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.

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.

This is a majorly long article. At about 8,600 words, I’m pretty sure this is the longest article I’ve ever written. It’s more like a free book chapter. The length is because my goal is to share one of the most comprehensive articles ever written on this topic. If you actually read the whole thing, you should gain many helpful insights from it. There are many subtle ideas here. If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to print it out for later. It goes good with peppermint tea.

Calibration for Long-term Success

When you begin any new activity or endeavor, initially you won’t be calibrated for success, so you’ll experience mostly failure. However, if you keep moving forward with a clear goal in mind, and if you progressively adjust your thinking and actions along the way, you’ll eventually calibrate yourself to get the results you want. This calibration only occurs from directly applying a skill under real-world conditions, not by reading about it.

When you’re in the pre-calibration period, achieving even a small degree of success in a new field requires a massive, all-out effort. Post-calibration, success is practically on auto-pilot; you can consistently achieve the results you want with minimal effort.

Calibration Examples

It’s easiest to understand calibration by way of example, so here are some detailed examples to consider:

Social Dynamics, Making Friends, and Dating

In the field of social dynamics, calibration is the process of learning how to meet new people, initiate conversations, keep conversations going, make new friends, get dates (second meetings), and basically achieve positive social interactions.

How you calibrate your social skills will depend on your personal goals for this area. A salesperson may focus on learning how to build rapport, generate interest, close sales, and construct a database of quality contacts. A professional speaker may learn how to get attention, arouse emotion, generate laughter, and inspire people to action. A pick-up artist may study how to initiate conversations, demonstrate value, build attraction, and achieve successful closes (a close could be getting a phone number, a date, or a sexual encounter).

In high school I was comfortable within certain social circles, but I was still more introverted than I wanted to be. So when I started at college, I decided to remake myself into a more extroverted person. I didn’t really know what I was doing, so I just dove in and attempted to be as social as possible. I accepted any and all opportunities for social interaction. If anyone invited me to go out, I always said yes. I made a huge commitment to elevate this part of my life, and I stuck with it for my entire freshman year.

This strategy actually worked. I hadn’t read any books on social skills at the time, but I quickly calibrated my social skills via trial and error.

Within a few weeks, I’d made dozens of new friends, and I was going to parties every week. If I ever wanted to hang out and do something fun, I could always find someone willing. Not including sleep time, I’m sure I spent more time in other people’s dorm rooms than my own. I was always going out — for parties, poker games, volleyball, ping pong, or just for pizza. I created an absolutely amazing social life and packed more fun into each month than I used to enjoy in a year. I practically became like a different person.

What I found interesting was that in the beginning, it seemed like I was always the one to initiate new connections, but once I felt comfortable doing that, additional connections began flowing into my life almost effortlessly. During my first week at college, I noticed a party across the hall and asked if I could join in the fun (and got a quick yes). After that I was always getting invitations to parties and virtually never had to ask. During the first few months, I initiated a lot of social experiences (Wanna join me for dinner at the dining commons? Wanna grab a slice? Wanna get a poker game together?). But eventually I had so many invites coming to me passively that I didn’t have to initiate as much.

Looking back, I probably went way overboard. The good news was that I really took control of this area of my life. By throwing myself into it with a passion, I quickly became comfortable meeting new people, and I learned to make friends easily. The bad news was that I totally blew off my studies and was flunking out of school. In retrospect it wasn’t such a bad trade off though. I got expelled after my third semester, but the social calibration I gained during that time has served me well ever since. I went to a different school later and still earned my college degrees, but I think the social calibration has proven more valuable in the long run. I don’t feel intimidated in new social situations, and it’s normally easy for me to make new friends and connect with people. Somewhere along the way, I picked up a wife without even trying.

When Erin and I moved to Las Vegas in 2004, we didn’t know anyone in the city. We went from having a lot of friends in L.A. to having zero local friends in Vegas. It was just the two of us and our kids in a big city of strangers. But part of the reason I was happy to move to a new city was that I knew I could make new friends easily. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before I had plenty of great local friends. The bigger challenge for me has been feeling over-socialized at times. There have been some weeks where I’d have preferred more alone time.

This social calibration has benefited me tremendously in business. I can go to a mixer or conference where I don’t know anyone, and I have an easy time making new friends and contacts. I remember when I first started attending the Game Developer’s Conference many years ago, most of the attendees seemed shy and socially awkward. They’d mostly keep to themselves or cling to their co-workers, especially at meal times. Meanwhile, I was going around making new friends, which just felt natural to me. Some of those chance encounters led to new opportunities and deals that helped grow my business. It was also nice to have more friends with similar interests.

One year at that conference, I hung out so late that the shuttles had stopped running. It was pouring rain outside, but a new friend offered me a ride back to my hotel. In fact, something similar happened at a different conference this year. It’s nice to know that my social calibration can keep me out of the rain when necessary.

To some people this may not sound like a big deal. Many people develop such skills in high school or younger. But for a shy kid like me who went to an all boys Catholic high school, it was indeed a big deal.

Although I use my social skills mainly to make friends and business contacts, you can use a similar process to develop dating and relationship skills. For example, if you want to go on more dates, you can calibrate your skills to get good at opening conversations with strangers, develop fun and interesting conversations, build attraction, and at least close with a phone number. There are lots of people teaching this stuff online now, with varying degrees of credibility (and sanity), but the most important thing is to just dive in and start experimenting. You’ll experience some rejection at first, but if you just keep learning and adapting, your skills will calibrate to the point where you’re able to get consistently good results.

If you happen to be suffering from loneliness, most likely it’s because you never took the time to adequately calibrate your social skills. Consequently, you may avoid making new friends because you don’t understand the social nuances of how to do it. You probably feel socially awkward and suffer from an amplified fear of rejection. The solution is to focus on a different goal first. You need to calibrate your social skills before you can apply them. Go out and socialize for the sake of learning how to socialize. Don’t worry about whether or not you make any new friends. Once your social skills are calibrated, which may take a few months, then you can focus on building the kinds of friendships you desire, and it will be much easier for you. Aim to get good first. Then aim to get results.

Martial Arts

If you study martial arts and begin learning to spar, you’re going to be pretty bad at it initially. You’ll have no sense of timing, and you won’t grasp the rhythm of a sparring match. You’ll probably bang knees with your opponent a lot. All the newbies do that.

For the most part, you can expect to look and feel like a total dork. The first time I sparred, which was more than 10 years ago, I was laughing during the match, mostly at how awkward I felt. I’m sure I looked like a total dork.

This is to be expected. You can try to play it cool, but the truth is that the first few times you attempt any new sport, you’re virtually guaranteed to look and feel like a dork. This is because your mind and body aren’t calibrated to that sport.

Within a few months of regular training, your sparring should be fairly well-calibrated for an intermediate level of skill. At the very least, you won’t embarrass yourself. You’ll have sparred many different opponents, and you’ll have a good sense of what to expect. You’ll be able to use different moves successfully, land punches and kicks, and pull off the occasional surprise. I remember how cool it was when I stripped an opponent’s helmet off with an axe kick during a sparring match.

While sparring at the beginner level feels awkward and intimidating, once you gain a little competence, it becomes a fun challenge. At this point the subtleties of the skill begin to reveal themselves. Once your basic sparring moves and tactics are calibrated, you can begin to calibrate your strategic decisions, and this is where the richness of sparring really opens up. The game becomes less physical and more mental. Some would even say it becomes spiritual at a certain point.

Calibrating to a particular sport is a lot like learning to ride a bicycle. Even if you don’t train for a while, the mental calibration remains, and you can easily pick it up again later.

I trained for about three years in Tae Kwon Do in the late 90s with a mix of group classes and private lessons. Over time I got pretty good at sparring and really enjoyed it. I moved away from the studio and stopped training, but several years later, I started training in a different martial art, Kempo, starting as a white belt. Kempo is geared toward self-defense, while TKD is more sporty. Fortunately, all the moves that are legal in TKD are also legal in Kempo, and Kempo allows you to do some things that aren’t legal in TKD, such as punching to the face. (Protective gear is worn during sparring, but there’s still some risk. I suffered a bruised rib and a split lip on different occasions.)

Even though I’d lost most of my flexibility, the first time I sparred in Kempo, I did amazingly well, certainly far beyond the white belt level. From my first Kempo sparring class, I was able to hold my own against one of the black belts in the studio. I was sparring TKD-style, not Kempo-style, but that actually gave me an advantage because the other students weren’t calibrated to that style. TKD is mostly kicking, but Kempo uses more hand techniques. My preference for kicks surprised the other students because they would hover just outside of punching range, but they were still within my TKD-calibrated kicking range, so I hammered them with kicking combos until they figured out they needed to back up. This threw them off mentally, and it took months for many of them to adapt to my style. Of course, it also took me a while to get used to having punches thrown at my head.

After a year of training in Kempo, I was fairly well-calibrated to that style, but I had to unlearn some of my TKD habits that were ineffective in Kempo. I had to work on my speed, defensive maneuvers, and incorporating punches, strikes, and backfists into my sparring.

The point is that once you gain calibration at a particular skill set, you may very well lock in that skill for life. I feel as if basic competence in sparring is so ingrained in me that even if I didn’t spar again for 20 years, I’d be able to quickly pick it up again. I can actually feel that calibration in my body.

Blogging

Since blogging is still a fairly new medium, it usually takes new bloggers a while to properly calibrate. The failure rate is pretty high for newbies because most of them give up before they calibrate for success. I’d say you need to write at least 200-300 posts before you get a decent calibration going, and that assumes you’re making a solid commitment to getting better. For some people it will require more than 500 posts to achieve reasonable calibration, especially if they aren’t very good writers. There’s just a lot to learn.

In particular, there’s a huge gap between writing posts that people read and forget vs. writing posts that people will remember well enough that they’re still referring their friends, family members, and co-workers to read a year later. One of the key calibrations for long-term blogging success is to learn how to write the latter type of post; that’s how you get your archives working for you, and your traffic can still grow even when you aren’t posting anything.

For example, of the top 10 articles on my website that generate the most referrals, only one was written this year. Articles I wrote years ago continue to attract new readers today. However, it took me a long time to learn to write the kinds of articles that would produce such results. I’ve publicly shared how I do this, and that’s been helpful for some people, but it still takes time for new bloggers to “get it” to the point where they can apply it.

Not long ago I was at a party, chatting with a woman who got started blogging after attending a blogging workshop I did a couple years ago. She was telling me some of the mistakes she made with her blog during that time, all of which were mistakes I explicitly said to avoid during the workshop. For example, she wrote lots of timely content instead of timeless content, so she felt like she was on an endless treadmill, and her archives were largely worthless. She remembered that I said to avoid those mistakes too, but that wasn’t enough to stop her from making them. Despite having the opportunity to learn from my experience and avoid the pitfalls I described, she still had to go out and make those mistakes in order to refine her own calibration. I’ve seen countless bloggers make the same mistakes. They seek my advice, I tell them what to do and what not to do and why, and they do exactly what I tell them not to do and then wonder why it isn’t working. Oy vey! This is okay though, as long as they keep plugging ahead and learn from those mistakes. We human beings aren’t known to be the best listeners in the galaxy. We learn much better by doing something than by reading about it.

Different bloggers will naturally calibrate themselves toward different goals. For example, I wanted to calibrate my blogging skills to the goal of having a deep, long-term impact on my readers. I want to change people’s lives for the better. This is partly why I do things differently than most bloggers. I blow off many practices that other pro bloggers defend as sacred. My articles tend to be very long and detailed. I typically avoid posting shallow short info-crack pieces. I post less frequently, sometimes going a week or more with no fresh content. I largely ignore current events. I don’t often link to other blogs. This is all because I’m calibrating my skills toward a certain type of result. Those popular strategies just aren’t very helpful at achieving the results I desire, so I don’t use them. If you want this to become yet another info-crack blog, get used to disappointment. I want to change your life, not provide you with a five-minute distraction.

So be careful when taking advice from others. If you’re calibrating toward a different goal than they are, their advice may hurt you more than help you. It’s best to learn from people who’ve already achieved a similar calibration to what you want to achieve. For example, if you just want to make as much money as possible and don’t care how you get it, then you probably wouldn’t want to model my blogging methods because I’ve calibrated myself toward a different goal. But you might want to follow those bloggers who proudly proclaim they’re in it for the money — there are plenty to select from. On the other hand, if you believe you’re here for a reason and that blogging could potentially become a sustainable expression of your life purpose, then you’d probably benefit greatly by studying my style, since I’ve been getting positive results in this area for years. The point is that if you decide to model someone, be sure you’re modeling someone with compatible goals (and thus a compatible calibration).

One thing I’ve learned from 4+ years of blogging is that it really isn’t that hard in principle to become a successful blogger; however, it’s very hard in practice. Newbies’ minds are typically filled with many false notions. In some ways they need to unload more useless ideas than they need to absorb useful ideas. I’ve raped quite a few pro blogging sacred cows, yet my blog is still going strong.

There are a lot of blogging success factors that are somewhat counter-intuitive. You won’t realize this if you just read sites about blogging because they’ll rarely write about these factors. For the most part, it’s not that anyone is intentionally withholding information. The ideas are simply too subtle for most bloggers to be consciously aware of them. Many calibration issues are like this — they’re just too subtle to appear on any “top 10″ or “how to” lists. Sometimes people who succeed can’t document all the specific reasons they’ve succeeded. They can’t consciously unearth every detail of their unconscious calibration. There are some things I do as a successful blogger that I’ve never seen anyone write or speak about publicly, myself included. Some of the concepts are so subtle or intricate that even if I explained them in detail, nobody but other successful pro bloggers would even understand what I’m talking about, and some people would accuse me of lying.

Yesterday another blogger emailed me a link to a post he wrote, explaining why he personally dislikes my writing style. This is a blogger who says he gets significantly less traffic than I do. His main criticism is that I state my opinions too directly, as if they’re facts. This is a perfectly valid criticism of course; I confess to doing this liberally. The attitude of that blogger was that this is a personal defect I should correct. However, what he probably doesn’t realize is that this is a trait I developed over time as part of my calibration process for blogging success. I’m sure his advice is well-meaning, but I know that if I take his advice, my results will actually decline. I can say he’s wrong and that I’m right because I’ve learned which approach works best for me via trial and error. As a generalization, I know that making strong statements works better than making weak statements.

This is one of many subtle calibration refinements I learned from years of blogging. I discovered that prefacing every opinion with phrases like “I think…” or “I feel…” or “In my opinion…” leads to the creation of wimpy content. So this was actually a personal defect I learned to correct, and I intentionally make strong statements. My readers aren’t stupid. They know that since this is my website, such statements represent my thoughts, opinions, and beliefs. When I offer up my thoughts directly, as opposed to watering them down with qualifiers, people are challenged to agree or disagree with me. This helps people question their beliefs, strengthening some while weakening others. This is what I like to see.

Another benefit to making strong statements is that other bloggers, including the one critical of my posting style, will take the time to write posts just to disagree with me, thereby sending traffic to my website and actively helping me achieve my goals. Yet because their content is usually wimpier, they don’t benefit equally from this same mechanism. There are a lot of subtle interactions going on here, and I’m only offering a cursory overview here, but the net effect is that by posting strong statements, I enjoy more blogging success, but I also attract more criticism. However, the criticism actually benefits me. This is pretty counterintuitive, isn’t it?

Part of the reason I’ve been so successful as a blogger is that people remember what I’ve written, especially if they disagree with it. If you look at the comments written about my work throughout the blogosphere, you’ll find that most people have very polarized opinions about my work. Some people love my work. Some absolutely despise it. Very few are neutral. However, love it or hate it, these same people keep discussing my work, constantly spreading the word to those who don’t know about me. Such controversy makes people curious and brings new readers to my website every day. Isn’t this just insidious? The more people dislike me, the more they actively go out and market my work to others, and the more they help me achieve my goal of helping people grow. This is so effective that I can even tell such people how they’re helping me, and they’ll keep right on doing it.

I could certainly write more agreeable posts that few people would find objectionable. I could apologize for every opinion of mine that isn’t mainstream. But that’s totally the wrong calibration for my goals, not to mention for my personality. It’s way too cowardly. I don’t want to calibrate as a wimpy blogger that nobody can find fault with. It’s more effective to calibrate as a blogger who challenges people and makes a difference, even if it sends some people running the other way (to go out and promote my work instead of reading it themselves).

Uncalibrated newbie bloggers often blog scared. They try to please everyone and avoid taking risks. Consequently, they write posts that are easily forgotten and which will generate few referrals. Then some new upstart blogger comes along with a better calibration, breaks all the newbie rules, and surges ahead in traffic. And the other newbies think it’s luck. It’s not luck though. A good example is the blog Stuff White People Like. I first happened upon it shortly after it launched, and I knew it would become successful. I could see it had a great calibration for building traffic quickly — it was only a matter of time before it took off. The posts were politically incorrect to the max, but they were witty and memorable. Sure enough, that blog became a hit and even led to a book deal. If this sort of success surprises you as a blogger, it means your calibration is off. If your calibration is solid, you should be able to browse through the early posts on that blog and NOT be surprised by its success. Overall, if you’re often surprised by the success of others in your field, it means your calibration isn’t very good yet. As your own calibration matures, you’ll get better at being able to predict successes.

One of the keys to success in any field, especially blogging, is to accept that there are good reasons the successful people are succeeding, and it has nothing to do with luck. If you see someone who’s getting better results than you, even if it’s someone with less experience who started after you, chances are they have a more accurate calibration than you. You can rail against that, feel jealous, and call them names, but it’s better to take a step back, eat your humble pie, and learn from such people if you can. I’ve learned some pretty cool things from bloggers who started long after I did. Although my current calibration is obviously working, I know I can always improve, and I never want to think of myself as such as expert that I can’t keep learning and growing.

One of the worst things you can do in blogging is to write in such a manner that will offend no one. If you don’t offend or challenge anyone, you’re probably writing content that isn’t very memorable or meaningful. If you write what people expect, their minds won’t store it. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any highly successful bloggers that don’t have multiple negative rants written about them somewhere. All of them piss people off. Most of them aren’t intentionally trying to upset people. It’s just that upsetting people seems to be a natural consequence of the calibration required for blogging success.

This isn’t unique to blogging either. Think of any successful media personality, and I’m sure you can find some rants about them with a quick online search. In fact, the biggest stars will have tons of rants. Consider Tom Cruise for instance.

Some people might assume this sort of controversy is a side-effect of success, like perhaps that celebrity got a big head after enjoying some success (causing people to turn against him/her), or maybe the rants appeared as a side effect of the celebrity’s popularity (like it’s just a numbers game). I’d say that’s the wrong way to look at this. It’s more likely that generating controversy was part of the celebrity’s early calibration process. If anything, the ability to handle controversy probably helped them become a celebrity in the first place.

Some of the first articles I ever wrote, even before I launched StevePavlina.com, generated controversy that helped turn them into fast hits. An example was the article Do It Now, which I wrote in 2000. Lots of people love that article, but some people find it disturbing and feel compelled to rant about it (even eight years after it was first posted online), perhaps because it makes them realize just how unproductive they are compared to what they could be achieving if they really made an all-out effort. Unfortunately, it took me years to figure out why that article became a hit and to learn how to reproduce the kind of impact it had. It also took me a long time to realize that the negative backlash generated by that article was actually helping me grow my readership… and that I should accept and embrace such critical feedback rather than worry about it. What I initially interpreted as negative feedback (i.e. I did something wrong) was actually positive feedback (I did something right). Interpreting emails from people saying “you are wrong” as evidence that you did something right is again pretty counterintuitive, isn’t it?

This is a key point of calibration. When you’re building a new skill, you have to look at the big picture in terms of the results you’re getting. You might do something that seems to generate immediate negative feedback from people, but when you step back and look at the big picture, you may see that the overall feedback is overwhelmingly positive. This happens a lot in blogging, where a reader may chew you out for something you wrote, and then six months later, they’re singing your praises for helping them achieve a breakthrough they never thought possible. And even if they aren’t singing your praises, they’re out there telling people why they hate you, thereby making people curious and sending you more traffic.

A similar effect also happens in social dynamics, where the “bad guys” can actually attract more success because they have so many detractors unwittingly doing their marketing for them.

Newbie Fear

Perhaps the toughest part of calibration is dealing with newbie fear. This is the fear of failure or rejection we experience when learning a new skill. Initially we suck, we know full well that we suck, and we really don’t want to deal with the embarrassment and humiliation of other people witnessing just how badly we suck. This is most distressing with skills that must be calibrated in public, such as dating skills and public speaking.

There are some ways to mitigate newbie fear. One of the best ways is to connect with other newbies and go through the initial training together. When you look up to experts who are already well-calibrated, it’s easy to become intimidated and psyche yourself out. You’ll tend to hold yourself to an unreasonable standard of performance. But if you befriend and hang out with other newbies, the learning process can be a lot more fun. It’s comforting to have buddies that suck just as badly as you do. You can blow off steam together, share your latest insights, and poke fun at each other as you learn. “Misery loves company” isn’t such a bad idea in this case.

The key is to associate with newbies who are committed to learning and growing. If you hang out with flakes, it probably won’t help you much. Try to identify other newbies that you predict are likely to stick with it and succeed, and hang out with them if you can. This will help increase your commitment without making you feel too intimidated.

When I first started learning about blogging, I enjoyed connecting with other newbie bloggers. In the old days (old as in four years ago), we swapped links with each other, shared advice, and found ways to help each other gain traffic. Many of those people gave up and quit of course, but a few are doing very well today. It’s cool to watch your newbie friends improve their calibration right along with you, even though everyone improves at different rates.

Ultimately, you’ll only get so much mileage out of trying to reduce newbie fear. The fastest way to overcome it is to simply charge straight at it. Just accept that you’ll suck, that some embarrassment will happen, and that the only way out is through. This is especially important for building good social skills.

You’ll only get so far by sitting at home reading, listening to audio programs, and watching videos. Such educational aids can help, but they can never substitute for real-world experience. Use them as supplemental materials to refine your in-field experimentation. If you want to become a successful blogger, start blogging immediately. If you want to build an online business, get some kind of website online right away. If you want to improve your social skills, go outside and meet people tonight. Yes, you’re going to suck at first. But if you push through the newbie fear and do it anyway, the fear will subside, and you’ll begin to calibrate your skills very quickly.

Even if you read all the books in your field, you will still suck on your first in-field experience. You won’t even be able to apply what’s in those books. So get out in the field and start calibrating.

Get that first crappy “Hello, World” blog post under your belt. Let out that inane “Hey, baby. What’s your sign?” pick-up line. Bang shins with your sparring partner as you scream, “Ouch!”

Newbie Pride

If you’re a newbie at something, and you’re feeling hesitant to go after some live in-field experience, realize that this is very normal. Many newbies resist being newbies, but this resistance only makes them more nervous. So realize that a big part of the problem is your own resistance to being a newbie. You’ll get into the field sooner if you can accept this phase of your learning curve.

My advice for turning this around is to fully embrace your newbieness. Don the badge of Newbie Pride. Instead of fearing that you’ll look like a total dork, take this the other way. Embrace and even exaggerate your dorkiness. Don’t try to resist it. Blow it up even larger.

In martial arts classes, there’s no hiding your newbie status. You wear a white belt, so everyone knows you’re a beginner. This actually makes it easier because you know people don’t expect much of you. The lower belts may be nervous about sparring, but since they know that nobody expects much of them, most are able to get out on the mat and spar without undue hesitation.

However, in other fields, people don’t wear white belts. This has positive and negative side-effects.

In online business, for example, many newbies try to hide their newbieness. I made this mistake when I started my first business. I pretended to be an experienced business person when I just started. I talked about my staff even when I was the only person in the business. That was totally unnecessary, not to mention really dumb. When I started blogging, however, I didn’t try to hide my newbieness. I embraced that dorky beginner phase and had fun with it. And because of that, more experienced bloggers reached out to help me. Back then, “more experienced” meant they started blogging a month before I did.

I still maintain this attitude today. If I’m new at something, I’ll openly share my newbie dorkiness and hesitation. It doesn’t embarrass me to share my weaknesses. On the contrary, it actually invites a lot of help and advice from non-newbies who want to help me calibrate.

The Master Newbie Pick-up Artist

Suppose you’re a guy who wants to learn how to pick up women at night clubs, but you’re terrified of going out, and you can’t imagine walking up to a woman and delivering an opener. Realize that so much of your resistance is because you’re trying to appear cooler and more experienced than you really are. Do you realize this is totally unnecessary? It’s better to embrace your newbieness and use it to your advantage.

If I were trying to develop this particular skill, here’s what I’d do. I’d go up to women and tell them the plain and simple truth. I’ve never actually done this, so take my advice with a grain of salt because this isn’t a calibration I’ve bothered to develop, but I’ll bet you it would work well at initiating fun conversations.

I’d walk up to a group of women with a big smile on my face. I’d get their attention and say to them, “Hey guys, I’m currently learning how to meet women at night clubs, but I’m a total newbie at this. Would you mind if I practice on you just for fun for a couple minutes? And would you give me some honest feedback afterwards?”

I suspect you’ll probably get a laugh if you do this, and if you don’t, then the women aren’t likely worth talking to anyway, so you can quickly disqualify them as boring or humorless. You’ve taken the pressure off by initiating a “practice session,” so it doesn’t even matter what you say next. Your next line could even be, “Okay what do you think of this? [Switch to deep voice] Hey, baby. What’s your sign?” That would probably get another laugh, but even a groan isn’t bad. You can keep saying other funny lines. You could also kick off a meta conversation about meeting women at night clubs, such as by asking a question like, “Okay, after I do the opener, what should I talk about next? Would this be a good time to tell you a quick story to demonstrate that I’m a cool guy? Should I tell you about the time I …?” The context is that you’re just practicing, but in truth you’ve already opened the group.

This is an untested suggestion of course, so you’ll have to try it yourself to see if it works for you. The general idea is not to hide your newbieness. It’s perfectly okay to be a newbie and even to admit it to people. When you’re a newbie, your initial goal is to calibrate your skills, not to achieve a particular result. So take the pressure off as to whether or not you succeed or fail. You can go for results after you’ve calibrated your skills.

If you pretend to be an expert when you’re not, you’ll just stress yourself out. Wear the badge of Newbie Pride.

Incidentally, if you actually try this, please let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear how people react to it. I think this could work for men and women alike.

In fact, if a woman came up and used this opener on me, I’d probably laugh and say, “Sure, let’s practice.” I’d be pretty impressed by a woman who used such a line because it demonstrates a high level of awareness with a certain playfulness. I’d probably fall in love on the spot.

Great… now I’ve gotten myself all riled up to the point where I totally want to go to a night club and try this for real just to see what happens.

The Skill of Calibration

Being able to calibrate yourself to a new skill set is a skill in itself. The more skills you learn, the faster you’ll be able to achieve competence in each new skill you attempt.

One thing that happens as you calibrate to many different skills is that you become more comfortable being a newbie in general. Once you’ve gone through the newbie phase enough times, it ceases to bother you so much. You can start from rock bottom in a new field and be mostly okay with how badly you suck. You get used to it, and you know you’ll eventually get better. This makes it easier to put in the time as a newbie, so you can quickly progress to intermediate. For me the newbie phase is often the most fun and exciting because I learn the fastest during this time.

Another benefit of having lots of calibration experience is that you’ll be less intimidated by the experts. You’ll accept that they fine-tuned their calibration over many years. This will help you develop the patience necessary to keep hacking away in order to build long-term competence.

When I became a raw foodist earlier this year, I spent a lot of time communicating with successful long-term raw foodists. Initially, the information I gained was just overwhelming. I was offered thousands of pages of text to read (books, e-books, articles), plus audio, video, and live lectures to attend. There were some weeks where learning this skill practically became my full-time job. I had to unlearn many bad habits that were holding me back, not to mention breaking a lifelong addiction to cooked food. This was a total lifestyle overhaul, not just a minor diet change.

After months of study and practice, I eventually calibrated myself to being a successful raw foodist, well enough that I felt I could maintain it on autopilot. I’d probably label myself an advanced intermediate at this point. I have a solid grasp of the fundamentals, cooked foods are no longer appealing to me, I feel fantastic, and I love the foods I eat. As part of this re-calibration to raw foods, my taste buds have shifted a lot. I actually crave fresh greens now. I feel mildly deprived if I don’t eat at least a pound of greens each day. Now that I’ve achieved a decent calibration, maintaining this lifestyle is pretty much a no-brainer for me. But during the first few months, I had to invest a lot of thought and effort into it.

Immersion and Experimentation

When learning new skills, my preference is to get through the newbie phase as quickly as possible, so I can start enjoying some good results. In order to accomplish this, I’ll often put other areas of my life on hold, so I can devote the bulk of my time to building competence in the new skill. I don’t always do this, but if the skill is important to me, I prefer the strategy of total immersion instead of working on it a little bit each week.

The danger of being stuck in beginner mode for too long is that your early motivation may fade, and more self-discipline will be required to keep going. Many new bloggers give up within the first few months, well before they’re getting any results. It takes them too long to calibrate their skills to what is required for success in blogging, so they never make it past the beginner phase. After a few months, they still haven’t calibrated, so they continue to make the sorts of mistakes that a well-calibrated blogger could spot within seconds. For example, they write boring posts that nobody cares to read, or they write time-bound posts that will be worthless a year later. It takes too much discipline for them to keep going with no results to show for it, so they give up. Then they repeat the same process again in a different field. Hopefully by now you can clearly see that this is a loser strategy.

On the other hand, I’ve seen bloggers who’ve built a lot of traffic very quickly, earning $1000+ per month within a few months after they started. They threw themselves wholeheartedly into learning everything they could about blogging, and they were willing to be open-minded and flexible. They learned what worked for them and did more of it. They learned what didn’t work and stopped doing it. They understood that if they wrote a blog post, and it generated no increase in traffic whatsoever, then perhaps they should write something totally different instead of sticking with more of the same.

Proper calibration requires a lot of experimentation. If you don’t get a good result, you can interpret that as a negative result, and change something — change anything. But don’t keep doing what didn’t work, expecting that it’s just a matter of time before things pick up. It’s not really a matter of time. It’s a matter of skill.

When you immerse yourself in learning a new skill, don’t focus on trying to get results with the skill — at least not right away. Instead, focus on getting good at the skill.

For example, if you’re learning to blog, focus on writing posts in a variety of styles. You want to calibrate yourself to get good at writing blog posts that generate referrals. Don’t worry about trying to make money with your blog. Don’t even worry about trying to build a certain level of traffic. You can focus on those goals later. But initially, aim to figure out how to semi-consistently write awesome posts that generate referrals. If you can’t figure out how to do that, your blog will surely fail. But if you can calibrate yourself to this skill, then you can shift from building your skill to applying your skill. That’s where you can start really building your traffic and generating income from your work.

A New Equilibrium – Post-Calibration

The funny thing about calibration is that once you reach a certain point, you’ll tend to let go of all the tricks, tactics, and techniques you learned along the way. Now you’re able to maintain a certain level of success just by being yourself.

This happens because the skills you learned have been internalized. You no longer have to think about the details because your subconscious mind takes care of them for you. Applying your skill becomes much easier when you reach this point.

Blogging is largely effortless for me these days. I can crank out a detailed new article with fairly little effort. I got the idea for this particular article while I was at the gym this morning. I outlined it in my head while I took a shower. Later I sat down to write, and the words just flowed. It took me a while to write an article of this length of course, but the process was easy and effortless. The reason it was easy is that I’ve already calibrated myself to the skill of writing articles. There are lots of details that go into writing an article of this length, but I don’t have to consciously think about the process of how to write. It’s all internalized. I can just sit down at my desk, the ideas start flowing, and my fingers automatically start typing. I can chunk the task of writing an article as a single to-do item, even an article of this length, and it isn’t a big deal to me.

When I write a new blog post, I don’t consciously think about all the details that other pro bloggers would tell you are important. I just blog. It feels like a very simple thing to do, not nearly as complicated as it might seem. However, the reason I can keep it simple and still do well in this field is because I went through that complicated newbie phase years ago. I internalized the techniques that proved effective for me, so today I don’t even think about them anymore.

Putting a skill on automatic pilot is the long-term benefit of good calibration. Once you gain this calibration, you can’t really lose it. You may need to re-calibrate your skills from time to time to adapt to changing conditions, but that usually isn’t as hard as acquiring the initial calibration.

If you took away my blog and all my articles, and I had to start over from scratch as an anonymous blogger today, do you think I could repeat my success? I’m sure I could do so very quickly because I’ve already calibrated my blogging skills. I typically experience quick success when I can rely on a previous calibration, such as learning to spar in a new martial art or building a social network of friends in a new city. One of the reasons I achieved quick success as a blogger was that I benefited from my previous calibration of running a profitable online business for years, so I was able to adapt much of that skill to the medium of blogging. I was also able to adapt my blogging calibration to writing a book.

When you calibrate, you lock in a new skill. Then you can use that skill to generate consistently good results. This is a wonderful place to be. Post-calibration, you’ll typically feel very confident within the realm of that skill. You have every reason to feel confident because you’re genuinely competent. I’d feel comfortable starting a new online business. I’d feel comfortable moving to a new city where I didn’t know anyone. I’d feel confident studying a new style of martial arts. I’d feel confident giving a new speech. However, the first time I did these things, I hadn’t yet calibrated myself for success. The only kind of confidence I was able to muster back then was the “fake it till you make it kind,” which is more false bravado than genuine confidence.

Calibrate Is a Verb

Don’t let the newbie phase get you down. Everyone has to go through it. Get a newbie training partner if you must, but turn toward that newbie fear, and run straight at it. The fear will soon go away. It’s not a big deal to fail or to get rejected. That’s part of being a newbie. Accept it. You will get better.

In order to calibrate your skills, you have to take action. You can’t just sit at home reading or studying training materials. You must go into the field and do field work under real-world conditions.

As Mike Tyson said, “Everybody’s got plans… until they get hit.”

I know so many people who’ve spent months reading about and talking about starting an online business. They still don’t have an online business. But they just keep talking about it and planning it, as if that’s some form of phantom progress. Their calibration is still at zero. They think they’re getting closer to their goal. From my perspective, they haven’t even started yet. They’re just procrastinating.

Such people would do much better if they stopped reading and planning and started doing. Nobody earned a black belt from reading about martial arts.

Which approach do you think will generate the best results? Reading about a diet for 30 days? Or doing a 30-day trial of that diet?

Which will improve your social skills the most? Watching social skills videos for 30 days? Or going out every night for 30 days and starting up conversations with strangers?

Which will generate the best blogging results? Reading blogs on blogging for 30 days? Or starting your own blog and posting your own blog entries for 30 days?

Which will generate the best physical results? Read about weight training for 30 days? Or hit the gym and do 30 days of weight training?

Reading and studying will give you knowledge and information that sits in your mind. That seems like a good thing, but you’ll still have zero results to show for your efforts. You’re actually no closer to your goals. You’re still at the starting line. But if you go out and do the best you can to apply what you know right now, even if your understanding is full of holes, you’ll quickly learn what works under real-world conditions, and you’ll adapt. You’ll make a huge leap forward in your calibration. You’ll also generate some real-world results that may benefit you.

Get your nose out of the books and onto the field. Take your licks as they come, and learn from them. Build your skills under real-world conditions, so you can actually apply them to get results. Don’t just read about life. Live it.

Reading and learning are awesome, but make sure you’re using these as supplements for in-field experience, not substitutes. If you’re reading about any skill you want to develop, but you aren’t regularly performing in the field yet, you’re just procrastinating. Deep down you already knew that, didn’t you? I’m here to remind you of this, so you can hate me for it and help spread the word about how awful I am.

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 is precisely what you need to share with others — openly and publicly.

Authenticity

If you can’t share your humiliation publicly, you haven’t gotten over it yet. And if you’re not over it yet, you’ve still got this gaping wound in your heart, and it will always keep you from being 100% authentic.

Being authentic — or transparent — isn’t just about being honest. It’s about having nothing to hide.

Concealing the truth from others creates a wall between you and them. Tear down that wall by sharing what you thought you could never share, and you’ll experience a much deeper level of connection with everyone you meet.

Shields Down

There’s no such thing as selective shielding. If you have to shield any part of yourself from being discovered and judged, you shield your entire being. You cut yourself off from creating true loving connections with other human beings. Your shields isolate and disconnect you from everyone, including yourself.

Lower your shields.

I know you think that when the shields come down, you’ll be pelted with a volley of phasers and photon torpedoes. But what’s the real worst case outcome? Harsh language? Ouch.

When you share your most shameful stories, you may be surprised at the response you get. Instead of a backlash of judgment, it’s more likely you’ll receive a compassionate response. Other people don’t want or expect you to be perfect. They want to connect with you and to be able to trust that you’re being honest with them. When you hide all your personal defects, you come across as fake, phony, or shielded. People may still communicate with you on a superficial level, but they won’t go out of their way to help you as a fellow human being. Why not? Because they won’t know the real you.

From Sorrow to Joy

When you share your shame with others, you transform your resistance into acceptance and your sorrow into joy. You learn that there’s a reason you had to endure certain experiences, even if they were self-inflicted. Your painful experiences can actually help you connect with other people on a deeper level than you imagined possible.

My book Personal Development for Smart People opens with my most humiliating story. Here’s the very first page of the book:

Do you remember the exact moment you first became interested in personal development? I certainly do. It happened in January 1991 while I was sitting in a jail cell. I’d just been arrested for felony grand theft. This wasn’t my first run-in with the law, so I knew I was in trouble. I was 19 years old.

I began stealing shortly after moving to Berkeley, California, during my first semester at UC Berkeley. I didn’t steal for money or to build a reputation — I stole for the thrill. I was addicted to the surge of adrenaline. The compulsion to steal was so strong that shoplifting was part of my routine, nothing more than my daily espresso. Usually I didn’t care what I stole; it was the act of stealing that seduced me. On a typical outing, I’d lift a dozen candy bars and then drop them off in a public place, figuring that other people would eat them. I didn’t eat the candy because I didn’t think it was healthy.

As I sat in jail for several days that January with nothing to do but wallow in my own stupidity, the reality of my situation came crashing down upon me. In high school I’d been a straight-A honors student, president of the math club, and captain of the Academic Decathlon team. My future as a computer-science major looked unbelievably bright, but somehow I’d torn it to shreds. Now I was expecting to spend the next year or two behind bars.

That wasn’t exactly the brightest moment of my life, so why would I begin the book with that story?

Many personal development books are written by authors who project an air of perfection — idyllic examples of order, achievement, inner peace, wealth, and so on. To me this is a form of shielding, an artificial wall, a fake standard no human being can realistically aspire to.

I think it’s more inspiring to share failure stories. I like to demonstrate that we can fail again and again and still keep going. I believe the ability to embrace failure is even more important than the ability to visualize success. You can visualize success all you want, but if you’re afraid to fail, your visualizations will never become reality.

Be Willing to Fail

When we fall into the pattern of hiding our past failures, we set ourselves up for long-term stagnation. We have to be willing to say, “If I fail at this, it’s okay. I’m human. I don’t have to be perfect. I can fail and keep right on going.”

I’ve had some spectacular failures in my life, including being expelled from school, getting arrested multiple times, and going bankrupt. And yet I’m still here. I haven’t given up on life.

If you can’t share your shame with others, then you’re telling yourself that failure is a bad thing… that failure is something you must avoid at all costs. But what about your future failures? Will you feel compelled to hide those too? Does this mean you won’t even attempt certain things if you know in advance that you won’t be able to hide your failures?

If you’re going to fail, then why not fail spectacularly in public — for all to see? Make your failures a real event. Let other people learn from your mistakes. Let others see that you’re human after all. You might even make some new friends and allies as a result.

Failure isn’t something to be avoided. It’s a natural part of life. To resist failure is to resist life itself.

Failure is our greatest teacher. We learn a lot more from failure than we do from success.

I learned to run a business successfully by failing in business for many years. Lesson: Forget about trying to make money, and just focus on creating and delivering value to other people. The money will follow. Money is simply a medium for exchanging value, so if I can create and share an abundance of value, I can enjoy abundant exchanges too.

I developed better social skills by struggling with mediocre social skills for years. Lesson: Stop trying to make new friends, and just assume that everyone I meet is already my best friend. This is how people want to be treated anyway. Don’t try to break the ice; assume there is no ice.

What Are You Hiding?

No matter what you’re hiding, the odds are that someone else has already shared worse. If a hitman can speak publicly about the dozens of murders he’s committed, surely you can open up about your anorexia problem, your abusive relationship, or your Internet porn addiction. Others have already shared their stories on these topics, which enables them to help others with similar challenges. Why not you?

Do you need permission to do this? Okay, I hereby grant you permission to be human. You have the right to be a total screw-up. You have the right to harbor the most politically incorrect thoughts. You have the right to struggle with the most socially unacceptable addictions. And you have the right to admit it in public.

Will there be some judgment if you go public? Sure, most likely. I get a little flak for some of the things I’ve written. Some people apparently view my mistakes as an invitation to condemn me. For example, since I was a thief in my late teens, then I must still be one today, somehow secretly ripping people off or selling snake oil or something along those lines. But because I’ve accepted who I am, including my past, those people don’t get to me. I see their criticism as being entirely about them and having nothing to do with me. I think that getting some flak is okay because the benefits of sharing those stories vastly outweigh the drawbacks, especially in terms of the new friendships I’ve made.

Also, if someone would reject me for being who I am or for doing what I did, then I say, “Let’s get the breakup over with, so we can both move on.” It’s good to purge unsupportive relationships from our lives, so we can focus on creating and enjoying more compatible connections.

If you’re worried that you’ll lose friends and contacts by outing yourself, let me suggest that you’re trying to hold on to relationships that aren’t worth maintaining. Any relationships that would reject you for being true to yourself are — by definition — abusive relationships. You’ll be much better off when you let them go.

I love that I don’t have to worry that someone will dig into my past and find some humiliating story that will annihilate my carefully crafted public image. I can just be the same person in public that I am in private. I don’t need to shield myself. Imagine how stressful it would be to try to live up to a false image. It’s no wonder that many celebrities have turned to drugs.

Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are

You don’t have to share your painful stories all at once. You can build up to this gently. Instead of trying to be authentic overnight, focus on becoming more authentic. Tell a story that would embarrass you a little, but it wouldn’t kill you to share it. Listen to the feedback you receive. Do you feel a sense of relief afterwards? Do you feel more connected to other people? Do you feel a little more open and free? Do you feel less stressed?

For every embarrassing story that you can’t imagine ever sharing publicly, just say to yourself, “I know this is an unnecessary block to love, but right now I lack the strength to let it go. However, I intend to become the kind of person who can eventually share this, thereby transforming my sorrow into joy.”

Be at peace.

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.

While many of these interviews discuss my book Personal Development for Smart People to some extent, most of them cover a variety of other topics such as 30-day trials, my raw vegan diet, how I got started in personal development, building a successful blog, financial abundance, and more. I did my best to provide helpful content in these interviews, not to excessively plug the book.

Just to clarify in case it wasn’t obvious, in all of these interviews, I’m the interviewee, not the interviewer.

Downloadable Interviews

If you’d like to hear some of the interviews I’ve already done, here are links to several that are available online:

1. We Like It Raw interview with Dhrumil Purohit (75-minute podcast)
2. WEEU interview with Nick Lawrence, Philadelphia radio station (44:41 mp3)
3. Tools to Life interview with Devlyn Steele (25:28 podcast)
4. The Displaced African interview with Mwangi Njanja (60-minute podcast)
5. Warm 106.9 FM interview with Tom McCarthy, Seattle radio station (10 minutes, only available online for 2 weeks)

Upcoming Live Interviews

And here are some upcoming live interviews if you wish to tune in:

1. Empowered Living Radio interview with Steve Maraboli (Live on Nov 14, 2008 at 10am Pacific time, 60 minutes).
2. Walking with Spirit with Monique Chapman interview on Achieve Radio Network (Live on Dec 9, 2008 at 5pm Pacific time, 60 minutes).

Thanks to the book, I’m getting more interview requests than ever before, and I’ve been enjoying them immensely. Lately I’ve been doing as many as three phone interviews per day. I did two of them earlier today. I’m certainly getting a lot of practice in a short period of time.

I definitely prefer the radio/podcast interviews to doing text interviews. Audio interviews are more fun and interactive, and they take a lot less time as well. I don’t care if the interviews are live or pre-recorded since I enjoy being spontaneous either way.

Radio Pros vs. Podcasters

I’ve noticed a difference in the interviewing styles of most podcasters vs. professional radio show hosts. The radio hosts are usually extremely polished, especially with respect to how they handle introductions and transitions, probably because they’ve had so much practice at honing their on-air skills. The podcasters on the other hand tend to be more tentative and not as smooth with their questions and transitions, but they often ask very thoughtful questions, and they can go much deeper into certain topics because they aren’t limited by airtime.

Personally I enjoy both types of interviews, but I think I prefer the podcast interviews overall because there are no forced commercial breaks or hard cut-off points.

Being an Author Opens Doors

When it comes to interview requests, being an author seems to open more doors than running a popular blog. Before my book was out, I used to get maybe 1-2 interview requests per month. Now I’m getting at least a few requests per week. At this point, I can’t tell if this is a temporary surge due to the book’s recent release or if it’s likely to be a semi-permanent change. Time will tell.

Doing these interviews has made me very grateful that I didn’t pick such a narrow niche for my blog or my book. I think I’d be pulling my hair out if I had to do dozens of interviews on the same topic like blogging or polyphasic sleep — over and over again. One day I did a morning interview on blogging, an afternoon interview on Internet business, and an evening interview on personal growth topics. I really enjoy that kind of variety — it’s a nice benefit of having many different interests.

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.

ICDI is a very popular self-help conference with thousands of attendees. I’ve been attending ICDI Vegas since 2004, and it’s been an amazing experience every time.

The 7 Keys to Genuine Growth

My 90-minute presentation will be on Sunday, October 5th from 11:00am to 12:30pm and is titled Personal Development for Smart People: The 7 Keys to Genuine Growth. Click the link for details on the presentation.

Erin and I will be attending the whole conference, so please do say hi if you see us there. Erin’s twin sister will be there as well — her first time at ICDI.

If you want to get a detailed insider’s perspective on the conference, feel free to read the reviews of ICDI Las Vegas 2008, ICDI 2007, and ICDI 2006.

Books Available

Even though Personal Development for Smart People won’t be officially released until October 15th, I’m told that the book will be available for sale at the Tampa conference (Oct 3-5).

After my workshop I’ll be doing a book signing — my first ever.

I’ll also hang out after the session to answer any questions people have and just to say hi.

Hay House Radio Show Taping

I’ll be participating in another Hay House Radio show with author Eldon Taylor during the Tampa conference. This show taping will be on Saturday, October 4th, 2:30 – 3:30pm. There will be seating available if you want to watch us live.

Erin’s Readings

Erin will be offering a limited number of in-person readings during the conference in our hotel room, so if you’re interested in booking a reading with her in Tampa, please contact her first, so she can work out the best appointment time for you. All bookings will be done on a first-come, first-served basis.

How This Came to Be

If you’re curious to know, here’s the story of how I ended up speaking at this conference. In 2006 a producer from Hay House Radio stumbled upon my review of the 2006 ICDI conference. From there she started reading some of my other online articles and liked what she saw. We had a friendly email exchange about it. Eventually this led to a meeting with Reid Tracy (President of Hay House) at ICDI Las Vegas in 2007. That meeting led to a book deal, and the book deal ultimately led to my speaking at ICDI as a new Hay House author.

So all of this basically happened as a result of blogging. I never had to get a literary agent or submit proposals to lots of publishers. I never had a manuscript or book proposal get rejected. Disgusting, isn’t it?

Apparently one way to secure a book deal with a major publisher is to write and give away about 20 books worth of free content first — in order to polish your ideas, hone your craft, build a platform, and prove that you can deliver value that helps people. That may sound like too much effort… unless of course you genuinely love what you do and would do it for free anyway.

Hope to see you at ICDI Tampa.

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.

On Sunday Erin and I attended Ron’s memorial service followed by a reception attended by his family, friends, and many other Las Vegas Toastmasters. I probably knew about half the people there.

Since Ron had such a deep and lasting impact on me, much more than he probably realized, I wanted to share some of what I learned from him, partly as a way of expressing my gratitude for the man that he was, and partly because I think it may inspire you to rethink a few things about your own life.

Mentor, coach, and friend

Ron was an incredible mentor and coach to many people. He was a DTM in Toastmasters International (the highest rank one can achieve) and was Toastmasters’ District 33 Mentor of the Year. He has attended and judged more speech contests than anyone I know. Just last weekend he shared his advice at a free workshop to help local speakers improve their performance in speech contests. Because he was so generous in giving of himself, he touched a lot of people’s lives, including mine.

I first met Ron in October 2004, just a few weeks after I started blogging. Ron came up to me after my first Division-level humorous speech contest (where I finished in 2nd place) and told me that he thought I showed great potential as a speaker and that I should consider joining an advanced Toastmasters club, a club that would challenge me more than my current club. I’d only been in Toastmasters for 4 months at that point, so I didn’t feel ready to join an advanced club.

I didn’t even meet all the prerequisites to join the club he recommended — I had to complete 10 Toastmasters speeches first, and I was only up to 6 so far. But Ron was pretty convincing, so I took his advice and attended a few meetings as a guest. I admit it was a bit intimidating at first because the other speakers were so much better than me — so smooth and flowing even when speaking off the cuff. I clearly remember what Ron said to me though: “It’s always good to join groups where you just barely qualify for membership. You’ll improve a lot faster that way because the other people will help lift you up to a new level.”

I realized he was right, so I joined that club as soon as I was qualified to do so, which happened in April 2005. What an amazing journey that has been! I learned much more from this advanced club than I would have learned if I stuck with the easier, safer path. I’m still a member of that club today, which has since become one of the most successful clubs in Vegas with about 35 members. In fact, Erin is being inducted as our newest member tonight.

In March 2005 I actually wrote a blog entry mentioning Ron’s advice. At the time I used to tease him that because of that blog post, I ranked #1 on his name on Google, so according to Google, I owned him. He seemed to find that amusing.

Having worked many years as a stock analyst on Wall Street, Ron was a great strategic thinker. He was able to look at a speech and make many suggestions for improvement, even though he wasn’t a top contest competitor himself. I can’t even count all the people who owe him a debt of gratitude for his help over the years.

In 2005, about a year after we first met, Ron and I and some local friends attended a seminar on the Vegas Strip. Erin was out of town with the kids (and our only car), so Ron offered to give me a ride. When I got in the car, he said he wanted to pick my brain about blogging, which was a nice exchange because I wanted to pick his brain about speaking and speech contests. There was a lot of traffic that day, so we were a little late arriving, but I didn’t mind because he was such a great person to talk to. He was immensely curious and was always thinking about how certain things could be improved — especially people.

Ron was always reading books, listening to CDs, and watching DVDs about communication and presentation skills. Whenever I went to a local speaking or presentation skills workshop, he was there. But instead of applying what he learned for his own use, Ron quickly turned around and passed on the best ideas he encountered to help coach others to improve. He had a great memory and often shared ideas and anecdotes from the vast amounts of information he absorbed. Most of the information products I have on speaking and communication skills were originally recommended by Ron. A glance at my bookshelf triggers memories of many conversations with him.

Ron encouraged me to continue competing in speech contests, saying that it was the fastest way to improve, equivalent to years of regular Toastmasters’ club attendance. Since then I’ve competed in three different contest seasons and learned a great deal from them. Following his advice required more courage, but it was a lot more effective. He helped me shave years off my learning curve. Ron did this for a lot of people.

There are many people who will help coach you up to their level, but what was so special about Ron is that he coached people beyond his level. How many of us can say that we’d willingly coach someone to surpass us? It was noted at yesterday’s service that Ron was a rare man with “the biggest intellect paired with the smallest ego.” I completely agree.

Ron was very encouraging of others, but he truthfully told people what they needed to hear. He didn’t let you squeak by when it was obvious you were performing below your potential. At the same time, he knew when it was best to be gentle with new speakers.

I think Ron approached coaching and mentoring with the mindset of an investor. Just as he once analyzed companies on Wall Street, he learned to recognize mediocre speakers who could eventually become great speakers if he invested some of his time and energy to help them. Ron was good at recognizing speakers who had heart (something he really couldn’t teach), and then he helped teach them the head-oriented stuff they needed to succeed. I imagine it’s a similar skill to recognizing a startup company with lots of raw passion and talent, a company that could do really well with the right mentoring and management.

As Ron witnessed my unfolding success as a blogger, he developed an interest in blogging as well. He attended my local blogging workshops and asked me a lot of follow-up questions. I think he was attracted to the idea of sharing his strategic business knowledge with more people. It took him a while, but he finally got his WordPress blog online at RonLewison.com and posted some of his articles shortly before he died. He had some trouble with the fonts because he pasted his articles from MS-Word — a common issue for new bloggers — but at least he got it up and running.

I’m not sure if Ron fully realized what a tremendous positive rippling effect he had on others. He was a very mental/analytical guy to be sure, but his actions affected people a lot more deeply than that. When Ron offered detailed advice and coaching, he came at it from the analysis side, probably because that was his background. However, I know that the people he coached, myself included, actually perceived Ron’s help as if he was saying, “I believe in you.” I have no doubt that he really cared about people.

Connecting after death

Now if you happen to maintain a belief system in which you’ve concluded that communication with the other side is impossible, you may want to skip this next section. On the other hand, if you’re of a more open-minded nature, I hope you’ll keep reading. I won’t be offended if you choose to skip it though since I know that death can be a sensitive subject for many people.

Partly because of my sensitivity to such things as well as the path Erin and I have shared for many years, after I learned of Ron’s death, I wondered if I would sense his presence or be able to connect with him in some way. Well, that happened in a most powerful way. I wasn’t too surprised that it happened since I always felt good about Ron while he was alive. I just didn’t think it would happen so soon.

On Friday (the day after Ron died), I took a 20-minute nap. I usually don’t take daytime naps, but I was out late meeting with someone the previous night, so I started getting drowsy and decided to take a short nap to refresh myself.

During this nap I had a vivid dream (I still dream even during short naps ever since my polyphasic sleep experimentation), and suddenly in the middle of the dream, Ron appeared to me. I wasn’t lucid at the time, so I didn’t know I was dreaming. In the dream I ran up to him, gave him a big hug, and exclaimed, “Ron! What are you doing here? I thought you were dead! What happened?”

Ron, however, just stood there and didn’t say a word. He didn’t even reciprocate the hug, which made me feel a bit stupid for initiating it. At that point I started becoming lucid and realized I was actually dreaming. I understood this wasn’t Ron in physical form, but it definitely felt like his energy. However, I still couldn’t get him to say anything. He didn’t even make eye contact with me. He just stared straight ahead looking stunned.

I woke up from the dream shortly thereafter, feeling very emotional about the experience. I told Erin what happened, and she encouraged me to see if I could tune back in and receive a message from him. I agreed it was worth a try, but I wanted to stay conscious, so instead of going back to sleep, I attempted to reconnect via meditation. I should mention that while Erin also knew Ron, she didn’t know him nearly as well as I did, partly because I was in a Toastmasters club and a National Speakers Association chapter with Ron, but Erin wasn’t.

As I began to meditate, I still felt a strong connection to Ron’s energy, and I could clearly see him in my mind’s eye, but he was just standing there and not saying a word. Nor did he seem to be attempting any sort of symbolic communication. I figured that since he’d just crossed over, maybe I was simply unable to get a clear enough connection. I spent the next 10 minutes attempting to go into a deeper state of meditation, but there seemed to be no improvement. If he had a message for me, I couldn’t tell what it was because nothing aside from his image was coming through.

I didn’t want to give up though. I thought that maybe Ron wasn’t here to give me a message at all. Maybe he wanted something else. Instead of trying to pull down a message from him, I decided just to try reading his energy instead. I picked up very clearly that he was shocked. I thought maybe he was too stunned to communicate with me, so instead of waiting for him to say something, I just starting talking to him. I wondered if maybe he didn’t know he was actually dead, so I figured that was a good place to start. I confirmed for him what had happened and that he had just crossed over. Based on my limited knowledge of what people experience when they cross over, I gave him some advice. I sent him lots of love energy to try to help raise his vibration. While many entities on the other side have a higher vibration than human beings (such as spirit guides and angels) and have to lower their vibration to communicate with us, I could see that Ron was having the opposite problem. Somehow there was a perfect irony in me coaching him for a change.

This energy work helped. I could see that he was rising up from total shock to the point where he was finally able to start processing what had happened. A few minutes later I was able to communicate with him perfectly. For me this came through clairaudiently, so I was actually hearing his voice in my mind. In fact, it was an unusually clear connection. I was surprised at just how perfectly the voice matched his physical voice. It felt like he was right there in the room with me.

We talked for a good 20 minutes, and basically what he told me was this:

He said he had absolutely “no idea” this was coming. Those were his exact words — “no idea” — which he repeated over and over. He was very sad about that. He said he thought he had a lot more time. This whole thing came as a tremendous shock to him, not because he was alive on the other side, but because his human life had ended so abruptly and unexpectedly. All the goals and plans he had in the works were instantly discontinued by his passing, and I got the sense he felt he’d left a lot undone. I could see that it was very hard for him to accept his death and that he was absolutely stunned by it. There were a lot of things in his physical life he really liked, and it was very hard for him to accept that they were gone.

I felt very compassionately towards him, so I did my best to comfort and console him. He communicated that he should have accomplished more as an individual, that he should have been more aggressive about getting things done. You see, Ron was the kind of person who would often talk to me (and others I presume) about his long-term goals and plans, such as getting his own blog off the ground. However, when it came to taking action, he seemed to have a hard time working on his own goals because he poured so much time into helping others achieve their goals. I know this is what his heart led him to do, but I think he had a hard time getting his head around it.

I reminded Ron of all the good he did and all the people he helped. I tried to help him see that in the long run, individual accomplishment doesn’t mean much, especially once we cross over, and that his best accomplishment here was all the positive ripples he created. I encouraged him to give himself credit for all the people he coached, mentored, and inspired. I think this helped to shift his mindset a little, but I could see it was going to take him a while to process all of this. Dying isn’t something that happens to us every day.

I thanked Ron for all the encouragement he gave me over the years. I ran through a few memories with him, showing him some of the good times we shared. I could tell this helped to raise his energy, not to a super-high level but at least beyond the level of shock and disbelief and on the way towards acceptance.

I told him I was surprised and honored that of all the people he could visit, he chose to come see me. I always felt a fatherly connection to him, but I wasn’t sure if he felt the same. I thought he’d be spending this time around his family. His answer was that he connected with me mainly because he could. Maybe I had the right antennae for receiving him because I’ve practiced developing my skills in this area for many years. He indicated that my (100% raw foods) diet made it easier for him to connect with me. This didn’t surprise me because I’ve felt a significant boost in my psychic/intuitive abilities after dropping all cooked foods from my diet. I think another reason is that I intended to connect with him and believed that I could — that tends to work as sort of a beacon. After we learned of his death, Erin also put out the intent for Ron to come to us if he needed help. It still surprised me that he showed up only a day after he died though. I was thinking it would take at least a few weeks before he was ready for that.

The sense of connection with him was so strong I felt like I could have talked to him for hours — if I could have maintained the right state that long. But once I saw that his energy had risen to a reasonable level, I told him he should take some time to process what had happened to him. I didn’t want to overload him. I also suggested that he should attend his funeral because I thought he’d really enjoy it. I knew the place would be filled with others who loved him. That certainly turned out to be true. There was more humor than sorrow as people shared their happy memories of Ron. I cracked up when a friend compared Ron to Yoda… such an apt analogy.

Two days later, I learned that at least two other friends felt they had visitations from Ron. They processed their experiences differently than I did, but I found it fascinating to learn that Ron was already getting around. Perhaps his Toastmasters skills proved helpful to him over there. After all, working on your human communication skills shares a lot of overlap with learning how to share your energy openly and authentically. I also think Ron felt that Toastmasters was an extension of his family, so he already had a very strong connection to members of this group.

I’ve connected with Ron several more times since his passing. He seems to be hanging around a lot, and I continue to help him adapt to life on the other side, giving him suggestions for things to try over there. With each passing day, I can see that he’s doing better and better. He’s learning to accept his death, and I sense that he’s already looking into mentoring and coaching people from the other side. I know he’ll be a real asset over there. I told him that if he needed any help that he could always come to me, and I’d do what I can. I also invited him to keep mentoring me on my own path as a speaker. I told him he should feel free to decline, but he seemed to really like that idea. Even though he never got the opportunity to get going as a blogger, I think he likes having indirect access to a bigger audience than he was ever likely to build for his own blog. Ron was the kind of man who celebrated the successes of those he coached as if they were his own personal victories.

The past few days have been a pretty emotional time for me, but I don’t feel my relationship with Ron has ended. It’s only been transformed. I keep thinking about the ideas I wrote about in The Joy of Sadness — how sadness and joy are really two sides of the same whole. While I’ve cried a lot during the past few days, it’s been coming from a place of deep gratitude, joy, and a sense of the beautiful perfection of life. I feel very much in a place of love, not a place of loss. I know that Ron’s energy will always be a part of me. Yoda has simply merged back into the force.

Paying it forward

Since he was such a treasure-trove of advice, I learned many lessons from Ron over the years. Perhaps one of the best lessons came from observing what he did. Ron used his knowledge and experience to help other people grow. The new ideas he absorbed were constantly flowing back out again through his continuous sharing.

When I first joined Toastmasters in 2004, I was looking to improve my speaking skills. I knew I eventually wanted to get into pro speaking. From Ron’s example I learned the importance of contributing to others, not just soaking up info for my own use. Even when he wasn’t personally presenting a workshop or training program, he was encouraging other people to do so, and he was actively promoting them too.

In the following years, I delivered a free Toastmasters workshop to help local speakers learn about blogging. I also did two similar workshops for the National Speakers Association, including an all-day workshop on the Vegas Strip. In May of this year, I presented another free Toastmasters workshop on creating compelling content. Creating and presenting these workshops required many hours of extra work. These experiences helped me step into the place of being able to give from my heart without needing anything in return.

A mutual friend told me that Ron’s family would be accepting donations for the Ralph C. Smedley Memorial Fund, to be given in Ron’s name. Ralph Smedley was the founder of Toastmasters. Erin and I agreed it would be nice to make a donation to this fund on Ron’s behalf.

On Saturday evening I was feeling very ungrounded, partly because I was spending so much time in a higher than usual state of being, so I thought it would be wise to go out and do something to ground me back on the side of the physical world. I hadn’t played poker in months, so I thought that would be fun to do, not so much for the game but just to go out and be around people who were at a more “normal” energy level. Erin was happy to spend a quiet evening alone, but she suggested that I donate any winnings to the memorial fund. I thought that was a good idea. I’m a decent player and usually win, but at the low limits I play, I could expect to return with maybe $50 on average.

I popped over to the Red Rock Casino, which is only a few minutes from my house. I’ve never played poker there before, but I didn’t feel like making the 20-minute drive to the Strip, so I figured I’d check it out. On Saturday nights the city’s poker tables can be pretty crowded though, especially during the summer, so I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get a seat. Upon arriving at the poker room, it was packed full, and based on the length of the waiting list, I estimated it could take as much two hours to get a seat. Oh well. I didn’t want to wait that long.

I figured I might as well stretch my legs, so I walked around for a while. The Red Rock is considered by many to be the best local’s casino in town. In addition to the hotel and casino, it has a huge movie theater complex, a conference center, a bowling alley, a spa, a food court, a night club, and lots of restaurants. Portions of the recent movie 21 were filmed there. As I walked around, I sensed Ron’s presence again. I was surprised that he’d come to me in a casino of all places. He didn’t seem to have any message for me. He was just letting me know that he was around.

An idea struck me, so I asked him if he wanted to have a little fun. I never knew Ron to take any interest in casino gambling — I know a few locals who work in the casinos but none who like to gamble — but I figured that due to his Wall Street background, he might be up for something interesting. I told him that poker was out, so I asked him if he was up for some blackjack. He agreed. I told him we’d be playing for a donation to Toastmasters. If I lost the money, we’d still donate maybe $100 (almost two years of annual dues), but if we won more than $100, we’d donate all the winnings. I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to influence anything from the other side, especially since he was a newbie there, but I told him I’d appreciate any help he could provide. Otherwise I could certainly handle myself well enough. I learned to beat blackjack when I was 21, and the skill is so burned into my neurons that I can go a year or more without playing a single hand and still automatically know what to do in every situation without having to think. The play is totally subconscious, much like driving a car or riding a bike.

I picked out a good $10 table, opting to vary my bets from $10 to $50, and bought $200 in chips. If I doubled my money, that would be a really good win. At these limits nobody at the casino is going to care whether I win or lose. On a Saturday night, a $10 table is typically the lowest you’ll find. I can afford to play higher limits, but that doesn’t interest me. For me this was just a game, not a career.

I played for an hour and left the table with $505 in chips, a win of $305. I thought that would be a nice donation. I walked around a bit to stretch my legs. Then I asked Ron if he wanted to keep playing or if we should quit. He said we should go one more round. He seemed like he was actually enjoying this experiment. I picked out another $10 table and sat down. At first I wasn’t getting anywhere, but then when I had my $50 bet out there, I split a pair of sixes and won both hands for a gain of $100. The next hand I got an 11, doubled down, and won another $100. And the hand after that I got a blackjack for a $75 win. After that I got a 20 and pushed. That’s when I heard the signal from Ron, “Time to go.” I left with $780 in chips for a net win of $580 (that’s net of both sessions). For only 90 minutes of play at fairly low limits, this kind of win is just amazing, especially at full tables (which means fewer hands per hour). I probably played about 50 hands total. That means we averaged more than $10 per hand, but my average bet per hand was probably $20-25. That’s a pretty serious win rate.

I could sense Ron’s presence the whole time I played. I don’t know if he was actually able to do anything from his end, but I definitely got far more than my fair share of splits, double downs, and blackjacks. The other players, the dealers, and the pit boss couldn’t help but notice how quickly the chips were flowing to me. Believe me — this win wasn’t due to skill. On average I’d be lucky to win an extra $20 under these conditions, since the edge on blackjack (assuming you really know how to play) is very slight, especially when playing in a multi-deck game. Doubling my money would have been outstanding.

When I got home, I told Erin what happened, and she was amazed. You see, the last time we invited a “spirit” to play with us for a certain cause, we won $445 in 45 minutes, which totally stunned us then. To have it happen again makes it harder to dismiss as a fluke.

Given the rarity of a win like this, I have to credit it to Ron. I don’t know what he did, but it worked. There’s such a sweet perfection in the notion that he could still be contributing to Toastmasters from the other side. Since I felt the $580 was his contribution, I bumped our donation to $1000 to include something from me and Erin as well. Although we already pay dues, conference registration fees, and various other sums to support Toastmasters International, I like that we can give back a little extra to support such a wonderful organization.

Initially I hesitated to share this part of the story, partly because it’s so strange and partly because I don’t want to deal with the headache of people misinterpreting my motivation for sharing it. But ultimately I figured it was best to share this part of the story for three reasons: (1) It’s the truth; (2) I know from experience that when I share a story I’m hesitant to post publicly, it’s going to resonate with someone out there in ways I can’t predict, often in very synchronistic ways; and (3) I’m sure the skeptics could use the exercise.

Seize the day

Now the point isn’t to pray to your ancestors to help you win the lottery. The point is to live — REALLY LIVE — while you’re here.

What will the people attending your memorial service say about you? How will you be remembered?

Hold your own memorial service at the end of each day. Did you live this day to the fullest? Did you give your very best? Did you express the real you? Did you make the effort to connect with people? Did you seize this day, or did you let it slip through your fingers?

Are you playing it safe just to survive, or are you stretching to give your very best? In the end, do you really think anyone will care whether or not you paid your bills on time?

Life is way too short to waste your precious time doing work you don’t love, enduring relationships you merely tolerate, and settling for limiting thoughts that hold you back. If you decide to waste this day, that’s the same as deciding to waste your life because your life is happening right now.

The mindset that says it’s okay to lose today is the mindset of death. If you’re squandering this day — and I mean today — then you’re already dead. You just haven’t accepted it yet. The rest of your days will be spent the same way. You’re reading this article in the Grim Reaper’s waiting room, waiting for your name to be called.

Too often we treat survival as our first priority, and only after we secure that can we move onto something more interesting than survival, like discovering a life purpose. But you aren’t here to survive. Do you realize you’re not going to survive? You’re going to die. Your physical life here is temporary. If you set survival as your goal, you lose automatically. Everyone who tries to survive fails. That’s how the game is set up. It’s supposed to happen that way.

Even a monkey gets more enjoyment out of life than a human being who works just to pay the bills. Monkeys find it silly to center their lives around paying their bills. They find it much more interesting to hang out with other monkeys — even if it means being homeless.

Would you say that your computer’s primary purpose is to survive? Or is it to provide you with information and entertainment and to empower you? You know your computer is eventually going to die (yes, even your precious Mac), so enjoy it while you can.

Are you enjoying your life while you can?

If you need a little hint to help you find your life purpose, it has to do with going out and connecting with people. If you’re trying to work on your purpose while spending most of your days isolated and alone, you’re missing the point. Go outside! Sure, it’s scary. But do it anyway. If the monkeys can manage it, why not you. Surely you’re smarter and more capable than a monkey.

It’s sad that we often fail to give ourselves permission to just dive headfirst into what we love doing. Realize you don’t need anyone’s permission to do what you love — or to connect with people that attract you. If some people object, let them object; then go do it anyway. The monkeys will welcome you as their new friend.

You know you’ll be happier outside the cage. The cage may be safe and cozy, but it’s no substitute for the freedom of the jungle.

Don’t wait to pursue your dreams. Life is far too precious for that.

Your life is today, not tomorrow or yesterday. Regardless of what happened in the past or what you think might happen in the future, today you have the freedom to make a conscious choice. Will it be the same choice you’ve always made, or will it be something different? Will that choice come from your heart?

Ron Lewison took the time to reach out and connect with people while he was here. He touched a lot of lives in a positive way. He may not have had the opportunity to complete all the projects he wanted to, but he gave more than his fair share. And because of that, I think he’ll find peace on the other side, and perhaps even more opportunities to coach and mentor people. Moreover, he gave the gift of many positive memories to those who knew him, a gift that continues to endure.

Ron, your presence will be missed in the physical world, but I think you’ll make quite a splash in the spiritual world. On the physical side, I may have to say goodbye, but on the spiritual side, I can say welcome home.

You are loved.

* * *

Note: I mentioned in the previous article that I would post a how-to article on raising your financial vibration next. Rest assured that article is still pending. As Ron recently discovered, sometimes life messes with your schedule.

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 is the 4th ICDI conference I’ve attended. In 2004 I went as a regular attendee. In 2006 and 2007, I went as a blogger covering the conference. And this year I went as an author/speaker.

This conference has always held special meaning for me because it was a major catalyst in helping me retire from computer game publishing and begin a new career in the field of personal development. When I saw Dr. Wayne Dyer speak about the Power of Intention at the 2004 conference, I thought to myself, “Damn… that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m supposed to be on that stage.”

At the time it was too much for me to deal with, so after the conference I tried to suppress those thoughts. But it was already too late. I got no more joy from working on computer games and eventually had to leave it behind. In retrospect it was one of the best decisions I ever made… but also one of the hardest.

Every time I’ve attended ICDI, the conference has been a transformational experience for me, and this year was no exception.

I’ll basically give a chronological review of the conference. However, since I had several speaker-related obligations this time, I wasn’t able to attend as many keynotes and sessions as in previous years, so I don’t have as much to review there. On the other hand, I also have to be careful about respecting the privacy of the various people I met, so I won’t post anything here that was clearly said with the expectation of privacy.

Wednesday, June 25

The conference hadn’t started yet, but on this day I met with Reid Tracy, President of Hay House, at the Palazzo Hotel. He was just finishing up a meeting with Colette Baron-Reid, so we chatted briefly as we transitioned from one meeting to another. Reid and I talked mainly about marketing and sales strategies for my book, Personal Development for Smart People. I won’t go into the details, but the main actionable item is that I’ll be doing a lot of pre-promotion for the book during the next 3-1/2 months, especially since the book is already pre-selling on Amazon.com and BN.com.

Speaking of the book, I just received the proofs yesterday for final review. I really love the layout and design. The book goes to the printer on July 15th. The official release date is October 15th.

Thursday, June 26

This day there was only an evening keynote from psychic medium Lisa Williams. Erin and I showed up early to pick up our badges. As we walked in, I started chatting with one of the volunteers, and when she learned I was a speaker, she said she’d been practicing and wanted to see if she could guess who I was. “You’re Gary Renard, right?” Eventually she grabbed a program, and with the help of some other volunteers, they were able to figure it out. I guess the volunteers weren’t screened for psychic ability.

Shortly thereafter, Erin and I met Nancy Levin, Event Director Extraordinaire. She gave us both big hugs and said that my speaker packet was on the way and that we could pick it up later that night. Nancy did an awesome job — the whole weekend seemed to run very smoothly.

I should mention that all of the people from Hay House I met during the weekend were so friendly and open that I began thinking of them as “Hug House.”

As Erin and I were walking through the Palazzo Hotel (connected to the Venetian), we noticed a couple of women gazing at us occasionally as if they recognized us. Soon they walked up to us and said, “Steve?” They turned out to be Donna and Karen from Hay House, who just happened to be bringing my author packet to the conference sign-in desk. While we were chatting, Nancy happened upon us again. I told her I didn’t want to wait, so I figured I’d just go ahead and manifest the author packet now via the Law of Attraction.

Lisa Williams was pretty good. This was the first time I’ve seen her speak. She did some opening monologue and then started doing readings for people. The first reading was rough getting started, since she had a hard time figuring out who the reading was for. But once she finally found the right person, it was pretty smooth sailing after that. I could tell the audience was enjoying this session a lot. Personally I didn’t get as much out of it because I’m already so immersed in it with Erin. I don’t need to be convinced of psychic/mediumship abilities, so watching other people get readings wasn’t that exciting to me. I’d probably have found this session a lot more interesting if I was skeptical and was looking for proof of something.

Friday, June 27

Erin and I checked into our suite at the Venetian. This is the first time we’ve stayed there. In fact, it’s the first time I’ve stayed in a Vegas hotel since we moved here in 2004. The room was pretty nice. It even had a remote control for the drapes and blinds.

This was the day of the pre-conference workshops. Erin decided to see psychic medium John Holland while I went to Dr. Bruce Lipton’s workshop on “new edge” science.

I was very impressed with Bruce’s workshop. He delivered an intelligent Power Point presentation that connected many dots between biology and spirituality, and I took copious notes. Did you know that the cells of your body are covered with tiny protein antennae that detect and respond to both chemical and electromagnetic signals, including your own brainwaves? If you want to know why it’s so important to take responsibility for your thoughts, go read his book The Biology of Belief. I think it would be pretty hard to go through all this material and still be skeptical about the mind-body connection. Even reading this article is creating thoughts in your mind that are subtly affecting your cells right now.

Erin and I decided to pop into the speakers’ lounge to grab some lunch. Okay, so she practically shoved me in there, enthusiastically flashing her Author Guest pass to any would-be bouncers. We talked briefly to John Holland, Dr. Brian Weiss, Colette Baron-Reid, and some Hay House staff members. Then we sat down for lunch with Dr. David Hamilton and his girlfriend Elizabeth, a delightful couple from Scotland. David and I are the same age, and we were both first time speakers at ICDI. He’s a biochemist who speaks about the mind-body connection and the placebo effect. We had an interesting conversation at what apparently became the newbie author’s table. Unfortunately we couldn’t attend each other’s sessions because they were both scheduled at the same time.

Lucky for me (and my raw food diet), the speakers’ lounge had a variety of fresh fruit and veggies. They also had plenty of other vegetarian/vegan food — even soy milk. Someone told me that Doreen Virtue is also a raw foodist, but I can’t confirm that because our paths never crossed at the conference. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the other speakers have vegetarian tendencies due to the nature of their work.

Before dinner Erin and I met with the Hay House PR team: Lindsay Condict, Richelle Zizian, and Jacqui Clark. We talked about the PR aspects of my upcoming book launch.

That evening we went to Dr. Wayne Dyer’s keynote, “Excuses Begone.” I really enjoyed it. The first third of the talk seemed a little unclear to me. He told a lot of personal stories, but I wasn’t sure what he was leading to. I always prefer it when a speaker makes a point first and then tells a story to illustrate it, so I know what to listen for. But I found the remainder of his talk very lucid and insightful. I’ve seen him speak several times now, and this time he seemed the most laid back of all. He wore shorts and a t-shirt and was even barefoot for much of the talk. For a moment I thought I was back at the Game Developer’s Conference.

Near the end of his 2-1/2 hour keynote, he brought one of his daughters up on stage to talk about her experiences quitting her corporate job with Best Buy to start her own business. She seemed very nervous and needed to catch her breath a lot, but the audience was supportive of her. Personally I didn’t find her new career choice (designing and selling leather laptop bags, which were available for sale in the back of the room) to really fit the context of Wayne’s speech, but I know the whole idea of leaving corporate thinking behind is a big issue for a lot of people, and it helps to know it can be done.

Saturday, June 28

I decided to go for a walk along the Strip at 5:15am to get some fresh air. At this time of year the temperature in Las Vegas is warm/hot at all times of day and night. It’s 107 degrees outside right now as I type this. Walking down the Strip early on a Saturday or Sunday morning is akin to playing Frogger. As I approached various drunk people hobbling back to their hotel rooms, I had to predict whether they’d stagger left or right so as to avoid smashing into them. It was moderately challenging. Another sight you’ll see at this time of day is all the prostitutes heading out from a night’s work. I’ve been solicited by them about three times since I moved here.

While walking past Caesar’s Palace, I spied a very drunk couple sitting on the grass, trying in vain to stand up without falling. They seemed to be enjoying themselves though.

Erin and I grabbed an early breakfast (the Grand Lux Cafe serves a really good fruit plate), and then I went to see Robert Holden’s keynote on happiness while Erin did a couple readings in our hotel room. Robert was downright hysterical. He talked about the problem of always wanting more, more, more and how it actually makes us less happy. One statistic I recall him mentioning was that people who make $30K per year think they need $50K to be happy, but people who make $100K think they need $250K. So chasing money for happiness just doesn’t work. He then explained what actually does work to create happiness — more truth, more connection, and more creative self-expression. I couldn’t agree more.

After the keynote I ran into some local friends and talked with them for a while. Then I went upstairs to meet Erin and wolf down some fruit.

At 11:30am I met Summer McStravick at the Hay House Radio area. I met her casually last year, and this time I was participating in a live panel discussion with two other Hay House authors, Alan Cohen and Andrew Harvey. I’d never met either of these authors and wasn’t familiar with their work. The topic for our panel was “Self Development 2.0,” which sounded interesting to me. This was being taped for Hay House Radio and was also being videotaped for possible future uses. The show will be played at some future time, but I don’t know when that is. If I find out, I’ll let you know.

The first thing I had to do was hair and makeup backstage. Aside from dressing as a clown for Halloween when I was a kid, I’ve never worn makeup before. Erin of course was having a great time watching me in the makeup chair, giggling and snapping photos from the sidelines. Overall it was pretty painless, but I know I heard the word “blackmail” uttered at least once.

I briefly met Alan and Andrew and chatted with them before going on stage. Alan, Summer, Andrew, and I soon took the stage, sitting in large brown chairs around a coffee table. There was seating for a studio audience, but there weren’t many people there. There were other sessions going on at the same time, so that didn’t surprise me.

This roundtable discussion seemed like a fun thing to do, so I just relaxed and enjoyed it. Summer did a great job of getting us going, and the hour went by quickly. I’d love to do more of these interactive discussions in the future.

One funny thing is that because this was being filmed and based on how the stage was set up, I was given a list of requirements for how to dress. This included no black, no pinstripes, no brown, etc. By the time I got to the end of the list and compared it the clothes I’d packed, I realized I’d have to go on stage naked to satisfy the requirements. Fortunately I found a gray shirt I’d packed that seemed suitable, so nudity wasn’t necessary.

After the radio show, I saw Robert Holden and told him how much I enjoyed his presentation that morning. He seemed happy for the feedback. Then Erin and I headed to the speakers’ lounge for lunch.

At lunch we chatted with Andrew Harvey (from the radio interview) and intuitive Robert Ohotto. Among other things we talked about the nature of suffering.

At some point during the day, I popped into the room where I’d be speaking on Sunday to check it out. When I speak I like to go to the room in advance, walk around the stage, see how the chairs are laid out, and get a feel for the room. There were about 400 chairs in the room, 200 per side with a column down the middle. The middle column layout means the energy of the room will be split, so I’ll always have to be talking to one side or the other. It isn’t a problem… just a fact to be dealt with.

While I was walking around the stage pretending to speak to a room of empty chairs, Mollie (a Hay House employee) walks in to check the room for the next speaker. I chatted with her a bit and then left. Everything looked good with the room, so I felt very much at ease about delivering my workshop there the next day.

At some point I took Erin to the room to let her get a feel for it as well. Months prior I’d asked her to introduce me to kick off the workshop. Hay House provides introductions for the keynote speakers but not for the breakout sessions, so I decided to provide my own. I wrote the intro for her, so all she had to do was get up and read it for about one minute. When I brought her to the empty conference room and led her up on stage, she looked out over the sea of empty chairs and said, “Oh, my Goooodddddd.” She suddenly got very nervous and said, “Why did I agree to do this?” The largest audience Erin had ever addressed up to this point was about 20 people.

That afternoon Erin and I attended Robert Ohotto’s session. He’s a very fluid and dynamic speaker. His presentation was about reaching the level of awareness where instead of being a victim of fate, you become a co-creator of your destiny. I especially enjoyed his stories.

Afterwards Erin and I returned to our hotel room to rest a bit and get ready for the speakers’ dinner.

The speakers’ dinner was at Dos Caminos restaurant in the Palazzo Hotel. As we entered the private dining room, we were greeted by Louise Hay and posed for photos with her. That was the first time I got to meet her, although there wasn’t really time for a conversation.

The dining area gradually filled in as more authors and Hay House staff members arrived. I’d estimate about 60 people attended the dinner, but it was hard to tell because wait staff were constantly moving about, serving drinks and appetizers. Unfortunately with all the conversations going on, it got pretty noisy in there, so it was hard to hear anyone. You really needed to be standing right next to someone to participate in a conversation.

During dinner Erin sat next to David Hamilton and Elizabeth, and I sat next to Summer McStravick and her husband, Charles. I think the high point was when David recited Mel Gibson’s speech about freedom from Braveheart. I learned a lot about Hay House from talking to Summer. It became clear that the most important thing they look for in new authors is a powerful message that inspires people. Being a strong writer with a weak or uninspired message won’t get you very far.

Before the conference I’d requested a raw vegan meal for myself and a cooked vegan meal for Erin. We’ve been vegan since 1997, so requesting vegan meals for special events like this is no big deal. Since I wasn’t sure the chef would understand the raw diet, I suggested in advance that a fruit plate would be fine for me. But when I let the waiter know I was the raw foodist guy, he informed me that the chef was actually a vegan himself and wanted to make me something special. I said, “Go for it!” I ended up getting a delicious raw veggie dish. It’s hard to describe, but it was basically a lot of finely chopped veggies with a light sauce on a bed of romaine lettuce. It reminded me of a raw dim sum I used to make a long time ago. It was very good! For dessert I had a truly magnificent fruit plate of fresh berries and thinly sliced apples and watermelon. I should also mention that I enjoyed some wonderful fresh guacamole at the start of the meal.

Later that evening we talked with John Holland, Vincent Barra, Robert Ohotto, and a number of other speakers and Hay House staffers that I met only briefly. Dr. Wayne Dyer didn’t attend the dinner, nor did Doreen Virtue (she was doing a keynote at the same time as the dinner). I saw Gregg Braden there but never got a chance to say hi to him. Overall it was a very fun, social evening.

The only thing Erin and I felt was missing during the speakers’ dinner was some sort of call to order. This is probably because Erin and I are so used to this from dinners/parties with other speakers from Toastmasters and the National Speakers Association. It seemed strange to us to attend a speakers’ dinner without a single speech. I think it would have been worthwhile to take just five minutes for a formal “Welcome and thanks for coming” spiel, especially for a first-time author like myself. That kind of thing often helps people feel more connected. With a room full of speakers, it’s never difficult to find someone willing to grab a mike and say a few words. Due to the layout of this particular restaurant, however, that may not have been feasible. Our private dining room opened into the main dining area on one side, so it would have been somewhat noisy no matter what.

Sunday, June 29

I went to bed on Saturday night at 11pm, and for some reason I woke up at 2am and couldn’t go back to sleep. I wasn’t nervous about my presentation that day, but apparently my subconscious mind decided it would be a good idea to wake me up and spend a few more hours mentally reviewing the material. I can’t see how that was necessary though because I was speaking about the ideas from my book, which are pretty well ingrained in my brain by now.

Erin and I decided to drive to the Luxor Hotel for breakfast. I wanted to eat at a buffet for some extra variety, and (oddly) the Venetian doesn’t have a buffet. The Luxor buffet isn’t the best in town, but it’s one of the few that opens at 7am instead of 8am, so I knew we could go early. On a Sunday morning, there’s normally little or no traffic on the Strip, so it only took us a few minutes to get there.

During breakfast Erin seemed to be channeling a lot of nervous energy and kept wanting to revise my introduction. She was continuously rewriting it, even though I felt the original version was just fine. I wasn’t nervous at all about my speech, but due to our empathic connection, I was feeling nervous about her being nervous. The funny thing was that the rewrites she was attempting kept making the intro worse, not better. Eventually she decided it was best to stick with the original version aside from a very minor edit.

A big part of my relationship with Erin has involved me helping her to learn courage. She’s been in Toastmasters for two years now, so I asked her to do my intro so she could have the experience of getting up on stage in front of a sizeable group. Think of it as one small step on the treadmill of progressive training.

I went back to my room to review my presentation one last time and then headed down to the room with Erin 45 minutes before the start of my workshop. It’s always good to show up early since it puts all the staff at ease to know the speaker is in the room. When I was doing a speech in Palm Springs last year, I showed up to the room 15-20 minutes early, and the conference organizer practically had a heart attack when he saw me, breathing a huge sigh of relief. The day earlier one of their speakers was an hour late, which messed up the schedule for the whole day, so he was unusually worried that someone else would be late. Meeting planning can be a stressful line of work. No one wants to assemble an audience and then disappoint them with bad news.

There were three Hay House volunteers in the room when I got there, so I greeted them and asked if they could give a copy of my handout to every attendee. Then I basically hung around greeting the early arrivals and chatting with some friends who showed up.

When the sound guy showed up, I asked if he had a lavaliere mike. Unfortunately he only had the kind that slips over the ear. I’m not a fan of those mikes because they can pop off too easily. Lisa Williams had that exact problem during her keynote. But I’d rather use the earpiece mike than a hand mike, since I like to have both hands free. The earpiece mike worked out okay, although it did start to come loose after about an hour.

I estimate there were about 200 attendees. I think that’s the largest group I’ve addressed to date, the previous limit being about 150. I wasn’t nervous at all. I love speaking, so I was feeling happy and excited. I signaled Erin to introduce me. She was a bit nervous when she spoke, but that only seemed to endear her to the audience. People applauded as soon as she introduced herself, so it was a really friendly crowd. When she introduced me, I joined her on the stage and gave her a hug and kiss. I was very proud of her for doing something that scared her.

I had a really good time delivering the workshop, which was titled “Personal Development for Smart People: The 7 Keys to Genuine Growth.” Everything went about as well as I could have hoped, given that this was the first time I’ve ever delivered it. I opened with a little humor and explained how I came to speak at ICDI. It’s been said that you don’t need to use humor in a speech… unless you want to be paid. I had a very content rich presentation, so I didn’t want to overdo the humor, but I think I’ll add a bit more for the Tampa conference in October.

This is the first time I’ve publicly spoken about the ideas from my book, so I couldn’t predict how the audience would react. Personally I think these ideas are really solid and profound, and the reactions I saw as well as the feedback I received afterwards told me that many of the attendees had some major a-ha moments.

The basic theme of this workshop was the fundamentals of personal development. These are the central principles that can help us grow in every area of life, including health, career, finances, relationships, and spiritual development. The three primary principles are truth, love, and power. The four secondary principles are oneness, authority, courage, and intelligence; they’re secondary because they can all be derived from the first three. There are lots of books that offer advice on how to grow, but I don’t know of anyone else in this field who has attempted to uncover the deepest underlying principles from which all positive growth arises. Consequently, this was a very unique presentation.

I never felt like I lost the audience at any point, but I could see that some people were more interested in certain topics than others. That’s to be expected. Some people have a hard time aligning their lives with love, while others may find courage to be much more challenging. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.

I felt very present and centered while speaking. I don’t memorize my speeches. I plan and rehearse them, but when I’m in front of an audience, I prefer to speak from my heart and stay authentic instead of going into robot mode. I sacrifice some elegance in my language by doing this, but what I gain is that I feel much more connected to the audience.

I tried to design this presentation with a good blend of education, explanation, audience exercises, personal stories and examples, and some humor. It’s important to have a good mix to appeal to left-brained and right-brained people. This was a different audience than what I attract online. My online audience is about 65% male, but this conference is closer to 90% female, although someone told me afterwards that my session appeared to be about 70% female. Knowing your audience is a key part of speaking since demographics can make a huge difference in how well a presentation is received.

As the workshop was coming to a close, I felt good because I really did my best. There’s always room for improvement, and I certainly made a few mistakes here and there, but that’s to be expected with a brand new workshop.

To my surprise the audience gave me a standing ovation. I wasn’t expecting that — most of the sessions at this conference don’t end that way — so it really told me that the workshop had a strong impact.

Afterwards I hung around for about 45 minutes, talking to people, answering questions, and posing for photos. Normally the authors do a book signing at this time, but since my book wasn’t out yet, people asked me to sign copies of the handouts or the blank journals they received free at the conference.

I signed everything with a “Live Consciously!” message. After signing several of those, I was struck by a powerful memory. Last year during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, I did an exercise I learned from a book on writing. The exercise was to practice doing a book signing. All you do is grab some scratch paper and pretend you’re signing your own books. The idea is to experience the state of mind of being a published author. I’d completely forgotten about the exercise until I realized I was signing everything the same way I’d practiced it seven months earlier. Fascinating. I’m sure I’ll be doing a lot more of this when the book actually comes out.

I’m used to getting some positive feedback after a good speech or workshop, but I have to admit it felt a little strange to sign people’s handouts and journals. Most people chatted with me and asked questions, and I really enjoyed the interaction. However, a couple people just asked for my autograph and then left. That’s never happened to me before.

I really like helping people, but there are certain problems that come with being the guy on the stage. It’s very easy for the audience to disconnect from you because they assume you’re too perfect. Just being able to speak in front of an audience is a huge fear for a lot of people. So I intentionally told some of my worst failure stories, including the time I was arrested for grand theft as a teenager. I wanted people to understand the difference between growth and perfection. No one can be perfect, but everyone can grow. Several people told me afterwards that they really appreciated those stories because it helped them see that they could improve their lives as well. As we finally wrapped up, I was happy but also very tired/spent.

My favorite kind of feedback to hear after a speech is something along the lines of, “You just helped me solve a big problem I’ve been having.” As a speaker you can inspire the heck out of people, but if you don’t help people solve their real-world problems, there won’t be much long-term impact beyond the entertainment value.

We popped into the speaker’s lounge for a quick lunch and talked some more with David and Elizabeth, since he’d just finished his workshop as well. (I heard later from a friend who attended that David was absolutely hysterical and that there was some kind of dance involved.)

During lunch we met British author/speaker Tim Freke (pronounced freak). He gave me a copy of his book Lucid Living. I read the book Monday night — it’s a very quick read — and recognized he was talking about the perspective of subjective reality. Lucid living and subjective reality are essentially the same thing — a certain way of looking at life that can be very empowering. Our friend Chris went to Tim’s presentation later that day and really enjoyed it.

I decided to head back to our hotel room to drop off a few items before meeting Erin for John Holland’s workshop where he was going to connect with deceased people to relay messages for the living. I stopped three times on the way to talk to people who’d attended my morning workshop. Erin and I were both recognized several more times throughout the rest of the conference. We always enjoy talking to people, so we didn’t mind this at all.

I was 10 minutes late meeting Erin, and I found her sitting in the back of John Holland’s workshop. This was the first time I’ve seen him speak, but Erin has seen him at previous conferences. His opening monologue was over-the-top funny, especially when he talked about psychic amnesia — a problem that happens when people go blank and even forget their own children while receiving a reading. Sometimes being the center of attention in a room filled with hundreds of people makes people freak out, and they can barely remember their own name.

I thought he did a great job with the readings. He’s very active and energetic when he reads, moving around the stage quite a bit. He got some strong validation hits like specific names and locations, and I don’t think there was anyone he read for that wasn’t brought to tears. At one point he read for a woman sitting in front of us, and after a few minutes she was shaking and could barely speak.

John was just outstanding at the way he managed to keep the interest of both the audience and the person he was reading for. Often when people do mediumship readings, it’s easy to lose the audience because you get tied up with the person you’re reading for. But John kept mixing in humor and explanation for the audience even while he did the individual readings. Most people probably didn’t realize how masterful that was.

At the end of John’s session, a couple of women came up to me and Erin to tell us how much they enjoyed our workshop earlier that day. They told us they really appreciated how authentic we were. We talked to them a little and then went out to meet our friend Chris from New York City. We first met Chris at last year’s ICDI and also met up with him during our New York City trip in October.

Before Chris showed up, we chatted with a number of people in the hallway, including our friend Vicki. John Holland was doing book signings at a table in that hallway, and he had a massive line of people. A volunteer was advising people to fill out sticky notes with their names in order to make the signings go more smoothly. I stood off to the side, and John’s friend Vincent (Vincent is a talented psychic himself who’s been doing readings for 30 years) saw me and waved me over. I walked up and talked briefly with Vincent and then with John as well. I hugged them both goodbye and told them I’d see them in Tampa in a few months.

We took Chris up to our hotel room to chat for a while. I was pretty tired, so I snacked on flax crackers and rested while we talked. After what was probably about 90 minutes, we headed back downstairs for my photo shoot.

I’ve never done a professional photo shoot before. I’d talked to the photographer, David Beeler, a couple weeks before the conference, who gave me some tips for improving the experience. Those tips included “show up” and “relax.” Hay House Creative Director Christy Salinas met us there, and soon I was back for another round of hair and makeup. I had a fun time joking around with the makeup artist. She even darkened my eyebrows. My eyebrows are very blond, so they tend to look almost invisible in photos.

Over the next 90 minutes, we took 395 photos. This is for a one-inch photo on the back of the book plus some publicity shots. I had a good time with it. I was impressed with the attention to detail, including the variety of lighting setups, trying different shirts, different poses, and different angles (including the use of a ladder). I realize my knowledge of photography is pretty much non-existent.

At one point they noticed that whenever Erin moved closer to me, I smiled even bigger and the photos came out better, so they actually had me look at her for a second and then turn to face the camera for many of the photos.

The photo shoot was over at 7:15pm, so Erin, Chris, and I decided to have dinner at the Wynn Hotel across the street. We ate a very leisurely meal. I had a big salad and a bowl of fresh berries for dessert. We were all pretty tired at the end, especially Chris since he was still on New York time (three hours ahead of Las Vegas). I think Erin and I sank into bed around 11pm.

Monday, June 30

Erin and I had an early breakfast downstairs and then returned to our room to pack up our suitcases. The conference ended Sunday evening, but Erin had a couple more readings to do this morning. I greeted her first client as he arrived, grabbed my laptop, and headed downstairs to do some work.

While Erin did readings, I worked a little on some PR materials in the food court at the hotel. After about an hour, I realized I was too burned out to be doing quality work, so I put the laptop in the car and went for a walk for the remaining 90 minutes. My brain felt pretty fried, but I still had plenty of physical energy.

I returned to our hotel room to meet Erin, we checked out, and we called Angela to tell her we’d meet her for lunch at the Grand Lux Cafe. Angela is one of the (awesome) moderators from our discussion forums who drove up from L.A. for the conference. We’d met her earlier but wanted to take her to lunch just to connect.

We got to the Grand Lux Cafe right on time, but after waiting 10 minutes, Angela was nowhere in sight. We called her cell phone, but there was no answer, so we left a message. Suddenly I blurted out, “Wait a minute… did you tell her which Grand Lux Cafe to meet us at?” Erin said, “Huh, there’s more than one?” I remembered that the Palazzo Hotel also has a Grand Lux Cafe. The Palazzo is a fairly recent addition to the Venetian, making the whole thing an enormous mega resort. Then I asked Erin, “Which hotel is Angela staying in?” “The Palazzo.” “Doh!”

I told Erin to wait while I made the 5-minute walk to the other Grand Lux to see if Angela was there. Sure enough… I saw her pacing in front as I walked up, probably wondering why we were so late. I explained to her what happened and escorted her back to the Venetian’s Grand Lux to meet Erin, and the three of us had a nice lunch together. Angela’s husband (aka Danger Man) also popped in briefly to say hi, but he didn’t join us for lunch because he had other plans with their son.

After lunch Erin and I drove home, I did some work, and then I went to a Toastmasters party later that evening. Erin was originally going to go with me, but she wasn’t feeling well, so she opted to cancel the babysitter and stay home.

Technically this was an officer installation party for the new slate of officers for my Toastmasters club, which is one of the largest in Las Vegas with 35 members. For me it was more of a celebration party after the conference.

During the party I was talking to Darren LaCroix about how my presentation went. He’s fairly well-known in Toastmaster circles because he’s the 2001 World Champion of Public Speaking, and he also does a lot of presentation skills coaching. I’ve learned a lot from him about the do’s and don’ts of professional speaking.

When I told Darren that my book wasn’t available for sale after my workshop because the release date was still 3-1/2 months away, he said, “Yeah… but you handed all the attendees pre-ordering forms and then collected them after the workshop, right?”

Doh!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, July 1

After dropping the kids off at school, Erin and I drove back to the Wynn Hotel for breakfast at their buffet. This was the first time we’ve eaten there. It isn’t cheap ($18 per person for breakfast, $30 for weekend brunch), but none of the good buffets here are cheap anymore. It was one of the best buffets for us because there were lots of vegan and raw options, including fresh guacamole and lots of fruits including raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, and papaya. They even had herbal tea.

Next we went to the Venetian Hotel (across the street from the Wynn) to hit the spa. Hay House generously treated the speakers to two spa treatments of their choice. I used one for myself and the other one for Erin. If I used both for myself, I’d be a little too relaxed (relaxed as in dead because Erin would have killed me).

Aside from the presence of a rock-climbing wall, the inside of the Venetian Spa was typical compared to the other Vegas spas I’ve been to, including a sauna, steam room, and whirlpool bath. However, the massage was just incredible.

I haven’t been to spas very often — this was probably the sixth time in my whole life — but I usually enjoy them. I was really looking forward to it this time because I wanted to relax and unwind after the busy conference.

I sat down in the men’s lounge with a cup of raspberry tea (no caffeine or sugar), a banana, and a copy of Gregg Braden’s Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer. But before I could get past the first page of the book, I started getting ideas for how I could improve my workshop for the Tampa conference. After a few minutes of being hit by idea after idea, I went to the attendant and asked if he had some pen and paper I could use. He was happy to oblige, and I returned to my lounge chair and just wrote down ideas for the next hour until it was time for my massage. Sometimes inspiration doesn’t know that you’re on vacation.

For my massage I got a double abhyanga, an ayurvedic massage where two people massage you at the same time. Since their movements are synchronized, it feels like getting a massage from one person with four hands. It was probably the best massage I’ve ever had. At the end the two women left the room to make some herbal tea, and I stayed on the table for what seemed like 10 minutes. I felt a strong surge of emotion which soon became an intense psychic experience. I won’t go into the details about that, since it would probably double the size of this already enormous review. When the women returned with the tea, I hugged them both and staggered out the door.

After that Erin and I had lunch at the Venetian and then headed home. It was quite a week!

* * *

Erin and I both enjoyed this conference immensely. Seeing everything from the speaker side made this a unique experience. If you missed this one, I encourage you to consider going to the Tampa I Can Do It! conference in October.

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.

Hay House is the publisher of my upcoming book, Personal Development for Smart People, and they’ve invited me to speak at their I Can Do It! Conference at the Sands Expo in Las Vegas, June 26-29, 2008. ICDI is a very popular self-help conference with thousands of attendees. I’ve been attending ICDI Vegas since 2004, so I’m delighted to be speaking there for the first time.

Other speakers you’ll see at this conference include Dr. Wayne Dyer, Dr. David Hawkins, Gary Renard, Marianne Williamson, Lisa Williams, Doreen Virtue, and many more.

The 7 Keys to Genuine Growth

My 90-minute presentation will be on Sunday, June 29 from 11:00am to 12:30pm and is titled Personal Development for Smart People: The 7 Keys to Genuine Growth. This is the first time I’ll be speaking publicly about the ideas in my upcoming book.

The high concept behind my book and my presentation is that I aimed to discover the universal principles behind all successful growth efforts. Why do we have such different rules for improving our health, relationships, spirituality, finances, productivity, etc? Is it possible we could reduce all success to a single set of principles that work equally well across the board? As it turns out, the answer is yes. In this presentation I’ll reveal exactly what those principles are and explain how to apply them to improve your results in any endeavor. I don’t know of anyone else in the personal development field who’s done anything like this. I’m very excited to be sharing the results of this work. This was a project I began in 2005, so it’s been a long time coming. These ideas have permanently changed the way I think about personal growth, and I imagine they’ll have a similar effect on others who are exposed to them.

I am getting paid for my presentation, but I don’t receive any extra commission if you decide to register for the conference. I hope to see you there if you can make it. I know a lot of StevePavlina.com readers are already planning to attend. Erin and I will be attending the whole conference, so please do say hi if you see us there. See the I Can Do It! conference page for all the details. The conference is less than 3 months away, so if you wish to attend, make your reservations early.

I’m doing a breakout session, which means there will be other sessions running concurrently to mine. Based on what I’ve seen during the past few years of going to ICDI, most breakout sessions seem to get in the range of 100 to 500 attendees. The main keynote sessions draw several thousand attendees.

If you want to get an insider’s look at the conference, you can read the reviews Erin and I wrote of ICDI 2007 and ICDI 2006. Of all the conferences and seminars I’ve attended, ICDI has been my favorite because of their impactful presentations. Most of the presenters are not professional speakers per se; they’re authors who speak because of their interesting content, not because of their rah-rah delivery styles. I’ve never been to a conference where the speakers communicate as authentically as they do at ICDI.

While there is a sales table where the speakers’ books and audio programs are available, I’ve never seen an ICDI presentation that was a high-pressure sales pitch. The presentations have always been content-rich.

Last year Erin and I hosted an informal meetup at ICDI, but I don’t think we’ll have time to do that again this year. After my session I’ll try to hang out as long as I can to meet with people and answer questions, but I doubt I’ll get to spend much time with anyone one-on-one.

Erin’s Readings

My wife, Erin, will have the capacity to do a limited number of in-person readings during the conference in our hotel room at the Venetian, so if you wish to book a reading with her, please book it early. Based on past experience, we know she won’t be able to give readings to everyone who wants one, so all bookings will be done on a first-come, first-served basis.

Hay House Radio Show Taping

I’ve also been invited to participate in a Hay House Radio show during the conference. I’ll be on a panel with a couple other authors: Andrew Harvey and Michael Neill. There should be some seating available, so you can watch us live if you so desire. This is scheduled to happen on Saturday, June 28, at 12-1pm. I don’t know what we’ll be discussing, but I think it will be fairly informal… perhaps some sort of personal development coffee talk. I’m not sure if audience members will have a chance to ask questions during the show.

Regarding my book, I turned in the manuscript to my editor a couple weeks ago, so I’m waiting to hear back from her on the first round of editing. This is the first time I’ve gone through the editing process with a publisher, so I don’t know how much editing will be required to produce the final version. The tentative release date is October 2008.

Hope to see you at ICDI 2008 if you can make 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.

Personal branding is unavoidable. As others interact with you, they’ll automatically form mental associations that connect you with certain labels, often within the first few seconds. You can’t avoid being labeled, and other people can’t avoid labeling you. It happens automatically because our brains are wired to recognize patterns and form associations. The labels people attach to you become part of your personal brand.

If you type an email, you’re branding yourself. If you have a conversation with a friend or family member, you’re branding yourself. How you dress, what you eat, and how you talk all contribute to your brand. Think of your brand as the summation of all the associations about you that are stored in people’s minds.

A test of personal branding

This section has been edited since its original version. In the original version, I included a quick branding test, but that test is now over, and the branding results have been posted. Here’s what the original text said in case you’re curious:

Before we continue I’d like to ask you to do me a simple favor. It should honestly take you less than a minute. Go to my contact form, and send me a quick 3-word message. Just type 3 adjectives that you feel describe me. Maybe you’ve been reading this site for a while, or maybe this is your very first visit. It doesn’t matter. Just go with whatever pops into your head. Just type those 3 words into the message box, and send it. Don’t worry about whether your words are in order or priority or whether they sound positive or negative. Just send me any 3 words that you feel describe me as a person. You don’t need to type anything else for the message other than those three words, although you can type more if you want to. I’ll know that the 3-word messages are for this exercise.

Please take a moment to do this before you continue reading if you’re going to do it at all. Otherwise what you read next could influence your results, and I’d rather get your first impression for this before I start filling your head with other adjectives. I’ll wait…

After a day or two, I’ll compile the feedback and see if I can make sense of it. If so I may share the results in a future post, so we can all see what you collectively think of my personal brand and if there are some interesting general lessons we can extract.

For the purpose of this exercise, I have no control over what you might say, and I really don’t know what the most common adjectives will be. But obviously I’ve had some influence over your opinion, especially if you’re a long-term reader.

Your external brand

Your external brand is how you project yourself to the world. There is an element of choice here. You can decide what to say or write in order to convey a certain image. Your projected image will influence what others think of you and how they might choose to interact with you. You may stumble upon this image accidentally, or you can deliberately target a specific type of image.

I think the best external image to project is the one you believe best reflects who you really are. Being yourself simply means being honest.

In my view it makes little sense to pretend to be something you’re not. I don’t pretend to be a therapist with a Ph.D in psychology because that isn’t who I am. I could pick up a Ph.D from an unaccredited “degree mill” school and call myself Dr. Pavlina, but what’s the point? That mindset assumes that in order to get what I want, I must pretend to be something I’m not. But how can I get what I want if I have to disconnect from myself to get it? To me the whole notion of projecting a false image makes no sense. It can only stem from a lack of acceptance of who I am.

When people project an obviously false image at me, it only causes me to brand them in a negative way… with labels like fake, phony, insincere, disconnected, inauthentic, shallow, and so on. Those labels automatically trigger other associations like: probably wants to sell me something, going to throw up now, and where’s the fire escape?

On the other hand, I think there’s some value to projecting an image that fits who you really are. For example if you’re a very neat and organized person, but you have a scruffy beard, you’re broadcasting an incongruent message, whether you agree with it or not. This is why facial hair and salespeople don’t go well together. Many people think that if you have facial hair, you’re trying to hide something, and that isn’t good for work that requires you to build trust. Many years ago I heard about a salesperson who increased his sales just by shaving off his beard.

Paying attention to your external image needn’t become an ego trip. Really it’s just the opposite. Becoming aware of how others see you helps you identify blind spots within yourself. Then you can work on those blind spots to help you become more internally congruent. For example, our bearded salesperson may realize he (hopefully not she) was sabotaging his results because he didn’t really want to work in sales anyway.

Sometimes there are practical problems with getting your external brand and your self-image to match up. This is why I can’t dress myself. If I were truly being myself, I’d probably dress like an off-duty Star Trek character, but since I also don’t know how to shop for clothes, I still dress like it’s 1989 instead of Stardate 42523.7. But when I look deeper into this problem, I see it points me to a bigger issue — that I still need to learn to delegate. The right person, such as an image consultant, could probably fix this problem for me. So the internal-external inconsistency is really there to help point me in the direction of positive growth. Time to say goodbye to Thrilla Gorilla.

Your internal brand

In addition to your external brand, which is how most people think about personal branding, you also have an internal brand. This is what you think of yourself.

What 3 adjectives would you use to describe yourself? Take a moment to think about that, and jot them down. Is this a brand you feel good about? Does it really resonate with you? Is this the same image you project to the world? If you could change those adjectives, what would you change them to?

If I were to do this exercise, I’d probably pick intelligent, curious, and direct. Other words I could use to describe myself include honest, growth-oriented, happy, independent, unconventional, deep, compassionate, purposeful, ambitious, conscious, focused, disciplined, strategic, responsible, thorough, persistent, practical, funny, holistic, clever, creative, accepting, and inspired. Ask me tomorrow, and I might pick different adjectives, but these are the ones that popped into my head right now. Your choices may be totally different than mine, but this is how I think of myself at this particular time.

Now ask yourself if your internal personal brand matches the external brand you project to others. You don’t necessarily know what others think of you, but you should at least know if there are any parts of yourself you don’t fully accept which you try to hide from others. If you find some areas you’ve been hiding, consider that your lack of self-acceptance may be blinding you from seeing these aspects as the assets they really are.

For example, if you see yourself as introverted, you could see that in a negative light (shy, antisocial) or in a positive light (intelligent, deep). If you sometimes describe yourself in negative terms, see if those terms also have a positive side. Consider focusing on the positive aspects instead.

I’m colorblind, so I could certainly see that in a negative light. I could internally brand myself as limited, defective, or impaired. But instead I choose to focus on the positive aspects. I see the world differently than most people, so that gives me the opportunity to be original, insightful, and non-superficial. My colorblindness also helps me connect with people, since I always need help picking ripe fruit, and when I try to do it on my own, it often gives others a good laugh.

Brand interaction

It’s expected that your internal brand and your external brand won’t completely coincide, and that’s OK, but those incongruencies can create interesting interactions that help you grow in unexpected ways.

For example, people sometimes send me emails indicating they find me a bit quirky or strange. That’s how they see me, but it isn’t really how I see myself. However, I can understand why people see me this way because I’m really curious about a lot of things, I like to learn through direct experience, and I especially enjoy creative undertakings. So while I don’t try to be intentionally quirky, I must admit that is a side effect of my general approach to life. By understanding that this is how others see me, however, I can acknowledge it up front, such as by poking fun at myself for undertaking yet another strange experiment, even though it doesn’t seem that way to me. When I do something strange and don’t acknowledge the strangeness, people can feel disconnected from me, but when I show that I’m aware of their perceptions, it keeps us connected.

Once you’ve gotten yourself assigned a few adjectives in someone else’s mind, it can be very difficult to change that. So just make the best of the adjectives you’ve been assigned. When you learn how others see you, you can “play back at them” by acknowledging their expectations. Instead of trying to fight your own branding, roll with it and turn it into a strength. This actually helps you reconnect your external brand with your internal one.

If I see myself as curious, while others see me as quirky, I can accept the quirkiness label and run with it. I can see how quirkiness still aligns with my internal brand. Quirkiness connects well with being creative and unconventional. It can also fit with intelligence because some people associate quirkiness with genius. Geniuses are strange people with odd personality quirks, right? By acknowledging and accepting what other people think of me, I can help to bring that projected image into better alignment with my own self-image. This helps other people connect with me as I am instead of connecting with a false projection of who they think I am.

This morning I did some spontaneous personal brand testing my family. Erin brands me as “insightful, courageous, and passionate.” My 7-year-old daughter, Emily, describes me as “tough, big, and strong.” I told her I brand her as “cute, creative, and sneaky.” Erin brands Emily as “funny, mischievous, and caring.” Emily described her 4-year-old brother as “little, clean, and bumpy.” Everyone is right because these brands all exist in their minds.

Personal branding has a lot to teach us about personal growth. It’s a rich place to explore. I encourage you to try the earlier exercise with your friends, family, and coworkers. Ask everyone to describe you with 3 adjectives. You’ll learn a great deal from it.

Incidentally, the Stardate I mentioned earlier (Are you geek enough to have already Googled it? Or worse… recognized it from memory?) is from an episode that really brings home the importance of personal branding. If you aren’t a Trekkie and have no idea what I’m talking about, well… methinks you’ve got bigger problems than personal branding.

If I ever get bored of the tagline “Personal Development for Smart People,” I think I’ll go with “Tough, Big, and Strong.”

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.