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.

Many people took advantage of the free trial to eliminate one negative belief such as “I’m not good enough” or “Mistakes and failure are bad.”

The experiences people reported were very similar to my own initial experience. There’s a feeling that something has shifted, but the question is, “Is the limiting belief really gone?”

In my case the answer is YES – the belief is really gone, and it didn’t come back. When the opportunity came up for the old belief to limit me, it was obvious that the belief simply wasn’t there anymore. So I was able to make choices and enjoy results that would have otherwise been blocked by the old belief. Removing that belief gave me a lot more freedom.

To share a little more detail about my experience using the Lefkoe Method, I recorded a short video.

On the same page as that video, you can also take advantage of the offer to eliminate a limiting belief for free if you haven’t already done so.

I gave the video to Morty Lefkoe to use as a testimonial on his website, and I joined his affiliate program as well. I think this may be the first time I’ve done a video testimonial for anyone or anything, but I really like Morty’s process, and his heart is certainly in the right place, so I’m delighted to help promote his work.

The video is short (less than 3 minutes), so go take a look.

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

For example, if you have the false belief that mistakes and failure are bad, then you’ll avoid many growth and learning experiences because you have to be willing to fail in order to build new skills.

As another example, if you have the belief that rejection is a bad thing, you’ll avoid approaching new people, and you’ll miss out on many wonderful social connections.

Where do these beliefs come from?

Many limiting beliefs get installed during childhood, but that isn’t always the case. The pattern is that your mind drew false generalization based on one or more specific events. It assigned questionable meanings to those events, and those interpretations are disempowering you. As a result your mind blocks you from taking certain actions, even though the actions may be reasonable and intelligent choices.

In order to remove a limiting belief, It isn’t enough to identify and acknowledge it. You may be aware of some of your limiting beliefs, but awareness of them isn’t necessarily enough to keep them from operating in your life. You may be aware that rejection isn’t such a terrible thing, but your subconscious is still conditioned to avoid it. Awareness is an important part of the solution, but it isn’t the whole solution.

Removing Limiting Beliefs

In July when I was in Bermuda for the Transformational Leadership Council retreat, I found myself sitting next to Morty Lefkoe at dinner one night, and I asked him about his work.

Morty claimed to have developed a method for permanently uninstalling limiting beliefs. And the best part was that his method only took about 20 minutes to apply, and you only had to do it once. Not once per day or once per week. Just once.

I was intrigued, so Morty and I talked for more than an hour. I was particularly interested in what he had to say because I frequently encounter people who struggle with limiting beliefs, especially when it comes to money and finding a fulfilling career. But I couldn’t recommend Morty’s method just on his word alone.

Fortunately, Morty offered to personally show me how the method worked, so later during the retreat, we sat down together in the hotel lobby, and he ran me through the process.

First, he asked me some questions to help me identify a particular limiting belief I had. I began by telling him that I was experiencing some blocks related to hiring people. We soon identified several different intertwined beliefs that were holding me back from hiring a staff. It was obvious that I needed to hire help, but I was still holding back.

Morty took me through a fairly straightforward cognitive process that allowed my mind to eliminate false beliefs that I’d been carrying around for years. After the retreat we did a couple more sessions by phone in order to eliminate some additional beliefs that were holding me back from hiring people.

My biggest limiting belief was, “If I hire other people, they won’t care about the work as much as I do.” I believed that it would be discouraging and draining to manage people who were mainly there for the paycheck. So naturally I didn’t hire anyone. Who’d want to work with people who don’t care?

After using Morty’s process, I felt a bit different, but I wasn’t quite sure if the old beliefs were really gone. I felt like something in my mind had shifted, but I wasn’t clear about the extent of that shift. It felt like the block had been removed, but would I act on it?

Fast forward some weeks later. Erin and I hired four people to help us with the workshop: a video guy, a sound guy, and two helpers who staffed the product table and served as mike runners. We could have kept it small, but we decided to make it bigger and recruit help.

The interesting thing wasn’t that we hired people. It was that we hired people who really cared about the work we were doing. People did more than was expected of them.

For example, Vicki went out of her way to help people process some of their emotional releasing during the breaks. We didn’t ask her to do that. She just saw that she could help, and she did it. She also gave me many suggestions for improving the workshop, some of which I incorporated on the fly during Days 2 and 3.

This was a big shift for me, and it opened a lot of new doors. I told Morty about this and thanked him for helping me get past this block. And I really do feel that the block is permanently gone. Hiring help was a lot easier than I expected.

The nice thing about Morty’s method is that it works for a wide variety of different beliefs, and he has a long history of success with it. He’s used it with more than 38,000 people.

I’m very grateful that I met Morty.

Try the Lefkoe Method for Free

The best part is that you can try Morty’s process for free.

Morty found a way to put his method online, It’s fairly easy and takes about 20 minutes to eliminate one limiting belief. You can complete the whole process while sitting at your computer.

When you eliminate a belief using the Lefkoe Method, the change is permanent. This isn’t something you have to do repeatedly. You only do it once.

By taking advantage of Morty’s freebie offer, you can eliminate one of the three most common limiting beliefs:

• I’m not good enough.
• Mistakes and failure are bad.
• I’m not important.

I’ve watched several of Morty’s interactive videos, each one targeting a different limiting belief, and the process is the same thing he guided me through in person and over the phone.

Try Morty Lefkoe’s belief elimination process for yourself — for free. I highly recommend 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.

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.

This will be a personal development workshop, not a blogging workshop. The content will be loosely based on the material from my book, so we’re going to cover the whole she-bang of personal growth — habits, career, money, relationships, health, and spiritual growth. This workshop will include a nice blend of stimulating material plus interactive exercises. I expect it will be very transformative and a lot of fun for everyone.

One of the reasons I’m doing this is to get out from behind the computer and spend more time working with people face-to-face. I also know that an immersive workshop can stimulate a lot more growth, change, and a-ha moments than reading articles or listening to podcasts. There’s just no substitute for a live event.

The workshop hours will be reasonable, so you’ll have your evenings free to go out and have fun in Vegas — see a show, sample an insane variety of food, or manifest some casino winnings (if you’re 21 or over). Most likely we’ll go from 9a-5p on Fri and Sat and 9a-3p on Sunday, so people can fly or drive home Sunday evening if they so desire. You also won’t have to drag yourself out of bed too early.

I know that a lot of people who read my website are on special diets (vegetarian, vegan, raw, etc). It shouldn’t be hard to find something to eat no matter what type of diet you’re on. There’s also a huge buffet on the floor below our meeting room with tons of variety.

Erin will be there to help facilitate, so you’ll get to hang out with her too, but she probably won’t be presenting any material herself. However, she might share a story or two if I can convince her to do that. She’ll probably offer a few in-person readings on the days before and after the workshop as well.

We’re still discussing the pricing, but very likely it will be $497 if you register before August 31st and $597 thereafter. We know there are some budget conscious readers in our audience, so we wanted to keep the price reasonable.

How much will a hotel room cost? The hotel rooms in Vegas are constantly updating their prices based on supply and demand, but fortunately there are many good deals to be had. If you stay at Harrah’s, my best estimate is that it will be around $100-140 per night on average. I believe Harrah’s is a 3-1/2 star hotel. If you want to go cheaper, there are rooms for $59 a night at the Imperial Palace next door (connected to Harrah’s by a bridge), and I’m sure you can find even cheaper rooms ($39 per night or so) if you go a little further away. If you want to go ritzier, Caesar’s Palace and The Mirage are across the Street, and the Bellagio, the Venetian, and the Wynn are within walking distance too.

Ideally I’d like to bring this workshop to other cities, but that won’t happen till 2010 at the earliest. We’ll probably start with the Western USA and branch out from there. For now Vegas is the place to be.

For this first workshop, our goal is to have 50-150 attendees. It would be fun to have a larger group, but if we go much bigger, we’ll have to start guaranteeing hotel rooms and do a lot of marketing and promotion, and our risk would be much greater.

I’m really looking forward to this. I’m sure it will be a lot of fun and a wonderful growth experience for anyone who chooses to attend. Plus it’s a great excuse to come to Vegas and have fun. Your trip may even be tax deductible if you can claim it as a business educational expense.

I expect to have a registration page for this event online sometime next week, so you can sign up for it then. I’ll announce it in my blog and newsletter as soon as it’s ready. For now I just want to give you a head’s up to save the dates — October 2-4, 2009.

If you expect you’ll want to attend this workshop or if you have questions about it, please let me know. Depending on the volume of replies I get, I may not be able to answer every question personally, but I’ll consider them when I create the registration page, which will probably include a FAQ.

Update 7/15/09: You can now learn about the workshop and register for it here: Conscious Growth Workshop.

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 did not suffer from that particular problem myself since my parents are both pretty bright intellectually. But I can still relate to the challenge of being raised by people with values that differ from your own.

I’ve also had some friends who were raised by — how can I say this tactfully? — intellectually challenged parents.

Some parents simply make some very dumb decisions and not just with respect to parenting. Some make dumb career choices and bad financial decisions. Some make poor health choices. Some are socially inept. And some are spiritually bankrupt. When parents make bad choices, their children are stuck going along for the ride.

In many cases, by the time the child is a teenager, they’re starting to realize that Mom and/or Dad are a few bits short of a byte. Then the kid is left wondering, “How the heck am I supposed to deal with these people?”

This situation can create a lot of conflict and stress during the teenage years. The teen is still dependent on the parents, but the parents aren’t doing a very good job as parents… or as human beings for that matter.

What do you do if you find yourself in such a position? How do you prevent dumb parents from making a mess of your life while you’re still dependent on them?

Here’s some advice on how to handle the situation of feeling trapped as a teenager by your own parents’ failings.

Accept the truth of your situation

Don’t resist or deny your situation. Accept it for what it is. Say to yourself, “So I don’t have the brightest parents in the world. That’s okay. It might be difficult, but I can deal with it.”

If you still have a few more years to live with such parents, it’s tempting to go dark and pretend they’re smarter than they really are. After all, you’ve trusted them to guide you this far. What’s the harm in continuing to put your faith in them?

Loyalty is a good value, but it’s best to direct your loyalty toward principles and key character qualities, not to individual people. Be loyal to the truth.

Being too trusting of people who don’t deserve your trust can lead to all sorts of problems. Even if you don’t have much control over your life situation, you’ll still share the burden of dealing with the consequences of (bad) decisions made by your parents. So it’s wise to limit your exposure to such risks when possible. And you can’t limit your risk if you deny that the risk exists.

Bad decisions made by your parents can create very real problems for you. For starters this can make your life very unstable, unpredictable, and stressful. When they screw up, you may have to deal with the aftermath.

It’s unfortunate to find yourself in a situation where you have limited authority but still must deal with the consequences of decisions made by others. In truth that doesn’t change even after you become an adult, so you might as well get used to it. We must all deal with the consequences of actions taken by others. It’s part of being a member of the human race.

If you deny the reality of your situation, you become truly powerless. Only by acknowledging and accepting your situation without resistance can you summon the power to deal with it appropriately. As tempting as it may seem in the moment, don’t allow yourself to go dark. Keep your eyes open.

Take responsibility and exercise your personal authority

After you accept the situation you find yourself in, assume 100% responsibility for it. Even if someone else is supposedly in charge, your life is still your own. If someone else makes a decision that affects you, you have to live with the consequences.

Your authority may be fairly weak as a teenager, but you can still exercise it to some degree. You can learn how to influence your parents to make better decisions. The skills you build to make this possible will serve you well later in life.

Whatever you do, don’t complain. Complaining only makes things worse. Don’t attack your parents for making decisions you don’t agree with. Learn to negotiate with them instead. Do what you can to help them make better decisions. That’s a lot to ask of a teenager, but again, this is a skill you’ll need later in life anyway, so it can actually be a blessing to develop it at a young age.

In order to become a good negotiator, you must learn to see reality through your parents’ perspectives. You need to understand what they value and why. Once you gain a sense of their values, you can use that as leverage to help get your own needs met.

Instead of getting angry and frustrated and throwing teenage tantrums, try to understand your parents as human beings. They aren’t perfect and they make mistakes. See your situation as an opportunity for you to learn and grow. If you can figure out a positive way to deal with your parents, it will help you out later in life because you’ll surely encounter others who are similar to your parents in at least a few dimensions of behavior. If you can’t handle them, you’ll probably attract others like them later in life until you learn this lesson.

For example, if your parents value peace and quiet, what can you do to make that a reality for them? How can you help them meet this need? Don’t guess. Just ask them outright. It may take a bit of massaging if they aren’t very expressive, but take your time. Keep feeding their answers back to them in your own words until they verify that you understand them.

If your parents are having financial problems, what can you do to help out? Can you help cut back on expenses? Can you pick up the slack by taking on more responsibilities at home? Can you encourage them now and then to help them feel a little less burdened? Can you start a simple web business to bring in a few hundred extra dollars a month?

Instead of blaming your parents for whatever ails you, step up and exercise your own power to make things better. Do what you can to improve your collective situation. You may not have as much societal leverage as your parents do, but surely you can do better than remain aloof. Whatever is testing your parents is a test for you as well.

Communicate your desires and don’t complain

It’s almost a truism that teenagers love to complain. They have an almost infinite capacity for talking about what they don’t like and don’t want. However, this practice doesn’t serve them at all. It merely turns other people against them.

Don’t succumb to the destructive pattern of teen angst. Instead, get into the habit of clearly expressing what you want. Then ask your parents what they need from you to make it happen. By all means assert your independence, but do it constructively if possible instead of lashing out recklessly.

My daughter Emily is only 9 years old, but she’s pretty good at letting us know what she wants. She can be a bit of a spitfire and doesn’t always express herself in the most tactful way, but I respect her more for communicating her desires so clearly. It makes it easier for me to parent her because I have a good sense of what she wants.

Emily loves thrill rides like rollercoasters. She practically equates good parenting with taking her on such rides frequently. As soon as she hits the minimum height requirement for another rollercoaster, she lets us know that we must take her on it ASAP. She recently hit 54 inches, which was the minimum height to ride the big rollercoaster at the New York New York Hotel on the Vegas Strip, so I took her on it, and she really enjoyed it. Since she’s so clear about what she wants, I don’t have to guess. I know that’s how she receives love.

It would be harder to parent Emily if she complained about what she didn’t want and never communicated what she did want. Sometimes when I pick her up from school, she vents about what went wrong that day, so I keep coaching her to shift her mindset. If she has a bad day at school, I ask her to tell me about what was good about her day. If she starts complaining about what she doesn’t like, I teach her to tell me about what she likes most. I still listen to her problems, but I try to keep her focused on overcoming those problems and turning them into positive growth experiences.

As a teenager, don’t waste your breath complaining about what you don’t want. It turns people off and conditions them to regard you as a whiner. It makes them less likely to want to listen to you. Complaining is negative personal branding.

Instead, take the time to clarify your desires. Make it clear to your parents what you want and need from them. Give them a clear picture of your personal boundaries. Ask them what is required to make your desires a reality. Open a negotiation with them about how to make your family life better for everyone.

Be persistent. Give your parents time to come to grips with your personal boundaries. Don’t expect their perspective to shift overnight. It may take many weeks for them to come around and be willing to negotiate with you. Just keep re-raising the issue once a week or so until they’re ready to deal with you as a more independent individual instead of as their dependent child.

If your parents are able to fulfill your needs, great. Do what you can to help make that happen. But if they aren’t able to come through for you or if they keep disappointing you, either due to unwillingness or incompetence, then don’t beat a dead horse. Accept that what you’re asking for is more than they can give you. They don’t have the capacity to fulfill your needs, so you must get your needs filled outside your relationship with them. There are plenty of other people on this planet who can help you out.

When you’re very young, your parents may be your whole world. But during your teenage years (if not sooner), you’ll learn that they can’t satisfy every need and fulfill every desire of yours. They have their own lives to manage, and you are probably quite a handful.

See the true intelligence of your parents

Maybe your parents aren’t very bright, but do they have any good qualities you value?

There are many forms of intelligence, and IQ is only one. People that aren’t very bright in one form of intelligence are often gifted in other forms. Social intelligence, interestingly enough, is a greater predictor of lifelong success and happiness than IQ.

If you have a conflict with your parents with respect to their apparent intelligence, perhaps it stems from connecting with their weaknesses instead of their strengths. Is it possible to shift your relationship in such a way that you can connect more often with their strengths?

For example, if you have a father who’s not very bright IQ-wise, but he has very high kinesthetic intelligence, then don’t ask him to help you with your math homework. Instead, try to relate to him on the basis of his strength. Perhaps you could ask him for advice on becoming more fit, or take up an interest in sports that you can share with him. When you have a personal challenge to deal with, maybe you could explain your problems to him using more physical language and body metaphors that he can understand.

When I meet new people, I like to probe them for their strengths, so I can relate to them on that basis when possible. For example, when I met someone with Asperger’s Syndrome that other people found to be socially awkward, I soon learned that he had a keen interest in video games, and I was able to connect with him easily when we talked about games. He was actually very bright, but he did poorly in school because school is pretty limited in the types of intelligence it values.

Society typically values some types of intelligence more than others. So if you have parents who struggle with seemingly basic aspects of living, such as being able to support themselves financially, it doesn’t mean they aren’t intelligent. It may simply mean that society hasn’t yet learned to harness the value they can provide.

Adopt substitute parents

It’s unrealistic to expect your parents to successfully fill all of your needs. That hardly ever happens in the real world. Most of us grow up with physical or emotional deficiencies to one degree or another. That doesn’t mean our parents are bad people. It just means they’re human.

It’s perfectly okay to befriend other adults who can serve as surrogate parents for you in some ways. If your parents can’t meet your needs, other people can. Your real family includes billions of people, not just the few who share your household.

When I was in high school, I had interests that my parents couldn’t fully support because they lacked the ability to do so. I didn’t hold that against them; I just found other adults who could serve those roles.

For example, when I was about 16 years old, I got really interested in fractals. I programmed my Atari 800 to graph color fractals pixel by pixel. My program would run overnight just to produce a single image. My parents didn’t know anything about fractals, so they couldn’t help me in this area. To get the mentoring I wanted, I made friends with a couple math teachers at my school who were both curious about fractals. They were able to guide me in ways my parents never could, such as by sharing books and resources with me that I otherwise never would have found on my own. Thanks to their help, pretty soon my bedroom wall was covered with fractal artwork I produced. I even invented my own fractal algorithms and produced artwork unlike any else that existed. I actually still have some of those images in a folder in my closet.

For a less nerdy example, when I was 12 or 13 years old, I joined a local Boy Scout troop. (Okay, so maybe that’s still nerdy, but in a different way at least.) My troop had an amazing Scoutmaster and assistant Scoutmaster who worked as professional search and rescue guys. I learned all sorts of cool things from them, such as first aid and lifesaving techniques, some of which I still remember to this day. Our troop went on camping trips once a month, so that gave me a much needed break from my family. That troop became like a surrogate family that allowed me to express and develop other aspects of my personality. I learned so many things that I couldn’t learn from my parents, such as snorkeling, cliff diving, building overnight shelters, archery, metalwork, wilderness survival, and so on. These mentors helped me face and overcome challenges that I’d otherwise never have encountered.

You can apply the same general idea to fill in the gaps in your own family life. Don’t whine and complain just because your parents are unable provide exactly what you want. Be proactive. Go out and find other ways to fill those voids. Recruit some substitute parents to help you.

Recognize that your parents are still right sometimes

Even if your parents seem to be lacking in brainpower, they probably have much greater life experience than you, and experience is often superior to raw intelligence. Adults can call upon their greater life experience to recognize patterns that teens haven’t yet internalized.

If your parents seem to be giving you bad advice or making inappropriate demands, ask yourself where their decisions are coming from. Do they know what they’re talking about? Are their conclusions coming from personal experience? Or are they making leaps of bad logic in areas where they have little practical knowledge?

If you see that parental decisions are coming from real life experience (i.e. street smarts), you may want to give your parents a little more leeway. Ask them to share some of the experiences that led them to their conclusions. Take a deep breath, and realize that it’s possible they may be more right about this than you are.

When I was young, my parents were very financially conservative. They both worked full time, they avoided credit card debt like the plague, they paid down their mortgage, and they saved money year after year. Consequently, my Dad was able to retire at age 55, and now ten years into his retirement, he still has lots of time for his personal pursuits such as gardening. When I was a teenager, I wasn’t particularly keen on saving money, but I bowed to my parents’ will because I figured they had a lot more experience with money than I did. Whenever I got gift money, I saved most of it and only spent part of it. Consequently, by the time I turned 18, I had plenty of money saved up for college. Since I went to a state school  in California, my two degrees only cost me about $2K total for tuition, plus maybe another $500 for books. By saving money for years and by spending conservatively, I didn’t need any students loans, and I graduated debt-free. Given California’s current multi-billion dollar budget deficit, perhaps they should have charged a bit more.

On the other hand, I recognized that because my parents were both lifelong employees, I shouldn’t take their advice with respect to starting and running my own business. That was beyond their personal street smarts. So in that area, I had to dismiss their advice, trust my own intelligence, and learn from other mentors. I’m glad I didn’t follow in my Dad’s footsteps since he worked for a GM-owned company. That might not have turned out so well in the long run, given than GM’s stock is currently worth about 1% of what it was a decade ago.

Move out when you turn 18

The practice of living with your parents well into your 20s is rather loserish in my opinion, and it’s especially bad if your parents are none too bright.

Living at home for too long into adulthood delays the maturation process and holds you back from embracing adulthood. You become a child in a grown-up body. It’s rather depressing to see people who are 28 years old who still live like they’re 18. They may look like adults, but they’re seriously lacking in maturity. By staying at home for too long, their transition into adulthood has been retarded.

I understand that people mature at different rates, but seriously… if you’re still living with Mommy and Daddy at age 25 and beyond, it’s time to get out on your own and grow up. Put the online orc battles on pause, and give adult living a chance. There’s no substitute for holding the reins of your life. Delaying this transition only makes you weaker.

It’s unfortunate that modern society lacks strong rituals for transitioning from childhood to adulthood. It’s not like you have to go out and kill a lion with your spear or take a mate and have your first child at age 15. The borderline has become fuzzier. Celebrating your 18th birthday isn’t much of a transition. Society may grant you more privileges at that age, but otherwise your life looks pretty much the same it did the day before, and you may not feel that much different. Spearing a lion is a much more significant boundary crossing than gaining the right to vote.

When social constructs are lacking, it’s up to you to craft your own rite of passage into adulthood. For me it was moving out when I was 18. It wasn’t an easy transition by any means, but it got the job done.

A good part of transitioning to adulthood is to assume full responsibility for your finances. Put all your accounts in your own name, and start paying your own bills. If you can afford to, get your own vehicle. In my family it was common to get hand-me-down vehicles from other relatives. When I couldn’t afford a new car, I bought an old Pontiac off my parents for $3K (the Blue Book value at the time), so I didn’t have to spend a lot on transportation (other than paying for gas, insurance, and repairs). When I couldn’t afford a car, I rode my bike everywhere.

Is it okay to move back with your parents once you’ve moved out the first time? I think that’s alright under certain circumstances — as long as it’s temporary, and you maintain good boundaries to ensure that you continue living like an adult. Lots of people move in and out of their parents’ home during their early 20s when they need to save money. It’s especially common in places where rents are very high, and it can be quite expensive to secure decent housing on your own. When this happens, however, you need to assume full responsibility for elevating your financial situation to the point where you can move out again. It’s okay to use family as a safety net when necessary, but make sure you don’t get too cushy with it.

What about the opposite end of the spectrum — moving out before you’re 18? In general I don’t recommend that except in severe cases like where you’re being violently abused or seriously mistreated. But it’s hard to make a one-size-fits-all call here because there are so many variables. I’ve seen people move out at 16 years old and thrive. Louise Hay, founder of Hay House (publisher of my book), moved out before 18, but she suffered a lot of abuse, including being raped at age 5, so that’s a lot more serious than merely dealing with parents you don’t respect.

When possible I think it’s better to maintain the stability of staying with your parent(s) until you turn 18, assuming you do gain some stability from it. People mature at different rates though, and some people are clearly capable of managing their own affairs at younger ages. In practice it’s a bit of a gamble no matter when you move out. For some people it works well, but for others it turns out rather poorly. A setback isn’t the end of the world though. You have to learn how to take care of yourself sooner or later.

I think the biggest risk these days isn’t moving out too soon. It’s staying at home too long. People get too comfortable staying at home, having their bills paid by Mom and Dad so they can delay adulthood by playing video games and surfing the web.

Even if you’re going to college, I think it’s better to move out and live on campus if you can afford it. Get a side job to make ends meet if you have to. But give yourself the gift of independence. Start making your own decisions, and cut the umbilical cord.

Be patient

Realize that the passage of time will eventually solve many of your problems. Your situation isn’t permanent, so the worst case is that you must wait it out.

A very empowering perspective is to consider that on a spiritual level, you chose your parents. Perhaps you incarnated with them for a reason. What can they teach you? Why on earth would you pick such people if you had a choice? Hmmmm…

This can be a hard perspective to maintain when you’re in the midst of chaotic teenage experiences. Sometimes the passage of time is required to clarify the valuable lessons learned.

I was raised in a family that my siblings and I used to openly label as dysfunctional. We revered the Bundy’s from Married With Children as a more loving family. But my parents did a great many things right that put me in a strong position later in life. I had a superb education and access to cool learning resources like a home computer and programming books at a young age (not terribly young by today’s standards, but certainly back then). By the time I was 16, I could write very well, and I could code interesting computer programs in BASIC and Pascal.

When I turned 18, I was glad to be out on my own and breathed a sigh of relief. It took me years to see the value of my upbringing as it played out. The passage of time helped to broaden my perspective.

If you’re a teenager right now, feeling stuck in an oppressive situation with parents you don’t respect, you may not be able to see the value in your experiences. You may simply regard them as chaotic or unfair. But time will surely shift your perspective. Be patient with yourself and your family, and allow your life to unfold as it will. In any event, resistance is futile.

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 ordered the original Kindle in January, but I was informed it was backordered and wouldn’t ship for 2 months. A month or so later, Amazon informed me that they were about to release the Kindle 2, so they automatically upgraded my order for free, and I received the Kindle 2 shortly thereafter.

I’ve had a few months to play with it now, and overall I like it a lot.

Electronic Ink

The Kindle doesn’t use an LCD screen. It uses a special technology called electronic ink. This involves shifting around physical particles to form each pixel instead of turning on tiny lights. This means that the Kindle isn’t back-lit, so you won’t be able to read it in the dark without another light source. In practice this isn’t a big deal because it’s no different than reading a print book.

I thought the e-ink was pretty amazing when I first saw it. The text is very crisp and easy on the eyes. When my Kindle arrived in the mail, I noticed there was some text printed on the screen. I assumed it was one of those plastic stick-on sheets to protect the screen from scratches during shipping, as you often find on electronic devices. However, when I tried to peel off the sticker, I discovered there was no sticker, and I got confused. Was this a piece of plastic I had to snap off somehow to get to the real screen underneath?  It took me a while to figure out that the device was already turned on and displaying a welcome message. The text was so unlike what I’ve seen on an LCD screen that I didn’t realize it was being displayed by the device itself.

The wow factor lasted about 15 minutes, and soon I paged through the Kindle manual, which is included on the device when you buy it. The manual works like a tutorial since it encourages you to try out features as you go along. I read the whole thing because I read a lot and expected to use the device a lot, so I wanted to familiarize myself with all the specs and diagrams.

Page Turning

The Kindle 1 received many complaints about the page turning buttons, which were too easy to bump by accident. The Kindle 2 solves this problem definitively by making the buttons hinge from the outside in, so you have to press them on the inside edge. That’s easy to do intentionally but hard to do accidentally.

I like that there are duplicate “Next Page” buttons on the left and right sides of the Kindle. This makes it easy to keep reading while holding the book in either hand.

My #1 gripe with the Kindle 2 is the slow page turning. It’s faster than the Kindle 1, and it only takes about a second, but those seconds add up when you’re seeing only a couple paragraphs per screen.

The slow page turning means I can’t really PhotoRead books on my Kindle. I can still use many of the PhotoReading techniques, but not all of them. Some aspects are just too tedious because of the slowness of the device. However, if they can speed this up a lot in future versions, then it would be practical to PhotoRead with the Kindle.

If your reading speed is average or close to average, then the Kindle 2 page turning should be just fine.

Cool Features

You can change the text size very easily. I only use the two smallest sizes. Even at those sizes, you’re only seeing 2-3 paragraphs at a time. At the largest size, you’ll see about 50-60 words per screen (not much longer than a Twitter tweet).

The search feature is very fast. You can search through individual books or across all the books in your collection. I wish I could instantly search through all the print books on my bookshelf since that would be incredibly useful. As I add more books to my Kindle, the search feature will become more valuable.

Battery life is excellent. I’m very impressed with that aspect. The battery drains faster with the wireless turned on, but it can last for a couple weeks if you keep the wireless off and just turn it on when you need it. It only takes about 15 seconds for the wireless connection to boot up once you enable it, so I usually leave it turned off. Even so, you’ll still get many hours of use with the wireless turned on.

I like the innovative power cord and USB port which share the same jack and cable. The cable has an attachment on the end to turn it from a USB connection to a regular power plug. There’s a charging indicator light that is yellow while the Kindle is charging and turns green when it’s fully charged. Unfortunately since I’m colorblind, I can’t tell the difference between those colors. That lame design decision makes this feature worthless for me and the millions of people who see colors like I do. Fortunately it doesn’t matter much because the device only takes hours to charge completely, and the long battery life means I don’t have to charge it more than once every few weeks, even if I’m using it a lot. My iPod tells me on the display when it’s fully charged.

I love the wireless connection to Amazon.com’s online store. It’s really nice shopping for books this way, especially since I’m used to buying items from them. You really can purchase and download books in less than 60 seconds. The first book I bought took 35 seconds to receive. And the best part was that I bought it from my backyard. The Kindle accesses a 3G wireless network directly from the device, just like a cell phone, so you can shop for books from just about anywhere — no need for a WiFi connection.

When shopping online you can access essentially the same info about a book that you can get at Amazon.com, including the reviews that people have posted. The downside is that you can’t see as much info on the screen at any one time, so it takes longer to page through lengthy text. I like to scan through multiple reviews very quickly, and that’s harder to do on the Kindle.

You can make annotations throughout any book you read, and then you can review the annotations later. I haven’t used this feature much, but it could come in handy if I read a book with a lot of sections I want to highlight, such as for posting a book review.

Amazon backs up your purchases as well as your annotations, so you can download them again later if you buy a new Kindle-compatible device. I like that all the books I buy for my Kindle can be accessed indefinitely as long as I have a device that can read them. Some people might not like being locked into a proprietary system though since you can’t read Kindle books on other ebook readers. Personally this doesn’t bother me since Amazon is the only online bookstore I patronize anyway, other than buying ebooks now and then. I’d probably be very concerned right now if I were one of their competitors.

You can subscribe to magazines and blogs on the Kindle for a small fee. Each blog is 99 cents per month, and you can get a free 14-day trial. The latest content is automatically downloaded to your Kindle via the blog’s RSS feed. But not all blogs are available because the blog publisher must explicitly submit their blog to Kindle and agree to Amazon’s long list of terms. There were about 1000 blogs listed last time I checked, but I haven’t checked for months, so there are probably a lot more by now. Personally I don’t use this feature at all, but that’s probably because I don’t regularly read any blogs other than Erin’s. I also thought the selection of blogs on the Kindle was pretty weak.

Despite several requests I’ve received from readers to make my blog available on the Kindle, I won’t be doing so anytime soon because Amazon’s Terms of Service for bloggers are too draconian for me. I might make a little extra money from the subscriptions, but it isn’t worth the headache to change the way I blog just to satisfy their requirements. Many other bloggers will balk at those terms as well, so I think the availability of the most popular blogs on the Kindle will be rather limited if they stick to their current terms. But perhaps they’re deliberately trying to start out slow so they don’t get overwhelmed with submissions. Personally I think it would be to Amazon’s advantage to lighten up their terms and not be so controlling. It seems silly to hold blogs to a different standard than the books they sell.

Sometimes the Kindle version of books don’t include everything the print version does. Recently I read the book Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century by P. W. Singer on my Kindle. I received the book in less than 20 seconds after ordering it directly from the device. Yesterday I was in a local bookstore and happened to see the hardcover version on the shelf. I thumbed through it and noticed it included several pages of photos on glossy paper. I didn’t receive any of those photos with the Kindle version. I don’t see why the photos weren’t included. They were all in black and white anyway, and the Kindle is capable of showing photos in 16-color grayscale, which would have been adequate to display the ones from the book. Incidentally, this was an excellent book — highly recommended if you’re curious about the future of robotics and unmanned combat. Did you know there are now thousands of robots now on active combat duty in the Middle East, many of which are armed?

Experimental Features

The Kindle also includes some experimental features.

Text-to-speech allows you to have your Kindle read any text to you. The Kindle comes with built-in speakers as well as a headphone jack. You can choose from male and female voices and different reading speeds. This is a nice touch, but personally I never use it. The Kindle is a bit too bulky to make a good portable listening device, so I’d rather listen to audio programs on my iPod. Nevertheless, this could be a useful feature under certain circumstances. For example, if you’re going on a long road trip and reading in the car makes you carsick, you can listen to your books on the road and then continue reading normally once you arrive at your destination. Same goes for plane travel. You can also set your Kindle down on the counter and have it read your latest book to you while you make dinner.

You can play MP3s from your Kindle, uploading them via USB. I haven’t tried this because I’d rather use my iPod for audio.

You can surf the web in a limited fashion, much like you would on a cell phone. I was able to check my Gmail account with it, but it’s pretty tedious due to the slow speed. The web browsing feature crashed on me a few times as well. I like that they included this feature, and I found it useful during a trip to L.A. when I didn’t bring my laptop, but realistically I’d only use it in a pinch if I had nothing else available.

Using the Kindle – My Personal Experience

So far I really like my Kindle, and it has quickly become one of my favorite gadgets. But I’d still like to see the technology improve, especially the overall speed of the device.

The Kindle reminds me of the pads from Star Trek: The Next Generation. When I use the thing, I feel like Wesley Crusher reviewing engineering schematics in Ten Forward. I mean that in a good way. I know this tech is still evolving, but I already get the sense that we’re on the cusp of a major transformation. I feel I’m witnessing the future of reading when I use my Kindle. As I sit in my office right now, I’m staring at hundreds of print books on my bookshelves and thinking, your days are numbered. And that includes my own book (which by the way does have a Kindle version and is currently in the top 1% of Kindle books by sales rank).

By far my favorite aspect of using the Kindle is the shareware marketing element coupled with the instant gratification. When I go to a bookstore, I like to browse books on the shelf. I’ll often read a chapter right there in the store to decide whether the book is worth my time and money. But many times they don’t carry the book I want, or they have a weak selection on the topic that interests me. And then I may have to wait in line to buy, especially during the holiday season. When I shop online, I get a bigger selection and better prices, but I have to wait days for my order to arrive. Even with the Amazon Prime program, which gives me free two-day shipping on every order for $79 per year, I still have to wait two days or pay extra for overnight shipping. That’s too long if I find a book I want on a Saturday morning and would like to read the whole book that weekend. I’m used to finishing books within a day or two after I buy them.

With my Kindle I get the best of both worlds. I can shop online with a vast selection since almost 300,000 books are now available on Kindle. When I find a book I like, I can instantly download a free sample chapter and start reading immediately. Then if I like it, I can buy the full book right away, usually for $9.99 or less. This whole process is superb. It’s not perfect — I still love to be able to thumb through the entire book like I can in a bookstore — but it’s a huge step in the right direction.

The Kindle also eliminates the hassle of shelving print books in my home. Erin and I own hundreds of books, and they take up a lot of space. I can donate the ones I don’t need to keep, but I still want many of them available for reference. The Kindle makes this very easy because it can hold up to 1500 books on the device itself.

I think it would be especially cool if Amazon gave you the Kindle version when you bought the physical version of a book too. It would also be nice to get Kindle versions of the print books I’ve already bought from Amazon over the years. They certainly have that info in their database. I understand if they can’t do this for free, but maybe they could offer a deep discount on the Kindle price for books they can verify that you already own, like 99 cents or so. If I could instantly Kindle-ize all the Amazon books I’ve bought over the years for 99 cents each, I’d very likely do it. But $10 each is a bit too much. This problem of digital rights management isn’t specific to Kindle — you see it with music, movies, and software too — but I think Amazon is in a good position to offer better solutions so you don’t have to keep buying the same content in different media forms.

For someone like me who buys dozens of books each year (despite being sent so many for free), the Kindle is likely to save me money in the long run, even with the $359 price tag. Most Kindle books are $9.99. For the types of books I frequently buy, I probably save about $5 per book on average, so with 72 books I recoup my Kindle investment. The money isn’t a big deal to me, but I point this out because I know that some people would consider this a pricey gadget. The price may be offset partially or completely if you buy a lot of books.

My kids got curious about my Kindle when they saw me reading it. Since it doesn’t look like a book, I think they regard it as something of a toy, like a Nintendo DS. My daughter Emily (age 9) keeps calling it a kettle. I showed her how it works, but she didn’t seem to care much. She loves to read as well, so I may have her read a book on the Kindle to see if she likes it. If some of her favorite authors are available on Kindle, she may quite enjoy it. This would save us from having to store all the books she buys.

Kindle DX

This summer Amazon is releasing their new Kindle DX, which is currently available for pre-order. Compared to the Kindle 2, the Kindle DX is significantly larger (10.4″ x 7.2″ x 0.38″). It has a bigger screen (9.7″ diagonal compared to the 6″ Kindle 2 screen). It has more memory (4GB, enough to hold 3500 books compared to the 1500 books on the Kindle 2). And it costs more ($489 vs. $359 for the Kindle 2). It also has some new features like native PDF support.

At 10.2 ounces, the weight of the Kindle 2 is just right, roughly comparable to a paperback book. The Kindle DX weights 18.9 ounces, so that’s more than a pound and 85% heavier than the Kindle 2. By comparison, however, the last Harry Potter book in hardcover weighs 41.2 ounces, so the Kindle DX is less than half of that. Even so, the heavier weight may mean more wrist strain if you like the device with one hand at an angle like I do.

I’m not sure if I’ll get a Kindle DX. I’d probably get one only if Erin and the kids end up taking an interest in my Kindle 2, and we end up competing for who gets to use it. Then I might buy a Kindle DX, so we have a couple devices to share between us. This would allow us to share all the books bought across both devices if we link them to the same Amazon account. At present I’m quite happy with my Kindle 2 though, and I’m glad I bought it. I hope that in time the price will come down, so these devices can be accessible to a lot more people, including those who don’t read as often.

I would not want to be the owner of a brick and mortar bookstore right now.

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© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Is attraction something you have to create with another person? Or does it just happen automatically?

Have you ever made up a list of qualities your ideal mate should have, but when you finally met such a person, you realized there was no spark?

Opposites Attract

In many ways Erin and I are total opposites, but we find ourselves naturally attracted to each other. On a logical level, our relationship might seem like a mismatch, but in truth we are very close and very happy together.

Erin is very nurturing and motherly. In college she majored in psychology, partly so she could understand people better. She loves to encourage people and help them feel better about themselves. If our kids ever feel bad, she’s always there to cheer them up and help them solve their problems.

On the other hand, Erin has a much harder time with qualities like confidence and courage. Sometimes I’ve had to shove her out the door to try something new that would stretch her beyond her comfort zone. When people are mean to her, she is very hurt by it. She has a hard time dealing with unfairness and injustice because she can’t understand why anyone would choose to be cruel to anyone else.

Nurturing is not a quality I’d use to describe myself. Trying to be overly nurturing typically makes me nauseous. When other people get emotional around me, I’m more likely to roll my eyes until they get control of themselves. I’m all for abolishing the celebration of birthdays and holidays that include gift-giving because the whole practice seems so fluffy and lame to me.

My natural style involves pushing myself and others to grow. Confidence and courage are qualities that come easily to me, and I thrive on fresh challenges. I actually feel uncomfortable when I spend too much time in my comfort zone — it makes me itchy to try something new.

Erin is very right-brained and intuitive. She’s an extremely talented psychic medium and has been developing those skills since childhood. A lot of people are shocked by the stuff she’s able to pick up about them. She’s imaginative and creative and wrote her first novel in only 16 days. She can play piano by ear, a skill our daughter seems to have inherited.

Left-brained thinking is much harder for Erin. Helping our daughter with her third-grade math homework is sometimes a stretch for Erin. Erin does a lot of things I feel are borderline ADD like leaving lights on all over the house when there’s no one in those rooms or sometimes leaving cabinet doors and drawers open after she’s retrieved something from them. Often when I go to the kitchen after she’s been there, it looks like a small tornado swept through it. Sheldon Cooper would go kittywompus.

Right-brained thinking didn’t come naturally to me. It was something I really had to work hard to develop in my adult years. I thought that intuition was just woo-woo fluff. I found it much easier to understand computers than human beings. I considered most artist/musician types to be lazy, still-living-with-mommy-at-age-30 losers. I could only respect people who could think things through logically.

I am much more left-brained. In college I double-majored in computer science and math. I began learning computer programming at age 10 and was naturally good at it. I like to be very organized, and I have a low tolerance for disorder. If you’ve read my book, I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s highly structured and organized in a fluff-free manner. Left-brained people usually love it, while right-brained people are more likely to find it a little rigid for their tastes.

On some fundamental dimensions of personality, Erin and I are total opposites. She’s on one end of the spectrum, and I’m on the other end.

And yet despite these major differences, we both felt very attracted to each other. Our 15+ years together have been an incredible journey, and we’re really looking forward to what the next 15 will bring.

Stimulating Growth

I think the reason our relationship has worked so well is that Erin and I are really, really good for each other. She stimulates me to grow and change in ways no one else does, and I do the same for her.

When you enter a relationship with someone who’s very different than you, you’re likely to experience a lot of growth and change, assuming there’s a healthy underlying attraction. But when you’re in a relationship with someone who’s just like you, that relationship won’t stimulate nearly as much inner growth.

Erin opened me up to a world I didn’t even know existed. The first time we met, we spent two hours discussing lucid dreaming, mostly with me asking questions and her telling me about her experiences. Later she taught me about astral projection, something I was able to explore firsthand that same year.

Erin also helped me to get in touch with my heart, to learn to connect with human beings (not just machines), and to think about how I could help others instead of just myself.

Early in our relationship, I admitted to Erin that I really didn’t know how to love. Love was an alien concept to me. Her response was, “I will teach you.” There’s no way I’d have written hundreds of free articles to help people grow if not for Erin’s influence.

Similarly, when I first met Erin, she was working as a $9/hour secretary. The whole notion of deliberately setting and achieving goals was practically unknown to her. She was fun to be around, but it seemed doubtful that she’d really get anywhere in life on her own. Her biggest dreams were perpetually stuck in the fantasy stage. She lacked confidence and drive and became overly nervous if she was ever called on to perform in some fashion.

Just as Erin helped me open my heart and my intuition, I helped her get better at courage, confidence, and left-brained thinking. Looking back it’s pretty amazing how much she’s grown. Even her family has commented on how different she is now.

I encouraged Erin to write and to develop her various talents and skills. I pushed her to create an online business (which she later sold), to start a blog, to become a pro psychic medium, to join Toastmasters, to take Tae Kwon Do lessons, to go vegetarian and then vegan, to move to Las Vegas with me, to travel more, and to make lots of other positive changes.

Erin and I continue to be excited about our relationship because we can see how good we are for each other. We know that we couldn’t have achieved all these personal growth gains on our own. Every year we continue to enjoy positive changes that naturally arise from how we influence each other on a day-to-day basis. 

Attraction

In recent years a great deal of material has been created to explain how to attract a relationship partner. Some of it is technique-based, while much of it encourages you to develop the inner qualities a potential partner would find attractive.

I do think this material can be helpful for many people, especially since a great deal of it overlaps with general principles of personal development.

However, a huge amount of relationship material is rooted in a mindset that I don’t agree with — that you must first change something about yourself in order to become worthy of attracting a really great relationship partner. This mindset pre-supposes that for whatever reason, you aren’t yet capable of attracting that partner in this particular moment. This is a tricky mindset. I won’t say it’s exactly wrong, but I think it’s missing the big picture.

Let me offer you an alternative way of thinking about attraction.

A while back I wrote an article called Self-Acceptance vs. Personal Growth, which is about how to make positive changes while at the same time accepting yourself just as you are. Don’t begin with the erroneous assumption that you’re somehow defective.

This is a good way to think about attraction as well. Attraction occurs very naturally. Instead of learning techniques and “inner game” to become attractive, I think it’s more accurate to say that we need to learn how to stop blocking attraction when it naturally arises. You are already attractive. You just need to realize that and stop blocking yourself from expressing your natural attractiveness.

How many animal species hold seminars to teach their members how to attract a mate? They don’t need anything like that because they don’t have our level of social conditioning that tells them they’re ugly and unattractive and need to be repaired before they’re worthy. They just drop for it in the bushes and then go back to foraging.

Natural Attraction

Instead of trying to diagnose what you need to change or fix about yourself in order to attract a desirable partner, look at it from the opposite perspective. What sort of people do you find naturally attractive?

I’m going to suggest that the people you find naturally attractive are the same people that can help stimulate massive positive changes within you. Even if it doesn’t logically seem like a great match, such partners can potentially be very good for you — not always, but quite often.

When Erin and I first met, we naturally attracted each other. We didn’t need to use tricks and techniques, and we didn’t need to develop our inner qualities either. We certainly weren’t masters of social dynamics, but it didn’t matter. We allowed the attraction to unfold naturally. And 15 years later, we’re still great matches for each other.

Now don’t get me wrong. I think there’s a lot of value to be gained from improving your social skills as well as doing things that make you feel more attractive, especially on the inside. But I would also suggest that entering in a new relationship with someone is one of the best ways to grow and improve.

Instead of thinking about what you should change about yourself in order to gain a relationship, think in the opposite direction. How might a new relationship help you create all those changes? A relationship isn’t an end goal. It’s yet another pathway to long-term growth.

We’re all imbalanced beings to one degree or another. That’s perfectly okay. Don’t think of your personality quirks as defects you must repair. Ironically those quirks may be exactly what someone else finds most attractive about you.

The nice thing about improving through a relationship (as opposed to improving for a relationship) is that you get to enjoy life with your very best personal coach at your side. Instead of growing to get the relationship, you experience growth because of the relationship.

What Attracts You?

What qualities do you find naturally attractive in others? See if you can push past the social conditioning about what is supposed to attract you, and get in touch with what really does attract you.

For example, I’m not usually attracted to women who are too similar to me personality-wise. I have many confident, left-brained women as friends, but I don’t feel drawn to take those relationships to a deeper level. Those qualities just don’t attract me in that way.

On the other hand, I’m naturally attracted to women like Erin who are opposite from me in many ways.

If you’re familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality types, I’m an ENTJ. Isabel Briggs Myers describes ENTJs as follows: “Frank, decisive, assume leadership readily. Quickly see illogical and inefficient procedures and policies… Enjoy long-term planning and goal setting. Usually well informed, well read, enjoy expanding their knowledge and passing it on to others. Forceful in presenting their ideas.” That sounds like me.

My opposite on this spectrum would be an ISFP, which is described this way: “Quiet, friendly, sensitive, and kind. Enjoy the present moment, what’s going on around them. Like to have their own space and to work within their own time frame. Loyal and committed to their values and to people who are important to them. Dislike disagreements and conflicts, do not force their opinions or values on others.”

When I read the description of ISFP, I also note that it’s a good description of the types of women I feel most naturally attracted to. Erin isn’t an ISFP, but she does have many ISFP qualities, especially sensitivity and loyalty. (When I asked Erin what type she was, she couldn’t recall, but I remember it wasn’t my exact opposite.)

Now if I were to make a list of what I think I desire in a relationship partner, I probably wouldn’t list the qualities of an ISFP or anything close to it. Instead I’d probably write down many of the qualities I already possess, in an attempt to find someone I’d consider highly compatible. However, when I notice how I actually feel about women who possess the qualities I think I want, I typically feel little or no spark of attraction. On the other hand, when I meet women who are ISFPs or close to it, my left-brain might assume they wouldn’t be a good match for me, but meanwhile my own body is signaling very strongly that I’m feeling an instinctual attraction.

This played out when Erin and I first met. Initially I wasn’t even thinking about her as a romantic partner. In my mind she wasn’t really my type. I was also dating someone else at the time.

But as Erin and I began spending time together, I couldn’t help but feel more and more attracted to her, not logically but biologically. I wasn’t even trying to get into a relationship with her. It just unfolded in a very easy, natural way as a result of that undeniable attraction. To this day I still feel a very strong attraction to her, even though my logical mind can continue to churn out reasons why she really isn’t my type.

I’ve seen this in other successful relationships too. Sometimes I look at a couple and wonder how they could possibly stand each other. Their personalities are so different. But those differences somehow complement each other, and their relationship makes them both happy and helps them grow tremendously.

I’m suggesting that instead of trying to hunt down and connect with someone who has qualities you think you want in a partner, come at this from the opposite direction. Begin to notice those people you feel naturally attracted to, even if you can’t explain why. Then start listing their qualities. And finally, review your list and ask yourself how someone with those qualities might actually be an incredible partner for you if you got together. Perhaps the reason you feel such an attraction in the first place is that those people possess qualities that will help you grow.

I can offer good reasons why women who are quiet, sensitive, loyal, and conflict-avoiding would be poor matches for me as relationship partners. I could spell out the reasons why I’d very much prefer to connect with strong-willed, independent, thick-skinned women. But that doesn’t change what I’m naturally attracted to. As David DeAngelo says, “Attraction is not a choice.”

Perhaps this is an area where we simply need to upgrade our logic. Maybe our biological circuitry is working just fine, but we aren’t seeing the big picture. We get too stuck in the social programming of what we’re taught to be attracted to instead of paying attention to the real human beings that we’re naturally attracted to. So instead of choosing partners that we actually want, we get caught up in judgments that cause us to rule them out.

“My parents won’t like him.”

“He’s too short and too bald.”

“She doesn’t have the same hobbies I do.”

“My friends would make fun of me if I went out with him.”

But what if there’s a reason we seem to be attracted to those people who, on the surface, appear to be wrong for us? Perhaps by mating with our opposites, we create a stronger family unit (even if it doesn’t take the form of a nuclear family). Instead of doubling up on talents and skills you already possess, wouldn’t it be better to enter a relationship with someone who brings something new to the table? Then you collectively cover a lot more bases that way.

This is how my relationship with Erin has played out. Because we’re so different, we each bring a wide variety of skills to the table, and our family is better off as a result. Our children also gain two different role models to learn from.

Recognizing natural attraction

Now here’s where things get interesting.

It’s been my experience that when I connect with women I’m naturally attracted to, I can often see clear evidence that the attraction is mutual, even if neither of us are willing to acknowledge that attraction openly. It’s as if there’s a magnetic field pulling us closer to each other. But when our logical minds notice what’s happening, there’s a tendency to resist and try to block it because we’ll reason, “No, this person isn’t my type, so I can’t be feeling attraction right now.”

I remember talking about one particular guy with Erin. I said to her, “You two are so much alike. He has all the qualities you say you admire in men. You must find him very attractive. If you wanted to hook up at some point, I certainly wouldn’t be surprised. I think you two would be great together.” But Erin said, “I know, but I just don’t feel it. I’m not attracted to him in that way at all.” At first I thought that was strange because this guy has many qualities that Erin has said she wished I possessed… and yet she feels no special attraction to him. She’s telling the truth. When I see them together, I can tell there’s no spark.

On the other hand, when Erin tells me which people she’s naturally attracted to, I sometimes laugh. “That guy? Really? How is that even possible?” But it’s equally clear that she’s telling the truth.

This works both ways. When I tell Erin about certain women I’m attracted to, she’ll sometimes be surprised. “Really? You like her?” she’ll say. Sometimes she’ll point out why such a person would be a bad match for me, and on a logical level, we’re always in agreement about that. Nevertheless, the attraction remains.

When we sense an attraction to someone, it’s so easy to deny how we feel. Our logical minds break through and explain why we’re facing a bad match. She’s overweight — no way. He’s too aggressive – not for me. If I go out with him/her, my friends will think I’m nuts.

The problem is that when we turn our backs on those feelings, we’re also turning our backs on truth. The feelings are there, so we might as well accept them, make peace with them, and seek to understand them.

Perhaps we should stop denying these natural attractions and see where they lead instead. Maybe it’s better to let go of our judgments and trust our feelings for a change.

Do you think other animals rule out potential mates by talking themselves out of the attraction they feel? Does a male gorilla stop himself, “I dunno. She seems kinda hairy. And she doesn’t have the right waist-hip ratio.”

Does the female gorilla say, “All that chest pounding and ripping up the grass… Who does he think he is anyway? My parents will never accept him, especially since he isn’t Jewish.”

I’ve spent 15 years with a woman I feel naturally attracted to. I often call her by the nickname ”Mate” because that’s how I naturally feel about her. I don’t have to reason why we’re together. It just feels naturally right to me. And so far it’s turned out amazingly well in terms of happiness, mutual growth, and a loving connection.

I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be in a relationship with someone for logical reasons — where I convinced myself that it was a good match, but deep down I just didn’t feel that spark of attraction.

Creating attraction

I know it’s possible to create attraction. You can learn how to do things that will make another person feel attracted to you. There are lots of people teaching how to do that these days. But is this a wise idea?

In your gut don’t you sense there’s something not quite right about using tactics and techniques to cause someone to be attracted to you, someone who wouldn’t otherwise find you attractive?

I think the answer depends on the circumstances. Are you trying to hide the real you and to project a false image that people are attracted to? Or are you working to eliminate the blocks that prevent your real attractiveness from coming through?

I see wisdom in learning how to express ourselves more naturally and authentically. This can lead to relationships that are naturally good for us, that make us happy, and that help us grow. The attraction is genuine.

But projecting a false image is the wrong way to go. This leads to relationships rooted in falsehood, denial, and deception. The people we attract won’t be good matches for us, and we won’t enjoy the optimal growth that comes from finding a true mate.

Attraction and Truth, Love, and Power

Even though your attraction circuitry may seem to operate on a subconscious, biological level, it isn’t there to frustrate you or to derail you. It actually serves a greater purpose by helping you become more aligned with truth, love, and power.

First, attraction helps to align you with truth. Attraction teaches you to let go of falsehood and denial and to practice acceptance. Can you talk about your attractions openly, even if it means others might reject your preferences? Are you ashamed of those you find attractive? Or can you accept this part of yourself completely and without judgment?

Second, attraction helps you align with love. By exploring your attractions and attractiveness, you’ll learn to connect with what naturally makes you happy. This happiness will inspire all other areas of your life. You also have the opportunity to enjoy one or more loving relationships. And you will have the joyful experience of connecting with a partner who finds you naturally attractive just the way you are.

Third, attraction helps you align with power. A relationship rooted in attraction can serve as a pillar of tremendous strength and growth. You’ll learn to stand up for your preferences and to stop apologizing for wanting what you want.

When you rail against what naturally attracts you and try to enter a relationship for reasons other than attraction, you throw yourself out of alignment with truth (by practicing non-acceptance), with love (by disconnecting from your feelings), and with power (by settling for a weaker bond).

Attraction isn’t the only important factor when it comes to relationships. By all means, consider the logical aspects too. Just take note that a relationship rooted in mutual attraction lays a very strong foundation.

Do your best to be true to your feelings instead of trying to reason your way into something that doesn’t feel right to you. Listen to your body more than your social conditioning. If you find yourself in a relationship with someone that your body doesn’t respond to as your natural mate, admit that you made a mistake, and take steps to move on. If you deny your true desires, you’ll be robbing yourself as well as your partner of tremendous opportunities for love, growth, happiness, and yumminess.

There is no one person in the world you must find to become your perfect mate. The world is filled with suitable partners for you. But it will be hard to find and attract them if you lead with your logical mind. Let your body and your feelings guide you instead. You can always engage your logical mind after the fact to figure out how you got so damned lucky.

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.