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.

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

Why does this happen?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

1. Admit There’s a Higher Truth

The first step is to consciously acknowledge what you’ve been feeling. Don’t be afraid to face up to your inner truths. If you want to live consciously, you must learn to accept truth in whatever form it comes to you. Sometimes you’ll discover inner truths that challenge you tremendously.

Within the belief system of Christianity, many controls are set up to discourage you from leaving. Rewards and threats are employed liberally. Stick with it and you’ll gain eternal life. Abandon it and you’re doomed to hell. Once enough people are integrated into such a system, the social conditioning becomes self-reinforcing. Members help to keep each other in line.

Recognize that you’re dealing with a control structure. When you see enforcement based on the promise of rewards and punishments, you’re not witnessing real truth. You’re witnessing marketing masquerading as truth.

Like many Americans I was raised as a Christian. All of my family and friends were Christian, so that was the only belief system I was exposed to. I knew nothing else. But as I took time to consider my core beliefs, I realized that the various elements of Christianity simply didn’t add up. It was filled with internal contradictions, and it was incongruent with my sensory experience of reality. I began to feel more and more disconnected from it. I often felt guilty because my Christian beliefs told me it was wrong to harbor such thoughts and feelings.

It helped me to realize that if God is almighty, then surely He can see into my heart. I cannot hide my true feelings from Him. He would know if I’m just going through the motions and that my heart isn’t in it. He can surely tell if I am a true Christian or just faking it. This realization helped me to accept the folly of subscribing to a belief system that no longer resonated with me.

Accepting the truth of your feelings is a powerful yet difficult step to take. It is a step you must take, however, if you are continue to grow as a conscious being. Never deny that you feel what you feel. If you have doubts about your beliefs, admit and accept those doubts as they arise. Realize that there exist deeper truths you have yet to discover.

2. Stop Going to Church

If you actively attend church services like Sunday mass, it’s a good idea to discontinue that habit. Disconnect from the continued reinforcement of your old beliefs, and give yourself some space to pull back and reflect on your life more consciously.

I used to attend church services religiously (pun intended). I attended mass every Sunday and on every religious holiday. I found these services to be incredibly boring and repetitive. The same scriptures were read every year. The same stories were retold again and again. The sermons were usually droning and uninspiring. Mass is basically a form of hypnosis. The next time you attend mass, sit in the front row, and turn around to observe the glazed-over eyes of the congregation in trance. It’s a scary sight, especially if you’re used to associating with people who are highly conscious and aware.

I stopped going to church when I was 17. Aside from occasional weddings and funerals, I’ve never been back. I’m glad I went through that experience, however, as it helps me relate to people who are in the process of making similar transitions.

I also used to go to confession regularly. I would tell a priest my sins, be forgiven, and be assigned a penance. When I finally abandoned this practice, I was empowered to make real improvements to my life instead of relying on a priest to perform magical acts.

In lieu of attending mass, I encourage you to transform Sunday mornings into a time of personal reflection at home. Take up the habit of journaling to explore your thoughts and feelings in private. Explore your spiritual side without the rules and constraints of a mass market belief system. Think of this time as your own personal retreat.

Transform the habit of church attendance into personal reflection. Don’t allow others to dictate what you should or shouldn’t believe since that will only turn you away from conscious growth.

If you miss the social element of going to church, consider forming your own spiritual meet-up group, or join an existing group of people who are more open-minded. I recommend that you focus on the experiential side of spiritual development. Erin and I used to host a weekly spiritual discussion group in our house. With such an interesting mix of people, it was never boring. I remember one fun session we had trying to practice telepathy. In another session we did an interesting group meditation. It costs nothing to do this, and if you form your own group, you can handpick the members.

You’re free to return to church later if you so desire. I certainly don’t miss it. My spiritual life is much richer without all the constraints and limits of Christianity.

Unplug yourself from group think, and discover what spirituality means to you as a unique individual.

3. Read the Bible Cover to Cover

Most Christians I know have never read the entire Bible. In fact, I’d say the vast majority haven’t even read 20% of the book’s content (I’m erring on the generous side here).

If you attend mass regularly for decades, you’ll be exposed to only a tiny fraction of the Bible’s contents… less than 5% I’d imagine. Partly this is because the same stories are read year after year, so every year of mass is essentially a repeat of the previous year. How long would you subscribe to my blog if I kept posting the exact same content every year?

If you’re going to call yourself a Christian, then at the very least, you should read the entire Bible cover to cover. Wouldn’t you agree? After all, it’s touted as the most important work of your entire faith. If you’d rather watch TV than finish reading the Bible, perhaps you aren’t cut out to be a Christian. Don’t worry — my blog will still be here in a few years when you’re done.

Now if you actually attempt this, it’s a safe bet that you’ll be bored to tears. The vast majority of the Bible’s content is very, very dull. It’s filled with long-winded genealogies and badly written stories. There’s a lot of aimless wandering in the desert. Very little of the Bible’s content is likely to be relevant or interesting to you. The good parts are few and far between. It’s an ideal cure for insomnia.

If you somehow manage to read the whole thing (an act that requires significant persistence), you’ll be left wondering what the big deal is. You’ll probably wish you’d spent that time reading something more interesting or educational.

The Bible is simply not a very interesting or useful book. Aside from the general dullness, it’s also filled with internal contradictions. This is intentional. You aren’t supposed to be able to make sense of it or discover profound truths on every page. The book is designed and marketed as a mystical work, such that you’re beholden to the Church as your interpreter. First they sell you a book you really wouldn’t want to read. Then they sell you a subscription service to the summary version, one that quotes the same passages year after year.

Try to read the whole book yourself, notice that there just isn’t much substance to it, and realize that an all-powerful God could surely have channeled a work of much higher quality. This realization will help you remove this book from a pedestal of mysticism. When you take the time to see that the Bible is little more than a mediocre work created by human beings, you’ll realize that it holds no special claim to your immortal soul.

4. Assess What You’ve Gained

Take a moment to consider some of the good you’ve gotten out of Christianity. Surely it wasn’t all bad. Feel grateful for the positive role it served in your life, and do your best to let the rest go.

In the end I retained many of the values I was taught as a Christian. One thing I appreciate about my Christian upbringing is that it taught me the value of service to others. After leaving the Church, I strayed from that concept for a while, but I successfully reintegrated it later in life. As an adult I’ve spent thousands of hours helping people in a variety of different ways, mostly for free, and I feel very good about that.

If you’ve had a rough time with Christianity as many people have, step back and look at the big picture. Notice the part it played in awakening your consciousness. In my case, the experience jolted me into accepting total responsibility for my own spiritual path, which was a powerful step for me. What role did Christianity play in your conscious development?

Be thankful for what you gained from your experiences as a Christian. Forgive and release everything else.

5. Connect With Jesus Directly

Since Jesus Christ is the central figure of Christianity, you may worry that if you turn away from the Church, you’ll lose your connection to Jesus. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, it’s easier to connect with Jesus without the Church. The main problem is that the Church tends to demonize the very skill set you need to connect with Jesus directly, so you’re stuck with priests as your interpreters. Unfortunately most priests are not very good interpreters because they lack these skills as well.

Jesus is a construct of consciousness. He remains unattached to any particular belief system. With practice you can tune in to him directly whenever you desire. Because of all the energy associated with Jesus as a thought form, he’s one of the easiest entities to connect to.

Sit quietly with your eyes closed. Take several deep breaths. Allow your body to physically relax, and visualize a meeting place in your mind. Mentally invite Jesus to come and talk to you. Wait patiently, and at some point you should be able to feel his energetic presence. Jesus has an extremely powerful energy. If you’ve taken the time to develop your psychic skills, you may feel a huge surge of emotion when he shows up. Usually I can’t help but cry when I do this because the energy of his presence is super strong. I’m actually getting a strong emotional hit just writing about this because I’m effectively pinging him by thinking about him.

I find Jesus’ energy to be so strong that I usually have to ask him to tone it down in order to communicate with him. ”Dude, can you rein in that aura a bit?”

Once you have a manageable connection, feel free to ask Jesus anything you want, and allow his answers to flow into your consciousness. Some people have used this connection to channel messages from him. It’s really not that hard to do if you develop the sensitivity to tune in and listen. If you haven’t developed this skill yet (which does take practice), you may find this exercise difficult to apply and the results, if any, hard to trust. If you really want to develop this skill though, read Erin’s blog because she’s written a lot about this.

I regard Jesus as a guide of unconditional love. He’s the go-to guy for questions related to love, oneness, and service. I often find his answers challenging to implement because he’s in such a perfect state of oneness. Whenever I think I’ve come really far in this area, he shows me how much more work I have to do and how many attachments I have yet to shed. Normally I prefer to consult with my own spirit guides because Jesus’ answers can be a bit too strong. Talking with him is like drinking a spiritual espresso.

You can also connect directly with other figures from Christianity such as Mary, various archangels, and saints. I find that Mary has a similar energetic signature to Jesus, but she comes through as more motherly. Sometimes Jesus, Mary, or various angels will make their presence known during my meditations if they have a message for me. Recently I’ve been connecting with a certain angel to help me solve a problem where I felt my guides were offering ineffective guidance. The angel was able to provide a higher level perspective that made the problem easy to solve.

How do you know if you’re connecting with real celestial beings? In truth you never really know. You can always argue that it’s just your imagination. But personally I’ve found it very effective to explore my spiritual growth in this manner. I consistently get good results from tuning in and asking for guidance from positive sources.

When you broaden your horizons beyond Christianity, you can connect with other religious icons as well. You aren’t limited to Christian figures. When you get good at meditating, you can summon anyone you wish. For example, in 2006 I did a meditation to connect with Quan Yin, and I posted the information I received from her as a blog entry called Desire in 2007.

I do not recommend you push forward with this skill set until you’re in a good place energetically, happy and at peace with yourself. You will most often attract beings that are close to your vibration. So if you attempt this when you’re feeling depressed, frustrated, greedy, or some other low-energy state, you’ll likely attract negative entities that offer counterproductive advice. And definitely never do this while drinking alcohol; you won’t be able to trust the results.

6. Diversify Your Relationships

It’s common for Christians to get stuck with inbred social circles. The religion does a good job of discouraging you from connecting deeply with non-Christians. But if you succumb to such limitations, you’ll severely limit your opportunities for growth.

Reach out and make friends with lots of non-Christians. Stop seeing people as either Christian or evil. Recognize that we’re all human beings together. We’re all part of the same whole. There is no us vs. them, saved vs. unsaved.

Put yourself in social situations you avoided as a Christian, if only for the experience. Go outside.

When I finally had the chance to associate with non-Christians, it was an eye-opening experience for me. I realized these people were not corrupt, evil, or misguided. Most of them were good and moral, and they didn’t require an order of priests to tell them how to think and behave.

These days I enjoy a lot of diversity in my friendships. I have friends who self-identify as Christian, Buddhist, Mormon, Jewish, Muslim, New Age, atheist, agnostic, etc. And I’m married to a Jewish psychic medium.

Do your best not to dismiss potential friends or relationship partners based on their spiritual beliefs. Get to know people as individuals. You’ll realize that you’re not so different after all. This will bring you more into alignment with the principle of oneness. Learn to regard everyone on this planet as a member of your family. There are no outcasts. We are all one.

7. Explore Other Belief Systems

As you expand your social circle, delve into other belief systems as well. Read a variety of books on spiritual development. Learn to meditate. Branch out and explore whatever interests you. I especially recommend that you study Eastern philosophies at some point, as a contrast to Western religions.

Many years ago I joined the Church of Scientology for a few months just to see what it was like. I went to one of their centers a couple times a week and spent hours talking to other Scientologists. I even had an official membership card. I found the experience fascinating. I had no interest in becoming a Scientologist long-term (and paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars like some people do), but I’m glad I did it. You always learn more about a belief system from the inside than you do from the outside.

If you study a lot of different belief systems as I have, you’ll learn that no one has a monopoly on your soul. All of these belief systems are man-made and flawed. Some are driven by powerful marketing machines. Whether you subscribe to any of them or not is of little concern to the rest of the universe.

Follow the path of conscious growth. If you feel that the best way to maximize your growth is to adhere to a particular belief system for a time, go for it. But remain alert for when your inner voice tells you that it’s time to move on. If you’re no longer excited by your spiritual path, that’s a powerful indicator that you’re ready to graduate to something else. Don’t buy in to religious marketing messages that urge you to stick around longer than you should.

8. Develop Your Own Moral Code

Christianity teaches you a basic system of morality. It’s a good start, but it has many flaws. Some elements are outdated. Others are impractical. Priests are frequently caught violating the moral code they’re preaching.

You probably disagree with various elements of Christianity. Which parts do you think are lame? Do you think pre-marital sex is bad? Is divorce a sin? What about using contraception? Telling white lies? Looking at porn? Using “Jesus Christ” as a swear word? (Seriously, Jesus doesn’t mind if you do that.)

Are you seriously going to hell for bending the rules? Or do you feel the rules are messed up to begin with? Would most Christians agree or disagree with your exceptions?

My guess is that on a practical level, you’re not a big fan of rigid rules, but you do see the value in living your life by a certain moral code. You probably think of yourself as a good person, and you want to live a good and moral life. You don’t want to go around hurting people, and you’d like to make a reasonable contribution to help this planet. Sometimes you screw up and violate your own values, but you feel best when you can forgive yourself, learn from those experiences, and move on.

This is all well and good. But I’d encourage you to take it a step further. Put in the time to codify your personal moral philosophy in writing. Where do you draw the line between right and wrong? How do you make moral decisions?

This is where you must do some serious soul searching.

If you’d like a shortcut to help you get started, I’ve written a whole book about it. That book is the result of my own act of soul searching to codify the principles of conscious growth. If you haven’t read it yet, no worries. I’ll give you the short version right now.

The three most fundamental principles of conscious growth are Truth, Love, and Power. You will find that these principles align with what you already intuitively know to be true. If you wish to develop any sort of moral code, then in some way it must incorporate these principles. Whenever you turn away from these principles, you turn your back on conscious growth.

To its credit Christianity does a decent job of stressing the importance of Love. Jesus’ teachings are all about unconditional love. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Turn the other cheek.” Those are worthy messages. Unfortunately the Church doesn’t do a good job of modeling this ideal in practice. It encourages separation between Christians and non-Christians. It creates division instead of promoting unity. You’re either saved or you’re not. Many Christians are raised to be rather unloving toward non-Christians, including the priests themselves. That is unfortunate because this is not at all what Jesus taught.

Christianity does a poor job of embracing Truth. It claims to value honesty and it does promote some degree of self-awareness, but that’s about it. Beyond that it markets a variety of fictional stories as indisputable truth. It doesn’t teach people to accurately interpret and accept what their senses tell them. And it largely ignores the importance of prediction. The lack of Truth-alignment is why many Christians find this belief system largely unhelpful in their day-to-day practical lives. So they’re Christians on Sundays but not on weekdays. Because Christianity is disconnected from Truth, it’s out of touch with reality. If you want to grow in your career, finances, or health while maintaining a strong spiritual focus, you’re basically on your own.

Christianity falls flat in the area of Power too. It teaches people to become dependent on the Church for spiritual guidance instead of cultivating real power as independent conscious beings. It promotes fear and timidity instead of courage. It teaches you to give your power away to an external authority instead of developing your own authority and creativity as a conscious being.

If you want to create an effective moral code for yourself, it must be solidly grounded in reality (aligned with Truth), it must help you cultivate a sense of unconditional love and connection (aligned with Love), and it must empower you to grow (aligned with Power). If it fails to satisfy any of these conditions, then your moral code is ultimately turning you away from conscious growth.

As explained in my book, my moral code is based on aligning my life with the 7 principles of conscious growth. The first three are Truth, Love, and Power. The other four are Oneness (Truth + Love), Authority (Truth + Power), Courage (Love + Power), and Intelligence (Truth + Love + Power). I am doing right when I am living in accordance with these principles. I am doing wrong (or sinning, so to speak) when I turn my back on any of these principles. This is a demanding code, but it ensures that I keep growing year after year without stagnating or getting sidetracked.

Your success at following your own moral code is for no one to judge but you. Only you know your true intentions. What might seem like an act of cowardice from an outsider’s perspective might have required extreme courage on your part. What might be viewed as an unloving act could have been driven by a deep sense of compassion for others. You must evaluate yourself.

Are you living in accordance with your highest ideals? When you commit those ideals to writing, it’s much easier to see how well you’re doing.

9. Deal Compassionately With Christian Friends and Family

I know this is a big issue for many graduating Christians. Once you feel ready to progress beyond Christianity, how do you handle your old Christian family and friends? How will they react to your decision?

When I decided to move on at age 17, my family took it very badly, as if I’d personally assaulted them. It was not a pretty sight. My friends mostly gave me strange looks and didn’t worry about it, so I didn’t have any difficulties at school, but my family was a different story.

It’s a shame that so many Christians react negatively when someone decides to unsubscribe. But you must understand that this is the nature of the beast. The Christian belief system encourages this kind of reaction. Your family and friends have been taught that if you leave the Church, you’ll be doomed to hell. Naturally they don’t want to see that happen. So their negative reaction is actually a sign that they care about you very much. Burning you at the stake may seem like a funny way of expressing love, but it is what it is. Some Christians simply have a lot to learn about expressing love toward non-Christians.

Another problem is that when you leave the Church, you stir up other Christians’ fears and doubts. You push them to face parts of themselves they aren’t ready to face. This can generate quite a backlash against you.

I know it’s hard to maintain this level of understanding when you’re currently being stoned, verbally or otherwise. I certainly wasn’t in a place where I could say, “Thank you for caring about my immortal soul” when people were treating me like I’d turned to the dark side. I’m glad I can hold this perspective today though.

I don’t think it’s helpful to get into arguments and long-winded debates with other Christians when you’re on your way out. All that does is create additional stress. This is a time where you should quietly slip out the back door, at least to the degree that’s possible. This is a time to reconnect with your spiritual side and focus on your inner development. You have a lot of healing to do and a lot more growth to prepare for.

Being treated like a demon for dropping Christianity certainly didn’t help me much. The negative reaction from Christians simply turned my doubts into certainty. In retrospect that was unfortunate because it wasn’t until seven years later that I was able to start consciously re-exploring my spiritual side. That was eventually triggered when all the 11:11 stuff started popping up in my life.

When I told my family I didn’t believe in Christianity anymore, the reaction was so negative that I felt the most reasonable course of action was to back off. I felt that forcing the issue wasn’t worth the loss of things like car privileges. I was going away to college in a year anyway, so I knew the conflict period would eventually fade. Consequently, I went through the motions and continued going to mass for many months. But I insisted on sitting in another part of the church, quietly slipping out the back and going for walks outside instead. Eventually I was caught because I got back late one time, and interestingly that ended the surface conflict with my family. They must have realized that they weren’t going to regain my soul with demands and threats. Turning 18 and going away to college was a major stress reliever for me, but my experiences led me to pre-judge Christians as people I could never really trust. I felt much safer in the company of atheists and agnostics.

It’s unfortunate that Christianity should create such rifts between people. I’ve seen countless others deal with similar problems. Almost invariably it’s the Christians that force these disconnections, while the non-Christians would like nothing more than to continue sharing a loving (or at least civil) relationship. Jesus did not come here to teach conditional love!

On the bright side, I learned a lot from this experience. In the long run, it taught me to be much more accepting of others, including Christians. I do my best not to push people away because of their beliefs. I may challenge people’s beliefs a lot, and there are some belief systems I hold in fairly low regard, but I still accept those who choose to hold such beliefs. I think the world would be much better off if each of us would develop the capacity to love and accept everyone as they are, regardless of whether or not we agree with them.

This mindset of unconditional acceptance can be a challenge to practice, but it serves me well. For example, as a vegan, I don’t condone acts of animal cruelty, including the consumption of animal products. I will not even harm insects. But I still accept those who think it’s okay to hurt animals, even though their actions violate my own moral code. Non-acceptance does not encourage people to live more compassionately.

If you’re facing a tough situation with your Christian friends and family, possibly debating whether or not to tell them of your decision, I feel for you. I know it isn’t easy. But in the long run, my best recommendation is to tell them the truth. That will put the ball in their court. Then it’s up to them to decide if they can love and accept you as you are. Unfortunately you can’t control the outcome. But you’ll soon find out whether they practice Jesus’ teachings about unconditional love or if they’ve been brainsquashed by the Church to reject you as an outcast.

Even if you become the family pariah at first, some of those people may eventually come around. Be patient. Go out and live the best life you can. When they’re ready they may choose to reconnect with you. You’ll have the best effect on them by being an example of conscious living, not by trying to convince them to accept your decision.

As long as your family and friends subscribe to a belief system that defines you as an outcast — as a person doomed to burn in hell — the doorway to a truly conscious connection remains closed. All you can do is hold the intention that they’ll eventually progress beyond that stage and learn to accept others fully and completely. In the meantime you can still accept and love them as they are, even if they find it difficult to do the same.

Rest assured that if you’re dealing with a situation like this, you’re not alone. You are not doing anything wrong or evil. The Christian religion itself is the problem. It is set up to create these artificial conflicts. It really is time for humanity to progress beyond this level of separation and bigotry. We need to accept that we’re all in this together.

10. Release the Guilt and Enjoy Your Freedom

My final piece of advice to you is to let go of all the guilt you absorbed during your time as a Christian. Forgive yourself and others completely. Let go and move on with your life.

Rest assured you’re not going to hell. You won’t be punished in the afterlife for declining to follow a man-made belief system. You are an explorer and a creator, not the servant of a multi-billion dollar organization that claims divine sponsorship. You are here to participate in the expansion of consciousness.

Know that you are a good person. Learn to love and accept yourself unconditionally. It doesn’t matter if you’re a saint or sinner by Christian standards. You are worthy of love no matter what. It’s time to step into your true power. Your light has been dimmed for far too long.

If all else fails and you find yourself feeling unloved, rest assured that I love you and care about you. It doesn’t matter if we’ve never met. It doesn’t matter if you don’t agree with half the stuff I write about. I love and care about you anyway.

Being a Christian was an important stage in your conscious development, but now you’re ready to progress beyond it. You no longer need others to define and control your spiritual identity. You’re ready to blaze your own spiritual trail. You have graduated. Congratulations!

Now go out and do some serious good with your life. Make it a masterpiece. Show this world your beautiful divinity.

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

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

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

The Challenge of Crafting a Good Elevator Pitch

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

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

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

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

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

Attracting Relevant Referrals

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

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

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

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

15 Second Marketing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Marketing Message

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

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

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

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

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

Crafting Your Marketing Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For example, I might test some variations like these:

I help people grow.

I help people live more consciously.

I help people overcome their fears.

… and so on.

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

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

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

I help people break bad habits and overcome addictions.

I help people take more risks and live more courageously.

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

Are you beginning to see the big picture here?

Using Your Marketing Message to Grow Your Business

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

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

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

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

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

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

Boosting Your Income

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Providing Genuine Value

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

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

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

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

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resistance is powerlessness. Acceptance is power.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get the idea?

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

You are here to shine, not to whine.

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

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

Working With Seniors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Working With Disabled Children

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Community Service

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

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

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

Benefits of Volunteering

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

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

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

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

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

Volunteering Through Your Career

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

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

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

Getting Started

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

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

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

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

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

The simple answer is that you know you’re creating value when you can see tangible positive changes in the world as a result of your creative output.

Weak Value

Suppose I post a new article, and lots of people send me feedback such as, “Great article, Steve. That was awesome! Thanks for posting it.”

Does that mean I created real value? Well, maybe I created some. I can see that some people felt good, but is that a tangible positive change? I would say no, not really. The impact will probably be short-lived. I can’t say I delivered much real value.

Lots of bloggers write articles that generate this sort of feedback. You might read such articles and think to yourself, “That was a cool article.” But a week later you’ve totally forgotten about it, and nothing in your life has changed. The only value you actually received was perhaps a moment of entertainment or distraction. There isn’t much evidence of tangible positive change.

So even though this might seem like positive and encouraging feedback, I would interpret it as an indication that I provided weak value. Weak value is better than no value of course, but if this is all I was able to do, I’d probably be struggling financially.

Take note that I receive this type of feedback every day. For any given article and any given reader, there usually isn’t a huge amount of value being transferred. And that’s okay. Creating impactful articles is very challenging. I don’t always know what will deliver strong vs. weak value.

The value received depends on the individual reader and the circumstances of their life too. Some people receive tremendous value upon re-reading an old article that previously didn’t mean much to them.

Strong Value

Now suppose I’m walking around at a conference, and someone recognizes me and says, “Steve, I’m so glad to finally meet you! I have to tell you our story. Earlier this year my brother and I read your article 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job. That article convinced us to quit our jobs as corporate engineers and start our own business this year. Now we design and sell inspirational T-shirts. We’re loving it. And our customers are digging the T-shirts too. Thank you so much for the work you do. We’re so much happier!”

This is followed by a squishy hug.

That new business is something real. This is a tangible positive change. That article obviously delivered more than just momentary entertainment value. It had a lasting effect.

This was a true story by the way. I was speaking at a conference in October, and I met Drew and Caroline Yacu at their vendor booth. This brother and sister team started a business CREATING and DELIVERING T-shirts with inspirational messages on them. The twist is that the messages are printed backwards.

This means that whenever you see yourself in a mirror, you’ll instantly read the message, so it works as a positive affirmation.

However, when someone else looks at your shirt, all they see is backwards writing.

Drew and Caroline gave me a free T-shirt at the conference to thank me for helping them get started on this path. I was delighted to see how happy they were. The backwards message on my shirt is, “I am a creative genius.”

Whenever I wear that shirt and see myself in a mirror, it always makes me smile. Since I can wear the shirt again and again, the value Drew and Caroline CREATED keeps getting DELIVERED. It’s not just a one-time thing.

I’ve also noticed that when I wear this shirt in public, people will stare at my chest trying to read the backwards writing. It invites people to walk up and connect with me. I always get comments about the shirt. So the shirt provides even more value by acting as a social opener.

Drew and Caroline said they quit their jobs in January, so they’ve been going for quite a while. And they still remembered the article that helped tip them over the edge. That’s another factor I’ve seen repeatedly. When real value gets delivered, it’s usually memorable.

Am I claiming credit for launching their business? Certainly not. They did all the work. That business is fueled by their creativity, not mine. My article was just a catalyst, perhaps one of many.

You can check out Drew and Caroline’s awesome T-shirts at ReflectMyLife.com.

Incidentally, here’s a photo of me wearing the shirt they gave me (after a dinner Erin and I enjoyed with several other Hay House authors).

From left to right: Dr. Darren Weissman, Dr. Brian Weiss, Sandra Taylor, John Holland, Steve Pavlina, Erin Pavlina, Colette Baron-Reid, Lisa Williams, Marc Lindeman (Colette’s husband).

Most of the feedback I get is on the weak value side, but I give the strong value feedback a lot more weight. An article that helps someone launch a new business is a lot more significant to me than an article that generates hundreds of “cool article” emails.

Aim to Create Strong Value

These days it’s pretty easy for me to write something that will generate plenty of positive “cool article” feedback. I can consistently deliver weak value without much effort.

Lots of other bloggers have reached the point where they can consistently deliver weak value as well, and that’s where they stagnate. They keep getting “cool article” feedback on every post, but they still aren’t getting the results they want. They wonder what’s missing since the feedback seems to suggest that they’re doing great. The problem is that these bloggers never make the transition from weak value to strong value. They don’t raise their standards to the point of creating impact instead of just entertainment.

The Internet is already overloaded with weak value. You could spend the rest of your life soaking up the weak value that’s already been posted — reading blog posts, watching videos, etc. It’s endless. But ultimately it’s nothing but info-crack.

If you pump out more and more weak value, you aren’t helping much. Hardly anyone would care if you stopped since they have plenty of other sources to turn to.

If you can figure out how to create strong value though, you differentiate yourself. You’re no longer part of the herd pumping out feel-good drivel. Now you’re actually doing something real. I hope you grasp this point because it’s an important distinction to internalize.

It is very challenging to create and deliver strong value. What can I say or do that could permanently change someone’s life for the better? The answer isn’t obvious. But you can reach this point by becoming a prolific creator AND by seeking to continually increase the value you’re creating. Put a lot out there, and gradually figure out what matters and what doesn’t.

Tangible Positive Changes

Here are some other examples of feedback that represent tangible positive changes:

1. My father lost 70 pounds this year after I forwarded him your series on the raw food diet.
2. I finally got a girlfriend after reading your article on soulful relationships.
3. I moved to Las Vegas after reading Living in Las Vegas, and I’m loving it here.
4. I had my first lucid dream after listening to Erin’s podcast on Lucid Dreaming. It was amazing!

These are all examples of real feedback I’ve received.

The commonality is that we can see some kind of evidence that positive change has occurred. Some sort of shift has happened. Someone having their first lucid dream is a positive change. Someone going from no relationship to having a girlfriend is a positive change. Someone moving to a new city and beginning a new chapter of their life is a positive change. All of this goes beyond the “cool article” type of feedback.

It isn’t enough to hope that you’re creating tangible positive changes. You need to see evidence that you’re having this effect. One of the simplest is that people will tell you how your creative work has affected them. Are you seeing any evidence that your work is producing tangible positive changes?

Some changes are small and subtle. Other changes are big and create massive ongoing ripples.

Note that the value you deliver to the world doesn’t have to be earth-shatteringly huge. It could be something small and simple. You may do something that only benefits a single person in a small way. That’s terrific.

Over time you’ll learn to deepen the value you’re able to share. A song can have a deeper impact than a few minutes of distraction. A comedian can do more than entertain. A T-shirt can do more than clothe you.

Get Started

How do you figure out how to provide strong value?

You get started by creating stuff that provides little or no value. Then keep experimenting. Keep trying different things. Look for ways to improve. In this manner you’ll progress to weak value and eventually to some strong value.

With practice you will calibrate. You’ll learn to provide more value.

I’ve written more than 800 articles now, and I’m still figuring it out. It’s still hit and miss a lot of the time.

But I keep writing. I keep trying new approaches and angles. And every once in a while, I manage to put out something that delivers strong value for a lot of people. I constantly make new distinctions. I deepen my understanding of what works and what doesn’t. I learn by doing.

The ability to create strong value is the result of high creative output. The more you create stuff, the faster you’ll figure out how to create something good. Every creator has to pump out a lot of crap before getting good.

Do More Than Nothing

The dumbest approach you can apply is to sit still and create nothing. Stand there and whine, “I don’t know what to do!”

That’s just lame. I’m sorry for being so blunt, but it is.

If you can’t get a clue as to how to get started creating and delivering some value to people, you must be blind.

Go outside for starters. Walk down the street. It shouldn’t take but a few minutes to find someone you can help.

If you made an all-out effort, could you make a difference in the life of one person today? Could you create even a little bit of weak value for someone somewhere? Have you ever tried?

If you’re really, really clueless, then volunteer. Go help people in need. You’ll learn quite quickly that if you have a pulse, you can provide value to people.

If the only benefit you think you can offer is body warmth, then go hold crack babies for a few hours a week. This will help get you out of your head and get into action.

I don’t know what to do is simply not a valid excuse. That’s just fear and cowardice talking. You know you can do better than that.

Seriously, if the Three Stooges can create value, why not you? Were they geniuses? Perhaps not. But they took a lot of action.

If you really, really don’t know what to do though, simply go outside and walk around. Don’t go home until you’ve figured out something you can do to take a stab at creating value.

This isn’t rocket science. If it takes you more than an hour to figure out something you can do to create value, you’re being way too anal. And the whole time you’re creating nothing. You have to figure this out by doing, not by sulking.

If you think you can sit at home and compute the perfect value-creation formula and then begin taking action from that place of perfect insight and understanding, you’re delusional. You’re suffering from the delay tactic known as perfectionism, a word derived from the Latin wimpus maximus.

You’ll figure out how to provide strong value when you’re in motion. Only the act of creation will enable you to figure out how to create strong value. You’ll figure it out as you go along.

Your first guess at how to create value isn’t going to be perfect. Please rid yourself of the myth that if you just come up with the right idea, you’ll be a high-level value creator from day one. It just doesn’t work like that.

Each time you create weak value, it serves as a learning experience. Every time you hear feedback like “cool song” — or worse… maybe cricket sounds — you can learn from it. You can say, “Well… that sucked. I’ll have to try something else.”

This is how you calibrate.

Beginners Always Suck

If you want to see a good example of calibration at work, go back and read my very first blog post. It’s only three paragraphs long. I’ll wait.

That was a true masterpiece, wasn’t it? It’s obvious from that first post that I would go on to have a massively successful blog, right?

The truth is that I feel like such a chode for having written that. It’s three paragraphs of absolute drivel. It doesn’t even come close to providing real value. It announces a book that I eventually decided not to write (canceling that book was the right decision though). I didn’t even get the basic “cool article” feedback for that one. But hey, it was a start. It set me in motion. I could only get better from there.

My second post was a little better. At least it has some substance to it, although it was weak value at best. It wasn’t particularly creative. As mentioned in that post, I was mainly rehashing other people’s ideas. It’s a big improvement from the first post though.

The first blog post I wrote that provided even a small degree of strong value was probably Dealing With Difficult People. That was my 27th post. And the next one didn’t happen until about 2 months later — How to Discover Your Life Purpose In About 20 Minutes.

When I first started blogging, it was a challenge just to create weak value. Creating strong value was quite rare and usually accidental. Over time I gradually improved. Notice that I didn’t improve by sitting around thinking about how to write impactful blog posts. I got better by writing lots of crappy posts and figuring out what not to do. And I’m still figuring it out. Give me another four years, and I’ll probably be embarrassed by what I’ve written today.

So here’s the rule to follow: Create more than nothing.

That’s it really. The only way to totally screw this up is to sit around sulking and feeling powerless. That’s the only way to fail. Doing nothing is failure. Creating nothing is failure. Creating something, however crappy it may be, is success.

I know I’m right about this because I have the T-shirt to prove 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.

It’s no secret that Andrew’s message creates resistance in people, partly because the way he delivers his message is so passionate, direct, and unforgiving. He pulls no punches and lambastes the “New Age Movement” for being yet another form of mental masturbation. Andrew is aware of the resistance to his message, and he acknowledged it when he spoke, but he certainly didn’t let it stop him.

Personally I agree with Andrew’s message (at least what I’ve heard so far — he’s written quite a number of books), although I view his ideas from within a different framework. What Andrew calls passionate compassion, I regard as a combination of Oneness and Courage (two of the seven principles in Personal Development for Smart People).

Andrew talked a lot about the Dark Night of the Soul, which is something everyone on this path of service experiences. Personally I think we go through multiple dark nights as we shed more and more of our false identities and learn to align ourselves with Oneness.

Andrew spoke with conviction as he told a story about praying at a temple in India. As he left the temple, he encountered a helpless man with no arms and no legs in need of assistance. Instead of ignoring him, Andrew opened his heart and chose to help this man. He contrasts that experience with the dissociated attitude many people display in such a situation. Instead of embracing our heartbreak and allowing it to guide our actions, too often we shield and distract ourselves from those feelings. When we do this, however, we become something less than human.

Bliss vs. Heartbreak

There was one line Andrew said during his workshop that gave me an instant emotional hit. He said, “Don’t follow your bliss. Follow your heartbreak.” That’s a powerful way to reframe your life purpose.

I realized that my bliss and my heartbreak both point in the same direction. I follow my joy and my heartbreak simultaneously because they’re two sides of the same coin.

Andrew’s statement reminded me of this quote from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet:

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see in truth that you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I mentioned this quote during our initial radio panel together.

My greatest joy is seeing people live consciously, courageously, and compassionately; it’s to watch people bring their lives into greater alignment with truth, love, and power. My heartbreak is seeing people live unconsciously and inflict all sorts of unnecessary suffering on themselves, on each other, on animals, and on the planet as a whole. It breaks my heart to see people living in denial, disconnected from others, and disempowered. It’s rare that more than a few days go by where the nature of my work doesn’t bring me to tears. However, usually those are tears of joy. I feel very grateful for being able to make a difference in people’s lives, and often that can be emotionally overwhelming.

In my messages I tend to focus on the lute’s music, while Andrew seems to stress the “hollowed out with knives” part. When he spoke, he often repeated the phrase, “The world is burning!” But really joy and sorrow are two sides of the same coin. Your greatest joy is also your greatest sorrow.

I remember debating with Andrew during our radio interview about the joy/sorrow issue. I think he may derive most of his drive and passion from the sorrow side, while I get mine from the joy side. I consider both approaches to be equally valid; however, gratitude is a stronger motivator for me than sadness, so I focus on the those feelings because they’re more effective for me. When I’m sad I usually do nothing. But when I feel grateful for the opportunity to make a difference, I reach out and connect with people.

Making a Difference

Experience has shown me that following my most action-inducing emotions does make a real difference in the world. As just a small example, over the years I’ve helped inspire hundreds of people switch to vegetarian and vegan diets. Let’s say I’ve helped 100 people go vegan, which would be a pretty conservative estimate. That seemingly small shift will actually conserve about 142 million gallons of water per year, not to mention loads of other resources and a massive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. (That’s 3,900 gallons per day of excess water required to feed a typical animal eater vs. a vegan x 100 people x 365 days per year.) That’s a lot of water! This is far more water than I could possibly conserve as an individual during my lifetime.

Just by continuing the work I’m already doing, I’ll eventually help us conserve many billions of gallons of water (and conserve fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions), which means my presence here is actually creating a massive net positive environmental impact. And that doesn’t even count the rippling effect that will spring forth from those I’ve influenced. I consider this a very tangible result of following my bliss, and it motivates and inspires me to do even more. All I really did was follow my heart and share my experiences with other people. It wasn’t particularly complicated.

From a certain perspective, I could say that it’s heartbreaking to see so many resources unnecessarily wasted in the process of turning plant-eating animals into human consumables, but again, I prefer to focus on the gratitude side because that’s what motivates me to take action. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have a positive environmental impact by doing my best to be a good example to others and by encouraging people to make their own conscious choices.

Heartbreak and Life Purpose

You can actually follow your heartbreak to discover your life purpose. If you’ve tried the life purpose exercise and had trouble going deep enough, try repeating the same exercise with this starting question instead:

What is my greatest heartbreak?

This strategy of following your heartbreak is another way to get out of your head and to start listening to the voice of your heart.

If you’ve already done the life purpose exercise and got an answer that inspired you, I encourage you to try it again with the heartbreak question. This may help you develop a deeper understanding of your purpose.

Effectiveness

You have to determine what works best for you. Are you more motivated when you focus on your bliss or your heartbreak? I suppose this is the classic difference between towards motivation and away-from motivation. I’ve always been a towards guy, but I think that’s the less common of the two.

The important thing isn’t how we choose to motivate ourselves. What’s important is that we find a strategy that’s effective for us. Are we actually taking action? Are we serving as good examples for others? Or are we comforting and distracting ourselves?

Which emotions are arising within you? Do you feel more connected to your pain or your sorrow? What feelings will drive you to action if you crank up the volume? Are you listening to those feelings… or are you numbing yourself to them?

***

Incidentally, Erin wrote up a review of our Transformational Weekend at the I Can Do It! conference in Tampa, so I encourage you to read it if you haven’t already done so. I’m not planning to post a separate review of my own this time.

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

I used to not care about people. I mean really not care. I know what it’s like to live with that mindset. I lived that way for years.

In my late teens, I’d go out and shoplift on an almost daily basis. While some shoplifters justify their behavior by claiming they only steal from “evil, greedy corporations,” I could steal from individuals as easily as from large companies. I didn’t need to justify it to myself, and I didn’t feel remorse or regret about it afterwards. To me it was just a joke. I knew my actions were probably hurting people on some level, but I simply didn’t care. I could sleep just fine at night. If I had a conscience back then, it was pretty darned quiet.

This apathetic mindset flowed through other parts of my life as well. I used to get drunk at least once or twice a week, mostly at college parties. If it caused consequences for me, I didn’t care. It didn’t bother me that I was poisoning the cells of my own body with every sip. I figured that life was meaningless anyway. There was no greater purpose to it. The only thing worth living for was momentary pleasure. Having fun was reason enough to do anything I wanted.

I also combined alcohol and stealing… just for fun of course. One morning I woke up with a pile of miscellaneous items on my dorm room desk that I barely remembered stealing; I must have broken into at least three cars after downing a bottle of wine one night. I have a vague recollection of laughing uproariously while rummaging through vehicles in some parking lot. When my roommates pointed at my desk with stunned looks, I glanced at the pile of junk, laughing, “Damn… what the hell did I do last night?” I didn’t even want those items, so I just threw them away. Apathy and alcohol can be a rather destructive combination.

Friends would try to talk to me about what I was doing, but they couldn’t get through to me. I always jokingly dismissed them.

I truly did not care.

It wasn’t till I finally crashed and ended up being arrested enough times and facing prison that I finally started to care. I graduated from apathy to self-centeredness and began taking responsibility for my life. Soon I transitioned to neutrality and learned to stop harming others, adopting the attitude “live and let live.” And gradually over a period of years, I transitioned to the mindset of oneness, regarding service to the greater good as a higher order of living as opposed to just meeting my own needs.

Let’s explore all three of these mindsets, so you can deepen your understanding of different ways of relating to the larger body of humanity: self-centeredness, neutrality, and oneness.

Self-centeredness

At the level of self-centeredness, your primary aim in life is to serve your own interests without much regard for anyone else. You may compete against others to get ahead, perhaps lying or “bending the rules” when you feel it’s worthwhile. You probably generate income by mooching off the value created by others as opposed to making a genuine contribution. You live as a parasite, knowing that the world would be slightly better off without your presence. In order for you to continue living as you do, others must endure some sacrifice. The rest of humanity isn’t helped by your presence, and is probably somewhat harmed by it.

Viewed from the perspective of the larger body of humanity, you behave as a disease, an infection, or a cancer cell. When you pursue your own advancement at the expense of others, you damage the other cells, and on some level the larger body suffers for it. However, you remain apathetic to the larger body. You have your own problems to deal with, and the larger body can fend for itself for all you care.

What’s the most sensible way for the larger body to respond to this kind of behavior? Its options include trying to convince you to alter your misguided behavior, attempting to contain the damage you’re able to inflict, or attacking you outright in order to render you inert or wipe you out.

If the larger body fails to respond to your behavior (and collectively, the behavior of others with a similar mindset), it risks its own demise. An unchecked disease may destroy it. If everyone chose to live as you do, humanity would eventually be destroyed, most likely by drowning in its own waste. The larger body has little choice but to respond with some form of resistance.

This is exactly what happens. Persistent self-centeredness creates a long-term defensive reaction from the larger body of humanity, at least to the degree it remains capable of mounting a defense against you. Collectively, humanity considers you a disease and treats you as such. Loving connections with others won’t be a major part of your life; you’ll have to settle for fear-based or dependency connections. Others will only connect with you because they feel they have to or because they can gain something from it. This means your connections with other people are basically reduced to the level of transactions. They are loveless and devoid of deeper meaning.

Life with this attitude can be a struggle on many levels. First, you may find that individuals who serve the good of the body object to what you’re doing, perhaps labeling you as selfish or misguided. If you surround yourself with like-minded cancer cells, you may be able to insulate yourself from most personal attacks, but then you become part of a group that the body treats as a collective form of disease. For example, if you opt to make a living by mooching off the value of others (while creating and sharing no real value of your own), and you mainly choose to associate with like-minded people, you may insulate yourself from most personal attacks, but now you’re subject to collective attacks aimed at those who behave like you. You shift from being an individual disease cell to being part of a larger infection. Join a criminal gang, become a greed-driven stock trader who extracts value while creating nothing, or start spamming people for income, and you’re guilty by association.

The larger body will mount some kind of resistance to your actions, whether you participate in a disease of a million cells or operate as a lone disease cell. So you can expect that your life will be filled with many (seemingly unfair) challenges and obstacles. You’ll always have this unsettling feeling that you’re swimming against the tide instead of going with the flow.

The net effect is that you can never experience genuine oneness with the larger body while you subscribe to self-centeredness. You can never feel truly safe. So you must live your life in such a way that you’re always pushing back against the larger body. You betray the body, the body resists your betrayal, and you resist its resistance. This is a life of perpetual disconnection from the whole. You will often have the feeling that you are unwanted and alone, even in the company of friends and family.

When you disconnect from the larger body, you also disconnect from other cells that serve the larger body. Now those do-gooder cells become a threat to you. Anything that strengthens the body threatens you because as the body grows stronger, so does its ability to resist you. So in order to grow stronger on this path, you actually have to mount more and more resistance to those who are actively doing good. Criminals fight law enforcement. Spammers fight anti-spammers. Polluting businesses fight environmentalists. The stronger you get, the more disconnected you become.

Since a life of committed self-centeredness is a life of perpetual disconnection and resistance, in the long run you’re likely to disconnect from your own heart. You’ll stop caring about the larger body, and you’ll stop caring about other people. You’ll learn to watch the suffering of others with no sense of caring or compassion. You’ll disconnect from your own humanity, becoming something cold and separate from all of us.

But your heart is still there, still waiting for its voice to be heard. You can never turn it off completely. You can only deny its existence and refuse to listen to it.

If everyone adopts this mindset, the human race basically goes to hell. We’d all be living as single-celled organisms, in complete denial of our inherent interconnectedness to each other and to this planet. Sooner or later, this mindset ends in the destruction of the larger body. In order for the body to survive and thrive, the cells must on some level be aware that they’re part of a larger body and work to maintain the health of that body.

If you’ve read my previous articles on polarity and polarization and are wondering if this sounds like the path of the darkworker, you’re right.

Neutrality

The second option is to follow the mantra “live and let live.” In this case you seek to do no harm, but you don’t go out of your way to do intentional good either. For the most part, you fulfill your needs non-destructively but also non-creatively.

In the larger body of humanity, you might consider your attitude to be about average (maybe a little above average). You try to take care of your needs without harming your neighbors. You certainly don’t live as a disease cell, but you don’t go all out to serve the larger body either. You simply do what you feel is necessary to get by. You may assist other cells from time to time as the need arises, but you mainly do this reactively as opposed to proactively. You don’t actively seek out new ways to serve others, but if someone directly asks you for a favor, you may be inclined to say yes if you can assist.

In this case it’s reasonable to expect the larger body to treat you with indifference. As a non-essential cell, your life is of no great concern to it. The larger body won’t directly attack you, but it certainly won’t go out of its way to help you either. It isn’t too burdened by your presence, but it doesn’t really need you either.

If you hold the intention to receive more resources or more assistance, your request will most likely fall on deaf ears. The larger body will likely view your requests as trivial or irrelevant, so it will respond with little or no assistance. That is in fact the most sensible response.

The problem is that if there are other self-centered people at large in the body of humanity, then your attitude of neutrality actually contributes to the problem. In your day-to-day life, you’ll be walking past cells that are suffering and will basically do nothing to help them. Your attitude will likely be, “Not my problem. Someone else will take care of it.” Then you’ll go home and watch your favorite TV shows.

If everyone lived like this AND the larger body had no self-centered, darkworker cells present, the larger body would probably be in a state of slow decline (such as your own cells experience through the process of aging). However, if there are darkworkers present, then the decline accelerates. You do nothing while more Hitler-types gain increasing power. Eventually your neutrality doesn’t look so good. The most likely outcome is that you’ll end up being an unwitting pawn of a darkworker. In fact, there’s a good chance you already are. If you have a job, for instance, do you know what kind of person or people you’re ultimately working for? Are you basically working to fulfill the desires of people who have little concern for the greater good? Do you invest your money in people and companies who maintain such an attitude?

Even though most people on earth fall into this category, neutrality is a highly unstable state. Real life will constantly bring you experiences to knock you off this equilibrium, pushing you toward self-centeredness and then oneness in a yo-yo-like fashion. However, you’ll never fully cross the border on either side unless you make the choice consciously. It won’t happen by accident.

With respect to polarity and polarization, the neutral path is the unpolarized (or pre-polarized) path. It’s actually the least powerful path of all. Although it may seem better than the self-centered darkworker path, neutrality is actually weaker in practice. The reason is that on the darkworker path, you’re going to meet with a lot of resistance, and pushing against that resistance makes you stronger, much like weight training strengthens your muscles. Since the neutral path offers less resistance, you don’t have as many opportunities to grow your power. Even the lightworker/oneness path offers plenty of resistance training, in the form of working against self-centeredness, apathy, and even neutrality. So while lightworkers and darkworkers grow stronger, neutral people remain very weak by comparison. Historically speaking, the lightworkers and darkworkers are the movers and shakers on earth, while the neutral people are subjected to what the lightworkers and darkworkers are doing.

If you’re neutral, it’s a safe bet that much of your life is controlled by others. This is the place of living reactively instead of proactively. Even when you set goals, they’re likely to be socially conditioned ones, and most likely you won’t feel strongly empowered by them.

Oneness

The third option is to live with the attitude of oneness. These cells recognize the larger body of humanity, and they devote their lives to serving the good of the body. This means taking care of individual needs as necessary, but the motivation for meeting one’s needs comes from being a better vehicle for service.

Oneness is the logical and emotional recognition that we’re all part of the same whole and that we aren’t separate from each other. We’re all cells in the larger body of humanity. Its fate is our fate. If the body suffers, we all suffer for it. If the body thrives, we all benefit from it.

When you fully internalize this mindset and commit yourself to it, something rather magical happens. The larger body recognizes your commitment to service, and it actively seeks to assist you. By helping you, the body is simply helping itself.

Imagine that someone else has pledged herself to meet your needs as best she can. Would you want to fight against her, or would you want to help and support her? Of course you’d want to help her because by helping her, you’re helping yourself. This is how the larger body of humanity responds to those who pledge themselves to serving its needs. If you say aloud, “I dedicate my life to serving the greater good,” and you feel that statement resonating with you on a deep emotional level, do not be surprised if new resources start flowing into your life to assist you.

Now this is a cute little theory, so it’s reasonable that you’ll be skeptical about this if you’ve never experienced the mindset of oneness for an extended period of time. I can’t convince you of this by merely writing about it. This is something that must be experienced first-hand to be believed. I can tell you what lies beyond this door, but that isn’t remotely the same thing as experiencing it for yourself. The way to walk through this door is to polarize as a lightworker.

What does the larger body of humanity actually want? Basically it wants the same things you do. It wants to survive and thrive, to be healthy, to learn and grow, to become stronger, and to creatively express itself. If you’re familiar with fractal geometry, the larger body is basically a zoomed-out version of you, and you are one of its cells.

Since a fractal is self-similar at all levels of magnification, if the larger body of humanity is sick and unhealthy, that doesn’t bode well for its individual cells. However, by healing ourselves and by adopting the mindset of oneness, we work to create a strong and healthy humanity.

In Chapter 4 of my book, there’s an exercise called Oneness World. Let me share this exercise with you here because I think it will help you understand what the mindset of oneness can help us collectively create for the larger body of humanity:

Oneness World

Set aside ten minutes to sit quietly, relax, and just imagine what it would be like to live in a world where everyone lives in alignment with oneness. Picture a world where all people feel joyful and connected with everyone else. Imagine a place where cooperation replaces competition. What would it be like to walk down the street past throngs of strangers and feel as if they’re all close family members? How would people behave in a world where “we” thinking replaces “me” thinking, where profiting at someone else’s expense never happens, and where everyone assumes personal responsibility for the well-being of everyone else?

In this world of oneness, you can always expect fair treatment, regardless of race, gender, or sexual preference. If you need help with anything, you can approach anyone at any time, and you’ll be treated like family. The very notion of individual advancement at the expense of others is completely alien. This world’s mantra is, “We’re all in this together.”

This new world has no weapons, no prisons, and no national borders. There’s no violence or war. People still have differences of opinion, but they settle them by cooperating to discover the truth while treating every individual with compassion and fairness.

Allow your mind and emotions to roam freely through Oneness World. Think about what it would be like to actually live there. Pay attention to how it makes you feel.

Although this is a fantasy world exercise, it will deepen your understanding of oneness. Even in the real world, you’ll experience some of these benefits as you begin to align yourself with oneness. When you interact with others from a place of cooperation, fairness, and compassion, you’ll tend to receive similar treatment in return. When you treat everyone as a friend or family member, you’ll often find them responding in kind. Over time, you’ll attract others who resonate with oneness, which will enable you to create a microcosm of the larger ideal within your own life.

from Personal Development for Smart People, Chapter 4

This is the short version of the ultimate vision that lightworkers aim to collectively create. Obviously it’s an ideal, but the more people who embrace this attitude, the better life becomes for all of us, even in the presence of darkworkers.

Lightworkers, incidentally, seek to render darkworkers inert and eventually convert them to lightworkers. This is a path of healing the larger body of humanity and bringing all of us together in a spirit of cooperation and compassion. Lightworkers believe that no one is undeserving of love, including darkworkers.

Given the current state of the larger body of humanity, it isn’t enough to do no harm. You must proactively commit yourself to doing good. Allowing harm to be done is just as irresponsible as causing direct harm. Our inherent interconnectedness is undeniable. We sink or swim together.

On the whole, committed lightworkers receive an incredible level of support from the larger body of humanity. This enables them to take on bigger and bigger challenges. Instead of worrying about survival, genuine lightworkers are given assistance to help them focus their energies on the larger mission of service. Others will come to their aid to help them meet their needs if necessary. From the larger body’s perspective, the important thing is that the lightworker keeps working to shift humanity toward that vision of Oneness World.

Discovering Oneness

If I went back in time and introduced my age 37 self to my age 18 self, I seriously doubt my 18 year-old self would believe we’re the same person. If he asked about my life, his main concern would be about how much power I had and how brave I was. He’d want me to share stories of grander crimes I got away with and the greater thrills ahead of him.

Although on the surface we might seem to be two totally different people, my past self is still inside me. He’s my shadow.

For a time I tried to disconnect from him, to put him in a memory box and do my best to forget he ever existed. But my life didn’t go so well without him. I became a nicer person, but I lacked the strength, courage, and passion I had during my teenage years. I matured into a largely powerless adult.

Years ago I began to dialog with that part of myself to discover what he wanted and to understand him more deeply. I had to acknowledge that he is still with me. He had something that was lacking in my life when I turned my back on him. I had to understand his powerful drive and especially his courage. I needed to harness his energy and find a way to re-channel it through the mindset of oneness. That’s when I realized that power and oneness are not in conflict; in fact, they amplify each other. I can do more good from a position of strength than of weakness.

I gradually came to understand that I needed to feel strong and powerful and that this is a universal need we all share, but too often it gets squelched. As human beings we need to express our power, which is our ability to create the reality we want to experience. We need to feel strong. Weakness does not become us.

We are here to shine, not to cower in fear. If we are to achieve greatness, we must abandon the wimpy goal of security. Courage, not security, must be our friend and guide on this human journey.

Expressing our power isn’t a bad thing. It only becomes harmful when we fall out of alignment with truth and love. Then our power becomes destructive and wicked.

But the good news is that we can have our cake and eat it too. We can align our power with truth and love. We can learn to care deeply about each other. We can express our full creative energies and let our passion burn for the sake of the greater good. We can use our power to create and build instead of to conquer and destroy. When we align ourselves with truth and love, we amplify our power. Our desire for power needn’t lead us into darkness; it can take us further into the light.

When we act as separate individuals, our power is limited. We can only do so much on our own. But when we turn our power in the direction of the greater good, we align ourselves with the much more powerful body of humanity, and our results are magnified a hundredfold.

The body recognizes and acknowledges us when we adopt the mindset of oneness; in fact, it actively supports us. When we need help, there’s a knock on the door with an offer of assistance. When we need resources, they freely flow to us. When we need ideas, they come to us. But when we lose this mindset, we experience either indifference or resistance.

If you want the world to care about you, you must care about the world. The first move is yours. If your first move is to wait and see what happens, the world will respond in kind. If your first move is to give freely to the best of your ability, the world will also respond in kind.

I could not be doing what I’m doing if I was going it alone, fueled only by my own selfish desires. I know what it’s like to live that way, and I can’t imagine going back. It’s boring at best, frustrating and demoralizing at worst.

When I hold the mindset of oneness (which I freely admit isn’t always easy), I’m uplifted and encouraged by daily assistance and support. I have more resources flowing into my life than I need, more opportunities than I can possibly follow. To me this represents a powerful “yes” from the larger body of humanity. Meeting my needs has become almost trivially easy. This allows me to focus my time and energy on doing what I can to create a more conscious humanity, one that is able to shift from self-centeredness and neutrality to oneness.

As an individual, my life doesn’t seem particularly important. A self-centered purpose would bore me to tears and leave me feeling empty inside. But as an instrument for serving the good of humanity, I feel so much power and energy coursing through my life, many times more than what I felt when I lived only for myself.

Of the seven principles I wrote about in Personal Development for Smart People, oneness will probably seem the most “airy fairy” and perhaps the least grounded and practical. However, the exact opposite is true. As a guiding principle, it’s incredibly practical. Your degree of alignment (or misalignment) with oneness is a statement of your basic approach to living as a human being. It’s your answer to the question, “Why am I here?” Aligning yourself with oneness makes life easier on so many levels. It transforms resistance into acceptance, competition into cooperation, and sorrow into joy.

Even when I have a difficult or painful experience, I can see the joy behind it. Every difficulty I face becomes a lesson I can share with other people, so there’s always the opportunity to feel grateful for the opportunity to contribute.

Helping each other doesn’t mean going out of our way. Helping each other is our way.

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.

Going vegetarian in 1993 and then vegan in 1997 both started as 30-day trials for me. I mainly did them out of curiosity. I maintained those changes because of the mental and physical gains, especially the mental gains.

Developing Compassion for Animals

Somewhere along this path of dietary refinement, I noticed that I started feeling more compassionately toward animals. I don’t have any pets, but I felt increasingly more connected to animals with each passing year.

A few years ago, I stopped buying leather products like belts and shoes. I bought alternative products from Vegan Essentials instead. They were a little more expensive, but I could no longer justify buying products that contributed to animal suffering. To my surprise I noticed that those products actually saved me money because they’re a lot more durable. My cruelty-free running shoes that have held up well for years — I can’t believe they’re still in good shape. Such shoes used to last me about six months, twelve if I pushed it.

It’s hard to avoid contributing to animal cruelty completely because it’s so tightly integrated into modern society. I’ve heard that even the crates used to ship fruits and veggies use glue made from animals. Personal care products like shampoo and soap typically include animal-derived products. Lately I’ve been favoring products from cruelty-free sources. You do the best you can. Improvement is always possible; perfection is not.

Now that I’m a raw foodist, I seem to be in the midst of another shift in my compassion for living creatures. I really didn’t expect this. This time it’s much stronger.

Now I’m starting to feel the same way about insects that I feel about animals.

Killing Bugs

When I was a kid, I never considered insects to be worthy of much consideration. They were like mindless little robots. I was a god compared to them, so of course I could treat them however I wanted. They were insignificant. At least that’s what I learned from other people.

When I was around ten years old, I used to take a magnifying glass to my backyard and fry ants with sunlight just for fun. I thought it was cool when they popped and smoked. I never felt any sympathy for them.

At a younger age, I used to collect bugs and put them in jars — something I learned from a neighborhood kid. I had a collection of bug jars in my room. When one of the bugs died, I could always find more to replace it. They were simply there for my amusement.

As I became an adult, if I ever found bugs in my home, I’d kill them of course. I’d squash them or spray them. They were a nuisance, and killing them was the most practical way to deal with them.

Sensing a Shift

Several years ago Erin and I lived in an area that was infested with crickets (Canoga Park, California). If you walked around our neighborhood at night, you’d hear them everywhere. I was always spraying around the house to keep them out, and I often squashed them when they got inside.

Someone told us that in Asia, crickets are considered good luck, especially in China. I don’t know if they really are good luck, but we did fairly well financially while we lived in that house before moving to Vegas in 2004.

During that time I was doing a lot of meditation and journaling to try to become more conscious and aware. At some point I worked on deepening my sense of connectedness to other living creatures. I tried to mentally connect with the crickets, and I asked them to stop chirping so loudly at night. To my surprise they actually did. I could walk outside and hear crickets all around the neighborhood, but our house was strangely quiet. I repeated the experiment again a few weeks later, and once again it worked. However, I didn’t have a belief system that could really handle this. It was a little too much for me, so I couldn’t bring myself to pursue it further. I stopped those experiments and returned to using bug spray. I wasn’t ready to make that kind of leap.

I soon talked to an old friend who’d also gone vegan, and he told me he stopped killing bugs entirely. I could respect his choice, but it seemed way too extreme and impractical. “What do you do if ants attack your pantry?” I asked. He said he’d make a trail of sugar or some other sweetener to lead them back outside, and eventually they would leave. But he wouldn’t kill them. I was impressed by his ethics, but I didn’t think I could live up to that standard myself.

For the next several years, I felt internally conflicted about killing bugs. I would still kill them when I saw them, but I also felt a strange connection to them.

Head vs. Heart

Shortly after I became a raw foodist, these feelings were greatly amplified. Raw foodists often speak about how the volume on your emotions gets turned up massively when you go raw. Believe me — they aren’t kidding! Emotional feedback that was once extremely subtle becomes much louder and clearer, so it’s harder to tune out. You have to start processing it. I think this is one reason why many people experience major shifts in their career, relationships, and spiritual life after going raw.

I noticed that when I killed bugs earlier this year, like if squashed a cockroach I found in my living room — cockroaches are very common in Vegas — I’d feel a knot in my stomach. My mind told me that killing bugs was still the proper course of action, but my heart was screaming louder and louder, “This is wrong, wrong, wrong!”

Every once in a while, I would let one go. At first I tried to justify it with a mental excuse: I’m feeling lazy right now. It’s just a small bug. It will probably find it’s way outside. It isn’t near the kitchen. Someone else will probably kill it later. My emotions were beginning to make inroads into my thoughts.

My feeling of connectedness to insects gradually increased over a period of several weeks. I’d still kill bugs if the family spotted one and asked me to take care of it. But I reached a point where I stopped killing bugs altogether if I was alone. One time I saw a spider in my office bathroom, a room that no one uses but me, and I said to the spider, “Don’t be afraid, little spider. I will not harm you. You are safe here.” I began thinking of the spider as my little pet.

I began processing these emotions consciously, updating my attitude towards insects. I concluded they were just as worthy of existence as myself. I justified that it won’t harm me to have a few bugs around my house. I finally realized there was no pressing need to kill them. I broke through the social conditioning from my youth, and I reconnected with my true feelings.

Eventually I couldn’t bring myself to kill bugs even around my family. Recently I overheard our housekeeper commenting to Erin that she’s been noticing a lot more bugs around the house. I chuckled to myself — that’s because I’ve stopped killing them! I haven’t sprayed around the house in a long time.

Now I’m even starting to discourage the rest of my family from killing bugs. They don’t seem to feel the same way I do — Erin in particular has a fear of certain bugs — but I’ve been encouraging them to think of the bugs as our little pets.

Spider Friend

At this very moment, a little spider is rappelling down my window. I said to him, “Hello, little spider. I hope you have a beautiful day today.” I think of him as my little friend. I could not even consider ending his life. I feel good knowing that he is safe around me. I like that he can go on about his day inside my home office without fear of violence. Maybe he even can sense my feelings toward him on some level. I am happy to see him spin his webs on my windows and live out his life.

Obviously I may hurt bugs by accident as I go on about my day, but even when I walk on the sidewalk now, I do my best to watch out for them and avoid stepping on them. To the degree I can make this choice consciously, I choose not to harm them.

Oneness

Chapter 4 in my book is about the principle of oneness, which is the combination of truth and love. As I noted in the book, this has been a challenging principle for me to follow, but I feel like I’ve come much more into alignment with it during the past several weeks. Learning to see all life as sacred, not just our fellow human beings, has been a huge part of it.

I have to ask myself how a dietary shift could have caused this change in my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. I think the truth is that those feelings were there all along, but they were buried beneath an overload of toxins in my body. As I purified my diet, these emotional signals became louder and clearer. I could no longer dismiss them as background noise.

The awakening of my compassion for insects is just one change among many. I also feel much more connected to other people, and I feel more centered in my life purpose than ever before. This feeling of connectedness has motivated me to reach out and connect more. For starters I created a Twitter page, so I can share small bits of info even when I don’t have time to write a full blog entry. I’ve shared 224 updates there so far. I also joined Facebook and accepted more than 1,000 friend requests in the first week. I didn’t do these things for business or marketing reasons. I did them because I naturally felt more connected to people, and these actions arose naturally from that feeling.

It’s like I’m finally discovering what it’s like to feel human — maybe for the first time in my life. All those years I was eating cooked and processed food, I never knew what I was missing. The intuitive and emotional signals were too subtle for me to process. The cells of my body weren’t working the way they were designed to work because they didn’t have the right fuel. I drugged myself with food to numb my emotions because I wasn’t ready to deal with the consequences.

These shifts make it really hard to justify returning to cooked food. That would feel like taking a prescription that made me feel numb all the time. I feel like I’d lose myself if I went back. It’s not easy dealing with these “raw emotions,” but I shudder at the thought of losing what I’ve gained from them. I’m sure I have a lot more processing to do, but I think I’ve finally reached the point along my path of growth where I’m ready to handle it.

I’ll bet that even if you choose to kill bugs or contribute to animal cruelty, you still harbor a sense of compassion for all living beings. Some part of you signals that it doesn’t feel right to cage them, inject them with chemicals, and kill them just to satiate your taste buds. But that signal may be so subtle that you tune it out. You disconnect from your heart and remain stuck in your head, where it’s easier to justify your actions.

What you may not realize is that you cannot disconnect from your heart in a targeted fashion. It’s more of an all-or-nothing mechanism. When you tune out from some of the signals, you disconnect yourself from all things emotional and intuitive, including your sense of connection to other people, your certainty about your life purpose, and your ability to be joyful and happy. When you disconnect from your heart, including the signals it sends about the smallest of creatures, you invariably suffer for it. You become a little less human.

When you see a horse up close, I’ll bet some part of you feels a sense of connection to her. On some level you must be able to tap into your awareness that you are not superior to her. You are both equally valid and beautiful expressions of consciousness. To reduce that beautiful animal to a mere beast is to become a beast yourself.

I want to add that I’m not judging you in any way. I’m just sharing what I’m experiencing. It’s up to you to decide if this holds any truth for you. It’s perfectly okay to see what’s coming up for you and not feel ready for it. I spent many years there. Just begin to listen to the emotional signals that do arise in your life, no matter how subtle, and observe how you deal with this. Do you tune in to them and consciously process them, or do you turn your back on them and try to drown them with food, entertainment, or other distractions? Do you consciously manage your emotional life, or are you unconsciously victimized by it?

Maybe the reason there are so many insects on this planet is because we have so much to learn from them. Perhaps they keep arising in our lives because we haven’t been very good listeners.

My spider friend seems to be staring at me intently. I wonder what he’s thinking…

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.