right now.” I thought the fastest way to do that would be to post a message on my Twitter account that might help someone. I sat quietly with that intention and allowed the words to come. I posted a simple message: You do not have to struggle today. It felt good to post that. It was a reminder to me as well.

Then I asked, “What else can I do to help people right now?” I thought I could answer some of my emails. I don’t have time to answer all the advice requests I get, and I actively discourage people from asking for advice by email. It just isn’t practical for me to answer all the questions that come in each day. But every once in a while, I’ll sit down and type some replies for an hour or so to answer people’s questions when I think I can be helpful and when it feels good to do so.

By the time I’d gone through about 20 emails, I was feeling pretty good. And then I got a message from a friend that was a response to the Twitter message I posted earlier today. She said that she’d asked the universe for guidance to help her overcome some confusion in her life, and my short 7-word message was the answer she needed to hear. It relaxed her and helped her in a way she needed to be helped. Reading her email made me smile.

Interesting synchronicities like this happen all the time when I stay in the flow of being happy and doing what I can to help people. But when I get too caught up in personal ambition and lose sight of meaning, fulfillment, and purpose, the synchronicities go away. I can tell when I’m back on track because the synchronicities immediately start flowing again. It’s magical how that happens.

When I’m in a good state of being, and I experience an unfulfilled need, the universe says, “Sure, no problem. Here you go.” When I’m out of alignment with my higher self, however, the universe says, “Sorry, can’t help you.”

A couple weeks ago, I was in a bookstore browsing through some tech books. I started getting some ideas for a new article, and I thought to myself, Crap… I need to write this down, but I don’t have any paper or a pen. I searched my pockets, and I found some old movie ticket stubs — with just enough blank space to jot down the ideas I was getting. Then I thought, Okay, I’ve got paper. Now I need a pen. I got caught up in another idea, and while I was pondering it, I paced a couple steps, turned on instinct, and saw two pens sitting on the bookshelf right next of me. I love that kind of service. The funny thing is that when I try to get these kinds of manifestations for my own personal goals, it rarely works. But it happens all the time when I’m working on something for other people, like writing a new article that I intend to share for free.

You may be very frustrated when you hit the afternoon of life and try to apply the same solutions that worked for you in the morning of life. I found it very difficult to admit to myself that what I was doing was no longer making me happy and fulfilled, even though I had every reason to believe it would. That was a truth that was very hard to swallow. I kept looking to re-implement what worked in the past, but those solutions ceased to be effective and usually made things worse.

If you strive for happiness, you’ll never find it. Happiness is only found in the present. It’s something you can create right now, in this very moment. I experience happiness when I put out happiness, i.e. when I act with the intention of making other people happy. When I’m feeling a bit down and I stop myself and say, “Let’s forget about me for a moment and do something nice for others,” the negative feelings subside, and a sense of bliss flows in to replace them. It’s quite simple in practice. The challenge is remembering to do 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.

If you don’t employ such a practice, it’s easy to lose sight of your goals. You get caught up in day-to-day activities, and the most important long-term items fall by the wayside. Instead of leading your life, you merely react to whatever comes up.

When this happens to me, I start getting an empty, sinking feeling. A week goes by, and I feel like I didn’t really get much done, even though I may have been very busy. Unimportant tasks consume my time and multiply, and my goals don’t seem to be getting any closer. Have you ever felt that way?

On the other hand, when I’m very focused on my goals and working on them actively, I usually feel great. I have more energy and motivation, and I end my week with a major sense of accomplishment.

Some people think that motivation spawns action, but action also spawns motivation. Motivation is the feeling that comes from building and maintaining momentum. When you can see your goals getting closer day by day, it’s very energizing.

There are lots of ways to keep your goals in front of you. Creating a belief board, which I mentioned a couple posts ago, is one way. Here are some other ideas to consider:

1. Use a digital photo frame to display photos of your goals.

I’ve gotten two of these as gifts, but they sat in my closet unopened since 2006 or so. I didn’t want to add more clutter to my desktop.

But a cool use for these devices is to load them up with positive imagery that reminds you of your goals. For example, if you want to go on a vacation, put up photos of the places you want to visit.

You can also create your own images like affirmations (with or without background pics), and add those to the rotation as well.

You might even add a few reminders of the things in your life you’re already grateful for. You don’t have to remove all the pics of friends and family. Just add to them.

2. Add goal pics to your sidebar widget.

I’m not currently using any sidebar widgets, but Erin has one on her Windows sidebar that rotates through photos from her hard drive. It would be very easy to add some pics that represent your goals to this widget.

3. Choose an inspiring desktop background.

You can add a list of your top goals to your desktop background image, so they’re always visible on the screen. Just load up the pic in an image editor, add some text to it, and re-save it.

4. Write your goals on paper and post them everywhere.

Print your goals in a large font (like 100-pt), and post them around your home and workspace, so you see them often.

If this sort of thing would embarrass you if someone came to visit and saw your goals posted everywhere, then you really need to get over yourself. Plus you need better friends who will respect people with goals. If anything, you’ll be doing your visitors a big favor by reminding them to think about their goals more often too.

If you can’t even summon the courage to do this, then what chance do you have of achieving your goals? I’d bet against you.

5. Tell other people about your goals.

There are multiple schools of thought on this one. Here’s my viewpoint:

I think it’s okay to share your goals with other people openly. Now when you do that, some people will support you, some won’t seem to care, and other people will criticize you as say stuff like, “Yeah, right. You’ll never pull that off.”

Talking about your goals is a great way to filter your friends and family because it immediately shows you who’s on your side and who is only going to hold you back. That’s good information to have. It gives you advance warning about the people who are likely to go kittywompus as you get closer to your goal.

For example, if you tell people that your current financial goal is to earn $10K per month, even though you’re only making $3K per month right now, some people might go hyper-critical just because you set that goal. They see you as a threat to their complacency and laziness. So they’ll poke fun at you, attack you, etc. If you start working on your goal and have a setback, those will be the first people to jump on you and call you a failure.

You need to cut those people out eventually, and the sooner the better. If they can’t handle your ambitions now, imagine what it will be like when you actually hit $10K a month. They won’t be able to deal with it. They’re just going to get worse along the way, and they’ll create a psychological drag on you that could very well make you fail.

Erin and I saw this happen with some of our old friends, and it’s not pretty. The longer you try to maintain such relationships, the worse it gets and the more drag it creates. Let go of such people early, and the path to your goals is much smoother.

On the other side, talking openly about your goals also helps you identify who your true supporters are. It shows you which friends will not only be able to survive your ambitions but also thrive from it. Some people are actually turned on by their friends’ ambitions and achievements. Erin and I tend to be like that when our friends talk about their goals. It excites us. We want to see them succeed. It gives us the opportunity to vicariously celebrate their success along the way.

Some people are neither whiners nor cheerleaders. They’re just neutral. They don’t get upset or excited when you talk about your goals. Those people can still become good resources for you, so there’s no need to drop them from your life just because they aren’t super enthusiastic on your behalf. They might even be future customers if you start a business someday.

Aside from filtering your friends and family, another reason to talk about your goals is that it creates positive accountability. Once you drop the whiners, you can stop talking to them about your goals. But it’s good to keep talking about your goals and your progress with the true friends who want to see you succeed. Those people will check in on you from time to time and hold you accountable for making progress. When all other reminders fail, knowing that so-and-so is going to be asking how you’re doing on goal X can help you jump-start an otherwise stalled goal.

Keep it simple

The key is to keep it simple. Some people decide to create these elaborate vision binders and whatnot, but it takes too much time and effort, so they don’t maintain the habit. It’s better to take 2 minutes to print and post a plain text statement of your goal on the way right in front of you, or send a quickie email blast to let your friends know about your latest goal. You can always fancy it up later if you have time.

A simple practice done regularly is superior to a complex practice done irregularly — or not done at all. If you can’t get something in front of you in less than 5 minutes, you’re overcomplicating the process. It’s really not that difficult.

The benefit of keeping your goals in front of you is that you’re constantly refreshing your goal-oriented mindset. You make it hard to forget about them. You may still go dark from time to time, but your reminders will create that positive pressure that says, “I’m still here, and I’m not letting you off the hook that easy. You need to make some changes ASAP and get back on track.” With so many things in the world to distract you these days, especially online, this is an important practice to adopt.

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.

In order to believe you’ll succeed, you must believe your goal is possible for you, and you must also believe that you’re actually going to reach your destination. If you don’t believe your goal is possible for you, you’ll block yourself. If you believe it’s possible but you don’t believe you’ll realistically get there, you’ll block yourself. 

Beliefs exist at the subconscious level, so they typically operate below the level of conscious awareness. But you can witness their effects when you set a new goal and then notice the various ways in which you block yourself from achieving it quickly. Maybe you procrastinate. Maybe you hold back due to fear. Maybe you question whether or not you’re worthy of some new accomplishment. Maybe you make avoidable mistakes that sabotage your progress. Much of the resistance you experience is coming from your subconscious beliefs.

Fortunately your subconscious mind can be conditioned to hold new beliefs. It is highly programmable. If you keep exposing it to certain inputs, it gradually learns those patterns. Just as you can learn to ride a bicycle or drive a car, you can learn to believe something different than what you believe right now. It is largely a matter of time and training. 

There are countless techniques for reconditioning your subconscious mind, all with varying degrees of effectiveness for different individuals. Some people find verbal affirmations effective. Others enjoy self-hypnosis or NLP techniques. 

In a general sense, I like to condition my subconscious by hanging out with happy, forward-thinking people because their positive beliefs will infect me. (This implies avoiding negative-minded or pessimistic people for the same reasons.) I also like to expose my mind to at least an hour of positive material per day, such as books, audio programs, DVDs, and Paraliminals. 

These are all good for overall positive mental conditioning, but what about conditioning new beliefs that are conducive to the achievement of specific goals?

Creating a belief board

One specific conditioning method I use is to put up a belief board in my office. Since this is visual, perhaps the best way to explain it is by referring you to a recent video that shows what it looks like. This video was filmed on Friday when raw foodie friends Matt Monarch and Angela Stokes visited with Erin and me. The belief board segment begins at 5:09. 

In that video you’ll see a cork board on the wall of my home office with several pages posted on it. Each page contains a single belief that I’m working to install. Some of those beliefs are based on specific goals or habits, while others read like general positive affirmations. 

For example, the first item on the belief board says, “I am extremely productive.” That’s not a clear and specific goal per se, but it is a positive belief to install. 

I like the belief board because it’s completely passive. It takes only minutes to create one, and I don’t have to adopt any new daily practices like reciting affirmations. I don’t even have to consciously remember that it’s there. It’s essentially a fire-and-forget technique.

My belief board is posted on the wall in front of my desk and slightly off to the side, about 10 feet from where I sit, so my eyes are taking it in whenever I’m working at my desk. The whole board is within my visual frame for many hours per day. Although I don’t often consciously pause to read the items on that board, my subconscious gets to chew on them all day long.

Don’t concern yourself with the specific beliefs I post on my belief board. They’re important to me, but you’d undoubtedly come up with different ones based on your own goals.

Effectiveness

Is it effective? For me the answer is yes, most definitely.

You are capable of taking action based on your own conscious decisions. For example, you can decide how you’ll spend your evening and then follow your plan. But interestingly enough, most, if not all, of the ideas that float through your mind actually arise from your subconscious. And those ideas will be filtered through your subconscious beliefs. If you have a lot of self-limiting filters there, you won’t even be able to form and hold onto certain thoughts in your conscious mind that would otherwise empower you. You won’t be able to seriously set certain types of goals because your subconscious will simply block all the thoughts that would enable you to accomplish them. And if your thoughts are being blocked, then so are your actions and your results.

Now by using some conditioning process to install new beliefs into your subconscious mind, you can overwrite some of the old limiting beliefs that you picked up through social conditioning, media conditioning, traumatic experiences, and other sources. This will automatically shift the thoughts that arise in your conscious mind, thereby leading to new actions and new results.

Usually I will notice myself having different thoughts within a couple days of posting a new item on my belief board, and I’ll observe my actions shifting in significant and obvious ways within a week or two.

For example, after I put up “I am extremely productive,” I came up with a simpler way to structure my workdays that is helping me get more done each week. Lately I’ve also been making a lot of tweaks to my productivity habits. One specific change is that I take a lot more breaks throughout the day, usually 10-30 minutes each. This reduces fatigue and keeps my motivation high. During the breaks I often think about how much I want to return to work, so it keeps me in a place of wanting to work instead of having to work.

Another item on my board is “I process email once per day.” The purpose of that belief is to help reinforce one of my productivity habits and to avoid the time-draining practice of checking email various times throughout the day. The obvious shift in my actions there is that I’m processing email less frequently. Sometimes I’d get a little OCD with checking email too often on certain days, but those obsessive thoughts are largely gone now, replaced by other thoughts that are more goal-oriented.

My board has one financial item that says, “I earn $100,000 per month.” I don’t always find specific financial goals meaningful, but this particular goal inspires me for a variety of reasons. I’ve been earning five figures a month for several years now, and I feel ready to experience another level of creativity, contribution, and abundance. I’m also ready to grow my business a lot more in the coming years. 

One specific action that I took after putting this on my board was to form a new local mastermind group for people with similar goals. The group only has three members so far, including Erin and me, but we’ve already had our first meeting and set a date for the second. Based on the results of the first meeting, we’re all very optimistic about it, and we’re holding the intention to attract other members who will be a good fit, namely entrepreneurs who run some kind of information business (blogging, writing, pro speaking, info products, workshops, etc), who are earning a strong six or seven figures a year, and who are looking to grow their businesses even more. Ideally I’d like to grow this group to about 5-7 people with meetings one or twice a month. This is only for entrepreneurs who live in Las Vegas because I definitely want this to be a face-to-face mastermind group.

“Form a local mastermind group” has been on my projects list for many months, but I didn’t make any real progress on it during that time. However, about a week after I posted the $100K/month item on my goal board, the mastermind group came together very quickly. I told Erin about it, and she said, “Let’s do it.” Then I emailed a local friend about it, and he loved the idea. We had our first meeting last week, and we’re off and running. It may take time to build a larger group, but even a three-person mastermind group is better than none at all.

Yet another item on my board is “I am releasing Goal Achievement for Smart People.” GASP is the working title of a new audio program I’ve been developing. I choose this belief because I want my subconscious to believe in the inevitability of that release, so that all the hard work I’m doing will converge to a finished product that actually ships. This is a big project (bigger than writing my book), and it involves a great deal of research and experimenting, so it’s important to keep it moving forward day by day. I need to stay focused on the end goal of shipping a product and avoid getting sidetracked. This item also induced some specific changes that brought this goal closer to reality.

Beliefs can be quite powerful. So far all of the beliefs on my belief board have induced noticeable changes in my thoughts, actions, and results. The changes happen quickly too. In most cases there’s a very obvious difference between day 1 and day 15 after posting a new item on the board.

Optimization and tweaking

Once in a while an item from my belief board will catch my attention. I look up and my eyes will be drawn to one of the beliefs I posted. For some reason It feels off. My subconscious chewed on it for a while, spit it back out, and said, “Um… no. I’m not going to accept this one as-is. You’ll need to fix this. Blech!” 

At that point I pause and reflect for a bit. Invariably some thoughts will arise. Those thoughts are my mind’s objections to that particular belief. My subconscious tells me why that belief is unacceptable. 

For example, I used to have a belief on my board that involved hitting a certain goal weight. It seemed reasonable at the time, but no matter how I phrased it, my subconscious wouldn’t accept it. When I paused for a moment to reflect, I realized that weighing a specific number of pounds doesn’t even make sense for me. I often change up my exercise routine, and lately I’ve been gaining more muscle as a result of doing a lot of strength training. I don’t mind gaining weight during this time, but I want to make sure I’m adding lean tissue and not fat. After a bit of thought, I changed this item to “My body fat is 11%.” That makes more sense to me. So far that one has been on my goal board for about a week, and I’m not feeling any resistance to it. My subconscious has more options for how to integrate this belief. My weight could go up or down from where it is now and still remain congruent with this belief. 

Another item that had to be tweaked was the $100K/month one. Originally I had a slightly smaller figure up there, but my subconscious kept spitting it back out. I soon realized that it just wasn’t ambitious enough. My subconscious was telling me, “You can do better.” This rejection didn’t happen right away though. It only happened when my subconscious had already begun to integrate some of the other items like “I am extremely productive” and “I do the important tasks first.” As those beliefs were getting installed, my original financial goal was subconsciously downgraded from stimulating to boring. So I had to raise the figure to make it more congruent with my other beliefs.

When a belief has been on the board for several weeks and my actions seem fully congruent with it and I’m not feeling any resistance to it, then it’s safe to say that the belief has been successfully integrated. I can then swap it out and put up a new belief I’d like to integrate. 

If you decide to create your own belief board, it’s a good idea to think carefully about what you’re posting. Are these really beliefs you want to install? Will they mutually support each other? Do you detect any conflicts?

Ongoing experimentation

Now you may have some questions like, Can I condition new beliefs that aren’t about me? or What’s the best way to phrase my beliefs? or Can I use images instead of plain text to represent my beliefs? 

The #1 rule here is to experiment to discover what works for you. Give yourself the freedom and flexibility to test new ideas for yourself and see if they make a measurable difference for you. If you find something useful, add it to your bag of tricks. If you find it useless, drop it and move on to something else.

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.

Rebecca used Site Build It! to create her website. Since many people are curious about what kind of real-world results can be achieved with Site Build It!, I asked her if she’d be willing to share specific traffic and income figures from her business’ first year online, and thankfully she agreed. I think you’ll find her results encouraging.

If you aren’t familiar with lucid dreaming, a lucid dream is a dream where you become consciously aware that you’re dreaming. With practice you can learn to do all sorts of amazing things in lucid dreams — fly like Superman, wield a light saber, jump around like Trinity in The Matrix, create dream characters out of thin air, move objects by thought, defeat the Kobayashi Maru, and lots more. Erin and I are both experienced lucid dreamers.

Enjoy the interview…

1. Why did you create World of Lucid Dreaming?

I wanted to get out of the rat race. When I left school I fell into the financial sector and before long, I found myself working a stressful city Editor job. I told myself it was worth it because it stretched my mind and the money would go a long way. By my mid-20s I came to realize that life isn’t about creating stress and drama, so I emigrated to the tranquil shores of New Zealand with my Kiwi partner.

I knew straight away I wasn’t going to rejoin the rat race here in Auckland. So I decided to become self employed, trading on my writing skills. It was a much better lifestyle working for myself, but the income was sporadic. When the credit crisis turned the industry upside down, it put the nail in the coffin for my investment writing. I decided to find a new niche.

That’s when I heard about Site Build It and discovered I could build a profitable online business based on my own life experience, no matter how little technical knowledge I possessed. And so World of Lucid Dreaming was born from my desire to be financially secure on my own terms, to work a job I am passionate about, and to be free from corporate slavery.

2. Can you share some stats on how your site is doing in terms of traffic and income generation? How did these figures change over time?

My site went live in June 2008 with 20 or so content pages and averaged 76 visitors per day. By July, it was time to start monetizing that traffic. I added my first two income streams: Google AdSense (which I would later drop for more lucrative affiliate partners) and Mind Sync (a seller of MP3s which puts your brain in an optimum state for lucid dreaming). I made $60 that first month. That may not seem like much but to me it meant my website was a viable income generator. Site Build It worked!

After that, World of Lucid Dreaming grew quickly. Site Build It warned me about “the hump” – but it never came. I did everything by the book: writing quality articles, putting my own personality into the site, building an online presence, and all the rest. It helped that I loved every minute – I was creating something new and unique and if I did it right, I would never have to work for anyone else again. I couldn’t ask for much more motivation.

By early 2009, Alexa had ranked my website in the top 0.3% globally. My average daily visitors had climbed to 750 (more than 20,000 hits per month). That’s some snowball effect in just over six months. SBI showed me how to monetize those visitors and in the month of January my monthly income topped $1,000 – a landmark event for me. I knew that if I could earn $1k from my website, I could earn $2k, $3k, or $4k a month. Even if I maxed out the potential for World of Lucid Dreaming, I could create another website in exactly the same way. I was delighted.

[SP: These are excellent results, Rebecca, and you have every reason to be optimistic about future growth. By comparison it took a year for StevePavlina.com to pass $1K per month in revenue, with Google Adsense being the main source of income. One year later it hit $41K in one month. That was obviously an exciting year.

Once you get the hang of traffic building and monetization, rapid growth is possible. The key is to be consistent and keep doing what's working, while continuing to experiment to test new ideas.]

3. What specific strategies do you use to generate income from your website? Which ones have been the most effective for you?

I currently make all of my income through affiliate programs. Once I find a good value product – usually one that directly aids lucid dreaming – I test it out and write a review on my website. I use my unique affiliate link so I earn money when people decide to buy it through my site. Sometimes I can offer special discounted prices which adds further value to my readers. I raise interest in these product reviews by posting banner ads around the rest of the site. I’ve even begun designing my own graphics which is fun – the creative process never ends for me!

I’m signed up with about a dozen affiliate programs for World of Lucid Dreaming. These include brainwave entrainment recordings, “how to” books and videos, and natural herbs to increase awareness and dream recall. My first e-book (Lucid Fiction) is underway and should be selling on site by July. I also plan to distribute this via affiliate marketplaces like ClickBank, so that other webmasters can do the selling and help me reach a wider audience.

My best selling products are brainwave entrainment MP3s created by affiliate partners. Binaural beats and hypnosis really helped my early quest for lucid dreaming and these MP3s have numerous other applications as well. Through my affiliate partners, you can buy MP3s for deep meditation, astral projection, out of body experiences, ESP, remote viewing, chakra healing, manifestation, and so much more. The seller tracks all links from my site for up to 90 days, so I earn profits from any future sales too.

Crucially, I don’t stock or sell any tangible goods myself. An online business is about making money with minimal ongoing costs. A traditional business might have to fund staff salaries, growing office space, wholesale goods, storage, packaging, posting, and resolving customer queries. In contrast, an online business like mine can generate high margin profits simply by recommending products and taking away a commission. Once I publish a product recommendation, the profits come in on autopilot, earning me passive income 24/7.

[SP: I discovered that a similar strategy works well for me too. Today most of my income is from sales commissions from product recommendations. When you have high traffic and can generate many sales for your partners, you can also negotiate custom deals for higher commissions and better terms, especially if your partners have strong back-end sales and don't need to see a high profit on the first sale.]

4. Why did you use Site Build It! to create your business? What has it done for you?

I chose Site Build It because it takes away the scary technical bits about website building, and leaves me in charge of the creative stuff. Before World of Lucid Dreaming began, words like RSS, pings, trackbacks and SEO meant nothing to me. The idea of starting an online business was all too overwhelming and not worth the risks associated with technical failure.

Site Build It virtually eliminated all that risk, because it told me exactly what to do, day by day, in order to build a profitable website. First I used the brainstorming tool to find a profitable niche, based on a number of my own passions and life experiences. Then I planed my site structure, researching article ideas with the optimum keywords. Then I designed my custom template with SBI’s point-and-click tools (although I would later get a re-design by Cre8ve Media). After that, I learned how to write for the web, how to pre-sell, how to create value, how to monetize visitors, and many more tricks for success.

I could go on about Site Build It for ages! Suffice to say that if you’re thinking about starting a website or blog – and you don’t already have the extensive knowledge required to succeed in online business – then make this a serious consideration. During the 10-day course I learned everything I needed to know in order to succeed. SBI simplified the whole process and even outsourced the most technical bits for me, like submitting my site to Search Engines, or pinging them when I posted a new article. And since I was committed to the project, it guaranteed my success. So Site Build It is not merely a blogging platform like WordPress or Blogger. It’s a complete guide to successful online business. (And it caters to internet dummies!)

5. Why did you select lucid dreaming as your site’s main focus? What related topics does your site address?

I discovered lucid dreaming when I was 14 and have been consciously exploring my dreams ever since. But I wasn’t what you’d call a natural lucid dreamer – I had to go through a process of learning, making lots of mistakes along the way. And that gave me tremendous insight. So now I know what rookie mistakes people make and how to avoid them. I know the coolest things to try in your first lucid dreams. I know what reality checks work better than others. I understand the potential of lucid dreaming and how it can affect our lives. That is my edge: inside knowledge – and passion.

So when Site Build It told me to write a list of all my hobbies, interests and areas of expertise, lucid dreaming was pretty high up. I also considered making a site about stock market investing as well as numerous travel related sites. I plugged all these potentials into Site Build It and each niche idea was given a score, based on the extent of my knowledge, passion, popularity and monetization potential.

Lucid dreaming came out top – and from then on I knew I couldn’t go wrong with it. Most bloggers don’t even consider this kind of concept examination, they just pick a topic that “feels right” and start writing. Unfortunately, not all niches are a good idea; they may be oversaturated or too obscure. Lucid dreaming is perfect for me because I am very enthusiastic about it and the concept is timeless – meaning people will still be searching for “how to lucid dream” in 5, 10, or 20 years’ time.

What’s more, the concept of lucid dreaming stems from a host of other subjects. I can write on a range of subjects while staying true to my niche, including human consciousness, dreams, psychology, self awareness, altered states of consciousness, meditation, astral projection, out of body experiences, dream yoga and Tibetan philosophies. While I fulfilled my original site plan some months ago, I am still struck by new article ideas all the time. It’s a wonderful topic of exploration.

[SP: It's awesome to create an online business based on something you're passionate about because then you have even more reasons to "play." For example, I can now justify my crazy growth experiments as research.

You raised a key point when you mentioned timeless content. If you focus on creating timeless content, your archives will retain their value. If you create mostly time-bound content, your archives become obsolete as they age. It's best to create assets that won't depreciate.

It's great that you picked a niche that gives you room to grow horizontally. You can also go vertical by producing your own books, home study courses, DVDs, teleseminars, webinars, and even live events, should you so desire.]

6. What are some key lessons you learned during your first year of running World of Lucid Dreaming?

The single most important lesson that World of Lucid Dreaming has taught me is this: anything is possible. I never dreamed that I could earn a living this way – I always thought that real money came from a stressful office job and you couldn’t have one without the other. While this thought was always niggling at the back of my mind, I stayed true to the lessons of Site Build It. I kept moving forward, delighted by the little things that showed my site was becoming a success. Too many people give up on SBI because they get bored or lose motivation. I couldn’t let that happen to me. And now that I’m earning my living from it, doing something I love every day, I have gained proof that you CAN have your cake and eat it.

I learned many new skills through Site Build It, like writing for the internet – something my job as an Editor never taught me. It’s a completely different way of relating to people. And it’s actually very easy. The ground rule is: Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS). If you read my site you’ll see I’m hardly Shakespeare. I just write like I’m talking to a friend, and that’s all. SBI has a free e-book called Make Your Content Pre-Sell which explains this technique in detail. I think this is also what makes my site accessible to a broad audience – I have everyone from teenagers and retirees writing to me, and they all “get it”.

I also learned that I am not Wikipedia. I started out writing generic factual articles, indistinguishable from hundreds of other “how to” web pages. So I sat down with the SBI e-book on writing for the web, and I began injecting my own personality into my words, introducing real life experiences. It really brought the site to life, helping me connect with my readers better.

[SP: Something I learned in Toastmasters was the adage, "Make a point; tell a story." It's best if the stories are your own. This helps you create content that appeals to both left-brained and right-brained readers. Some people just want the straight-up information; others prefer to extract their own insights from stories.]

7. What have been the major contributing factors in making your online business successful?

Traffic, traffic, traffic! Without people landing on my website, it would be nothing. No-one would benefit from the value I’m creating, and in turn I wouldn’t benefit from their custom. It would be a 100% failure.

Thankfully, I learned how to generate plenty of free traffic through SBI’s techniques. I dabbled with Google AdWords (pay per click advertising) but without becoming a PPC guru, I had no hope. It was better to focus my efforts on free traffic techniques and that is where all of my website traffic comes from today.

I should add that you need to pick a high demand concept to begin with. Traffic doesn’t materialize out of nowhere; people have to be looking for you in the first place. Lucid dreaming has that strong demand, and catches the imagination of quite a broad spectrum of people. When I tell someone they can become self aware in their dreams – so that everything looks and feels as real as waking life – most people respond with “Really?? How!?”

That leads to the second advantage of my site concept. Everyone thinks lucid dreaming sounds awesome, but not many people can actually do it. I can tackle that with a “how to” approach on site and teach people what they want to know in order to improve their lives. Having that practical element encourages people to return to my site and learn the next step. It also opens plenty of doors for monetization.

Motivation is also a major contributor to success. I’m the type of person who has a great idea and gets really excited about it, but then gets bored because it takes too long to finish. I can’t tell you how many novels I’ve started writing and left off at chapter four! And so the concept of Site Build It is to give you a step-by-step framework without feeling overloaded, which is an enormous advantage. I could never give up when I had the next day’s instructions right in front of me. Ultimately, Site Build It made the difference between a barren two-page blog that I would delete a few months later, and a profitable online business that has changed my life.

8. What is some of the most popular content on your website? What value does it offer people?

Many people are keen to learn about brainwave entrainment and how it can help them improve their lives. I have several articles explaining how binaural beats work and reviewing my favorite CDs/MP3s. My readers trust my opinion because I only recommend products that have actually helped me achieve lucidity. I also make a lot of sales of other entrainment tracks like astral projection and meditation MP3s. This is excellent because practicing one often helps the other. People who meditate regularly (i.e. enter altered states of awareness on demand) improve their ability to relax deeply, visualize dream scenes, communicate with their inner voice, and question their self awareness. It’s ideal practice for lucid dreaming.

Another popular page is lucid dreaming techniques. These are all scientifically established methods of dream control, so I create value by explaining what works best for me and why. I also present the techniques in a user-friendly way – with no technical jargon or esoteric interpretations of the dream world. I haven’t found a free collection of lucid dreaming techniques like this anywhere else on the net. To get this kind of insight, you’d have to surf several different sites or buy a book on lucid dreaming. I give this all away for free to build further credibility with my readers.

[SP: This is a great example of creating value. Making ideas accessible can be a powerful benefit.]

9. You also have a second website called Improve Vision Naturally. Can you tell us about that site and how it’s been developing with traffic and monetization?

I was so excited about the success of World of Lucid Dreaming, I launched my second website, Improve Vision Naturally, in November 2008. I made it using all the principles of Site Build It, planning my site structure in advance, using effective pre-selling techniques, and putting my own personal experience into the site. I had been doing eye exercises to cure my nearsightedness earlier that year, so I already had a monetization strategy in mind – to sell the 30-day vision training course, Rebuild Your Vision.

The first month averaged 55 visitors per day and generated my first trickle of income – $32! Like World of Lucid Dreaming, it proved early on I had a concept that worked. Today, just over six months old, it generates $500 per month from one-off sales of Rebuild Your Vision and recurring monthly sales of Ocu Plus Formula eye vitamins. This website has so much potential but scaling up two websites at a time is proving a little too much for me. So I’ve decided to focus all my energies on World of Lucid Dreaming. In the meantime, Improve Vision Naturally continues to be an ongoing passive income earner.

[SP: The nice thing about having an online business is that it can generate income month after month even if it just sits there. There's no rule that says you have to work on it full-time.]

10. What are your expectations for the road ahead as online entrepreneur?

I want to advance both my websites as far as possible, creating value by translating my personal experiences and passing on the lessons I’ve learned. Now that I have taken the Site Build It concept and replicated it twice, I feel confident about my future earning potential in online business. I have ideas for my next infosite and am really excited by that. In time, I hope to have a fleet of SBI sites to my name, each delivering their individual income streams on autopilot. This will leave me free to pursue all the goals I want to in life, without worrying about having a steady 9 to 5 job or where that’s taking me.

[SP: Sounds like an awesome plan, Rebecca. There's no substitute for directing the course of your own life. :)]

11. What advice would you give to others who’d like to create their own online businesses?

Educate yourself in online business. Building a profitable website is not something you can do going in blind. So many people start a blog with the best intentions but when the traffic (or income) doesn’t appear, they let it fall by the wayside. If you want to start your own income generating website, I totally recommend Site Build It. You will learn everything you need to know to earn your living from it. In fact, if you follow the instructions and are motivated to keep going, I believe you can’t fail.

Lastly, check your personal beliefs about income generation. Most of my friends don’t know how I earn my living nowadays and if I told them I don’t think they’d believe me. It’s that kind of limiting belief that could break your spirit and make you give up before you’ve even started. Becoming self employed and earning a steady income from the internet is not an impossible dream. You just need to know how to succeed – and that’s exactly what Site Build It taught me.

[SP: As you discovered, some people have huge misconceptions about making money online. For example, people often get stuck fussing over the minor costs involved, trying to go as cheap as possible, but those who are succeeding think of those costs as no-brainer investments because they earn back many times more than what they spend. Perhaps the best advice is to learn from those who are already succeeding and ignore the opinions of those who've never done it.]

Thanks so much for agreeing to this interview, Rebecca. I’m sure many readers will find your success inspiring. I certainly do!

SP: If you want to learn more about lucid dreaming, World of Lucid Dreaming is an outstanding place to visit. The site is filled with great articles and tips to help you learn this amazing skill.

I also highly recommend using Site Build It! for building an online business. Rebecca certainly isn’t alone in achieving positive results with it. SBI is a great service that provides all the education, tools, and support you need to create a profitable online business. Watch the free video tour to learn how it works.

Where would you be today if you’d worked on your goals during the past year like Rebecca has done? Where do you want to be a year from now? It’s never too late to get started.

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 people who hear your elevator pitch could be potential business partners or clients, or they could be strangers you meet at a party or on the street. Even when it seems like no serious business relationship is likely to develop, there are lots of people out there that can help advance your career indirectly. For example, they might personally know someone who’s looking for the service you provide, so your elevator pitch could lead to a referral or two.

Unfortunately most people totally flub their elevator pitch, so they’ll typically receive a reply like, “Oh, that sounds interesting.” At best the other person may ask a few follow-up questions, but deep down they don’t really care about your answers. They’re just making polite conversation. They’ll probably never do business with you, and they won’t refer you any new clients or customers.

The Challenge of Crafting a Good Elevator Pitch

I’ve struggled with crafting a good elevator pitch because I do a lot of different things. For starters I’m a blogger, an author, a speaker, and an entrepreneur. But I don’t identify with any of those exclusively.

Often when someone asks me what I do for a living, I’ll say, “Well, it’s a bit complicated because I do a lot of different things.” Then I’ll mention some of the things I do. Typically the other person will give me a strange look while they process this overload of information, and then they’ll say something, “Ok, so you’re a writer?” And then I’ll have to explain some more.

Sometimes I’ll say, “I run a popular personal development website.” That’s usually a good conversation starter, but all too often it backfires — it leads some people (usually people who aren’t very web-savvy) to think of me as a web consultant. A week later I’ll get a call asking if I can help them solve an issue they’re having with their small business website. I definitely don’t want people thinking that I’m their go-to guy for tech support. I have no interest in that whatsoever.

I’ve had great success in delivering elevator pitches that stimulate conversation, but not the right kind. Too often my response leads to a dull conversation about blogging, writing, building websites, or professional speaking. Sometimes those discussions are interesting, but they rarely help me grow my business or attract new readers.

Ironically, I tend to have more stimulating discussions when I talk about the food I eat instead of the work I do. At least then we can get into a discussion about diet and health, and I can offer some value by talking about my raw food diet experiences, juice feasting, polyphasic sleep, etc. This leads to referrals that are actually relevant — such as people who desire to experience greater health and vitality. It’s also led to a few business deals with people who work in the health field. Those deals didn’t make a ton of money, but they did create some new passive income streams.

Attracting Relevant Referrals

On the other hand, people that actually understand the work I do are constantly referring high-quality leads to me. The main reason my website exploded with traffic is because of so many personal referrals. People told their friends, family, and co-workers about the work I was doing, and those new visitors became long-term readers and soon started referring others as well.

To date I’ve never spent a dime on advertising or promotion. My business has grown mainly by word of mouth. Lots of people have been referred here by their friends and family via face-to-face conversations, phone calls, or emails.

The interesting thing about these organic referrals is that they also involve simple elevator pitches, but the pitches are given by someone other than me. More often than not, people refer others to specific articles, not to my home page or main blog page. So they’re pitching specific content, not the overall website. However, when people come and read one article, they often like it so much that they continue to read more and eventually become long-term subscribers.

This gave me a clue as to how to craft a better elevator pitch, but it didn’t bring me all the way there. My individual articles tend to focus on specific, narrow topics. But I write about so many different things that I can’t turn my general elevator pitch into a pitch for a single article. Close… but no cigar.

15 Second Marketing

Eventually I figured out how to resolve these problems, but I didn’t figure it out on my own, so I have to give credit where credit is due. I found the answer I was looking for in an information product called Insider Secrets to 15 Second Marketing by Charlie Cook. In fact, I found it so helpful that I decided to formally recommend it here on my site, so I recently joined Charlie’s affiliate program. Charlie really gave me a critical mindset shift — one of those gorgeous a-ha moments – so I give this product a big thumbs up.

15 Second Marketing is both a book and an audio program — the content of both is the same. It covers how to write your own marketing message and how to use it to effectively attract more business and make more money. Your marketing message is even shorter than an elevator pitch. It’s basically a single sentence — something you can say in 15 seconds or less.

When I saw how long the book was, I wondered how anyone could create a whole book about something that seemed so basic. But Charlie does a great job of explaining why an effective marketing message is crucial to your career or business. I could certainly relate to what he was saying because of my own challenges in this area. At one time or another, I made all the classic mistakes in the “what not to do” section.

The concept of a marketing message is general enough that you can also use it to develop your career, build new contacts, and even to attract new romantic partners. So you don’t have to run a business to benefit from it.

The basic idea is that when someone asks what you do for a living, you want to offer a response that stimulates the right kind of discussion. So if you’d like to grow your business, you need a marketing message that serves as a good lead-in to a discussion that will help you generate new leads and attract more clients. This is not as easy as it sounds.

Your marketing message isn’t just something you say to people. It’s also something you can use on your website, in your newsletter, on your business cards, in your email signature, etc.

When someone asks what you do for a living, imagine they’re really asking, “What are you here to contribute, and why should I care?”

The mistake I made was that I used labels to describe my work (blogger, author, etc), but I didn’t convey the real value I delivered to people. If you tell people you’re a blogger, consultant, real estate agent, or salesperson, most people simply won’t care. Your answer doesn’t do anything for them. There are millions of people doing all of these things, and you’re just another professional with a boring job title. You may still get some business this way, but you could be doing much, much better if you had a more effective marketing message. This is especially true during a recession.

Your Marketing Message

15 Second Marketing provides a 7-step process to craft a strong marketing message as well as a checklist of characteristics your message should have. I can’t summarize the whole book in a single blog post, but I can share the big picture ideas with you.

The overall solution is that instead of describing what you do or telling people your credentials, you should instead share the actual value you provide. What value do you deliver to people? Why do people pay you? Why should I care?

What I really like about Charlie’s program is that it connects the dots between your elevator pitch and your life purpose. Your marketing message is NOT a sales pitch. It’s simply a statement of the value you can offer people. I like to think of it as a statement of your life purpose filtered through your career.

If you tell people that you’re an independent consultant, a realtor, or a web developer, your answer offers no value. It’s boring. You just drained all the life out of the conversation.

But if you offer an answer that states the value you can offer to people, now you’ve opened the door to an interesting conversation. You don’t have to do any selling because the right type of conversation will naturally get people interested in your service. This can lead to direct business as well as referrals. It can also lead to new relationships.

Crafting Your Marketing Message

Crafting an effective marketing message is tricky. There are a lot of aspects to consider. If you really want to do a thorough job of this, I highly recommend you go through the 15 Second Marketing program step-by-step. It packs in a lot more advice than I can cover in a blog post. But I can give you some tips to get you thinking in the right direction.

My advice is to think about what kind of conversation you’d like to stimulate. Tossing out labels to describe your work is usually a dead end. Instead, think about what kind of value you can provide to people.

As I tried to craft my own marketing message, I brainstormed a lot of variations and eventually settled on this one:

I teach people who are living below their potential how to feel energized and motivated, how to earn lots of money doing what they love, and how to make a real contribution to humanity, so they can finally enjoy the life that deep down they know they were meant to live.

A few days later, I had a phone call with Charlie Cook — I like to talk to people one-on-one before I commit to recommending their products — and during our conversation, I shared my marketing message with him. He said it was a good start but that it was too long. He suggested I make it much shorter, on the order of 10-12 words. He said that the goal isn’t to provide a bullet list — that can come later.

Perhaps I should have asked him this before I pasted this marketing message on my home page, Facebook page, Twitter page, etc.

What he said made sense to me, so I came up with some shorter variations, but I quickly realized that I’ll never perfect my marketing message sitting at my desk. I have to test these in the field to see how well they work.

For example, I might test some variations like these:

I help people grow.

I help people live more consciously.

I help people overcome their fears.

… and so on.

The key is that good marketing messages go beyond labels. As soon as someone labels you as falling into a particular career bucket, it gives them the opportunity to dismiss you. They tune out and stop listening to what you have to say. But if you present them with something that defies immediate labeling, you make people curious. You present an enigma they have to solve. You open the door to an interesting conversation.

You can also use different marketing messages depending on the circumstances. For example, I might find occasion to say any of the following when someone asks what I do for a living:

I help people quit their jobs so they can fulfill their life’s purpose.

I help people break bad habits and overcome addictions.

I help people take more risks and live more courageously.

I can imagine many situations where these sorts of replies would make people curious and stimulate interesting discussions.

Are you beginning to see the big picture here?

Using Your Marketing Message to Grow Your Business

A good marketing message doesn’t just stimulate fun conversations. It serves a powerful business purpose too. A good marketing message helps people remember who you are because it gives them a reason to care. When people remember you, they’re more likely to do business with you at some point, and they’re more likely to send you referrals. If people don’t remember you, it’s game over.

When I worked in the computer gaming industry, I learned an important lesson. I discovered that the more time people spent playing a particular game, the more referral sales they generated for that game. The longer people play a game, the more they talk about it. More gameplay time means more viral marketing. This is one reason the massively multiplayer online games can generate so many referral sales. When someone spends years playing World of Warcraft, it’s a safe bet they’ve told everyone they know about the game, and they probably helped Blizzard gain new customers. Heck, I’ve never even played the game, and here I am mentioning it as an example. Now contrast that with a single-player game you can finish in a weekend, and a year later you don’t even remember playing it.

Your marketing message serves a similar purpose. The message itself may not be very memorable, but it can lead to a stimulating conversation that is memorable. If you remember the conversation, you’ll remember the person, and that gives you more chances to engage in business with that person or to send referrals to that person. But if your initial marketing message falls flat, that entire chain of referrals suffers an early abortion.

Do you remember all the times someone offered up a common response like, “I’m a hairdresser”? It doesn’t mean anything, so whatever conversation that ensues about hairdressing will likely be forgotten. Your mind won’t retain the details because the conversation fits a pattern you’ve seen many times before, so it just reinforces the general pattern you’ve already stored, and the specifics are lost. We’re far more likely to remember events that violate our expectations because such events trigger our minds to store new patterns.

Now imagine asking someone at a party what she does for a living, and she says to you, “I make people look stunning before special events.” That statement by itself may not be that memorable, but it has a good chance of stimulating an interesting and memorable conversation. This hairdresser is more likely to stand out. If you remember her a little longer, you have more opportunities to utilize her services and more opportunities to refer new clients to her. Pretty soon she’ll be earning double or triple what equally competent hairdressers earn.

Think about the websites and blogs you frequent. Which ones do you remember best? Do they invite immediate generic labeling (like, “oh, another productivity site”), or do they stand out from the crowd in some way? Being harder to label can be a good thing if it makes you more memorable.

Boosting Your Income

If you’re self-employed and provide some type of service for clients, you can increase your income by attracting more clients. But you can also leverage a good marketing message to increase demand for your services. This means you attract so much business that you have to raise your rates. Then you can earn more money even as you work fewer hours.

Erin has been improving her marketing message over time, so she can attract better clients who will strongly benefit from her services. At first she promoted herself as a psychic medium, but then she started calling herself an intuitive counselor. That’s still a label, but it’s a less common one, so it was a step in the right direction. This helped her avoid bad clients who were looking for lottery numbers and casual entertainment and helped her attract better clients who wanted help making important life decisions. Eventually she began attracting so much business that she had to raise her rates several times. A 30-minute phone reading with her currently costs $497, and she has no shortage of clients because she’s very good at attracting clients who will receive tons of value from her service.

After going through 15 Second Marketing, Erin and I worked on her marketing message as well. The version we came up with is still too long, but it’s a step in the right direction. We’ll have to field-test some variations to see how well they work. If you’re curious, here’s the first draft we came up with:

I help people who are feeling uncertain about their lives determine the best course of action so they can enjoy a fulfilling career, earn more money, and attract loving relationships.

We might try shortening it to this and see how well that works:

I help people who are feeling uncertain about their lives determine the best course of action.

Again, the marketing message itself may not be super-memorable. But the idea is that it can stimulate an interesting conversation about the work you do, such that the other person really cares to hear what you have to say.

Suppose someone asks Erin what she does for a living, and she replies, “I help people who are feeling uncertain about their lives determine the best course of action.” That might lead the other person to say something like, “Okay… how do you do that?” Later in the conversation, the person might throw out, “By the way, my sister is stuck in a bad relationship, but she can’t figure out what to do about it. Are you able to help people like her?” This gives Erin the opportunity to ask follow-up questions, share some success stories, and continue the conversation. It should be fairly clear how this can lead to a potential new client — no selling required.

Such an opener also gives Erin the opportunity to ask qualifying questions of the other person, again without trying to sell herself. For example, after she gets a reply to the opener, she could follow up with, “Are you currently feeling blocked in any areas of your life?” This gives Erin the opportunity to provide some value and advice right on the spot, helping the other person with something that really matters. Erin never has to sell herself because if the person is really interested in her service, eventually they’ll ask something like, “So how much do you charge for a session?” or “If I booked a session with you, do you think you could help me figure out my career path?”

Think of your marketing message as your conversational opening move. If you use a bad opener, you can stunt the whole conversation. A good opener is no guarantee of success, but it can surely boost your long-term performance.

A good marketing message isn’t all-or-nothing. There’s a whole spectrum from terrible to mediocre to incredible. If your current message isn’t working for you, try something else. Keep tweaking it until you’re able to generate good conversations and create a steady flow of leads and referrals.

You can also use your marketing message on your website, your Facebook page, your email signature, and so on. Even when you aren’t physically present, your marketing message serves as an invitation for people to learn more about you.

Providing Genuine Value

I find Charlie Cook’s advice very refreshing because he offers a way of thinking about marketing that is honest, authentic, and non-manipulative. You’re never trying to sell people something they don’t need. You’re never trying to get people to buy from you. Instead, you’re inviting a discussion about the real work you do and how you can help people. You’re opening conversations at the level of life purpose. This is an awesome way to generate leads for your business and build contacts for your career because it works so organically. The approach meets with zero resistance because it fits our natural conversation patterns.

When your marketing message doesn’t convey any real value, that’s when you have to struggle to sell yourself. That’s when you end up throwing money away on ineffective advertising and promotion. That’s a downhill battle because you’re trying to make people care, and you’re going to meet with resistance because people don’t like being sold.

Once you get into tweaking your marketing message, I think you’ll find that it’s actually a lot of fun to field-test it. The next time someone asks what you do for a living, try out different marketing messages to see what kinds of conversations they stimulate. Do you feel like the conversation is stunted, or did you just open the door to a wonderful discussion about a subject you’re passionate about? Passion makes you stand out. Passion makes you more memorable. It makes people want to work with you. It encourages people to refer others to you. And passion flows naturally when your marketing message is aligned with your life purpose… when you come from a place of abundance instead of scarcity.

In this article I’ve only scratched the surface of how to craft an effective marketing message. If you find value in this topic, I encourage you to get a copy of Charlie Cook’s Insider Secrets to 15 Second Marketing. It’s very inexpensive relative to the value it provides, especially since it can pay for itself many times over by helping you boost your income. It comes with a 90-day money back guarantee, so there’s no risk to try it. I think you’ll get a lot of value from it whether you’re self-employed or not.

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.

For example, people write to me all the time saying that they wish they could start a successful blog, but they just don’t know how. They act as if I was magically bestowed with some kind of insider blogger’s knowledge that isn’t equally accessible to them. The truth is that no one really knows how to do something new until they’ve done it. Imagine Wayne Gretzky saying, “I wish I could play hockey, but dammit — I just don’t know how.”

If you were to give those very same complainers a greater incentive to get moving, such as a million-dollar bribe for generating measurable results within 30 days, you’d find that their empty excuses and pointless whining are solidly blasted out of the water. Somehow the lack of knowledge is no longer a serious obstacle for them. (Yes, I’m being harsh on purpose. When such people are in front of me, I prefer to smack them, but in this case I’ll have to settle for a verbal smack.)

I’ve written about this topic before, but this time I’ll tackle it from a totally different angle. In the past I’ve pointed out that with sufficient motivation, you’ll simply go out and acquire whatever knowledge you need. All the raw how-to information you need is probably available online for free anyway. Either that or you can figure out what you need via trial and error if you just start taking action.

Instead of looking at the motivation side, let’s consider the excuse side. Claiming that you lack certain knowledge is an act of denying yourself permission to experience what you desire. It’s a way of blocking yourself from moving toward your goal.

The physical and mental act of acquiring knowledge is really a projection of a deeper event that occurs within your consciousness. That event is the act of giving yourself permission to progress to a new “vibration,” to shift away from your current experience of reality and to graduate to a new experiential level. When your consciousness experiences that internal shift, all the knowledge you need will practically show up at your doorstep. In many cases you don’t even require new knowledge, but if you think you need it, then you’ll experience a learning phase in your physical reality as you progress to the next level.

Why would you ever want to block yourself from going up a level? Why would you stay stuck for so long with feeble excuses like ”I don’t know how” or “I don’t know what to do”?

The answer is that you aren’t ready to progress yet. You haven’t soaked up all the lessons from your current reality. Energetically speaking, you still need to experience and accept some of the energy patterns swirling about you.

To use a video game analogy, imagine your current reality as a level from Pac-Man. You can’t progress to the next level until you gobble up all the pellets on the current map. It’s not a matter of putting in a certain amount of time. If you try to wait it out, you’re just waiting for death. It’s a matter of completion. You can run around the map for quite a while, but if you don’t pick up that last pellet, you’re going to be stuck on that level until you die.

People who complain about not progressing are like Pac-Man players who complain that they can’t pass the current level. Maybe you’re complaining that you can’t figure out how to get those last few pellets. That’s usually because those pellets are on the other side of the ghosts (i.e. your fears). It may take you a long time to pass the level if you always run from the ghosts. Perhaps you need to swallow a power pill (i.e. grow a pair) and run straight at the ghosts of fear to pass the current level. Pac-Man isn’t a game for fraidy cats; nor is real life.

For many years I was stuck at the financial level of being broke. I was constantly struggling against debt, but you can’t pass a level by resisting it and hoping that you somehow get a mercy pass. You have to accept and work with the game board as it is. My solution was to turn toward the ghosts (my fear) and realize that I could still be happy even if I was broke. I learned to stop trying to make money with a scarcity mindset and to start expressing my creativity with an abundance mindset. In truth I had to pick up a lot of pellets (lessons) on the financially broke level, but once I got them all, I was able to progress to a new financial level rather quickly. Of course that new level had plenty of other interesting pellets/lessons to gobble up.

When you’re stuck at a certain level in your health, relationships, finances, career, spiritual growth, or personal habits, and you can’t seem to make any progress, take a moment to stop and look around. The universe knows you want to reach the next level. It’s not blocking you to frustrate you. You’re blocking yourself because deep down, you know you aren’t ready for the next level yet. You still have more lessons to acquire right where you are.

Is the point of playing Pac-Man to get to the next level as quickly as you can? Not really. The point is to have fun.

Is the point of life to immediately jump to a state of infinite health, wealth, relationship nirvana, and spiritual bliss? Of course not. The point is to enjoy the progression through various lessons that help you develop and expand your consciousness. When you pass each level, your reward is a new level with… you guessed it… more lessons. If you don’t learn to enjoy the lessons and the process of growth itself, you’re surely going to stagnate.

If you stop resisting where you are, you’ll find that life becomes a beautiful thing, regardless of what level you’re currently experiencing. You can anticipate the next level while still having immense fun right where you are.

If you want to level up, you have to acknowledge the ghosts on your level. They may seem like bullies, obstacles, or dangers, but in truth their purpose is to make you a better player and to provide you with an interesting experience.

Imagine playing Pac-Man with no ghosts. Every level would be the same. It would be incredibly boring. Nobody would play it. Similarly, no one would want to come to earth and partake in this human experience if there were no ghosts to face here. The ghosts make it interesting.

Confronting ghosts develops your consciousness. Ghosts help you discover new truths about yourself. They motivate you to get moving and pursue your goals. They make you stronger. When you face ghosts, you discover what kind of player you really are. That’s a priceless gift.

To pinpoint the ghosts on your current level, ask yourself, “What parts of my reality am I currently resisting, and why? What parts of my reality do I refuse to fully accept?”

When you’re about to go up a level in a video game, what kind of emotions do you feel? I usually feel a sense of excitement, fun, and gratitude. Don’t you basically feel the same way when you level-up in real life?

When you aren’t close to that level-up feeling, it means you aren’t ready to level up.

Leveling up occurs when you’ve completed the current level. This doesn’t mean you tie up every loose end in your life. It simply means that you’ve integrated the key lessons you needed to learn.

If you’re broke and wanting to experience financial abundance, have you learned the key lessons of being broke? Are you feeling immensely grateful for everything that financial scarcity has taught you? Or are you still running away from your ghosts?

If you’re single and wanting to experience a relationship, have you learned the lessons of being single at this time in your life? Do you feel happy and grateful when you’re alone because of all the beautiful gifts you’ve gained from it? Or are you railing against it, thereby preventing yourself from moving on?

If you’re struggling to figure out your life purpose and/or to choose a career direction, have you learned the lessons of being directionless? Do you feel grateful for the freedom and limitlessness of options you have right now? Or do you still resist your current experience of reality?

You can’t move forward in life by hating where you are.

Whenever you resist your reality, you deny your own creative power. You make yourself powerless to progress. You’re like a Pac-Man player that swears “I hate this game” and slams the joystick in anger. That isn’t going to help you level up.

When you’re ready to be grateful for your current experience of reality, warts and all, you’re ready to level up. Now you’re reclaiming your creative power, which is the very power you need to manifest the new level you desire. When you rail against the reality you’re experiencing, you simultaneously deny your power to create something new.

Resistance is powerlessness. Acceptance is power.

Imagine an artist surrounded by her paintings. Suppose she dislikes them so much that she denies creating them. Is that going to put her in a place to go and paint something better? Of course not. She’ll probably just sit around sulking.

Now imagine that same artist, feeling grateful for all the paintings she created. She acknowledges that she created them. This doesn’t mean she feels they’re her best work, but she appreciates each piece for what it taught her. Her early work may not be much to look at, but it’s still precious. The true gift she experienced from creating all that art was her progressive refinement as an artist.

Similarly, when you look at any part of your life with disdain, you deny that you’re the artist who created it. Maybe it’s your early work, and it’s not much to look at, but you can’t progress by denying that it’s yours.

What would be the market price for Picasso’s first crappy pre-school drawing today? Don’t deny the value of your own ”suck period.”

When people do make progress — real progress — in some area of their lives, how do they look back on their past experiences? Usually they look back with gratitude, nostalgia, love, and appreciation. If they look back with resistance, they’re probably still repeating those same lessons in their lives today.

I don’t hate the years of my life when I was broke. I look back on those times with fondness. I smile when I remember how Erin and I squeezed three people and two businesses into a small apartment on a noisy street. It’s funny to remember that we once used a cardboard box as a piece of furniture. I was able to move on from that period of my life because I allowed myself to fully accept it. I now know how important it was for me to have those experiences. I’m very glad that I went through that period. It was a cool level to play through.

What about those times when I was arrested and stuck in jail? I feel grateful for those experiences too. I don’t look back and feel hatred towards anyone. But at the time, I resisted those experiences tremendously. That’s why I had to keep repeating them. I wasn’t ready for the next level. Eventually I learned to fully accept those experiences because of what they taught me. For starters, those experiences turned me on to the pursuit of personal growth.

Are there still parts of my life that I’m resisting today? Of course. We all have those blocks. When we’re ready to face them, we’ll do so.

Blocking yourself from reaching the next level isn’t the end of the world. It’s okay to be where you are and to stay there for a while — assuming that’s what you want to experience. For example, income-wise you may hold yourself at a certain level because you’re still soaking up the experience. Maybe you don’t want to boost your income because you’re quite happy with your current level. That’s absolutely fine.

When a block becomes a problem is when you feel stunted and trapped in your reality. You anxiously crave different experiences, and you’re bored or frustrated with the doldrums of your current level. That’s a signal that you need to turn toward those ghosts and face them head-on. It’s time to build your strength and move forward.

Long-term stuckness boils down to running from fear — fear of failure, fear of success, fear of rejection. We all run from these fears at times. We’re only human. Lots of stuff scares us. Even the best Pac-Man players spend a lot of time running from ghosts. Ghosts are scary.

But we’re also more than human. We’re creators. We have the power within us to dig deep and proclaim, “Enough of this. I’m summoning my power to create a new reality.” We can self-prescribe a power pill. But in order to summon this power, we MUST acknowledge and accept what we’ve already created.

Imagine the Biblical God visiting this planet and saying, “Adam and Eve? Heaven and Earth? Nope, wasn’t me!” That’s what we do when we resist some aspect of our current reality. A mountain of debt? A sucky relationship? No, wasn’t me! Yeah, right… as if the credit card charges just appeared out of thin air and the wedding ring was glued to your finger by a mischievous fairy.

Look around at your reality for a moment, take a deep breath, stick your chest out, and say, “Yup… that was ME!” Take credit for all that you’ve created, even if you don’t think you deserve it. When you claim credit for what you’ve already created, you simultaneously summon the power to create something new. Never deny what you’ve created. That would cause me to smack you. (I swear your cheek LoA’d my palm!)

Your best bet is to assume that you’ve created everything in your reality — and for good reason. With respect to everything in your reality that you currently resist, say to yourself, “Okay, let’s assume I did create this. Now why would I do something like that? What could this possibly do for me?”

Look for the hidden benefit, lesson, or message behind everything in your reality that bugs you.

In order to do this properly, you have to look beyond the physical. Look at how it affects your consciousness. What benefits might you be able to retain even after death?

Use the TLP framework from the book Personal Development for Smart People to help classify your experiences. How are these experiences bringing you into greater alignment with Truth, Love, and Power? What about Oneness, Authority, Courage, and Intelligence? The cool thing about these principles is that they’re rooted in consciousness, not in physical reality, so they can help you see the empowering lessons behind all of life’s challenges, regardless of the particulars. The nice thing about universal principles is that they can be applied to any situation.

Don’t think of yourself as a physical being. Think of yourself as a conscious being. You aren’t here to develop your physical life. You’re going to lose all of it when you die anyway. Everything you build here will eventually crumble. The human race itself will die off too. But consciousness is eternal.

Physical reality is a playground for the development of your consciousness. Your physical body, your bank account, your material possessions, your home and family – none of that stuff really matters in the long run. Eventually it will all be gone. If you get too attached to those things, I guarantee you a lot of frustration and emptiness down the road. You’ll get that slow sinking feeling that something isn’t right about your life. Instead, focus your primary attention in this life on the development of your consciousness. That’s why you’re here.

Work on your physical body because such a pursuit develops your consciousness. Build your discipline by challenging yourself to eat foods you know are healthy for you. Build your compassion by refusing to kill and torture animals for the sake of your taste buds. Build your courage and authority by eating the way you feel is right, regardless of what others think.

Work on your finances because such a pursuit develops your consciousness. Expand your creativity by creating value for others. Cultivate an abundance mindset by learning to let go of scarcity thinking. Build your focus and discipline by working hard. Experience freedom by creating passive income instead of living paycheck to paycheck.

Work on your relationships because such a pursuit develops your consciousness. Build your courage by learning to be open and honest about your feelings. Increase your alignment with oneness by getting to know lots of people and realizing that we’re all part of the same whole. Deal with difficult people to learn unconditional love.

Get the idea?

Learn to embrace the Truth. Learn to connect with what you Love. Learn to channel your creative Power fully. Your problems are there to help you progressively train up your alignment with these principles. The purpose of your physical life is to help you improve the TLP-alignment of your consciousness. That’s something you can take all the way to the grave and beyond.

You are here to shine, not to whine.

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.

Suppose you set a goal to write a book, but you aren’t already in the habit of writing on a regular basis (ideally daily). Most likely you’ll never complete the book. That goal will just sit on your to-do list for years.

Suppose you set a goal to quit your job and run your own Internet business, but you aren’t in the habit of developing websites. That goal is also unlikely to be achieved. It will simply remain a fantasy, overridden by the habit of showing up to work each day.

Identify Habits to Support Your Goals

When you set a new goal, think about what habits would enable you to put that goal on autopilot, thereby making it a done deal.

It’s usually best to think in terms of daily habits, especially for big goals. Daily habits are easier to install than less frequent habits. (For details on successfully installing irregular habits, see the article How to Maintain Not-Quite-Daily Habits.)

It’s also wise to think in terms of simple habits, not incredibly complicated ones. Simple habits are easier to install and maintain. You can always add complexity later, but focus on getting the basic habit successfully installed first.

If one of your goals is to write a book, a simple daily habit would be to work on your book for at least one hour per day. If you can install and maintain that habit, completing your book is practically a done deal. Even if you write only on weekdays and take two weeks off, that’s still 250 hours per year you’ll be investing in your book. This simple discipline is enough to build a career as a professional writer.

Ask yourself: What daily discipline(s) would make this goal a done deal? The answer to that question will tell you what habit(s) to install. If you can condition and maintain those habits, you’ll very likely achieve your goal. It’s only a matter of time.

Be Specific

Make your habits specific. Identify when, where, and how you’ll implement them. Leave nothing to chance.

If you’re going to exercise daily to support your weight loss goal, specify when you’ll exercise and for how long, where you’ll exercise, and what type of exercise you’ll perform. Doing yoga in your living room from 4pm to 4:45pm daily is a clear habit. Adding “go to the gym” to tomorrow’s to-do list is not a clear habit.

One of the most basic habit properties is time. To install any new habit, you must put in the time.  Carve out a dedicated block of time to spend on your new habit. Even if the habit doesn’t require any extra time to maintain, such as the habit of not biting your nails, you’ll still need to devote time to conditioning the habit.

Start With a 30-Day Trial

Use the 30-day trial approach to kick-start your new habit. This method has a high success rate and can be adapted for virtually any habit you’d like to install. (For details on how to do this, see the article 30 Days to Success.)

Focus on achieving a perfect record with your habit for 30 days straight. Don’t worry about Day 31. If you can make it 30 days, you can usually coast from there because the habit will be on autopilot by then.

Even if you later get off track, it will also be easier to re-establish a habit when you’ll already completed at least 30 full days in a row. At the very least, you’ll know you’re capable of making it 30 days and beyond when you start anew because you’ve already done it.

Eliminate Interference

Nuke any obstacles that may interfere with your new habit. Clear commitments from your schedule that would overlap the time you’ve allotted for your habit.

Notify other people that this time is sacred and that they do NOT have permission to disturb you at these times.

Make sure you have all the equipment and supplies you’ll need to implement your habit. You don’t want to start on Day 1 with lots of enthusiasm, only to discover you’re missing something important and can’t proceed.

Give yourself every advantage before you begin. Review the article Habit Change Is Like Chess to make sure you account for the early game, middle game, and endgame of habit change. Don’t fall into the trap of blitzing for Scholar’s Mate and putting yourself in a disadvantaged position from Day 1.

Identify Supporting Habits

Take time to identify any supporting habits that will support your main habit, thereby supporting your primary goal as well.

For example, if you want to change your daily eating habits, you’ll also need to change your grocery shopping habit to make sure you buy the right foods consistently. This is especially important if your new diet will incorporate lots of fresh produce.

Another example: If you want to build a successful blog, writing is an important daily habit, but for optimal results, you may want to spend time each day promoting your work as well. This is especially important when you’re just starting out and hardly anyone knows about your blog.

Work on installing your main habit and all critical supporting habits at the same time if possible. If this is too much to handle, then install the supporting habits first. You can tackle them one by one with consecutive 30-day trials if you wish. Once the supporting habits are in place, you can then tackle the main habit.

For example, first you could install the habit of restocking your kitchen with healthy food every Tuesday evening. Then you could install the habit of preparing meals every day (to reduce your desire to eat out). And finally you could install the habit of changing your diet to whatever you want it to be. This simple progression can lock in a collection of supportive habits to help you achieve goals for weight loss and better overall health.

Commit Yourself Publicly

If you need some extra incentive to stick with your 30-day trial, get other people involved to help you. Commit to your new habit publicly. Put yourself on record, so it will be harder to wimp out.

Many people announce their latest 30-day trials in our discussion forums. Some also post daily updates to let others know of their progress. This is an excellent idea because it increases accountability. You’re less likely to slack off when you know others are watching out for your progress updates.

If that isn’t enough, then make a promise or bet with someone — with a significant consequence if you fail. Add some pain to the mix to ensure that you’ll do your best to follow through. This kind of positive stress can be very motivating, especially if you consider yourself somewhat lazy.

Goals Into Habits – A Personal Example

One of my top professional goals for this year is to develop and release a line of downloadable information products on a variety of personal growth topics.

This is a big goal that will require a significant time investment. Unfortunately, my current work routine doesn’t support this goal at all.

I have lots of experience selling info products online. I used to sell downloadable PC games for several years, so I already have the know-how to create and publish downloadable info products. I remember the daily rhythm I experienced while developing and releasing new games, and it’s very different than my current work routine which is centered around instant publishing of much shorter content.

Achieving this goal requires that I invest a serious amount of time and energy in product development. But up until this time, I haven’t been in a good position to install the necessary habits I’d need to make this goal a reality. I managed to write a book of course, but that was a one-time release, not a complete product line.

Starting this week, I’m going to devote several hours every weekday to developing new information products. Initially I plan to create a downloadable audio program. I’d also like to write more books, but I intend to release at least one audio program first.

In order to achieve this goal, I must radically change my daily habits. Here are some of the changes I’m making:

1. Continue to get up at 5am, but instead of going to the gym first, go straight to my home office to get started on my work day. Review my goals and plans, and get to work on product development tasks by 5:30am every weekday.
2. Dedicate every weekday morning to product development, working straight through until lunch time. I normally have lunch around 1pm, so with a few breaks, this should give me a solid 6-7 hours per day on product development. If I start feeling burned out, I can always cut back on the hours or take extra days off as needed.
3. Devote one hour per day to writing and editing new blog posts. I can write short posts more frequently or long posts less frequently. Adapting to shorter writing sessions will be a major change in my blogging rhythm.
4. Limit the time I spend on routine communication to no more than 60 minutes per day, including email, forums, phone calls, etc. Do these tasks in the afternoon.
5. Exercise in the early evening after my workday and before dinner. Favor exercises I can do at home instead of going to the gym. This saves driving time.
6. Run errands on weekday evenings around 8pm (especially Tuesdays). Stores are less crowded because people are at home watching TV. This habit saves me as much as 30 minutes on a typical errand run vs. running the same errands on a weekend.

It may take me a while to successfully install all these new habits to support the achievement of my goal, but once they’re up and running, I’ll be able to develop new products with a steady rhythm, much like the blogging rhythm that allowed me to write hundreds of new articles year after year.

By reclaiming more time from my daily routine, I’ll have more time and especially more creative energy to invest in developing information products. I can continue to release abundant free content like articles, podcasts, and newsletters, but I’ll save the more complex messages for structured products.

Blogging is a great medium for expressing certain ideas, but it’s a weak medium for covering topics that are too big or too complex. This is one of the reasons I decided to write the book Personal Development for Smart People. Writing a book enabled me to explain the fundamentals of personal growth in much more depth than I could do in a handful of articles or podcasts. I was finally able to share the big picture instead of always hacking away at the branches. I was delighted with the final result, as were the vast majority of the book’s reviewers, so this encouraged me to develop more products.

Other topics that would be better served by full-length products as opposed to blog posts and podcasts include time management, subjective reality, polarity, the Law of Attraction, the raw food diet, polyamory, and polyphasic sleep. These topics are all sufficiently complex that an article or series of articles can never do them justice.

Erin is also interested in developing and releasing her own info products. In fact, last week we made a bet with each other to see which of us would release a new product first. This is a win-win situation because our combined readers will benefit from a new product release from either of us, and obviously our family will enjoy the additional income as well. I won’t share the exact details of the bet (it’s kinda kinky), but suffice it to say I’m very motivated to win.

What new goals can you achieve by installing a few simple daily habits?

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.

At the start of each new year, I like to pick a primary focus for the upcoming year. I prefer doing this instead of making a New Year’s resolution because it’s more effective for me. By primary focus I’m referring to a single area of my life where I want to make a major advance in my personal growth efforts.

I find that by picking just one area and by applying strategies like immersion and overwhelming force, I can take a quantum leap forward in that area and then lock in the gains. This has been much more effective for me than trying to make modest gains in multiple areas. Usually when I aim for several small changes, I only perpetuate the status quo. It’s like if someone throws you a ball, you can catch it, but if you’re thrown three balls at once, you get confused and fumble all of them.

In 2008 my primary focus was to improve my diet and health, which was probably obvious if you read my blog during the past year. In retrospect that turned out to be an awesome decision. I successfully converted to a raw vegan diet, after eating a cooked vegan diet since 1997. Although weight loss wasn’t my primary goal, I dropped 15 pounds from where I was at this time last year. I feel wonderful physically and emotionally, I have more energy and mental clarity than ever, and I love the food I’m eating. (As I write this, I’m enjoying a tasty shake made from bananas, brazil nuts, and water.) I’ve also made many great new friends in the raw food community.

It certainly took a lot of time and effort — and help from others — to make this transition. But I’m very happy with the results thus far.

After leveling-up my character in this area, it’s time to pick a different area of focus for 2009. I’ve decided that my core focus for 2009 will be intimate relationships.

This will take a bit of explaining…

Some Relationship Background

You may have noticed that I haven’t written a great deal about intimacy and relationships since I started blogging. There have been a handful of articles like Soulful Relationships, and I wrote a chapter about relationships in my book, but overall I haven’t written a ton about relationships relative to other topics. Also, I haven’t shared too many details about my marriage to Erin and how we manage our relationship. That might seem odd because Erin and I have been together almost 15 years now.

I get a ton of requests for articles about relationships, so it isn’t due to lack of interest.

The main reason I haven’t written much about this topic is that it was a part of my life where I had more confusion than clarity, and I didn’t want to give out phony advice that wouldn’t work. It’s also an area of my life where I’ve felt stuck for many years. It wasn’t until recently that I finally figured out how and why I was stuck and what I should do about it.

As I alluded to a couple days ago in the Overcoming Indecision article, we create growth forks of indecision when deep down, we know which path to take, but we don’t feel ready to accept it yet. My big challenge wasn’t really about deciding what to do. For me the really hard part was accepting the next step on my path. For reasons I’ll soon explain, I had a very difficult time coming to terms with a path that felt a little too overwhelming for me.

If you hold very traditional, mainstream views about relationships and especially marriage, then you probably won’t like what I’m about to say. My guess is that you’ll be inclined to frame this in a rather non-accepting, resistant way. And that’s okay if you feel that’s a reaction you need to have. That being said, please understand that I’ve already moved through this phase myself, so there’s no need to bother sending me a critical email to share your discontent and/or concern. I don’t want you to waste your time crafting a lengthy response that won’t actually be read, so if you feel inclined to do that sort of thing, please don’t.

Marriage

Erin and I have been together since 1994, married since 1998. We got married on the four-year anniversary of the day we met. In all that time, our marriage has been monogamous with no cheating or affairs or anything like that.

Erin and I are very much in love. I love her, and I know she loves me. Throughout our relationship, I’ve never doubted that she loved me.

Erin is my best friend. I feel I can talk to her about anything. We often talk for hours — about our lives, our careers, and how we can help the planet. I never get bored spending time with her. She’s one of the most conscious and interesting people I’ve ever known. I find her totally fascinating, and I feel grateful to have her in my life every day.

I love being married to Erin. I love that we get to spend so much time together. Our journey together has been magical.

Indecision

This may sound surprising given what I just wrote above, but a huge area of indecision in my life for years has been this question: Should I stay married to Erin, or should I get divorced and experience other relationships?

You really don’t want to know how much time I spent pondering this.

Since we have two kids, ages 5 and 8, and since we run a business together, the consequences of divorce can get pretty complicated.

The problem was that neither path intuitively felt right to me. I felt like I was stuck in a no-win situation.

Being married to Erin has been wonderful. However, we’ve grown so close over the years — to the point where we’re telepathically picking thoughts out of each other’s minds — that it’s hard to imagine growing much closer as a couple. I can’t even define what being closer to Erin would mean without us practically becoming the same person. I feel that Erin and I are closer than any other couple I’ve met.

As wonderful as our relationship has been, for a long time it has felt like something important is missing. The thought that I would never enjoy a deep, intimate relationship with any other woman really started to bother me. I felt like if I stayed married to Erin, I’d be missing out on a huge area of potential growth for the rest of my life. But more importantly, I felt that I had more love to give that was getting bottled up inside me with no good outlet for expressing it. If I stayed married to Erin, I’d have to accept that so many wonderful opportunities for love and connection with other people would never happen. I wasn’t willing to accept that.

I’m referring to both physical and emotional intimacy. For me the two are hard to separate. I can’t imagine being physically intimate with a woman without feeling deeply emotionally connected to her as well. Having sex just for the sake of orgasm feels hollow. For me the emotional bonding and the feeling of connection is an essential part of physical intimacy. There’s something magical about two souls opening themselves to each other’s presence. Consequently, a model like swinging (i.e. having sex with other couples) or just getting some extra sex on the side would be a total turnoff for me.

There have been times when I had to stop my emotional bonding with another women from leading too far into physical intimacy. In my heart I felt that’s where things were meant to go, but I always kept that door closed.

My feelings aren’t caused by any sort of deficiency in my marriage. Erin is an absolutely awesome wife. I think I would feel the same way no matter who my wife was. Erin and I are compatible on so many levels, so compatibility isn’t the issue. In the most important ways our marriage can work, it works wonderfully. The issue is that my desire to connect with women is more expansive than what can be provided by any one relationship. I want to express and share more love than I’m currently able to.

For a time I thought the only viable solution was to move into a serial monogamy situation, so I could experience multiple relationships. That felt totally wrong to me though. That would merely convert the current problem into a recurring problem.

When I thought about getting a divorce from Erin, it felt absolutely wrong to me. I have no interest in breaking up with her. We’re still totally in love with each other. I love spending my life with her. Why would I want to give that up?

For a long time, I got stuck in the trap of either-or thinking. I thought there were only two realistic options. Either I had to stay monogamous with Erin, or we had to break up so I could experience other relationships. But there was no way I could fully commit to either choice because they both felt wrong to me.

I guess another option would be to have an affair, but I could never do that in secret because that would mean turning my back on truth. So I can’t give that serious consideration. I even read an excellent book about people who have affairs in order to understand why so many people choose that path, but it didn’t change how I felt. Having an affair would be an unconscious path that would force a decision later, but I’m looking for a conscious choice I can feel good about. In general, people don’t consciously choose to have affairs; affairs almost invariably arise unconsciously.

Being in this state of indecision for so long had a negative effect on my marriage. Because I wasn’t sure what to do, I felt uncommitted to Erin. As a result I held back a lot of love I might otherwise have given her. When I was feeling very stuck, I often disconnected from her. I didn’t want to keep feeding a relationship that I thought would have to end in a break-up. I’m sure that created a lot of stress for Erin too. She’s very intuitive of course, so she knows when I’m not fully present in our marriage.

Due to the close nature of our relationship, I often discussed my feelings openly with Erin. I brought up the possibility of divorce many times. I thought that by discussing this with her, it would give me more clarity and lead to a decision that felt good. Unfortunately, it didn’t. I wasn’t trying to threaten the relationship, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to keep all of these thoughts to myself. I couldn’t just pretend everything was okay.

I read many acclaimed books on relationships, but nothing proved helpful. My relationship with Erin had already advanced beyond the stages those books addressed. Our level of closeness and connection wasn’t the problem, so trying to get closer wasn’t going to yield a solution.

This indecision also had a negative effect on me as a father. I felt disconnected from my children. Every day I’d look at Emily and Kyle, not knowing if we’d be living in the same household much longer. That was very hard for me. I know I held back a lot as a parent, and of course that made things harder for Erin as well. Just thinking about this makes me pretty sad.

I used every decision-making technique I knew, but none of them gave me an answer that felt right. I know that when my head and heart don’t agree, something is wrong. But I just didn’t know how to resolve this.

An Alternative Answer

Eventually the answer came to me. What’s really amazing is that I have to credit the answer to the gains I experienced after going 100% raw and especially after completing my juice feast about a month ago. If I didn’t take those steps, I’d probably still be feeling stuck right now.

The mental clarity gains were only part of the solution process. Actually the more important part was that I finally felt like I had the physical and emotional energy to implement the solution. Prior to making these dietary changes, whenever I caught a glimpse of the solution, I always had to reject it as insanely impractical. I just didn’t have the power needed to face that kind of truth.

My problem wasn’t really due to a lack of clarity. So it’s no wonder that trying to gain more clarity was a perpetual dead-end. The problem was that I was unwilling to accept the answer that was presenting itself. Every time it came up, I’d shove it aside with a loud, “No way!”

So what is the solution? To put it simply, I needed to replace either-or with and.

This is where we have to say goodbye to mainstream paths. This is also the point where my Puritanical readers will begin looking for a good throwing stone or an appropriate Bible verse.

I very much want to stay married to Erin, but I also want to experience intimate relationships with other women. Is it possible to do both at the same time?

As it turns out, the answer appears to be yes.

The specific nature of the answer is still foggy because I haven’t implemented anything yet, but the general solution could be labeled polyamory.

Polyamory

Polyamory simply means having multiple intimate relationships at the same time. I’m not going to dive too deep into explaining the details at this time. If you want to learn more about it, you can Google polyamory and find some good sites devoted to the topic.

In practice, polyamorous relationships can get complicated because you’re dealing with multiple partners. I believe I have a good shot of making this work. I’m a pretty conscious guy, and since I don’t have a job, I have a lot more free time than most people. Plus I love challenges.

I guess the main challenge would be finding other partners who are open to this sort of thing. Obviously it’s not very mainstream. But neither is raw food, juice feasting, being happily jobless, experimenting with polyphasic sleep, or many of other things I’ve done.

What appeals to me about polyamory is that it’s a way for people to learn to share love and connection without trying to possess each other. It feels a lot more free and open to me than a closed marriage situation.

Is this just about having sex with other people? No, if that was all I wanted, I could just go pick up some tourist women on the Strip.

The truth is that I love connecting with Erin physically and emotionally, and I want to enjoy that kind of connection with other women too. I can use self-discipline to try to deny those feelings, but that would require turning my back on the principle of Love, which is a big no-no. In this case I have to follow my heart.

Erin’s Reaction

What’s Erin’s reaction to all of this? Due to the nature of our relationship, of course I’ve talked to her about this in depth. At the present moment, she’s actually okay with it. Like I said, she’s a very conscious woman.

I expect this will deepen my relationship with Erin in the long run. Her acceptance of this already makes me feel more committed to our marriage. By taking divorce off the table, I feel like we can continue to invest in what we’ve built together.

I feel our relationship has already improved in the past few weeks. We spent a lot of time talking and snuggling today. I feel much happier about our future direction, and I think Erin does too.

In fact, to kick off the New Year, Erin and I have decided to commit to a 30-day trial of 30-60 minutes per day of physical intimacy (sex, massage, cuddling, smooching, etc). We’re normally very affectionate with each other, so we want to see what happens if we turn this into a daily practice for a month. I doubt we’ll blog about it as we go along, but I’m certainly looking forward to this trial. It seems a lot more fun than the ones I did last year.

If I don’t go this route, what’s the alternative? The alternative is that we’re back to the original either-or decision. I could stay monogamous with Erin without feeling good about it, or we could get a divorce. Regardless of how a polyamorous relationship model works out, we’re really no worse off than before. Sure there might be some added consequences, but to me the biggest deal right now is the status of our marriage. I’d like to stay married and keep our family together in one household, and I know Erin wants that too.

Being in this state of indecision for so long has held me back in a lot of ways. For example, I didn’t want to grow the business too much because it would complicate things even more if we eventually got a divorce. It sucks to have to think like that, but indecision can’t be so easily compartmentalized. It feels good to move beyond that level of thinking though.

Linear Growth

Looking back I can see that the growth fork (i.e. that prolonged state of indecision) was something I created to keep myself from moving forward because I didn’t feel ready to take the next step.

The next step in my relationship with Erin was to expand beyond sharing an intimate connection with just one person and to learn to create and share that kind of connection with other people too. Deep down I knew that was the truth, but it was a truth I felt unready to face.

Obviously I’ll have to deal with some flak from people who have issues with this new direction. But the more important issue is what will happen to my relationships with Erin and my kids.

Intuitively I sense that it’s time for me to explore other models for intimate relationships and to share what I learn along the way. The comfortable path would be to stay monogamously married and pretend everything is fine as-is. The courageous path is to reach out and attempt to share love and intimacy with more people. The courageous path is the only one with a heart.

Erin and I have basically taken our personal connection about as far as we can on our own. If we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we may enjoy some small incremental gains, but it’s doubtful that we’ll experience any major leaps. Without those kinds of growth opportunities, it’s hard for me to get excited about our relationship, and it’s hard for me to feel committed to it.

But the thought of taking the kind of deep connection that Erin and I have built with each other and creating new relationships with other women — now that’s exciting to me. But I wouldn’t just want to talk about it or write about it in a theoretical way. I have to do it. My growth style is experiential.

My heart is excited by all of this. My head needs some time to catch up, but eventually he’ll be on board. I don’t know exactly what I’ll do about this yet, but intuitively I know this is the right direction to go.

Writing about this publicly feels like a good first step. I’m sure the next step will reveal itself soon enough.

Sharing Love

Sharing love and connection is my main motivation for wanting to experience other intimate relationships. It’s not about trying to get something from other people. I don’t feel I’m coming at this from a place of neediness, at least not in the sense that I need something from other people.

What I’m feeling is that I have this massive energy source of love inside me, but I lack the channels to fully express it. I want to let it flow, but all I’m doing is keeping it bottled up. Some of it flows into my relationship with Erin of course, but there’s still more to give.

Sharing emotional intimacy is great, but I’ve felt stunted by my inability to cross the physical intimacy border and take the sharing of love and connection to a much greater level. I think some amazing things will happen by dropping that limitation from my life.

Obviously I can share love through writing, speaking, and talking with people. However, my most natural manner of expressing love is through physical intimacy, especially touch. I give Erin massages all the time. If I see her sitting on the couch, it’s hard for me not to start squeezing her. When we go to bed at night, I usually massage and cuddle her first. Sometimes I play a game to see how much massaging she can handle before she’s so sleepy that she asks me to stop. We also have sex pretty often, especially since I know how to put her into a receptive state. A foot massage always sends her to la-la land.

But I still have the capacity to share more attention and affection than Erin can receive. If I give out as much as I feel inclined to give, she eventually starts rejecting it. Consequently, I always have to hold back. Some of this desire for expressing affection gets channeled into my writing, which is a way for me to reach out and connect with lots of people, but since that medium is a mismatch for physical intimacy, I often feel stunted trying to express love through the written word.

Why can’t I just become a massage therapist on the side and touch people all day long? That wouldn’t be appropriate because in my case, sensual touch leads very naturally to sex. I’d have a hard time holding back. Touching, kissing, massage, and sex are all part of the same bundle in my mind.

Physical and emotional intimacy go hand-in-hand with me. I’m not exactly sure why, but it’s hard for me to separate the two. A physically intimate relationship with a woman would make me feel very connected with her, and I’d automatically want to connect with her emotionally as well.

I’ve no idea how easy it will be to follow this path, but at least I know that others have already done it, so hopefully I can learn something from them.

I’d never want to do anything deceptive, so I wouldn’t start a relationship on false premises, like by pretending I’m a single guy. I’d need to find women who could understand my situation without going kittywompus. I have to imagine that somewhere on this planet, there must be other women who are open to exploring physical and emotional intimacy without major hang-ups and possessiveness issues… hopefully ones who like being massaged a lot.

2009

So my main focus for 2009 will be to explore intimate relationships in more depth. I mean that experientially of course. This includes my relationship with Erin as well as creating intimate relationships with other women. I can’t say in advance what the exact nature of those relationships will be because I’ve never done anything like this before. That remains to be seen.

There may be a limit as to how much I can write about this because I’m not going to reveal info about others who might be involved w/o their permission. I may not be a very private person myself, but I respect other people’s desire for privacy. What happens in Vegas…

However, I can certainly open up and write more about relationships in 2009. I’ve learned a lot from my very conscious relationship with Erin. The things we did that brought us so close happened more than a decade ago though, so for the most part these would be pretty old lessons. But I’m sure they’d still benefit a lot of people.

If I had it to do all over again, knowing what I know now, would I still get married? No, I doubt it. The monogamous marriage model doesn’t feel right to me. I love the idea of long-term committed relationships though, but you don’t need marriage for that. I don’t see a compelling reason to get a formal divorce just on principle, but it’s fair to say that my commitment to being in a single monogamous relationship has ended.

I can’t really say where this path will lead, but I’m sure this will be another amazing year of growth and change. I could easily write 10x more about this topic, and I know there are a lot of loose ends I didn’t wrap up, but that will have to be shared later. Most of those loose ends are still loose right now, so at this point I can’t tie everything into a nice neat bundle for you.

Happy New Year! May your 2009 be filled with the discovery of new truths, an expansion of your love, and a strengthening of your power.

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.

Linear Growth

Linear growth is when you can see the next steps ahead of you fairly clearly. Figuring out where you should go next isn’t that hard. Implementation is the biggest challenge here. This doesn’t necessarily mean you can see ten steps ahead, but the next step in front of you is at least visible. Once you complete that step, the next step will soon present itself.

An example of linear growth is my long-term path of improving my diet. I started on a variation of the SAD diet, and gradually progressed to vegetarianism, veganism, and raw foodism. There was some exploration along the way of course, but most of the time I had a pretty clear idea of the “next level” I wanted to reach.

There were two independent lines of development here, but they basically pointed in the same direction. The first line was shifting from animal-based foods to plant-based foods. First I eliminated all animal flesh, and later I dropped eggs and dairy products. I’ve been eating a 100% plant-based diet for about 12 years now.

The second line of development was to graduate from processed to unprocessed foods. I progressively dropped manufactured and cooked foods and began eating closer to nature (i.e. fresh, raw whole foods). Cooking does increase the bioavailability of a few nutrients, but that can’t compensate for the hundreds of other nutrients it simultaneously destroys; on the whole cooking is nutritionally devastating to food.

Linear growth is wonderful. When you can clearly see the next steps ahead of you, you can focus on making changes instead of second-guessing your decisions. This doesn’t mean that it’s easy, but at least you can see where you’re headed.

It’s important to recognize when you’re on a linear growth track in some area of your life. Often when we’re on a linear path that’s very challenging, we’ll have a tendency to second-guess our decisions. “There must be an easier way,” we proclaim. But when we rehash the decision, we keep coming up with the same answer. We’re on the right path; it’s just a very challenging path. This is good for us though because these are the paths that push us to build focus, self-discipline, and a strong work ethic.

If you think that if a path is too hard, it must automatically be the wrong path, you’re buying into weak-mindedness and turning your back on truth. Training yourself to lift heavier weights makes you stronger. Avoiding heavy weights only makes you weaker.

Growth Forks

A growth fork is when you see two or more mutually exclusive paths ahead of you, and it’s tricky to decide which path to take. Your challenge here lies in choosing the “correct” path. Implementing your decision may still be hard, but the up-front decision is the major limiting step.

Should you attend college or start your own business? Should you marry your current relationship partner or break up and go your separate ways? Should you move to Los Angeles or New York City?

Should you choose Option A or Option B? What’s the right choice? How do you decide?

Growth forks can be very frustrating. The problem with a tricky growth fork is that it can cause your growth to stall, sometimes for years.

I’ve faced some very difficult growth forks in my life. Some of them absorbed hundreds of hours trying to figure out the correct decision, and I still felt unsure about what to do.

You can seriously wrack your brain trying to figure out the best choice. You can use different diagnostic and analytical tools to help you decide. You can ask other people for advice. You can consult with your intuition. Sometimes this helps, but in many cases the more you try to analyze the situation, the more you feed your ambivalence.

One way to visualize a growth fork is to imagine two or more alternate timelines stretching into the future, one timeline for each possible branch leading away from your decision point. Once you make the decision, you lock yourself in to a certain branch. From that moment onward, you’ll never have the freedom to experience the other branches, at least not in the same way you can now.

Indecision at Growth Forks

One reason it’s so easy to get stuck at a growth fork is that the pre-fork position offers the illusion of greater freedom than any of the post-fork decisions. This freedom often feels better than making a commitment to any one path.

For example, suppose you’re married, and you’re also having an affair on the side. Your spouse and your lover find out about each other, and now you’re pressed from both sides to choose one or the other. Many people in this situation will delay making a choice, stringing along both spouse and lover as long as possible. Why? Because the freedom of keeping both possibilities open feels better than the instant loss of either partner. Neither path seems like a clear improvement over the state of perpetual indecision.

Unfortunately, when you stay stuck at a growth fork for too long, you often lose the freedom to make a choice at all. For example, your spouse and lover both get fed up with you and dump you at the same time, so you get nothing. Your freedom to decide has been taken away. The choice has been made for you. Letting fate decide isn’t a good idea because fate often makes crappy choices.

Growth forks needn’t be huge. You may get stuck at a growth fork when faced with the question, “What should I do today?” If you remain stuck in a state of indecision for too long, pretty soon you’ll lose the freedom to decide at all. Perhaps your TV or the Internet will make the decision for you. Such indecision can cause you to waste a large portion of your life, often by letting it slip away one day at a time.

Overcoming Indecision

So how do you overcome the trap of indecision at a growth fork?

Suppose you’re playing a computer role-playing game where you control an avatar in the game world. In this game you have a lot of decisions to make. What character class will you choose? Will you explore Arendia or Algaria? Which quests will you undertake? What guild will you join?

There are a lot of decisions to be made, but few people would consider such decisions paralyzing. Can you imagine someone complaining, “I bought this game three years ago, but I haven’t started playing yet because I just can’t decide what character class I should play. I don’t know what to do!”

Instead most people will just dive in and start playing. They’ll give a little consideration to such decisions, but they’ll decide fairly quickly, perhaps even impulsively. And for the most part, the consequence is that they’ll have fun.

Sure there may be some regrets along the way. “Dammit! I never should have picked up that cursed item!” But most people will just take any setbacks in stride and keep pressing on. As a result their character goes up in levels, and they get to tackle bigger and bigger challenges. When the game gets boring, it can be retired, and the player can move on to something else.

So why do we face situations in real life that can cause us to remain terribly stuck in indecision, but when we’re just playing a game, major in-game decisions are regarded as no big deal?

Consequences

Perhaps the main factor is that in an artificial game world, the consequences of your actions are considered minimal. Regardless of what you decide, you’re not really going to be hurt. No one else is likely to be hurt either. A bad choice affects only your character, but it doesn’t affect your real self. The whole thing is just pretend. No matter what happens to your character, the real you will still be okay.

But in the real world, things are different. Your actions have bigger consequences. People can get hurt. If you screw up, you could be socially ostracized, and that can create serious consequences for you.

It’s understandable to fear such consequences because at one time in human history, if you were socially ostracized by your peers, that could be a major threat to your survival. Getting kicked out of your community for incompetent decision-making might even be a death sentence.

Today, however, the consequences of being socially ostracized aren’t nearly as severe. For example, in the USA most marriages end in divorce. And interestingly, marital satisfaction has been on the rise for decades, keeping in step with the relative ease of getting a divorce. At one time getting a divorce was considered socially unacceptable (and of course still is in some cultures), but now it’s not such a big deal. Even if your divorce messes up the lives of many people, society is robust enough to absorb the impact, and you can still press on and achieve post-divorce happiness.

Of course there are other consequences aside from being socially ostracized. You could really mess up your finances, for instance. That could put a big crimp in your lifestyle plans.

When you apply some sort of analytical process to decision-making, you’re trying to assess and compare the consequences of different possible paths. The path with the best consequence is deemed the correct choice.

Unfortunately, assessing and comparing consequences requires predicting the future. To some degree we can pull this off, but it’s tough to be accurate. Real life will seldom fit our predictions.

So we really have two problems that lead to the state of indecision. First, we consider the consequences of certain real-life decisions to be serious and important. Second, we try to predict which consequences are best. This is how we try to make a decision.

The problem is that this decision-making process often fails. The more you magnify the importance of a decision, the more you’ll paralyze yourself. Eventually external factors will force you down a certain path, and you’ll lose your freedom to decide altogether. By refusing to decide, you get assigned the character class of Peon by default.

An Alternative Decision-Making Process

How can you make a decision if not by comparing future consequences?

This might sound like a subtle distinction, but a different way to make decisions is by comparing immediate present-moment consequences.

What does this mean?

Instead of trying to predict the future to determine the long-term implications of each possible path, drop the whole branching timeline model. Instead of regarding time as a line, consider time as a single fixed point. In other words, assume that only the present moment is real, and nothing beyond that exists.

Your decision point no longer involves the selection of a long-term path. Now it’s merely a state change to your present moment.

As you consider the alternative choices you might make, ask yourself this question: If I were to commit to this choice, how would it affect me right now? What immediate changes would I experience?

Imagine each possible choice as real, as if you’ve already made it. Pay attention to how the choice makes you feel. Does it feel good, or does it feel wrong somehow?

From Growth Forks to Linear Growth

When I use this process, I often find that my growth forks transform into linear growth. The indecision fades away, and I begin to see that the fork itself was merely an illusion. It was a mental construct — a distraction — that my mind created because on some level I didn’t feel ready to face the next logical step on my linear path. Because I thought the step was too big for me to handle, I created the growth fork as a way of putting my progress on pause.

For example, for many years while I was running my game development business, I was stuck at a growth fork. I debated whether I should keep growing my games business or quit that field and build a career in the field of personal development.

I kept trying to decide by predicting the future consequences of each path, but that led to analysis paralysis because I was comparing apples to oranges. It was tough to decide on that basis. Because of the difficulty of changing careers, my mind had a tendency to keep me stuck. Remaining in a state of indecision was actually easier and gave me the illusion of more freedom.

However, when I compacted each alternative to a present-moment decision, considering how each option made me feel in the present moment, the right choice was clear. When I thought about continuing to build my games business, I felt trapped. When I thought about working in the field of personal development, I felt excited. I didn’t need to predict the future. The present-moment difference was clear enough.

This helped me see that deep down, I already knew the right decision. But I was having trouble coming to terms with it, so I created the decision fork to keep myself stuck. Once I saw that the decision fork was a self-created illusion, I realized that I was dealing with a linear growth challenge all along.

Although it might not seem like a linear progression to shift from game development to personal development, it was for me. While running my games business, I began writing articles on the side to help out other game developers. Eventually my articles became more popular than my games. Switching from creating games to creating articles was therefore a semi-logical “graduation” for me. It became clear that I could provide more value through writing articles than I could through producing games.

Since that time, whenever I’ve faced a tricky growth fork, it has eventually revealed itself as a false dichotomy. It was an illusion I created to avoid dealing with a major growth challenge. Sometimes I created growth forks as a way of giving myself permission to pause and gather my strength.

Making the right decision wasn’t the real issue. Deep down I knew the correct decision. I could see the correct path just by focusing on the present-moment effects of each alternative. The challenge was being able to accept the correct path and to stop resisting it.

Is it possible that your own growth forks are merely illusions? Could they simply be delay tactics? Might you already know the correct choice, but you’re having a hard time accepting it?

Can you recognize the pattern that whenever you get stuck at a growth fork, you use the state of indecision as a way of putting your forward progress on pause? Do you see that this is a way you avoid what you know is coming up because you don’t feel ready to deal with the consequences yet? Can you see that making the correct decision isn’t the real issue? Can you see that the real issue is being able to fully accept the path you’re already on?

Even when you’re on a fairly linear path, you may have a tendency to create growth forks as a way of putting your progress on pause. If you don’t feel strong enough to take on the challenges ahead of you, a growth fork is a tempting option. By placing yourself in a state of indecision, you get “credit” for trying, even though your forward progress is halted.

When you face a tricky growth fork and you feel stuck in a state of indecision, pull back for a moment, and reconsider your challenge from a different perspective. Instead of trying to choose the correct path, consider that your task is to fully accept the path that deep down, you’ve already chosen.

Accepting Your Path

Accepting your path can give rise to some interesting emotions. I’d call it a combination of relief, excitement, and surrender. It feels good to leave the state of indecision behind, but it can also feel uncomfortable because now you have to get to work. You can no longer hide behind the excuse of indecision.

The feeling that “Crap… this is gonna be hard! I’m not even sure I can do this…” is perfectly normal. I experience that feeling every time I get past a growth fork. On the one hand, I know the decision is correct. But on the other hand, I don’t feel quite ready for the path ahead. I glance at the level 30 monster down the road, and I’m concerned because my character is only at level 20.

But once you stop asking, “Am I really supposed to tackle that level 30 monster?” and you fully accept that yes, you’re the hero assigned to it, this helps to shift your focus. The indecision evaporates, and you surrender to the path ahead. You realize you’re going to have to build your character beyond level 20, so you can prove a match for that monster.

“I don’t know what to do” is an excuse that really means, “I don’t feel strong enough to take the next step.” In other words, “I don’t know what to do” is pure nonsense. Of course you know what to do. You’re just scared that you won’t be able to handle it.

The funny thing is that if you poured all the energy being wasted on worry and indecision into building your character, the monster ahead would soon be no match for you.

Which path of your growth fork makes you think, “Gosh… I dunno if I can do that. That looks pretty tough. That’s a pretty scary monster”? Is it the entrepreneurial path? The path of improving your diet? The path of marriage? Which path will push your character to progress from level 20 to level 30?

Take heart that other heroes have already defeated that same monster you must face. Others have already reached the level you’re trying to reach. You can train up to their level if you work at it. Your level 30 challenge looks difficult because you’re looking at it through the eyes of a level 20 character, but you don’t have to remain a level 20 character forever.

Drop the excuse of indecision, and start working on level 21 today.

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.