Is it possible to use the Law of Attraction to manifest true abundance in your life, including financial abundance, social abundance, and more? Absolutely, it is. In this 35-minute video (split into 4 individual clips for posting on YouTube), I explain why people so often fail in this area, and I give you a simple two-part method to make it work for you. I also share some stories and examples from my own life to help you internalize these ideas so you can apply them successfully.

There are several video clips of me on YouTube already, but those were all recorded by others, including some interviews that people have done with me. This is the first time I’ve intentionally recorded a video to share the kind of ideas I might otherwise cover in an article or podcast. So please consider this my first official video blog.

I recommend that you watch all 4 clips back to back if possible (35 minutes total). I broke the video into shorter clips because of YouTube’s 10-minute limit. I wanted to post these on YouTube instead of another service since it’s the most popular one, and I already have a YouTube channel (stevepavlinadotcom). Feel free to subscribe to it if you’re a YouTube member.

This video was recorded in HD by the way. Enjoy!

You can watch the videos one at a time below, or use this playlist link to automatically watch them in sequence on YouTube.

Creating Abundance (Part 1 of 4)

Creating Abundance (Part 2 of 4)

Creating Abundance (Part 3 of 4)

Creating Abundance (Part 4 of 4)

I’m a total newbie at video, and this was my very first time using iMovie — or any video editing software for that matter — so please be kind.

I hope you find these insights on creating abundance helpful. If you’d like to see more videos, I’m open to suggestions for additional topics to cover.

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

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

Workshop Details

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

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

Workshop Location

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

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

Comparison to CGW #1

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

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

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

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

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

Workshop FAQ

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

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

Workshop Forums

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

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

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

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

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

CGW Alumni Attend Free

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time to Register

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But I have bills to pay,” you say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Since these courses tend to be fairly involved, I decided to ask for feedback from people who’d already gone through some of them to see if they’d be worth my time to evaluate. To be honest I was partly hoping that people would trash them because that would save me a lot of time.

However, the feedback I received about David’s work was very positive overall. Several people told me they got great results from applying what they learned from his programs, such as successfully initiating new relationships.

Another thing I was able to discern from the feedback was that many people found David’s later programs to be significantly better than his earlier works. These products were released over a period of many years, so it makes sense that the work would evolve over time. At the time I wasn’t quite sure what people meant by “better” though.

Evaluating David DeAngelo’s Products

This summer I went through a massive amount of material from David’s product line for men — dozens of DVDs in total — including the following home study courses:

• Cocky Comedy
• Meeting Women Online
• On Being a Man
• Deep Inner Game
• Man Transformation
• Become Mr. Right

He has other product lines for women created by different experts, and I have several of those products too, but I haven’t had a chance to evaluate them yet. Because of the size and scope of these programs, it can take a long time to go through them. It’s a good thing I enjoy evaluating personal development products.

I definitely saw a progression in these courses. The earlier works like Cocky Comedy and Meeting Women Online were largely technique-based. Say this and do that to get a certain result. Although the message in those programs didn’t resonate strongly with me, I could see them being helpful to many men, especially men in their early 20s. I might have applied some of those ideas in college to good effect, but I don’t see them being as effective at creating connections with women who are very conscious and aware. Even David admits as much in his later programs. Whether or not those products will prove helpful to you depends on where you are on your path of relationship growth. If you’re just starting out, you’ll probably find them useful. But if you’re already good at connecting with women and are working on the intimacy stage, it’s safe to say you’re ready for something more advanced.

David’s more recent works like Man Transformation and Become Mr. Right have a significantly different focus. I could see why people liked them so much. In these courses the emphasis is on inner development, not so much on tactics and techniques. A lot of time is spent exploring what it means to be a man today. How do we shed outmoded models of manhood that no longer serve us? What kind of men do we wish to be? How can we express ourselves authentically with women? What do women find most attractive about men? How can we create fulfilling intimate relationships? What’s holding us back?

Man Transformation

By far my favorite course was Man Transformation. At 20 DVDs, it’s the most comprehensive of all these programs. That’s about 35-40 hours of material.

Man Transformation focuses on three core areas of relationship development:

1. Inner game – developing your character, identity, and life purpose from the inside out
2. Interaction skills – approaching women, starting conversations, being confident and authentic
3. Creating lasting intimacy – moving beyond attraction and creating a deep connection with your partner

This course covers everything from approaching a woman the first time… to dating her… to creating a fulfilling long-term relationship with her.

I especially liked that this course included hour-long presentations by multiple experts — 16 in total aside from David himself. These people share a wealth of knowledge based on extensive experience.

My perspective on this course is necessarily different than most people who’d be interested in it, since I’ve been enjoying a very fulfilling intimate relationship since 1994, married since 1998. One reason that Erin and I remain very happy together is that we worked through a great number of blocks to intimacy along the way, especially during our first few years together. There were a lot of challenging moments, but we worked through them together. Our relationship has been — and continues to be — an amazing growth journey for both of us.

Many men, however, don’t know how to work through their blocks to intimacy and remain stuck for years. For example, many guys feel tremendous anxiety at the mere thought of walking up to a woman and starting up a conversation with her (aka approach anxiety), and this paralyzes them from taking action. Other guys can start a conversation, but they don’t know how to express romantic interest and end up orbiting the woman indefinitely as a friend. Other guys are good at getting dates, but they’re stuck with a series of shallow connections and can’t progress to the intimacy stage.

Man Transformation spends a great deal of time identifying these blocks and explaining how to overcome them. I think it will be really helpful for men to learn from men who started out with poor relationship skills and progressed far beyond those limitations.

If this program sounds interesting to you, please read my complete review of Man Transformation.

Exclusive 10% Discount and Bonuses for StevePavlina.com Readers

When I find a course or program that impressed me and that I feel good about recommending, I like to arrange a special deal for my readers if possible. Since I have such a large readership, product publishers are often willing to offer us a group discount or bonus.

Well, I’m pleased to tell you that the publisher was willing to offer both a discount and an extra bonus for any of my readers that are interested in purchasing the Man Transformation course. And best of all, this offer is exclusive for us, so you’re getting a better deal here than anyone else can offer.

First, you get a 10% discount off the price. My readers are the only people who are being offered this discount. Apparently they never do discounts, but they’re willing to do it for us.

Second, you get a number of free bonuses, including 3 extra DVDs (on time management, health, and financial success), a note-taking journal, and a free copy of David’s Double Your Dating e-book. Most of those bonuses you would still get if you buy direct from the publisher — it’s part of their standard offer. However, the free Double Your Dating e-book is a special bonus that’s only being offered to StevePavlina.com readers.

Third, you also get to try Man Transformation for a free 30-day trial. You only pay for it if you decide to keep it. Otherwise just send it back and don’t pay a dime.

As with any special deals I arrange, this one includes a 100% no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.

Finally, if you live in the USA, you get free shipping too. If you live outside the USA, you’ll pay a reasonable shipping fee.

This offer is good for the next 10 days (through September 27th, 2009). After that, the offer may continue in some form, but it probably won’t be as generous.

You’ll find all the details on my Man Transformation review.

In case it wasn’t obvious, this program is intended for men. If/when I find a high-quality dating or relationship program for women or couples, I’ll be sure to let you know about 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.

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.

Paraliminals are personal development audio programs designed to condition your mind for enhanced results, such as greater productivity, positive behavioral changes, better health, and so on.

What’s unique about Paraliminals is that they deliver simultaneous but distinct messages to your left and right ears. One message is tailored to your left brain, the other to your right brain. No subliminal messages are used, so you can hear exactly what’s being said. The messages are of course very positive and uplifting. It feels good to listen to them.

Listening to a Paraliminal is a very relaxing experience, much like a guided meditation session. Paraliminals are recorded with special Holosync technology that uses binaural beats to put your mind into a relaxed and receptive state. This is one reason I recommend Paraliminals so highly — they never fail to put me into a deep state of relaxation.

I’ve been listening to Paraliminals regularly for almost 3 years now. My last listening session was last night before going to bed.

I wrote a detailed Paraliminals review a while back, so please check it out if you want to learn more about them. I own the entire Paraliminals collection, and I didn’t write my review until I’d listened to most of the Paraliminals multiple times. I still feel just as good about recommending Paraliminals today as I did at the time I wrote my original review… except that now I’m even more impressed by the long-term usefulness of this collection. The quality is just outstanding.

The Peak Performance Paraliminal CD includes two different sessions. The first session is 25 minutes, and the second is 23 minutes. The first session focuses on boosting your motivation, and the second session encourages you to take action from a place of passion and commitment. I was informed that the free download includes only the second session.

Take note that this isn’t a promotional recording — it’s the same material they sell on the Peak Performance CD for $29.95.

Given my roots as a shareware game developer, I’m delighted to see Learning Strategies embracing the try-before-you buy model. Obviously I love giving away content for free.

Download the free Paraliminal and give it a listen. I think you’ll really enjoy it.

If you like the free Paraliminal and decide to buy the whole Paraliminals collection as a result, be aware that I receive a commission on those sales. As a general rule, when I find good products to recommend, I almost always negotiate a profit sharing deal with the publisher or join their existing affiliate program. This enables me to generate a sustainable income while continuing to offer a vast amount of free content to people around the world. It also makes it possible for me keep this site free of all third-party advertising. I evaluate a LOT of products every year, and I only recommend the very best ones I find.

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.

When I was in high school, I did volunteer work at two different places, helping out for about 50 hours at each place.

Working With Seniors

The first place was a convalescent home near LAX (Los Angeles Airport). I must have been 16 years old, since this was shortly after I learned to drive. I served as an assistant for the woman who was in charge of the place. Picture Gilda Radner after four cups of coffee.

I helped to facilitate various activities with the seniors at this place, including games and social events. Sometimes I talked one on one with people in their rooms. Other times I pushed people around in wheelchairs for their daily ”exercise.”

I remember talking to one guy who had a world map on the wall of his room. He said, “Point to anywhere, and I’ll tell you about it.” I’d point to different countries, and he’d tell me of his travels there, some of them during World War II. I rather enjoyed that. He reminded me a little of my grandfather, who was stationed in Germany at the end of WWII.

Overall, I learned a lot from this experience, but I honestly didn’t enjoy it. Most of the seniors at this place seemed lonely and depressed. Some were unfriendly, withdrawn, and bitter and clearly didn’t want to be there. A few seemed mentally unstable. I was cautioned to steer clear of at least one person there.

The staff seemed overworked and unmotivated. I didn’t get the sense they wanted to be there either. I imagine it was just a job to them. No sense of life purpose was present as far as I could tell.

Often the staff treated the seniors like children. That was sad to see, but at the time, I just assumed they knew what they were doing.

During the time I was there (Friday afternoons for a few months), I don’t recall seeing any family members visit, but I might not have noticed if they did because I usually wasn’t near the front desk. But it’s safe to say that the people in this convalescent home didn’t have much social interaction with anyone but the staff and each other. And some of them didn’t like each other or the staff.

Most of the seniors there were very passive. They just went along with the program and didn’t resist. For me personally that lack of independent will was the most difficult thing to see. I could better understand the people who showed bursts of emotion on occasion.

Perhaps the biggest lesson for me was that I didn’t want to end my life in this manner. It seemed so sad to me that human beings should spend their last remaining years this way. Virtually no one there was really doing anything with their lives. They spent a lot of time watching old movies on TV. I got the sense that everyone was basically waiting to die. The convalescent home was essentially a holding cell before you hit the afterlife. Once you checked in, you’d eventually be leaving as a corpse.

This was a formative experience for me because it gave me a greater sense of taking personal responsibility for my long-term health — all the way to the grave. Some things may be out of our control, but most of those seniors didn’t really need to end up there. If they’d assumed 100% responsibility for their own health care from a young age, most could have been physically and mentally independent for years to come. I’d rather end up Jack LaLanne (age 94) than have my body falling apart at age 70.

You could blame the families for abandoning their elders, but I wouldn’t do that. I agree that many Americans have a long way to go in terms of how we treat our elders compared to the respect shown by some cultures, but I also think that respect must be earned. If you allow your mind and body to atrophy so badly that your family would rather pay thousands of dollars to make you someone else’s problem, who’s responsible? Ultimate responsibility always rests with you. Just consider for a careful moment or two where your current health decisions are leading you. Where will your body be at age 70, 80, 90?

Incidentally, this convalescent home was later written up in the local newspaper for reported health code violations. I didn’t know anything about health codes at the time, but none of the details in the newspaper report were surprising to me.

Working With Disabled Children

When I was 17, I volunteered at the James McBride School in L.A. This was a special education center for children with various disabilities. I figured I’d already worked with seniors, so I might as well try the other end of the age spectrum. This time I was a classroom assistant for pre-school kids. The kids were probably 3-4 years old.

Most of these kids wore special helmets because they tripped and fell down a lot. One child had cerebral palsy and spent most of the school day in a special contraption to support his body and head. Without it he was unable to hold himself up. He looked a bit emaciated because his muscles were so underdeveloped. He also drooled a lot. I really loved his spirit — his smile would totally light up the room. Just looking at him forced me to open my heart.

I absolutely loved working with these kids. They were so alive and full of joy – the way people naturally act before social conditioning takes root. I enjoyed helping them learn shapes like circles, squares, and triangles. They already knew their colors better than I did.

After the pre-school kids went home, I ate lunch, and then I monitored afternoon recess activities with the grade-school kids. This mainly involved helping them shoot hoops and making sure they didn’t get into trouble. Some of the kids had difficulty managing their emotions, so it didn’t take much to set them off and initiate a fight. I remember that one kid with Down Syndrome sometimes had issues getting along with the other kids; we just had to make sure his tremendous energy was being channeled in a positive way.

I still recall some of the pre-school kid’s names — Steven, Candice, Joey, and Ricky.

Steven was a brown-haired kid who took an instant liking to me once he discovered we had the same first name. In his eyes that made us instant best friends. It was a Festivus miracle!

Candice was a short, sassy blend of Queen Latifa and Rosie Perez. The only problem was that while she was chewing you out, she’d often lose her balance and fall down. For an adult that might have been embarrassing. But Candice would simply get back up, straighten her helmet, and continue sassing you without missing a beat.

It’s funny to realize that those kids are now in their mid-20s. I wonder if any of them are reading my blog today.

Many years later, Erin did some substitute teaching at James McBride. It was a very challenging experience for her. She was working with older kids though, not the pre-schoolers.

Working with those kids made me more interested in having kids of my own. Before that I was definitely a no-kids person. This experience didn’t push me over the edge completely, but it definitely softened me up.

Watching kids learning shapes and colors reminded me of my experience at James McBride. At the preschool level, the way “normal” kids learn and play together isn’t much different than the behavior of children coping with various disabilities. Kids are kids, and self-acceptance comes naturally to us. For a young child, dealing with a disability is just life. It’s only later on that society teaches those same beautiful children that just because they’re different, they’re somehow broken.

Being normal is overrated anyway. If you live a “normal” life, your reward may be a stint at a convalescent home.

This year I read a book called The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal by Jonathan Mooney. The book is an insightful journey into the lives of people who are labeled disabled and the challenges they experience in dealing with society’s pre-conceived notions about them. This book gave me a new perspective on my experiences at the James McBride School. I can honestly say that I both loved and hated this book at the same time.

Community Service

Later in life when I got myself into a bit of legal trouble, I ended up doing some involuntary, court-ordered community service. That was a whole different beast because I didn’t really want to be there. Most of this time was spent picking up trash at the Emeryville Marina.

In January Erin and I spent a few days in Emeryville (just east from San Francisco across the Bay Bridge), and I took a morning walk around the marina. The park where I did my community service was still there, and I actually saw people in orange vests picking up trash just like I did… half my life ago. None of them looked like they wanted to be there either. I should have walked up to one of them and asked, “Surely you must have some interesting stories to tell. Have you ever thought about a career in blogging?”

When you perform service with a closed heart and mind, the experience is completely different compared to doing it because you really want to.

Benefits of Volunteering

I highly recommend doing some volunteer work, especially if you’ve never done it before. It’s a great way to open your heart and to feel more connected to people. If you’re feeling isolated, disconnected, misunderstood, or lonely, then volunteering can definitely help. Your biggest problems in life will all seem pretty minor when you’re face to face with the heart-melting smile of a child with cerebral palsy.

Many people have discovered new career opportunities from volunteering. If you want to work in a certain field, what better way to get started than to put in a few hours each week for free? And if you don’t have a clue what you’d like to do for your main career, volunteer at a few different places to see what you like best. You’ll learn a lot, build valuable experience, and make new friends and contacts.

Use volunteering to face some of your fears. Push yourself to grow. Are you uncomfortable around children or homeless people? How do you feel about domestic violence? Do you avoid people who are dying? You can use volunteering to face your fears head-on, gradually replacing them with greater truths.

The nice thing about most volunteer work is that you can quit whenever you want, so you don’t have to make a long-term commitment.

Volunteering is an activity, but it’s also an attitude. You’re there just to give. Obviously you’ll gain something from the experience, but it’s nice just to have the experience of helping people without needing or expecting anything in return.

Volunteering Through Your Career

Do your best to bring this same attitude to your main career. Work because you want to, not because you have to. Work like a free person who chooses to work, not like a slave who is forced to work. And when you’re at work, pour your whole heart into it. Never leave your soul at home when you go to the office.

I wrote this article because I had something I wanted to share with you, not because I need or expect something from you. My motivation to write stemmed from desire, not obligation. You’re free to read this article, think about it, and not pay me a dime for it. It is a gift.

I hate to think of what would become of my work if it was something I felt I had to do, like involuntary community service. If you work because you feel you must work to earn money, you’re poisoning your output. You don’t get great art by whipping a slave and saying, “Be more creative or else!”

Getting Started

If you’re curious to learn more about volunteering, a good place to get started is VolunteerMatch. You can use that site to search for volunteer opportunities near you. Another option is just to ask around, or stop by a place that looks interesting and ask if they could use some free help. If you’re currently in school, someone at your school may also be able to help out with volunteer placement. I got connected with the convalescent home and the James McBride School through my high school guidance counselor.

I recommend that you do something where you get to work with people face to face as opposed to sitting in a room alone doing filing. If you volunteer at a homeless shelter for example, ask to work with homeless people directly, even if you’re just serving them food. Throw your whole heart into the experience.

If your life is a struggle… if you keep getting bad breaks… if it appears that the world doesn’t much care for you, then it’s your move. The world is waiting on you to say “I love you” first.

A couple hours on a lazy afternoon is all it takes to send your life in a whole new direction.

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.

I explained that my primary interest in polyamory has to do with sharing emotional intimacy, not physical intimacy. That’s the honest truth.

However, later I realized there was a hidden assumption behind the comments people were making. I really wish I’d caught this earlier, but I didn’t notice it until recently.

I suddenly realized, “Wait a minute here. What if sex really was my primary motivation for going poly? What it I was just in it for the sex? Would that have been a problem?”

The hidden assumption is that enjoying sex with multiple, consenting partners is somehow wrong.

Now that’s a belief I definitely don’t agree with.

Let’s explore this issue in more detail.

What’s Wrong With Sex?

Is there anything wrong with two people coming together and just having sex — for fun — without first having an emotionally intimate relationship (assuming safe sex is practiced of course)?

I was raised to believe the answer to this is yes, that there is something wrong with it.

As a sophomore in high school, I had to write a school paper on why premarital sex was wrong. I did the assignment and regurgitated what I needed to get an A.

Privately I had doubts about what I was taught. And of course I went ahead and had premarital sex anyway, which turned out to be a lot of fun with no guilt or regret.

Looking back, I think I would have preferred to get an F on that assignment and had more fun instead.

Today I see absolutely nothing wrong with having sex just for fun, as long as it’s done safely and consensually. I think those who feel that sex is wrong, dirty, or immoral are terribly repressed. I’ve never met a genuinely happy person that felt this way about sex. Perhaps if such people just got laid more often, they wouldn’t be so grumpy.

Prerequisites for Sex

What prerequisites do we actually need to engage in sex? A willing partner is really all that’s required. If you have a willing partner, you can have sex.

Serious rocket science here, eh?

Just to be clear, let’s assume your body and your partner’s body are physically capable of having sex as well.

All other rules, constraints, and requirements arise from social conditioning and are therefore unnecessary.

You don’t need to be married or in a committed relationship.

You don’t need to be dating.

You don’t need to be in love.

You don’t need an opposite-sex partner.

You don’t need to be exclusive with your partner.

Your partner doesn’t need to be exclusive with you.

You don’t need to be programmed in multiple techniques.

You don’t even need to have met the other person first.

All you need is consent.

Technically speaking, even your partner’s consent is a socially conditioned prerequisite, but I think it’s one we should maintain. The alternative is illegal, unethical, and hurtful. We can certainly enjoy sex without resorting to rape. Acting out your kinky fantasies, on the other hand, can still be completely consensual.

How many extra rules do you have in your head about what’s required for you to have sex above and beyond the most basic?

How are those rules working for you? Are you delighted with the results they’re producing?

Do your rules make it easy for you to enjoy the sexual experiences you desire? Or are they simply getting in the way and blocking you?

Do you realize that you have the freedom to choose the rules you want to keep as well as those you’d rather dump?

I’m not suggesting that you need to lower your standards to the absolute minimum. I’m simply suggesting that you take a good, conscious look at your current rules and requirements for having sex, and consider whether they’re helping you or hurting you.

Personally I have pretty high standards for when I will and won’t have sex. These standards, however, are ones I’ve chosen because I’m happy with them. I don’t maintain standards just because everyone else feels they’re proper and necessary.

Let go of unnecessary sex rules that don’t serve you. You decide what’s really important to you, and drop the rest.

Perhaps my #1 requirement for having sex with someone is the energetic connection I feel toward her. Does her energy feel open, loving, and positive? Do I want to share my energy with her? Would I find the experience draining or uplifting? Is she capable of both giving and receiving? In most cases this type of connection will arise from genuine friendship. But it’s possible to enjoy this kind of connection with someone I just met.

The more restrictive rules you pile on top of the simple act of having sex, the more fun you’ll deny yourself. The more flexible and consciously chosen your rules are, the more sexual abundance you’ll enjoy.

Sexual Awareness

Your personal experience of sexuality depends on the awareness you bring to it. If your thoughts are rooted in fear and scarcity, your sex life will reflect that. If your thoughts are centered in love and abundance, your sex life will reflect that as well.

I’ve spent a lot of time this month hanging out in Las Vegas with polyamorous people. These are people who enjoy having sex with multiple partners quite often.

I found it absolutely fascinating to learn from them. One conversation lasted nearly eight hours without a break, from 8:30pm until 4:15am. The time just flew by because I was so enthralled. I left their hotel feeling so energized that it was hard to fall asleep afterwards.

Here are some of the common patterns I noticed about them:

1. They believe sex is a giving act; inviting someone to have sex is like giving someone a special gift.
2. They take pleasure in giving pleasure to their partners.
3. They enjoy having sex and see it as a fun thing to do; sex is play.
4. They easily attract willing partners who feel the same as they do.
5. They embrace their sexuality and aren’t embarrassed by it; this makes you feel the same about your own sexuality in their presence.
6. They accept themselves as they are, warts and all; they feel good about their bodies, regardless of how well they live up to society’s standards of physical beauty.
7. They see themselves as being worthy of sexual abundance; some can offer specific reasons for this, like knowing they can create massive pleasure for their partners.
8. They enjoy the variety of having sex with multiple partners; their partners enjoy it too.
9. Everything is 100% consensual; no one is pressured to do anything they aren’t comfortable with.
10. They’re pretty darned happy about their lives; they laughed a lot!

Within the first few minutes of conversation with someone they just met, these people can express sexual intent, and a positive response is anticipated and received. They regard sex as a gift they can offer and share with others, and this causes others to respond in kind. They don’t broadcast creepy vibes because they aren’t trying to take anything from anyone.

I noticed that such people also resist putting labels on their experiences. They didn’t quite resonate with polyamory or any other specific labels. Some of them invented their own labels; others preferred none at all. They allow their sex lives to flow dynamically instead of trying to force their experiences into a particular mold. This was especially eye-opening for me because I have a hard time coming up with good labels for what I’m doing. Now I can see that it’s folly to even try.

What is your attitude toward sex? Do you see it as a fun gift to share with someone? Or do you secretly believe you’re doing something wrong, asking for something you don’t deserve?

Hanging out with these people for the past couple weeks was incredibly eye-opening. Just by being themselves and inviting me into their world, they helped me release years of accumulated mental baggage.

Most of what I observed, I’d already figured out mentally, at least in bits and pieces. But being around people who truly lived it helped me to “get it” on a much deeper level.

It’s easy to say that sex is an act of giving. It’s another thing entirely to internalize that belief so well that you can meet someone new and began discussing your desire to have sex within the first five minutes of conversation — and consistently get a positive response of delightful anticipation from the other person.

Why Sex?

“Why sex? Why not love without sex? Simply stated, were we not to manifest for the lessons of physicality we would have remained in the form of spirit.” – Mystic Life, Spiritual Polyamory

Do you think it’s a cosmic mistake that you have a body capable of — and desiring of — sex with another person?

Your sex drive makes you want to share pleasure with other human beings. You can deny yourself this pleasure, or you can enjoy it. Which will path make you happier?

Let’s be honest. If you were whisked away to a fantasy land where you could do absolutely anything you wanted, and no one else would ever know about it, what would you do? What sexual fantasies might you act out?

You slut!

Now which of those desires could you experience in real life if you simply had willing partners?

What if you could enjoy an absolute abundance of judgment-free, guilt-free sex with all the willing partners you desire? And what if your partners enjoyed it and were much happier for the experience as well?

Is this such a bad thing to invite into your reality?

Now do you realize that this is actually possible? We’re certainly capable of sharing this type of connection with each other. We just have to dump all the mental blocks we’ve used to convince ourselves it can never happen for us.

And the more brutal truth is that lots of people have already released these blocks, and they’re just waiting on you to do the same. People are willing to have amazing sex with you, but your limiting beliefs cause you to broadcast vibes that would send them running the opposite direction. Such vibes include unworthiness, scarcity thinking, and negative judgments toward people who enjoy sexual abundance. If you’re really blocked, you may never even see such people appear in your reality except as fictional characters. But I assure you — they’re real… and they’re spectacular.

For too long we’ve demonized and repressed our sexual desires. But those sexual desires are there for a reason. If we pursue them consciously, they bring us together, they make us happy, and they even perpetuate our species.

What would happen if we stopped fighting and resisting our sexual desires and consciously embraced them instead? What would happen if we fully accepted ourselves as sexual beings?

Sex and the Law of Attraction

Do you realize that willing partners are everywhere? But they can’t come into your reality very easily if you harbor limiting beliefs that block them.

If you were a vibrational match for sexual abundance, you could go out tonight, meet someone compatible, and have great sex together. People do this all the time.

You can try to make progress by studying the behavior patterns of people who are able to do this, but what you’re really after is a vibrational shift in your being. You simply need to dump the limiting beliefs that tell you sex is something dirty, selfish, or unworthy. If you can do this, the discordant behaviors will fade on their own.

I’ve been amazed by the massive shifts that have been occurring in my reality over the past several weeks as a result of internal shifts in my thoughts and beliefs.

Initially there was some craziness as people reacted to my decision to explore polyamory. But regardless of how people reacted, I was already congruent with the change, and I knew with certainty that I wouldn’t turn back. I had burned the ships behind me before I posted the Dec 31st announcement.

Within days a whirlwind of external change began to occur. Sometimes it felt like Erin and I were in the midst of an energetic tornado. During the first week of January, several light bulbs burned out in our house (including some with a 7-year warranty that were only a few month’s old). We also popped a circuit breaker, and our car blew a tire that week as well. We’ve had previous experiences like this where significant vibrational shifts in our lives manifest as physical disturbances in our home.

A flood of helpful advice and resources came to us. New friends appeared. Polyamorous people came to Las Vegas to visit us and befriend us. New relationship possibilities began to simmer and gradually coalesce.

I’ve gone through some pretty big shifts in my life before, but none have been as rapid and explosive as this one. I’d look back on each week, barely able to fathom how much had changed. I can’t even remember when I last saw my comfort zone. I think he got left behind somewhere around Christmas.

Today I feel very differently about relationships, sex, and life in general than I did just 30 days ago. And consequently, the social landscape I’m experiencing is utterly and completely different as well.

I love the changes that have occurred, and I’m ridiculously happy with this new direction. It does take some getting used to though. I feel like someone power-leveled my character when I wasn’t looking. When I look around my universe, I hardly recognize it, and yet it still feels exactly as it should be.

One thing is clear. I can never go back to my previous level of thinking.

Conscious Sex

Perhaps the most conscious way to explore our sexuality is to stop corrupting sex by trying to turn it into something else. It’s time for us to release the emotional and social baggage we’ve linked to it.

Sex isn’t a relationship. It isn’t a sin. It isn’t a performance. It isn’t a curse.

Sex is simply an experience.

Take a moment to decide whether or not sex is an experience you wish to have and in what manner you’d like to experience it. Tune in to what you truly desire. Then work on shedding everything that keeps you out of vibrational harmony with your desires.

“Surrender into your own wholeness. Feel its warmth and genuine comfort. Question everything you’ve been taught directly or indirectly about love.” – Mystic Life, Spiritual Polyamory

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.

A common misconception is that polyamory is all about the sex. For some people sex with multiple partners is a very big deal, but for the vast majority of poly people I’ve communicated with, sex just isn’t the main reason for going poly. It wasn’t my #1 reason either.

If you want to understand the realities of polyamory, try not to be too obsessed with the sexual component. Sex is only one piece of the much larger puzzle.

Saying that polyamory is all about the sex is no different than saying marriage is all about the sex. Say to a married couple, “Oh, please… you two just got married for the sex. Admit it!” At best you’ll probably get an eye-roll in response. A similar response is appropriate for polyamorous relationships.

Friendship Is the Core

My relationship with Erin began on the basis of friendship. We became close friends first and soon became lovers too. Our beautiful friendship has always been precious to me, and it has served as the core of a very strong relationship. I genuinely care about Erin, and she cares deeply about me. She and I have been best friends for many years.

Some people consider sexual attraction or sexual chemistry to be the core of a good relationship. This can certainly make for a fun short-term fling, but by itself it doesn’t provide much substance for a deep, intimate connection. Good chemistry is a great thing to have, but it’s not the only thing that matters.

I understand that the desire for sex can seem overwhelming when you’re in your teens or 20s (especially if you consume dairy products and ingest your fair share of bovine hormones). But as you get older, your sex drive needn’t play such a huge role in your life. Other factors become more important, especially long-term compatibility and shared values.

Emotional Intimacy

What really draws me to polyamory is the opportunity to be emotionally intimate with other people. I’m referring to deep, soulful connections similar to what I’ve experienced with Erin.

You may be thinking that I could have achieved this from within the confines of my marriage without having to resort to full-on polyamory. Just hold that thought for now. To explain this honestly will take a bit of unraveling.

When Erin and I first met, I’d never really had a close, emotionally intimate relationship with anyone. In large part due to my upbringing, the shields around my heart were very strong, and I didn’t let other people get too close to me in terms of intimacy.

In my late teens and early 20s, if a woman tried to get close to me, I’d usually deflect her. I did the same thing with my male friends too. None of my friends knew the real me because I shielded my true self from being too exposed. Most of the time I didn’t even realize I was doing this. It just seemed normal to maintain a certain minimum safe distance from others. I’m referring to emotional distance, not physical distance.

Then Erin came into my life, and everything went kittywompus. She was able to bypass my shields because she was so open, honest, and non-judgmental. She awakened parts of me I thought were long dead. In our earliest encounters, I found myself telling her things I never told anyone. I felt I could trust her with anything. I never knew how much I needed my heart until I met her. I wrote an article that goes into detail about this called Soulful Relationships, one which many people have found helpful.

Even so, letting Erin in was still difficult for me at times. Early in our relationship, I confessed that I didn’t think I could love her because I didn’t know how to love. It was an emotion I hadn’t felt since early childhood. I even suggested we break up because of this. But she wouldn’t have any of it. Instead she said, “I will teach you how to love.” She saw something in me that I didn’t know was there. It took a while, but she eventually succeeded.

When Erin and I first met, I had zero compassion. I truly didn’t care about anyone. I lived only for myself, and no one else really mattered to me. However, I did feel a strong energetic draw to Erin. It was as if our two souls magnetically attracted each other. Regardless of what I did or didn’t feel, I couldn’t pull away.

Little by little, Erin helped me work through all the blocks I had. My heart slowly opened, and I began to genuinely care about her. Soon I started caring about other people… then animals… then much more. Today I don’t even harm bugs anymore. I would no sooner harm a spider than a kitten. This isn’t just something I sense intellectually. I feel it emotionally as well.

While Erin was showing me how to open my heart, I was teaching her courage. I showed her how to identify and pursue her dreams in ways no one else could. I encouraged her to stop working for other people and to generate income independently. I helped her develop her skills and talents. I pushed her to face her fears again and again and to stop settling for less than she’s worth. I saw something in her that even she couldn’t see.

Throughout this time we became lovers too. I was very attracted to her. New issues came up in the bedroom, and we worked through them together. As you may know, Erin was previously in an abusive relationship for 3-1/2 years, so we worked on healing those old wounds together.

To this day our relationship remains extremely soulful. I have no doubt that we were meant to be together.

I’m totally in love with Erin, and I can’t imagine not wanting her in my life. However, I can also see that it’s time for our relationship to change form. We’re not the same people we were 15 years ago. We still have much more to share with each other, but we’re past the hump of integrating the most important lessons.

Erin has learned to be strong and courageous. She’s pursuing her passion. She’s taking action to help people around the world. She’s actively getting her message out there. By finally embracing a talent she’s had since early childhood and moving beyond her fears, she’s become one of the top psychic mediums on the planet. That’s a far cry from the $9/hour secretary I first met. When I look at Erin today, it’s unbelievably gratifying to know that I played a role in helping her become the amazing woman she is today.

It’s almost unfathomable how much I’ve grown as a result of our relationship as well. Erin has done things for me that I never would have done on my own. My past self would never believe that someday I’d be doing the work I’m doing today, especially in the way I currently do it. I give so much away for free simply because I want everyone to be happy, fulfilled, and at peace with themselves. I care about people very deeply, and that deep sense of caring has become the core of my motivation and drive. I’m so happy and fulfilled that sometimes it feels like my cells are about to explode with radiant energy. Is it possible to become too happy?

This is just a glimpse of what my relationship with Erin means to me, but if you can understand and accept at least this much, it will be easier to grasp the context for wanting to expand into polyamorous relationships.

In all this time, I never sought to develop a deep, emotionally intimate connection with anyone but Erin. There are several reasons for this. For starters, we were experiencing so much growth together that I wouldn’t have had the capacity for another relationship like ours. It would have been too much to handle. Another reason is that I harbored the limiting belief that this would somehow be a form of betrayal toward Erin. And lastly, I simply wasn’t ready for it yet. A deep, emotionally intimate connection with another human being can be a powerful, life changing experience for all involved. That isn’t the sort of energy I would casually play with.

Now that my relationship with Erin has matured to a certain point, our roles have changed. We’ve both integrated each other’s lessons so well that the changes we induce in each other have become more incremental. It seems that our relationship has more to do with reinforcing and supporting those changes as well as making changes together as a couple, instead of one of us inducing a major shift in the other. Now we interact more like teammates instead of coaches to each other.

Consequently, we have the capacity to explore other intimate relationships as well. I doubt any new relationships will create as dramatic a shift as what we both experienced together, but I still believe a tremendous amount of good can come from connecting with others as Erin and I have connected with each other. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

Emotional Polyamory vs. Sexual Polyamory

While it may seem that I could have developed emotionally intimate relationships with other people from within the confines of monogamy, it didn’t feel that way to me. I can understand those who think that way, but that isn’t how I view the situation.

For me, sharing emotional intimacy with others was a much bigger deal than having casual sex on the side. Having sex with other people just wasn’t that big a deal to Erin and me. If I simply wanted to have sex with other women, I could have done that years ago. Erin and I had already talked about it, and she was fine with it. Sometimes she actively suggested that I should go out and have sex with other women, believing I’d enjoy the experience. But at the time I never pursued it.

I regarded my emotional monogamy with Erin as the essence of our marriage. Having sex with other women wouldn’t have been a serious taboo for either of us. But being emotionally intimate with other people — now that was a very big deal to me.

Sharing my body with another woman? No biggie. But sharing my heart and soul? Huge deal!

Erin was the only human being I’d ever been really, deeply emotionally intimate with. However, as I started blogging and sharing more and more of my real self with the world, and as I began delving into the notion of Oneness, I began to see that I’d eventually have to let go of emotional monogamy.

Eventually I became comfortable with the idea of getting really close to people other than Erin. That definitely wasn’t easy for me, but I’ve gone far enough down this path that it’s clear I won’t be turning back.

The reason that sex is even part of the equation is that if I become emotionally intimate with a woman, it could lead to sex as an expression of our emotional connection. Sex may not be the primary goal, but it can be a natural extension of emotional polyamory.

In fact, the main reason I didn’t pursue sexual polyamory years ago, even though Erin was fine with it, is that I was worried that being physically intimate with other women could lead to emotional intimacy, and I wasn’t ready for that yet. Sex tends to be a very loving, connected experience for me. It isn’t easy for me to treat it as a casual physical act without getting wrapped up in the other person’s energy. I’ve never had a one-night stand or anything like that.

So even though sexual polyamory has been on the table for years, I could never pull the trigger because I thought that it would probably lead to emotional polyamory, and I definitely wasn’t ready to go there. I was happy being emotionally intimate with Erin, but to create that kind of connection with someone else was just too much for me.

Now that I’m finally open to sharing emotional intimacy with other people, the sexual polyamory block is removed at the same time. But again, the sexual aspect by itself was never that big a deal for either of us. I know it can be a huge deal to some people, but for us, having sex with other people is really no big whoop. Being sexually monogamous just isn’t that important to either of us.

If Erin went out and had sex with someone else, assuming she did it safely, that wouldn’t bother me any more than if she shared a meal with someone. I think it would be a nice experience for her to get some extra variety now and then.

Poly-Sex as Taboo

I have a hard time relating to couples who regard having sex with other people as such a huge taboo. Why not give your partner the freedom to go out and enjoy some extra variety now and then? Why get all hot and bothered about it? Is your relationship really so insecure that you can’t trust that your partner won’t dump you after having great sex with someone else? I don’t get it. This kind of thinking is totally fear-based.

Just to be clear, I’m absolutely fine with couples who mutually agree to be monogamous with each other and who simply don’t want to sleep with anyone else. If that’s your conscious choice, terrific!

Since I started writing about polyamory, I’ve been hearing from many halves of couples, where one partner would really love to be sexually polyamorous, but the other partner will have none of it. In some cases, the mono partner won’t even entertain a discussion about the subject. This is a huge no-no. Stonewalling such open, honest communication will only feed resentment and unhappiness if left unresolved. A painful break up is very likely.

If you block your partner from openly discussing polyamory with you, what happens? You emotionally disconnect from your partner as well. Then your partner turns around and writes to me to share the thoughts and feelings they really should be sharing with you.

Why do they share this with me instead of you? Because they know they can trust me and that I won’t judge them for being who they are. Now doesn’t it strike you as odd that your partner is able to trust me more than you in this area? All your non-acceptance is doing is pushing your partner away, causing him/her to seek open, honest communication with someone else. Shouldn’t your partner be able to turn to you first? Drop the judgment and non-acceptance, and allow yourself to really listen to your partner, and your relationship will enjoy a renewed level of trust and intimacy.

If you find yourself stuck with a partner who’s stonewalling your attempts to even discuss polyamory, why are you tolerating such nonsense? If your partner won’t even listen to you, the truth is that you don’t really have a committed, loving relationship. At best you have a living arrangement. I know it’s sad to realize that, but if you can’t communicate openly and honestly about such an important topic with your partner, then how can you even justify staying with such a person? What sort of relationship do you even have if there’s no actual relating going on?

Naturally you should use your best efforts to get through to your partner and open a real dialog. Some resistance is to be expected, and it may take hours of patient listening to get past it. But if you have a committed, caring, compatible relationship, then ultimately your partner will be able to hear what you have to say and consider it. If it becomes clear you can’t reach that point no matter how hard you try, it’s time to think about leaving. You’ve likely outgrown your partner, and it’s best to move on.

Erin and I are willing to talk openly about absolutely anything. If we weren’t willing to listen to each other, then how could we claim to be in a loving relationship together? Many times we discuss topics that give rise to some resistance, but when that happens, we just talk through it until we get to the core issues.

I trust that Erin cares about me and wants me to be happy, and she trusts me and cares about me as well. If we didn’t share that core level of trust and caring, such as if our relationship was based on little more than sexual chemistry or attraction, then our relationship would largely be a sham.

Is your partner your friend? Do you trust him/her completely? If so, then you should be able to discuss what matters to you openly and honestly, trusting that your partner cares about you enough to listen. If you can’t reach that point even with your best efforts, then you must ask yourself, “Does my partner truly care about me as a human being? Does my partner truly want me to be happy? Is our relationship rooted in love and acceptance… or fear and attachment? Do we have real love here, or have we become mired in fear?”

Remaining loyal to a fear-based relationship isn’t noble or selfless. It’s simply cruel.

If you discover you’re in a relationship without a heart, please leave. I know that isn’t easy, but you deserve to be happy, and so does your partner. If you genuinely care about your partner, give him/her the opportunity to wake up with a smile again. And give yourself that gift as well. If you can’t wake up with a smile, then perhaps you aren’t really awake yet.

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 this article I’ll candidly share my thoughts about polyamory, monogamy, marriage, and about intimate relationships in general.

Hurt

One issue that seems to be a hang-up for a lot of people is the possibility of getting hurt. Monogamous relationships can lead to plenty of hurt when they go bad, and it seems reasonable to assume that polyamory could multiply this hurt even more, if only because more hearts are involved.

One reason people fear getting hurt is that they’ve had some bad experiences in the past and haven’t fully recovered yet. Another problem is that people have an undue fear of hurting others because they’ve caused some pain in the past, and they’re still harboring a lot of guilt and regret.

What does it take to let go of that fear and pain and to summon the courage to take new risks in your relationships, in the hopes of experiencing ever greater levels of joy?

Basically, you just have to get back in the arena and do the best you can… without worrying so much about getting hurt. Over time your calibration will improve. You’ll get better at avoiding broken hearts, and you’ll learn to create joy more consistently. Unfortunately, you have to move through the hurt phase to get to the joy phase.

If you live your life so as to minimize your potential hurt, you’ll endure a very dull, dreary, and cowardly existence. This is how drug addicts aim to live. Of course the pain always gets its say further down the road.

Anyone who wants to live consciously must accept that getting battered and bruised is part of the game of life. It happens.

When you get hurt, the best response is to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, tend to your bruises, consider what you’ve learned, and get back in the game with even more resolve than you had when you were knocked down.

Wounds heal. This includes the wounds you inflict as well as those that are inflicted upon you.

Life has knocked me down quite a few times. I’ve been arrested and convicted. I went bankrupt trying to build my first business. I was kicked out of my apartment because I couldn’t pay the rent. People criticize me publicly every week, especially this week. Hmmm… wonder why…

Does it hurt when stuff like this happens? Sure it does. I’m not invulnerable.

I know that life will keep knocking me down again and again. And each time I’ll get up, dust myself off, and tend to my wounds. Then I’ll say in my snarkiest tone, “Nice try, Life. Is that the best you can do?”

I don’t want to reach my grave in pristine “like new” condition. I won’t die with my music still in me. When the coroner checks my dead body, I want him to say, “Damn… what the hell did he do to this thing?”

Don’t try to grow a big callous around your heart to protect yourself from getting hurt. Don’t try to shield yourself from emotional pain. That will only make you cold and callous yourself. If you disconnect from your heart, you disconnect from everything. You’ll rob your life of all its delicious flavor.

Instead, take the hurt as it comes, and fully accept it. Listen to what the hurt is telling you, learn from it, and grow through it. See the hurt as a gift instead of a punishment. Tune into the joy behind the sadness.

The message of hurt is this: Despite what’s happened, can you still respond with love?

Even when you’re faced with negative emotions, can you see beyond them and consciously choose to respond with love instead of reacting with fear?

Can you see how helpful this process is in the long run? The more you get hurt, the more you develop your ability to choose love.

If you look at some of the most loving souls on earth, their pasts are often riddled with the most wicked abuse and suffering you can imagine. Knock them down, and they keep coming back with more love. Do you sense the power of this way of living?

I understand that not everyone has this attitude. What can I say? Is it really helpful to wallow in self-pity or guilt? Isn’t it better to accept the hurt as it comes, process it, let it go, and then move on?

The human heart has a great capacity to heal. If you get hurt, you’ll recover. If you hurt others, they’ll recover too. If you consciously work on your healing, you’ll heal a lot faster than if you merely subscribe to the mantra, Time heals all wounds.

Does this mean you should go around hurting people intentionally because, what the heck, they’ll heal? No, it just means that you shouldn’t fear it. It’s better to experience (or cause) one real broken heart than to fear a thousand imaginary ones.

I know that by exploring polyamory, there’s a good chance that someone I’m involved with will feel hurt at some point. Maybe me. Maybe Erin. Maybe others. Maybe all of us.

If I want to fully embrace the game of life, there’s no getting around that. It’s a risk.

But I can’t live my life cowering under the covers like Shaggy and Scooby. I’m gonna be kick-ass Fred.

You just know Fred was all over Daphne and Velma in the back of the Mystery Machine.

Hmmm… I wonder if Mystery has a Mystery Machine.

Monogamy

I have nothing against monogamy in general. I’ve been in a monogamous relationship for almost 15 years. Those years have involved an awesome amount of growth and joy.

If you’re monogamous and happy about it, that’s terrific. If I thought monogamy sucked, I wouldn’t have stuck with it for so long.

At this particular time in my life, I feel ready to move on from monogamy though. I can see that it would be the wrong path for me in the years ahead.

Some people have asked if I’m bored with my current relationship situation. That’s an overly simplistic way of looking at it, but overall that’s reasonably accurate.

Some people suggested the general prescription of spicing things up a bit and staying monogamous. The spice isn’t the problem though. The issue is what’s beneath the spice.

I’ve gone through enough life lessons to know when it’s time to spice up my life by adding/changing projects and activities vs. doing a complete overhaul. In this case, it’s clear that it’s time for a complete overhaul of my approach to intimate relationships.

Dropping monogamy is going to be a pretty radical change for me, much like when I switched careers from game development to personal development. This is going to impact every part of my life in a big way, as well as the lives of Erin and my kids. It’s going to be a lot of work to navigate this transition. I have no delusions that this will be an easy change.

Marriage

Marriage and monogamy are two different concepts, so let’s be careful not to confuse them.

In contrast to monogamy, I think marriage is an unnecessary legal institution that does more harm than good.

I got married to Erin when I was 26 years old. We met when I was 22. If I had it to do all over again, knowing what I now know, I wouldn’t have gotten married.

What can I say? I goofed. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Of course, the year after I got married, I also went bankrupt, so perhaps those weren’t my best decision-making years.

I very much like the notion of long-term, committed relationships. I think long-term relationships are wonderful. I just think marriage is a poor vehicle for expressing them.

Marriage might be an okay vehicle for some people. I certainly know some pretty conscious married people. However, in the long run, it’s very easy for marriage to become a consciousness-lowering bugaboo. Of the very conscious people I know who are married, I think their growth would likely accelerate if they stopped being married, myself included.

The failure rate for marriages is pretty high. In the USA most marriages end in divorce, and of those that don’t, probably most of those couples would be happier in the long run if they did get divorced. History also demonstrates that as divorce becomes easier and more accessible, more people are willing to end their marriages. So the overall track record of marriage, at least in modern times, isn’t particularly good.

The institution of marriage is simply too far out of sync with the realities of human relationships.

That being said, I’m actually glad I got married. Huh? The reason I say that is that being married for so long (almost 11 years) has helped me understand and relate to other people who are married. I rather like that I can share my thoughts about marriage as an insider. There’s just no way I could understand the realities of marriage if I hadn’t experienced it firsthand. Obviously with only one marriage under my belt, I may not be the world’s greatest expert on the subject, but it’s a lot better than having zero experience.

You probably don’t want to know how many married people emailed me in the past couple days to say, “I’ve been married X years, and I can totally relate to all the things you’re saying with respect to polyamory. I’ve had many of those same feelings myself, and I applaud you for being so open and honest about it. I just don’t think my partner would ever understand if I tried to discuss this with him/her. Please keep writing about this — it helps me a lot to know I’m not alone in having these feelings.” Suffice it to say there was a lot of feedback.

It might interest you to know that this feedback came from men and women about equally — if we compensate for the demographic split of my readership (which is about 65% male).

The problem with marriage is that it pushes relationships into the realm of law, and that’s a huge no-no because that runs contrary to conscious choice. Just to be clear, I’m referring to legal law here, not divine law. Coupled with societal pressure, marriage applies an inappropriate form of force to relationships.

To our credit, Erin and I discussed this problem to some degree before we got married. In our wedding vows, we actually declined to include the phrase “till death do us part.” It seemed unreasonable to commit in advance to being married for a lifetime, especially since we were both going through lots of growth and change.

Erin once told me that Wiccans use the phrase “as long as our love shall last.” We didn’t use that phrasing ourselves, but I think we used something similar. The idea was that the status of our marriage should be subservient to the status of our relationship, not the other way around.

My long-term relationship with Erin has been wonderful. I still want it to continue.

My marriage to Erin, however, has had its share of issues. I’ve often felt trapped and constricted by the legal and societal ramifications of marriage. People relate to you differently when you get married. That can get a bit wearing after a while. Sometimes it feels like marriage is some sort of disease. Once you’ve been infected by it, you’re expected to cocoon yourself in a special part of society with other married people. You gain some things, but you also lose freedoms. This runs contrary to conscious living, which requires the freedom to make conscious choices.

My experience has been that marriage closes more doors than it opens. Your experience may vary, and that’s perfectly fine. I’m just sharing my own experience. I’m sure I’m not the only married person who feels this way.

I stopped wearing my wedding ring a long time ago. Occasionally I’ll wear it as a piece of jewelry, but the ring’s symbolic meaning is something I no longer connect with. I see it as a symbol of attachment and restriction, not a symbol of conscious living. In my opinion, wearing a wedding ring as a symbol that I’m attached to one and only one person runs contrary to the principle of Oneness.

In lieu of a wedding ring, I’d prefer to wear a ring that says I’m connected to all of humanity… or to life itself. But presently I don’t find it necessary to wear a symbol for something I feel intuitively. Maybe later…

Marriage has a very possessive aspect to it. My wife. My husband. It’s like you become someone’s custodial property. You are “spoken for” and “attached.” Does that mean no one else can connect to you in the same way? If you’re attached, does that mean you can’t enjoy new intimate connections?

In practice marriage serves as more of a barrier to intimacy than an enabler of intimacy.

If you find my views on marriage offensive in some way, I understand that. There’s no need to defend yourself though because I’m not attacking you. Just spend some time thinking about this, and get in touch with your true feelings about it. If you find the legal institution of marriage an attractive choice, then by all means get married if that’s what you want. Just don’t go dark and take the relationship behind the marriage for granted.

Again, I think long-term committed relationships are great. But the current legal and societal institution of marriage is a poor vehicle for conscious, committed relationships.

I think it’s rather appropriate that Las Vegas is filled with wedding chapels. Much like gambling, marriage can be quite a seductive vice.

Family and kids

Some people clearly have something in their craw about how polyamory might affect my kids. It’s weird to see people get all worked up about all the potential damage that will be done… especially when they’ve never met Erin, myself, or our kids.

This is an area where people are clearly projecting their own personal issues onto us.

Most of the negative feedback in this area is so far out of sync with reality, I can’t even relate to it. There’s just no shred of truth to grasp because such feedback has nothing to do with us whatsoever. The best response I can offer these fear-mongers is a eye roll. Maybe for good measure, I can add, “Oh, please. Get real.”

Overall I expect that this change will be very positive for my kids.

Emily and Kyle are both very social and love meeting new people. Whenever we have house guests, my kids love interacting with them.

Emily likes to ask new people, “Are you vegan?” She’s our resident vegan cop. Just say yes no matter what, and you’ll be fine.

My son Kyle loves to say to people, “Come play Halo with me, so I can kick your butt!” He’s quite a trash talker when he plays, which is pretty funny to see from a five year-old.

Past experience tells me that my kids love it when interesting, open-minded people are brought into our lives. It just means more people for them to socialize with. The extra stimulation is good for them.

If you think this is a bad idea, raise your kids differently. But it’s foolish to assume this will somehow damage my children if you’ve never spent as much as a minute with them. You’re just grasping at straws if you think that.

If you actually met my kids and got to know them, you’d have a hard time making the case that this lifestyle choice will somehow harm them.

Do you have a clue what it’s like to have a personal development expert and a psychic medium as your parents? My daughter actually goes around telling her classmates, “My Daddy is the smartest man on earth, and my Mommy talks to dead people.” Emily assumes that since I run a website and wrote a book “for Smart People” that I must be the smartest guy in the world.

When I pick up my kids from school, sometimes little girls run up to me and ask, “Emily says you’re the smartest man on earth. If that’s really true, then what’s 100 times 100?”

At least my math degree is good for something.

Keep in mind that my kids share much of my DNA. First, that alone should scare you. Secondly, if you try to convince them they’re going to be damaged by my choices, they’ll just laugh at you. Then my son will proceed to kick your butt at Halo, after which he’ll give you a very loving hug to cheer you up.

Polyamory

What draws me to polyamory is that it aligns very well with the 7 universal growth principles in my book. This means that pursuing polyamory is likely to be a major positive growth experience for me. If I don’t pursue it, I’d be turning my back on my own path of conscious growth.

Let’s consider each principle briefly… my version of briefly, that is.

Truth – Polyamory can be practiced with total openness and honesty and no deception. It’s been practiced for millennia. It’s a natural part of our heritage as human beings. To turn our backs on it and demonize it is nonsensical. That’s our social conditioning talking, not authentic truth. Without polyamory you probably wouldn’t even be here.

Love – Polyamory means many loves. Creating and maintaining authentic, loving connections is its very core. Polyamory resonates with me emotionally and spiritually. It’s something I’d love to experience, and it can be a wonderful thing to share with others who are willing to do so. So it gets a big checkmark from this principle.

Power – Will polyamory be empowering? It will be a major growth experience to learn about it and practice it, so regardless of what degree of success I enjoy, it will empower me to grow. It will also require me to further develop my self-discipline, my communication skills, and more. This is a path that will surely build strength, not one that will feed weakness.

Oneness (Love + Truth) – Polyamory is more aligned with Oneness than monogamy. Monogamy is exclusive, while polyamory is inclusive. Connections that would otherwise be blocked can be accepted. Polyfidelity (being in a closed polyamorous relationship) is less inclusive, but it’s still more inclusive than monogamy.

Authority (Truth + Power) – Since polyamory is experiential, it aligns wonderfully with the principle of Authority. It involves consciously authoring new relationships. My personal authority in the area of relationships will expand much more on a polyamorous path than it would in a single monogamous relationship, if only due to the greater experiential abundance. By writing about my experiences, I can share the lessons learned, which will benefit thousands of others too. This is all very good.

Courage (Love + Power) – Is this the courageous path or the cowardly path? It should be pretty obvious that going polyamorous, and especially writing about it along the way, takes Courage. In my case I need a lot more Courage to go polyamorous than I’d need to stay monogamous. This is definitely a path with a heart. You may find that monogamy requires more Courage for you personally, and that’s fine. In my case monogamy would be the more timid route since that would merely require a continuation of the status quo. Polyamory is the level 30 beast that intimidates my level 20 character.

Intelligence (Truth + Love + Power) – Is polyamory an intelligent choice? Yes, if the path is followed truthfully, lovingly, and powerfully, it can produce positive growth for everyone involved. Going polyamorous entails developing a whole new outlet for authentic self-expression. When it works, it has the potential to become a thing of beauty. Also, by writing about it, I can potentially boost the relationship intelligence of many, many people.

One of the main reasons I’m choosing to pursue polyamory is that relative to monogamy, this path will increase my alignment with all 7 of these principles. This means I’ll grow a lot faster if I go polyamorous as opposed to remaining monogamous. It also means I’ll be able to share a lot more growth and learning with others along the way. If you’ve been reading my work for a while, I’m sure you’d agree that this change is going to inspire a lot more sharing of knowledge vs. what I’d be able to share if I maintained the status quo.

I wasn’t just blowing smoke when I wrote a book about these universal principles. I really do live my life this way. My primary aim is to become as truthful, loving, and strong in character as I can (i.e. aligned with Truth, Love, and Power)… and to share what I learn as my legacy to humanity. We’ll see how far I can get before I’m assassinated.

As I noted in my book, it’s not remotely easy to keep shifting into ever-greater alignment with these principles. But who needs easy when you can have growth instead?

Sex

Is polyamory just about the sex? For some people, sexual variety can be the primary attraction to polyamory. Overall though, this is a very immature view of intimate relationships.

Many people in the seduction community enter a polyamorous frame whereby their primary interest seems to be “sowing the wild oats.” Personally I see nothing wrong with this if it’s something you genuinely want to experience. This isn’t what polyamory is about though.

Putting your genitals first is a phase that people eventually grow out of. Sure, it can be fun to enjoy some sexual abundance for a time, but after you’ve shagged everything in sight, that superficial level of intimacy grows stale, and you’re left feeling a bit empty, wanting something more.

This pursuit leads many people back to the frame of a steady, monogamous relationship. They realize they want a deeper connection that goes beyond just having lots of sex. Even when sex is really good, by itself it can’t fulfill all your emotional needs.

Many people are really uptight about sex. Sexuality can expose a lot of self-esteem deficiencies, especially body image issues. If you aren’t ready to face those inner demons, it’s easy to blame sexuality itself. This pushes you into a fear state and leads you to adopt a control strategy as a coping mechanism. You relate to sex as something that must be controlled instead of something you can experience freely. I believe the technical term for this is being anal retentive.

I love sex. Nothing beats a good shag. But would I want to center my whole life around meeting Titan’s needs? (In case you didn’t know, every guy names his schmecky.) No… elevating sex as my highest need would be a huge step backwards. It would be dropping all the way back to eating cooked animal flesh, something I haven’t done since 1993.

I think it’s great that we have sexual desires. Our sexuality is a signal to connect with each other. Those undeniable urges push us to go outside and talk to people, sometimes to mate with them. Initially we may be drawn to do this purely for release… to satisfy this biological need. But then we move past that state and say, “Hey, connecting with people is pretty cool. I should do this more often.”

Your fear may encourage you to stay home and cocoon yourself in a comfy, cozy lair of security, but suddenly Agamemnon yanks you out the door (Persephone if you’re female). Of course you can stay home and take care of yourself, but that isn’t nearly as fun, and if that’s all you do, you’ll probably end up feeling very disconnected. I know it sucks to hear this, but you’re going to have to develop your Courage — with a capital C — if you want to get off your butt and connect with real people, sexually or otherwise.

Although social conditioning may encourage us to believe that men are more sexual than women, the truth is that women enjoy sex at least as much as men do.

It’s unfortunate that a man who gets a lot of sex is lauded as a stud, while a woman who does the same is shunned as a slut. That sort of social conditioning is really lame — it’s totally out of alignment with Truth and Love.

Personally I think of a woman who’s open with her sexuality as a studette. I have a lot of respect for women who don’t feel the need to hide their sexuality. It takes a lot of courage to go against the social grain and deal with the consequences. Believe me… I know.

It doesn’t surprise me that a few people have asserted that I’m interested in polyamory because I just want to go out and sleep with lots of women, consequences be damned. Much like the issue with raising kids I mentioned earlier, this is a pretty clear instance of projection. No one who says such things has even met me. If they spent as much as an hour with me one-on-one, they’d realize how far such statements are from reality.

People who know me personally would find this a ridiculously immature lens through which to view my decision. I recommend that the people who think this way should go back to my very first article (The Courage to Live Consciously) and start over from scratch, since obviously the message about living consciously hasn’t gotten through to them yet. Go back and chew on 2004 for a while. I’ll still be here when you’re caught up.

Physical intimacy

We all possess many channels through which we can give and receive love. Some may be highly developed, while others may be under-developed. Our strengths and weaknesses depend on where we’ve focused our self-development efforts over the years.

Physical intimacy is one of those expressive channels available to us, quite a powerful one in fact.

I’ve spent a lot of time developing my communication skills, so I know how to give and receive love through writing and speaking. I can also express love through one-on-one conversation.

Some of my friends are entertainers. They can give and receive love by making people laugh and feel good about themselves.

A chef can express love by preparing delicious meals for people to enjoy.

Every medium has a different range of expression. For example, the medium of writing can’t adequately convey tone of voice. Many times when I write something in a tongue-in-cheek manner, people who aren’t familiar with my personality will read way too much into it, interpreting my words in ways I never intended. Writing has some nice advantages like accessibility and searchability, but I can’t express the full range of my personality through writing alone.

Even my dietary choices serve as a channel for expressing love. By choosing to eat low on the food chain, I reduce the harm I inflict. I don’t torture and kill animals, and I also minimize harm to plants by (1) eating lots of fruit, which doesn’t harm the plants, and (2) eating plants directly instead of eating plant-fed animals, which would harm many more plants. Also, by sharing my choices with others, I encourage them to see if this is something they’d like to pursue as well.

Just as I developed various other outlets for giving and receiving love, I want to further develop my physical and emotional intimacy channels. Why? Because I think that working on this area of my life will help me become a more consciously loving person. Polyamory seems like an ideal way to push myself forward in these areas.

I’ve gotten really good at connecting with people en masse. I know how to write articles that help large numbers of people worldwide. Having this ability entails a great deal of responsibility, so I want to keep improving.

I want to learn how to connect with people ever more deeply, and I can’t develop that skill through one-to-many media like writing and speaking alone. Instead I need to explore a deeper level of one-on-one interaction, not just with one person but with many different people. With a single person, my calibration will always be limited. I need to connect with different people in different ways in order to more deeply understand the core “soul” of human beings.

I think polyamory is an excellent way to accomplish this. There are other steps I can take too, like doing one-on-one coaching work, and I plan to start doing that too this year. However, the depth that coaching can reach isn’t anywhere near what can be gained by exploring intimate relationships that are both physical and emotional.

Of course there are plenty of other ways we can give and receive love. Polyamory is just one of many possible paths. At this time it’s the path I feel most drawn to explore.

If you feel there are better ways to give and receive love than what I’m doing, by all means, go pursue those avenues. I’m delighted with the path I’m on, but it may not be suitable for you. You’ll need to find your own way.

Selfishness

Is polyamory a selfish choice? I think those who frame it like that are coming from a place of wrestling with their own selfishness.

I feel inspired by my current level of giving, and I want to expand upon that. This is a journey that I believe will be wonderful to share… on multiple levels.

Developing this part of myself and sharing my journey openly with others is such a beautiful blend of giving and receiving.

If I wanted to be selfish, I’d keep all of my discoveries and realizations to myself, so I’d have a competitive advantage over others. But that would pull me out of alignment with Oneness, so it makes no sense to go that route.

To label this journey a selfish one is simply ignorant. I suspect those who label it this way are having issues coming to terms with their own desire for greater physical intimacy. Consequently, they attack me because I’m a symbol that reminds them of their inner discontent.

Realize that intimacy isn’t selfish if you’re sharing value with your partner. Thoughts of selfishness only arise if you’re coming at this from a frame of low self-esteem, whereby you’re assume that you’re taking something from other people and offering no value in return.

Instead, try coming at this from the frame that you are a worthy person, and anyone who gets to enjoy a relationship with you is very fortunate indeed. You don’t have to be arrogant and showy about it. Just stop acting like you have nothing of value to share. You have many gifts to give. Simply giving someone your full attention is a tremendous gift. Fully accepting someone as they are is another gift.

The most selfish thing you can do is to withdraw from others and keep all your tremendous value to yourself. Connecting with others is your gift to share, so get out there and share it!

Relationships with women

It will take me a while to figure out what types of relationships with women I want to cultivate. I can’t even classify all the possibilities because there are too many to consider.

One of the roles that comes up for me a lot is that of being a teacher. I enjoy this pattern overall, but in an intimate relationship, it needs to be balanced, with both people serving as teachers and students for each other. Otherwise it can too easily degrade into an unbalanced rescuer-victim pattern.

Overall the co-teaching pattern is a very positive one that helps both people grow. I enjoy many friendships that follow this pattern, whereby my friends and I mentor each other in different ways.

I’ve fallen into the rescuer pattern a few times during the past year, not in physically intimate relationships but in friendships. In the end it just ends up biting me. It’s hard for me not to want to help people in need, but if I do this from a rescuer frame, it disempowers the person I’m helping and delays their growth lessons. So I know I need to be careful to avoid falling into this trap.

Overall the general relationship pattern I enjoy most is one of shared mutual growth. This includes teaching each other things as well as sharing new growth experiences together. This is one of the patterns that my relationship with Erin follows when we’re at our best.

For example, I’d love to connect with a woman who really likes to travel. Erin enjoys traveling to an extent, but whereas I prefer going to places I’ve never been before, Erin likes returning to places she knows she likes. She seems to have more of a nesting instinct than I do. We talked about taking a weekend trip later this month. Erin wants to return to San Francisco (we were last there about 3 years ago), whereas I’d prefer to go somewhere I’ve never been to like Seattle.

This is an area where polyamory could be a big improvement. My travel resiliency is much greater than Erin’s, so I could meet her needs as a travel companion and still have plenty of wanderlust to share with someone else. Obviously I always have the option of traveling alone or with friends, but part of what I love about traveling is the chance to enjoy new experiences with an intimate companion. I really want to get out and see more of the world, but I wouldn’t want to do that solo for long, and there are certain types of trips where Erin would wear out long before I would. I enjoy lots of go-see-do as opposed to relaxing trips where you might sit by the pool reading a book.

Initially I’ll just have to stay open-minded and experiment. At this point I really can’t predict what kind of ongoing relationship situation will result from this pursuit. My best bet is probably to connect with a woman who’s open to having some fun, new experiences and who isn’t afraid to stretch herself.

Relationships with men

Several people asked me about having deeper relationships with men. What does this mean to me, and how would I incorporate deeper male relationships into my life?

Just to clarify in case you didn’t know, I’m 100% straight. I can’t recall any time in my life where I seriously harbored any gay or bisexual thoughts. I have no qualms with people who are gay or bisexual. This just isn’t something I have an interest in experiencing personally. I have a lot of respect for people who follow such alternative lifestyles because they have so many delicious growth challenges/opportunities. I don’t have too many gay friends, so my knowledge in this area is very limited. Consequently, I don’t have much to say about this because I have no personal experience to go on.

With respect to physical intimacy, I’m only interested in connecting with women. That’s simply where my heart leads. I feel a strong physical attraction toward certain women but not to men. I can appreciate the male body as a creation of beauty, but I wouldn’t want to find one lying naked next to me.

Nevertheless, I can still enjoy a strong emotional intimacy with another man. Due to the nature of my work, many men have shared some pretty intimate stuff with me over the years. The intimacy I feel toward other men is different than what I experience with women though.

In some ways the intimacy I share with men doesn’t go as deep as what I experience with women. There’s something about the male-female connection when physical attraction is part of the equation that helps create a deeper bond. This is something I really want to explore more fully… hence my decision to pursue polyamory.

On another level, I’m actually able to enjoy deeper emotional intimacy with men. There’s a certain “guy code” that men have with each other that very few women seem to grasp. Our gender has its own shared culture that is quite amazing. I revealed some of this when I wrote the article How to Be a Man. I’m sure a lot of these gender differences are socially conditioned, but that doesn’t make them any less real as part of the experience of growing up male.

There are certain things that men simply don’t have to explain to each other which makes man-to-man communication pretty straightforward, but which would normally require a lot of explanation to get a woman to understand (and the attempt will often be unsuccessful).

A few years ago, Erin was playing on online role-playing game, and she started playing a male character. She joined an all-male team, and she noticed that the other guys would totally change their communication style as soon as a female character joined the group. Once the female left and it was presumably all guys again, the guys changed back. Erin found this fascinating.

Not all guys change their communication styles like this, but it’s definitely very common.

A good example of guy code would be the sort of stuff that’s shared in the seduction (or pick-up artist) community. This is a gross generalization to be sure, so please forgive it for being so, but there are certain things shared in that community which can serve as very empowering growth lessons for men… but which a woman would often find offensive, untrue, or preposterous. Deep down, however, men simply want to learn how to get better at connecting with women.

What you may not realize is that the most effective advice on how to connect with women almost invariably comes from men, not from women themselves. It’s fairly well-established in the seduction community that if you ask a woman what women find most attractive, you’re very likely to receive honest, heartfelt advice that sounds reasonable but which utterly backfires when you try to apply it. The extraordinary truth is that a man who’s very good with women actually understands women significantly better than most women do. I suspect that statement also holds true if you reverse all the gender words.

As it turns out, connecting with men and with women are two sides of the same coin. Some of my deepest connections with other men arise when we’re discussing women. Women absolutely fascinate us guys, and we spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure you out.

Unfortunately, the social conditioning that men and women receive tends to make us really bad at connecting with each other. We get so skewed in our beliefs about each other that when we’re told the truth about how to connect, point blank, we dismiss it as, “No, that can’t be right.”

When it’s at its best, the seduction community teaches men how to communicate with women in such a manner as to bypass all the blocks and shields that many women create out of habit. The end result is that a genuine connection of intimacy can be shared and enjoyed. If our social conditioning didn’t obstruct us from connecting with each other, there would be no need for a seduction community with such a massive number of resources being created. Some guys are paying thousands of dollars for this info.

The more I can deepen my relationships with women, the more I can deepen my connections with men too. Some of the most authentic man-to-man communication occurs when men are discussing women and relationships. As I improve my ability to connect with women, I simultaneously improve my ability to connect with men. One of the best things one guy can do for another guy is to help him become better at connecting with women (assuming we’re talking about straight men of course).

So even though my sexual attraction to women is different than with men, to me this isn’t an either-or pursuit. I can’t grow closer to men without also growing closer to women, and vice versa. These different sexual polarities may involve different connection strategies, but they’re completely compatible. This aligns beautifully with the principle of Oneness.

I’ve seen this play out over many years in my relationship with Erin. The better I get at connecting with Erin, the better I am at connecting with other men too.

Want to improve your relationships with men? Work on connecting more deeply with women. Want to improve your relationships with women? Work on connecting more deeply with men. The two pursuits are inseparable.

Reaction from others

Obviously polyamory is a subject that can polarize people, but causing controversy isn’t my goal here. I’m living my life in the way I feel is best, and I’m honestly sharing my growth experiences along the way. I know many people are helped by this sharing process. A few lives have even been saved by it — no joke.

Overall, I’m impressed that most of the feedback — about 80% I’d say — is very positive, encouraging, and supportive. A lot of people are very, very curious about this and want to know more. Many have already walked this path or are walking it now, so I’m receiving many new leads to follow, including articles and books to read and people to connect with.

If you’re supportive of this journey I’m taking, thank you so much. I really do appreciate it.

If you happen to have a strong personal objection to what I’m doing, I understand that. I won’t hold it against you if you genuinely feel that way. But please try to understand that I can’t join you at that level of thinking, and I have no interest in debating polyamory with you if you’re personally opposed to it.

These are challenging issues to be sure. It’s tough having someone question the way you’re living your life, nudging you to consider alternatives, even if it’s done indirectly. That can feel very uncomfortable. I know because I’ve been on the receiving end many, many times. The worst thing anyone can possibly do to you is to raise your awareness of something you don’t feel ready to face.

My personal choices don’t invalidate the path you’ve been following thus far. You’re perfectly fine as you are right now. You don’t have to change your whole life around if you don’t want to.

If you really can’t handle what I’m doing though, then please don’t willingly expose yourself to it. Following what I’m doing is totally optional, so if you continue to read what I share on this topic, I must assume that on some level, you have a personal interest in learning about polyamory, whether or not you’re willing to acknowledge it. I’m not going to try to trick you, so if you wish to avoid being exposed to such content, it should be easy enough to avoid it based on the article titles. While polyamory will obviously be a major focus of mine for some time to come, I intend to share info on other topics as well, just as I did last year.

Regardless of any personal objections you may have, please understand that I’m quite comfortable with my decision, and I intend to move forward with it.

Immersion

As you can probably assume if you’ve been following my blog for a while, when I set a new direction, I really like to dive into it without delay.

At this point I’m investing a lot of time and energy in educating myself about polyamory, much as I did when I was learning how to adopt a raw diet. I’m in the same “explosion of resources” phase I was in about a year ago. It feels a bit overwhelming because there’s so much to learn, but it’s also exciting because this is the phase where I can soak up new ideas very rapidly.

One thing I’ll certainly do is to reach out and connect with others who are living polyamorously. I want to learn from people who are much further along than me at cultivating multiple intimate relationships.

If I continue to maintain a social network where virtually all of my friends are monogamous, I’ll very likely fail because I’ll have no social support.

A key lesson I learned in my efforts to switch to an all-raw diet is that if you have knowledge (Truth) plus willpower and self-discipline (Power) but you’re missing the social support (Love), you will almost certainly fail to achieve a challenging goal. Your existing social network will just pull you right back to where you were. Long-term success requires the construction of a whole new social network. It doesn’t have to replace your old network — it just has to be created.

In order to succeed on this path, I’ll need to cultivate new connections with people who are happily polyamorous. I have to learn from those who’ve done it. Fortunately, there are quite a lot of them.

Many people from this community have already reached out to connect with me over the past few years, usually because they were interested in my work. Seems only fair that I return the favor now.

I know this was quite a long article, so congrats if you made it this far. I hope you found it worth reading.

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© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.