But this year I’ve decided to go further with this process and declare outright social bankruptcy. This is an area of my life that was far enough off track that changing it for the better is closer to starting over from scratch than making modifications to an existing structure. It’s more analogous to changing careers than it is to tweaking an existing career.

I could see that my social life was becoming exceedingly unbalanced. It was a source of many stimulating connections, but the overall big picture wasn’t working very well.

While many people have trouble with physical clutter piling up, the main source of clutter in my life has been social clutter, most of which flowed into my life as a result of having a popular website/blog and having many open doors on the Internet through which people could easily connect with me.

Initially I thought that being so accessible was a good thing. I liked having an open door policy. To do otherwise seemed like it would be too cold and aloof.

In the beginning that open door policy worked okay, but too much of a good thing can eventually become a curse.

A Gift or a Curse?

Imagine if people starting coming to your house and bringing you gifts because they want to express their appreciation.

At first, you may receive their gifts with gratitude. How nice of them. How lucky you are to receive such abundance.

Now imagine that the gifts keep coming, year after year and with increasing frequency.

Eventually you start seeing patterns in the gifts. The same types of items appear dozens, then hundreds of times. What was once a delightful surprise now becomes routine and predictable.

Soon you stop bothering to open some of the gifts. You can tell what they are from the outside packaging. You don’t need what’s inside since you’ve received similar items many times before. You may still appreciate the sentiment, but the gifts themselves no longer hold much value to you.

You start running out of space to store the gifts. They pile up. You shove them in closets and fill your garage with them. And they just keep coming.

You can reasonably expect that this pattern will continue for many more years to come. It isn’t going to stop on its own. You begin to dread the treadmill you find yourself on.

All the while, people follow up to ask you about the gifts you received. At first you really are appreciative. Then you become indifferent. Then you may feel resentful. You may try to feign appreciation from behind that resentment in order to be polite, but it isn’t always easy. After a sufficient amount of time elapses, the gifts are entirely unwanted. As new gift bringers arrive, you stop answering the door as often.

Due to the asymmetrical nature of these interactions, those individual gift givers can’t see any problem with it. They always feel they’re doing a good deed. And so if you aren’t appreciative each time, they quickly jump to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with you.

So what do you do?

You could ask people to stop bringing gifts, but whom do you tell if it’s different people each time?

You could hire someone to process the gifts for you, but why pay someone to process what you don’t even want? This would also do a disservice to the gift givers since you’d never personally receive and appreciate their gifts. They probably wouldn’t have brought the gifts if they expected their gifts would merely be processed by an assistant. They intended the gifts to be personal.

Social connections are like gifts. In small quantities they’re precious, and it’s easy to appreciate them. In vast quantities, however, they can become a curse.

I hit that curse level a long time ago and did my best to manage it, but eventually I realized that it was a no-win situation, and I had to make some fundamental changes. I couldn’t just get better at processing the gifts that arrived. I had to stop the gifts from showing up altogether. I had to eliminate the curse aspects and get back to a more reasonable level of interaction.

Declaring Social Bankruptcy

It took a while to accept it, but eventually I realized I had to declare social bankruptcy. I’d gone too far down a path that wasn’t working. I could see that it was time to get off that path entirely.

I began to think about what kind of social life I’d create for myself these days if I had the opportunity to start over completely from scratch. I imagined that nobody on earth knew who I was. What if I didn’t have email… or a website… or any social media pages… or a phone number?

What would I consciously decide to add back? What would I avoid recreating?

I still like writing, so I’d keep that. I like speaking too, so I’d recreate that as well.

But there are some items I wouldn’t recreate, at least not in the same way they’re present in my life today.

One of those things would be email. I’d keep it for some very limited usage, but I wouldn’t use email as my primary business communication tool. I’d reduce my email usage by at least 90% and check it maybe once or twice a week, with perhaps 15 minutes of usage time per week. I wouldn’t have an assistant process a bunch of messages for me. I’d set it up so hardly anyone would message me. I’d only receive emails that I wanted to receive, from people I wanted to be able to email me.

Another thing I wouldn’t recreate would be online interactions with people regarding my articles, including comments, questions, and discussions. Reading feedback can be stimulating at times, but I don’t find it inspiring or fulfilling, and it certainly isn’t necessary. Life itself gives me all the feedback I require. It’s fine if people want to discuss and share what I’ve posted on their own, but I don’t need to participate in those discussions. By the time I’ve posted something, I’ve already moved on to the next thing. For me writing is a process of letting go. To write is to release. If I get involved in discussions about my past work, my attention is pulled back to where I’ve been, and I experience greater levels of attachment. I’d rather keep my attention on where I am and where I’m going.

If I’m going to discuss anything work-related, it’s more interesting to discuss what I’m inspired to explore next. It’s easier for me — and more fulfilling as well — to have such discussions with friends face to face. So again the online element is superfluous.

In the long run, my open door approach to connecting with readers was a bust. I tried modifying the parameters of that open door — for years — but eventually I had to close that door altogether. Life is a lot simpler without all that social clutter.

Closing those doors (quitting Facebook, shutting down the forums, disabling my online contact form, etc) was tough to do at first, but now I’m far enough along with this contraction process that I wish I’d done this years ago.

I’m also revamping the way I use email, including killing off old email addresses and reserving email for a much lower volume of communication henceforth.

Obligation vs. Freedom

There are several themes that run through this social rebooting process. One involves eliminating social obligations and expectations and replacing them with freedom of choice.

My social life has been overburdened with perceived obligations. People who have a social connection with me frequently expect that our connection entitles them to something from me, such as a reply to their emails or advice when they request it.

In small quantities that isn’t a problem, but in the quantities I’ve experienced this, it’s too far over on the curse side.

So as part of declaring social bankruptcy, I’m erasing any social debt people feel I owe them as a result of our past connections.

Feeling obligated to live up to other people’s expectations isn’t how I wish to manage my social life. I wish to experience a social life based on freedom of choice by all involved, where no one feels they have the right to leverage our connection to obligate the other person.

Freedom must still be balanced with responsibility, so if I’ve freely chosen to obligate myself in some way, such as entering a business contract or making a verbal agreement with someone, I’ll honor that of course. But I’m not going to let those unspoken obligations creep back into my social life, where people feel they’re entitled to something from me just because they exist in my reality.

If certain people can’t handle this and wish to complain about it, I’m not going to maintain a serious connection with them. The types of people I like interacting with already feel similarly anyway, so I’m not losing anything I value here.

Online vs. Offline

The second shift involves doing more of what fulfills me and less of what doesn’t fulfill me.

I love connecting with people face to face. Occasional video-Skyping is okay too. But typing individual messages to people has grown pretty stale. And if I have a lot of messages to read and reply to, that just feels burdensome.

So I’m deliberately axing almost all of my one-on-one communication via the Internet. And I’m replacing it with more face to face social interaction.

I’m making this change not only for personal socializing but for business networking as well. I may use email to help maintain some connections, but I’m essentially closing the door to new business connections that arrive by email. New business contacts will have to meet me in person, and that will essentially mean they’ll have to come through organically via my existing social network. It will be exceedingly difficult for cold callers to reach me personally.

Incompatible vs. Compatible

The third shift has to do with the types of people that I connect with on a regular basis.

The bulk of people who’ve gotten in touch with me in the past were readers of my blog, Internet marketers, and the press. In small doses these interactions are normally fine, but in larger quantities it can get a little crazy.

As part of declaring social bankruptcy, I felt it wise to close the door on these types of interactions via the Internet, so I could create some space to reassess my social life without so many distractions piling up.

During this quiet time, I realized that I didn’t wish to recreate the reader-based interactions. These are too often interactions where people put me on a pedestal and place themselves on a perceived lower tier as they interact with me. It’s not a big deal when it’s a temporary thing like during a workshop weekend, but it’s not something I like having in my life on a daily basis. These interactions provide little value to me, and they encourage me to keep revisiting the past instead of focusing on new challenges. If you think my decision to cut these people off is selfish, that’s because it is.

Sometimes I’ve even said to people, “Please don’t do the fanboy thing with me.” While I’m sure some people draw energy from having others look up to them, I find it very unnatural when adults behave like that towards me. I prefer it when people connect with me as equals.

Regarding Internet marketers who approach me primarily because they want something from me, I’m not going to lose any sleep over shedding those connections. These types of approaches are very common online, but they’re much less frequent in person. And in person it’s much easier to help the person get past their fake salesy persona and behave a bit more naturally.

Connecting with the press might seem to be a wise door to keep open for business reasons, but after doing so many interviews, I don’t see much value in continuing the practice. Mainstream journalists and the publications they represent are too often a mismatch for my message. They have an overwhelming tendency to want to reduce everything to cutesy sound bites, and they frequently get the sound bites wrong anyway. These people are almost invariably over-stressed and harried, so they can only crank out incredibly shallow work that provides little or no long-term value. Most publications of this nature don’t provide a compatible medium for a message about conscious living.

So as I declare social bankruptcy on these types of connections, what’s left?

I thought about the kinds of friends I want to keep in my life, as well as new friends I’d like to attract. These include people with qualities and values such as:

1. Freedom – people who maintain free and flexible lifestyles and have control over their schedules (can’t connect with people who aren’t available)
2. Self-Sufficiency - high-functioning people who can take care of themselves (not needy, clingy, or high maintenance)
3. Happiness – people who are generally happy and fulfilled with their lives
4. Growth – people who value growth above security (security-minded people are very boring)
5. Courage – people who seek to identify and face their fears; people who are following their “path with a heart”
6. Offbeat – people whom others might label as weird, quirky, or unusual (I like social rebels; the social conformists don’t seem particularly sane)

There are lots of people in my life who will claim to value these qualities, but not as many can claim to be living them. People who are living up to their values tend to have a certain peacefulness about them that’s a joy to connect with.

I’ve been maintaining many partial matches in my social network, i.e. people who have enough compatibility to create a connection with me but not enough to maintain a mutually fulfilling relationship in the long run. These partial matches are relative dead ends though, and they crowd out more compatible connections.

As part of this bankruptcy process, I’m reassessing each connection in my social network as if it’s a brand new connection opportunity that just showed up for the first time. I’m letting go of past social baggage with certain people and asking myself if it makes sense to include them in my social map today. At the same time, I’m raising my standards with respect to the types of connections I’ll invite in and maintain.

Quantity to Quality

In previous years I’ve had lots of relatively shallow connections in my life and a handful of deep ones. But virtually all the joy and fulfillment comes from the deeper connections. So I’ve decided to release most of those shallow connections and invest more time and energy in creating and maintaining deeper connections but with fewer people.

I don’t find it difficult to create and maintain deeper connections, but when there’s too much social clutter in my life, it keeps me flailing around in the shallow end of the pool more often than I’d like.

Instead of maintaining a large but loose social network, I’m dumping that model and replacing it with a much smaller, tighter social network. I seek fewer friends, but deeper and more compatible connections.

Having an extensive social network with loose ties with lots of people may seem like a good thing to some people, but I haven’t found much fulfillment in that model. Breadth is no substitute for depth.

I think the main mistake I made here was assuming that having a bigger funnel at the top would result in deeper connections at the bottom. It doesn’t work that way in practice, however. Shallow connections rarely evolve into deeper ones. Deep connections frequently avoid the funnel altogether. When truly compatible people show up, we tend to click right away — within a matter of hours. For the most part, either we click right away, or we don’t. There is no funnel.

As part of this process, I’ve been going through my Google Contacts and making liberal use of the delete function. I figure that if I haven’t contacted someone in 6 months or more, I probably don’t need their contact info.

Having fewer contacts to maintain simplifies my life and makes it easier to focus on connections I wish to maintain. If I ever really need the info for a deleted contact, I can always get it through some other means, like searching my email archives or requesting it from someone.

After a few passes, I was able to reduce my contacts down to 64 people. My goal was to get it down to 30 or less. With a couple more passes, I got it down to 28. Smile.

I may gradually build it back up to around 40 or so, but I’m in no rush. It’s nice to see the whole list fit on one screen for the first time ever. No scrollbar.

Contraction, Then Expansion

Having been through a financial bankruptcy many years ago, I can tell you that declaring bankruptcy isn’t such a terrible thing. When you go bankrupt, you shed what clearly isn’t working for you. For me it was a very liberating experience.

I find this social bankruptcy process equally liberating. It’s obviously not the same thing as a financial bankruptcy, but the energetic effect is similar. Old obligations and expectations are released. Hope and optimism replace feelings of overwhelm and disappointment.

I’m looking forward to rebuilding a positive and supportive social life this year, practically from the ground up. Having such an active social life for so many years, even if it wasn’t particularly fulfilling, gave me a lot of clarity about what I want to experience in this part of my life instead.

Initially I hoped to transition directly from where I was to where I wanted to go. But I couldn’t get that approach to work. The old patterns were too strong, and I didn’t have enough clarity about where to go next. It’s like being in a job you don’t like, but you’re still unsure about what you might do instead or how to make it work. You have to quit the old job first, break free of its distractions and conditioning effects, and take some reflective time to get in touch with what you’ve learned and what you want. Then you can take steps to create something new. There may be some negative side effects to this approach, but they’re worth it. Staying stuck in a no-win situation is worse.

In a similar vein, I eventually accepted I had to undergo a social contraction first before I’d have any hope of creating something better. I couldn’t transition directly from planet A to planet B because planet A’s gravity was too strong. I had to leave planet A behind first, then explore a bit in order to identify planet B and plot a course to it.

I’m in that exploratory phase now, which is a refreshing change. As I shared above, I have more clarity about what I want to experience next, but I’m in no rush to get there. I’m still shedding bits and pieces of the old planet A, and I feel very relieved as I watch it recede further into the past. My social life is quieter and simpler than it’s been in years, and I’m taking advantage of this peaceful period to get back in touch with myself.

Ho’oponopono It

When I was at the Transformational Leadership Council retreat in Kona, Hawaii last week, we did an interesting Ho’oponopono exercise that included writing an exhaustive list of anyone and anything from the past that we still felt a lingering attachment to. At the end of the exercise, we tore up our lists, a symbolic way of shedding those attachments. This doesn’t mean shedding those people from one’s life. It just means releasing any unconscious attachments to them, so you can make a freer and more conscious choice about how to relate (or not relate) to them thereafter. At least that was my understanding of the exercise.

At the time I did that exercise, I didn’t sense that anything special had happened. It was a nice gesture but not particularly transformational for me. However, when I returned to Vegas several days later, I could tell that something had shifted in my attitudes towards certain people. I could more easily distinguish the aspects of those connections that I was freely inviting vs. those aspects that had become riddled with unconscious expectations and obligations. I felt a greater sense of freedom to relate on the basis of choice while releasing any lingering loyalty to the expectation side. I felt more empowered to relate to people as my true self without worrying about their reactions.

I think that deciding to stop participating in traditional holiday gift exchanges as I shared in yesterday’s post was one result of this Ho’oponopono process. I might have gotten around to it eventually, but I feel this process helped speed things along. I was able to get it done without worrying about other people’s reactions. I saw that it was more important to be true to myself and stop trying to satisfy other people’s expectations of me.

As I allow myself to explore this delightfully peaceful space of fresh possibilities, I’m already noticing new doors opening. Part of me wants to dive in and explore some of them, while another part of me wants to hold off and enjoy the silence a bit longer. I’m sure I’ll begin to explore some of those alternative paths soon enough, but the most important thing for me right now is to explore in an unattached, noncommittal way. I want to experience a social life where each relationship feels like a fresh choice made anew, not an obligation to remain loyal to the past.

When it’s obvious that some part of your life isn’t working, stop. Release what isn’t working. Then choose another path. People will squawk at you, but you’ll be happier on the other side.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Many people grow up with holiday traditions that center around buying and exchanging gifts with family members. I enjoyed and appreciated this when I was younger, and I have many fond memories about it. These days it no longer resonates with me though. It’s not a good fit for my values. I feel it’s time to make a conscious choice here and drop this tradition from my life.

Gift giving is a popular love strategy that means a lot to certain people. I respect that. But it’s not a tradition that I personally find fulfilling or meaningful, either on the giving or the receiving end of it.

My primary love strategies are physical touch (like hugs and affection) and spending quality time together. I experience these in abundance, which makes gift giving feel really hollow by comparison.

I’ve never been particularly good at shopping anyway, nor do I care to get better at it. Most years I don’t even start my Christmas shopping till December 23rd. This past year I didn’t start till Dec 26th.

I know that some people love shopping for gifts, but for me the experience often feels tedious, annoying, and even creepy. I always procrastinate on it and then have to force myself to do it. Then I usually surrender before I seriously try, and I resort to buying everyone gift cards. This is clearly a path without a heart for me.

Some people like making gifts instead of buying them, but that doesn’t resonate with me either. I’d still be bothered by the obligatory nature of it. I occasionally enjoy giving someone a gift (bought or made) when it strikes me as a free and inspired choice. But when it takes the form of an expected obligation, it gives me the overwhelming urge to pummel an elf.

I told my family that if they still feel compelled to get me gifts, they can donate to charity instead. I suggested fellow TLC member Cynthia Kersey’s Unstoppable Foundation, which builds schools and wells for children in Africa.

As for how my family reacts to my decision, that’s up to them, but from my end it’s a done deal regardless of their responses. Hopefully they’ll understand though.

I feel good about this decision. It simplifies my life, which I like. And perhaps by sharing this quickie blog post, it will inspire others to consciously reexamine their holiday traditions.

Which of your behaviors are consciously chosen? Which are merely inherited?

Which practices would you discontinue if you knew there’d be absolutely no negative backlash from anyone?

If you wouldn’t continue a practice except for reasons of social pressure and obligation, then your motivation is fear-based, and fear will taint your gifts as well. If you can’t give from a place of free conscious choice motivated by love and inspiration, then is it really a gift you’re giving? To me that sounds more like a curse.

Leo from Zen Habits has a nice article about opting out of gift exchanges. Although Leo’s reasons are different than mine, he shares some insightful food for thought.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Social timidity is frequently a result of approach anxiety. Instead of proactively approaching new people to form connections (for friendship, dating, networking, etc), these people often hold back. There can be a variety of reasons for why they hold back, but it typically boils down to fear caused by limiting beliefs about approaching people, initiating conversations, expressing interest, etc.

When I shared this with Morty, I figured there might be 5-10 common limiting beliefs that contributed to approach anxiety, such as “being rejected is bad” or “I’m not good enough.”

Morty grew curious about what limiting beliefs he might find if he investigated this further. Since his specialty is helping people eliminate limiting beliefs quickly and permanently, this was right up his alley. I’ve been recommended Morty’s method for more than two years now, and many people have found it an effective way to remove beliefs that were previously holding them back, so I figured the subject of approach anxiety would be a worthwhile area for him to explore, one that would be a good fit for his process. Morty agreed.

Morty also knew that if he could figure out the most common limiting beliefs that contributed to approach anxiety, he could use that information to create a new product that would help people with this specific challenge, so this undertaking made good business sense as well.

Investigating Approach Anxiety

To explore this more deeply, Morty recruited volunteers who felt socially limited by approach anxiety, those who rated their fear at least a 7 on a scale of 1-10. Then he interviewed them to discover what beliefs were making them feel anxious or hesitant to connect with new people.

To Morty’s surprise (and to my own as well), he discovered a great variety of beliefs that contributed to approach anxiety. There weren’t just a handful of them — there were dozens that he was able to identify.

The main problem wasn’t the quantity of beliefs, however. The bigger issue was that there was very little overlap between participants, meaning that each person had different beliefs that contributed to their experience of approach anxiety.

This meant that it wouldn’t be practical for Morty to create a single product to help people eliminate this problem. Morty can still use his method to help such people one on one by phone or Skype, but he can’t turn it into a product because there’s too much variety in people’s limiting beliefs. To eliminate a limiting belief, it must first be identified, and that identification process plays out differently for each person.

I was disappointed that we couldn’t use this idea to create a new product that would help people afflicted by approach anxiety. I liked the idea of helping people to permanently and inexpensively eliminate such a problem. But I didn’t want to let Morty’s initial research go to waste, so I asked him if I could share the backstory about this idea and the beliefs he was able to identify with his volunteers, and he graciously agreed.

I expect this may still be helpful to many people since identifying a limiting belief is an important first step in eliminating it. Sometimes just being aware that you have a negative belief can get you started on the path to letting it go.

Limiting Beliefs That Contribute to Approach Anxiety

For this project Morty focused his interviews on men, so all of the subjects were male. He surely would have uncovered even more limiting beliefs if he expanded this to include women as well.

The age range of the participants was 20-38 with most in their 20s. And as I mentioned previously, Morty asked people to rate their fear on a scale of 1-10 and chose people who answered at least a 7.

Here are some of the feelings these participants reported:

1. Anxiety when talking to a woman
2. Fear of being criticized or judged
3. Fear of talking to an attractive woman

And here’s a list of limiting beliefs related to approach anxiety that Morty and his participants were able to identify:

1. Change is difficult.
2. I can’t do anything right.
3. If a woman isn’t attracted to a man initially, she never will be.
4. I’m a bother to people.
5. I’m a dangerous person.
6. I’m annoying.
7. I’m a loser.
8. I’m broken.
9. I’m inadequate.
10. I’m inferior.
11. I’m not acceptable.
12. I’m not attractive.
13. I’m not good enough.
14. I’m not interesting.
15. I’m socially awkward.
16. I’m ugly.
17. I’m unlovable / not lovable.
18. I’m weird.
19. It’s wrong to show sexual interest in a woman.
20. It’s wrong to be attracted to women.
21. It’s wrong to be turned on by women.
22. My sexual desire is bad.
23. People aren’t interested in me.
24. People aren’t interested in what I have to say.
25. Relationships are difficult.
26. There’s something wrong with me.
27. What makes me good enough or important enough is having people like me.
28. Women don’t want nice guys.
29. Women don’t want to be bothered.
30. Women don’t want to talk to guys.
31. Women want more financial security than I could provide.
32. Women want men who are assertive and get what they want.
33. Women want attractive men.
34. Women want interesting men.
35. Women want men who are confident / flirtatious.
36. Women want men who are witty / make them laugh.
37. Women want men who treat them badly.
38. Women want men with exciting lifestyles.
39. Women want men with money and stability.
40. Women want popular guys.
41. Women want security / to be protected physically.
42. Women want successful men.

This is an interesting collection to be sure, but it’s far from exhaustive. I’m sure you can identify many more, especially if we consider limiting beliefs that women have as well.

We can loosely categorize this list into beliefs about oneself, beliefs about others, and beliefs about interactions.

Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

Many of the self-related beliefs are linked with low self-esteem and a low sense of attractiveness. Eliminating the negative belief is one way to fix those problems. Another way is to shift your focus onto your overall lifestyle, and take more action to create a life that fulfills you. When people are pleased with their lifestyles, it shows. It’s easier to attract people you like when you’re enjoying the other parts of your life. It’s also easier to attract compatible partners when you’re already living a life you enjoy.

As for the beliefs about others, the main issue there is overgeneralization. Everyone has different standards for what they find attractive and what they don’t. These patterns certainly aren’t universal.

With billions of people on earth, we can find many people who may fit those patterns and many who don’t. And in any given week, people can oscillate between matching and not matching these patterns. Sometimes people feel social and would be glad to be approached by almost anyone. At other times people turn inward and prefer more solitude.

One pattern I see here is the implied limiting belief that if you approach someone who doesn’t want to connect with you (for whatever reason), and you get rejected as a result, then you made a mistake and never should have approached in the first place.

Of course there isn’t much real danger in trying to initiate and deepen connections, but that doesn’t make the fear any less real. The fear may be rooted in false beliefs and erroneous assumptions, but it can still exert control over one’s behavior.

There is a matter of calibration involved here, so as you gain experience, you can increase your hit rate, but this doesn’t mean that getting a rejection now and then is a terrible thing to be avoided at all costs. It’s really no big whoop. You basically have to risk some rejection in order to build experience. The more experience you have, the easier it is to read people and get a sense of who’s open to connecting with you and who isn’t. Making a mistake here isn’t the end of the world.

The good news is that when these limiting beliefs were eliminated, the fear went away too. And when the fear goes away, that’s where the fun begins.

Finding Counterexamples

One of my favorite methods for eliminating limiting beliefs is to deliberately seek out counterexamples. If I can find even one or two counterexamples for a belief, then the belief tends to collapse. My mind can no longer pretend that it’s true.

A long time ago I had the belief that women aren’t interested in sex as much as men are. I also had some related beliefs about sexuality being bad or sinful. I can credit 12 years of Catholic school for installing such notions. This certainly isn’t uncommon.

Then I saw the movie Kinsey, which opened my eyes to the notion that sexual desire is a very individual thing. That helped put a dent in my overgeneralized beliefs.

Later I met women who were comfortable talking about sex openly, and they shared thoughts, feelings, and attitudes that contradicted my old beliefs. It took me a while to make the 180-degree turn from my Catholicism-installed falsehoods, but I eventually collapsed those limiting beliefs.

I also had to be careful about installing opposite beliefs like “women love sex more than men do” since that’s an overgeneralization as well. I find it more helpful to accept the notion that this is a very individual thing.

Accepting Variety

Overgeneralizing is an attempt to treat everyone the same, as if you can come up with a single pattern or strategy that works well with everyone. Generalizing works okay in some areas of life, but in other areas there’s too much variety, including in the area of human relationships.

Our brains automatically and unconsciously seek out patterns in specific data, but sometimes they make mistakes, and we need to consciously adjust their conclusions.

Deep down we may indeed have similar needs and desires, but we have different ways of satisfying those needs and desires. So what one person finds attractive, another person finds creepy, boring, or repulsive.

If you can accept this, you’ll see that it’s silly to expect everyone to like you as you are. Some people will. Some people won’t. Such are the vicissitudes of life.

Instead of trying to get someone to like you or worrying about saying or doing the right things to create attraction, it makes more sense to express your personality and preferences openly to the degree that’s possible, and then let other people self-select if they feel they match you.

Alternatively, you can focus on initiating connections with people you find attractive, while accepting that your interest may not be mutual. If the other person doesn’t feel the same, it doesn’t mean you aren’t awesome. It just means the other person doesn’t agree that you’d be a good match. Certainly that isn’t the end of the world. There are billions of other people you can seek to match with.

For the past several years, I’ve mainly been using the expressiveness strategy because I’ve had so much social input coming my way. All I really had to do was to express myself openly and shamelessly, and then I could select among the people who seemed to resonate with what I shared. If people didn’t like me, they usually filtered themselves out of my reality, and if they didn’t, then it was easy for me to decline to interact with them. If people initiated interactions with me as a result of what I shared, then I could choose to accept some of those invites, and at least I was guaranteed to have an interaction with someone who was interested in connecting.

This worked well for attracting people who are interested in me, but it doesn’t give me as much opportunity to connect with people that I find equally interesting. So for the past several months, I’ve been closing most of those open doors (like my Facebook page, the forums, and my contact form), so fewer people can approach me to connect. This gives me more opportunity to initiate my own connections with people I’d like to get to know better and to be more selective.

With my old socialization strategy, I would sometimes stray into my own version of approach anxiety, but of a different sort than the one discussed earlier. I actually worry more about being approached. Will the person be interesting? Will they be honest about their intentions? Are they just trying to get something from me?

As my social interactions became increasingly patterned, I felt I was at risk of developing limiting beliefs like “Everyone needs something from me” and “People are energy vampires.” I thought it best to turn off the flood of incoming connections for a while, so I could have more space to consciously think about what kind of social life I’d like to create and experience.

The benefit of getting limiting beliefs out of the way is that it creates more room for conscious choice.

Training Up

Another favorite way to tackle limiting beliefs is with progressive training. I see limitations as a weight to be lifted. The more you train the relevant muscles, the easier it is to lift and finally dispose of the limitation.

As a child I was very shy. In kindergarten I used to play in the sandbox alone most of the time. If I had any friends, it was just one or two close friends that I played with. I didn’t feel very comfortable socializing with other children, especially in large groups.

In grammar school what I hated more than anything else were speech contests. These were mandatory every year in my school, but I never felt comfortable presenting in front of the class. I got nervous, my hands would shake, and I was pretty bad at it too.

I improved a little from this forced practice, but I still didn’t like that I got nervous when I spoke in front of the class.

Eventually I decided to conquer this fear, and I thought that progressive training would be a good strategy. I started volunteering to speak tech conferences. Then I joined Toastmasters and later the National Speakers Association to keep making progress.

This approach took time, but it worked. The more practice I got, the more comfortable I became with speaking, and the less nervous I was. Now I feel just as comfortable in front of a group as I do playing video games with my kids. What used to be anxiety producing now gets channeled into enthusiasm and fun. I now find myself looking for ways to make it more challenging; if it feels too easy, it isn’t as stimulating for me.

Enlisting Social Support

Another important thing to realize is that you can be afraid and still take action. This is hard to do on your own, but it’s much easier to do when you have some social support. Without social support it’s too easy to succumb to fear and make excuses. But when you’ve committed yourself to people who will hold you accountable, it’s harder not to act.

For example, if you agree to give a speech, you’ll usually find that you can still follow through even if you’re really anxious about it. People do this all the time. They get up to the mike, and for the first several minutes they’re nervous. You can see their hands shaking. Or their voice cracks and they can barely catch their breath. They’re clearly having an emotional reaction, but they still do it.

What may surprise you is that many pro speakers with decades of practice still get nervous when they speak. But they’ve learned that if they agree to speak anyway, they’re going to follow through even if they’re nervous.

Think about how you can apply this idea of social support to other forms of social interactions that may be troubling you. Can you invite a few friends to encourage you along the way and to hold you accountable?

I’ve seen how well this works at some of my workshops. People who can’t get themselves to start up a conversation with a stranger can suddenly take action when they have two accountability partners encouraging and supporting them.

Further Help

Although we don’t have a singular solution that works for everyone, approach anxiety is a problem that can be overcome.

If you want more information about how Morty can help you with such challenges, feel free to call him at 415-884-0552, and ask about working one on one with him. For help in overcoming other limiting beliefs, be sure to read my blog post about this. You can also test Morty’s method to eliminate a limiting belief for free.

If you prefer a very hands-on approach to improving your social skills, I invite you to attend the 3-day Conscious Relationships Workshop (Feb 17-19 in Las Vegas). Approach anxiety is one of many topics we’ll address, both with group discussions and interactive exercises. At CRW you’ll have the opportunity to experiment and receive feedback in a positive, supportive, nonjudgmental environment.

However you decide to tackle the challenge of approach anxiety, try not to be so hard on yourself. It’s not the end of the world if someone doesn’t want to connect with you. No matter how weird or broken you think you are (or how cold you think other people are), many people would enjoy your company.

People can provide value to each other in the simplest of ways, such as by listening to each other, sharing a meal, and holding hands as they go for a stroll. If you can smile, you can provide something that millions (probably billions) of people would receive as valuable and worthwhile.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

These workshops are highly interactive and very unlike anything else out there. Each workshop is centered around a core of serious content where I share the best tools I’ve encountered and plenty of stories and examples to illustrate them. We also have plenty of social exercises so you can easily make new friends, written exercises to help you apply the ideas right away, group discussions for people to share their own stories and contribute helpful ideas, creative exercises, games, and more. At CSW we even had some spontaneous music as well.

$100 Early Bird Discount for CRW expires Jan 17

Next month we have the Conscious Relationships Workshop (Feb 17-19 in Las Vegas). The $100 early bird discount expires at midnight on Jan 17, which is tomorrow, so if that workshop interests you, this would be a good time to sign up. The group rate for the hotel will expire soon as well; the cutoff date for that is Jan 20.

Just to clarity, the relationships workshop is about more than just romantic relationships. We’ll cover that of course, but we’ll also address friends, family relationships, working relationships, networking, connecting with strangers, overcoming approach anxiety, and much more. The core of this workshop is upgrade your social skills, so that you can connect more easily with new people, deepen your existing connections, and learn a wide variety of tools for resolving conflicts and other relationship challenges.

As I mentioned at the Conscious Success Workshop, our relationships are the primary means through which we create success for ourselves and others. Without relationships, success has little meaning.

As with all of these workshops, the keyword is “Conscious.” This means that these workshops aren’t centered around what matters to me. They’re centered around what matters to you. The idea is to help you clarity what’s most important to you in life — on your path of growth, to your lifelong success, in your intimate and casual relationships. Then we help you learn and apply a variety of tools to make your desires a reality.

So for our relationships workshop, it doesn’t matter if your intention is to find a marriage partner, to deepen your existing relationship, to date around a lot, to be celibate, or to explore polyamory. Anything you desire is fair game. The point of CRW is to help you more deeply understand what you truly desire in your relationships, to help you accept those desires, and to assist you in making them real for you.

Hope to see you at CRW next month.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

One reason my business has been successful is that I enjoy running it. A big part of that enjoyment is that I genuinely like the people my business attracts as long-term customers. I include many of them among my friends and hang out with them socially often. My business partly serves as a feeder for making new friends.

The same is also true for the other business partners I work with. I like these people and enjoy them personally at least as much as I like networking with them professionally.

Since I like the people I serve, my motivation is higher, and I naturally work harder without having to force it.

If someone doesn’t have enough compatibility with me to potentially become a friend, I’d rather not have them as a customer of my business.

Many business owners will sanitize their public personas in an attempt to avoid alienating anyone. While following the rule “Thou shalt not take a stand” may indeed be a way to attract more customers, I wouldn’t want to run such a business. I know people who’ve done this, especially in the personal development field, and by and large they tend to have a great deal of stress in their lives. They reach a place where their businesses run them, and life is all about satisfying obligations. The joy fades. Going to work is a burden.

I’m not willing to go that route. If I did that, I’d end up disliking my business and the people it attracts, and my motivation would plummet. This approach wouldn’t feel good to me at all.

So I do the opposite. I intentionally share things that are likely to repel people who wouldn’t make good friends for me. I’d prefer not to have such people as customers either.

People so often tell me I’m crazy to post certain things that they believe will alienate people. I think it would be crazier not to do that. I share what I’m into. Why on earth would I want to run a business that requires me to suppress my interests? And to what end? Temporarily making more money at the cost of unhappiness, demotivation, a lot more stress? No thank you!

I think many small business owners underestimate just how important it is to love your customers, but I don’t recommend trying to force yourself to love people you wouldn’t even like hanging out with socially. I think it’s much more intelligent to design your business around serving people you already like. And then take steps to make sure that you don’t have too many incompatible people getting through.

I also enjoyed running my computer games business because my customers for that business were people I liked having as friends too — i.e. fellow gamers. I published games I enjoyed, and so my customers and I had some common interests. But the compatibility with my current business is much greater. I rarely met any of my games business’ customers face to face, but with my current business this is a regular occurrence. For instance, I like hosting meet-ups when I travel because I get to meet many interesting people that way.

I’m really looking forward to CGW this weekend, and the main reason is the people. I get to spend the weekend hanging out with people who are strongly interested in improving their lives, including many friends I already know and new friends I’m sure to make.

What kinds of people do you really like? Can you think of a business that would attract these people as your core customer base? You could start by asking some of them what their biggest problems and challenges are.

Even if you’re not a business owner, do you love the people you get to work with each day? Do you like your business’ customers and your co-workers? Do you go out of your way to hang out with them socially, just for fun? If not, that’s a hint and a half that you’re in the wrong place.

You don’t need to be so anal that you require 100% compatibility with everyone, and that isn’t realistic anyway, but downplaying your personality, interests, and desires in a vain attempt to get everyone to like you is not a path to happiness.

Running a business where you actually like the people you serve is very motivating. A day’s work feels like helping out your friends and doing nice things for people you care about.

Be unabashedly yourself. Many people won’t like that. Don’t chase after them. You may want to shoo them away instead. If they can’t accept you as you are, they aren’t a good match for you — personally or professionally.

There’s no need to check your soul at the door when you go to the office. If you can’t be yourself at work, you haven’t found — or created — the right workplace yet.

I’ve proven to myself that it’s possible to run a successful business this way. My web traffic keeps going up, hitting a new all-time high of 10.7 million page views last month. When I announced the new workshops, they sold enough tickets to cover all the costs within the first week, and some are still months away.

This October 1st will be my blog’s 7-year anniversary. Only a tiny percentage of blogs last that long. I doubt I’d still be happy doing this, however, if I held back in order to avoid alienating anyone.

One thing I’ve learned is that although not everyone will like you for being you, more people will respect you. And some of them, as ironic as it may seem, will actually refer new business to you even if they don’t like you that much. They may be disappointed that they don’t have much compatibility with you personality-wise, but there’s a good chance they’ll be able to tap into some appreciation for you at the level of character. While people may not like some of my personal interests, I think many of them still appreciate my honesty and openness. They may not like my playfulness or sense of humor, but they can still appreciate my willingness to push boundaries and stretch myself.

I’m not really trying to push people away or to alienate people — not directly. I’m simply making sure that I continue to enjoy my work and that it remains a labor of love. I hope you can understand and appreciate that. There are plenty of other people in this field, and if you find that my style or my message is a turnoff for you, I invite and encourage you to go elsewhere. It really is pointless to complain to me about such things though because despite the protests, I’m going to continue doing what I love, and I absolutely refuse to sanitize my public image. If you attempt to complain to me about that, don’t be so surprised when I treat you as a fool for doing so.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

This inspired vibe has many forms, which include aspects like caring, playfulness, happiness, passion, curiosity, exploration, love, and oneness. There are countless ways to be in the flow. The common element is that when I’m in the flow, I feel open, connected, and graceful.

It took years of public speaking practice to reach the point where I could experience this flow consistently while in front of an audience. When I first began on this path, I started as many others do. I focused on the words I was saying. I learned to write speeches. Then I learned how to deliver what I’d prepared.

I attended workshops on how to improve at writing and delivering speeches. I networked with successful speakers. I got involved in Toastmasters International and the National Speakers Association.

I also stretched myself by competing in speech contests, winning several of them. I did comedy improv for a few months and performed in a couple shows. I kept pushing myself to get better.

In the long run, however, I found this approach to public speaking to be a dead end for me. It always felt a bit unnatural for me. This style of speaking, while very popular and well developed, was too rigid and controlled for me. I can’t speak like that and be in the flow of inspiration at the same time.

My message is about waking up to conscious growth, to live more truthfully, lovingly, and powerfully. It’s not a message just for me. It’s a message for all of us. It’s not a message of words. It’s a message of being.

The particular words I use to deliver this message aren’t as important as I was led to believe. I sure have written plenty of words so far, and I’m always coming up with new ones. If I’m delivering this message to an audience, what I say isn’t critical. I find that the most important factor is who I am when I’m on the stage.

Public Speaking as a Co-Created Experience

If I’m speaking to an audience, delivering a well-written and polished speech, but internally I’m focusing most of my energy on remembering what to say and do at each step, then what is the audience’s role in that speech?

I’ve seen many speeches that seemed excellent from a technical standpoint, but I didn’t feel the speaker was actually present in the room with us. His/her energy was focused on what to say next… or what gesture to make… or where to move on the stage so as to use the whole speaking area… or perhaps on appearing confident. On the whole I don’t enjoy such speeches, and I prefer not to watch speakers who communicate like that.

When I’m really in the flow of communicating with an audience, I’m not thinking about what I’m going to say next. I’ll have an idea of what I’m going to talk about, but I’m not really giving a speech. The experience is much more interactive. It feels like my energy combines with that of the audience, and I become a conduit for the flow of a co-created experience.

This might sound chaotic at first, but it works well in practice… perhaps because when people come together for a workshop or presentation, they’re showing up with similar assumptions, expectations, and desires. People typically attend my workshops because they want to grow, and so our collective energy co-creates a growth experience for the group. Everyone wants that to happen, and so it does.

I’ve done 5 Conscious Growth Workshops so far (with a 6th one coming up in 4 weeks), and each one has been unique. I do continue to improve the structure each time, but I believe that most of the difference in how these workshops turn out has to do with the particular energy of each group. Every audience broadcasts a collective energy, and it’s a different broadcast each time.

While I understand that for many people, public speaking seems like a frightening thing to do, for me it’s a very beautiful and harmonious experience. This is probably because I don’t see the audience as being opposed to me in any way. We come together with a common purpose — to create a powerful growth experience for all. So we’re all on the same page. I want to be a good facilitator, and the audience wants me to have a good experience. So what is there to be nervous or worried about? A workshop is not a performance; it’s a stimulating group adventure.

I understand pretty well how this co-creative model works in the area of public speaking. I think it’s why I enjoy speaking so much and why I find it so rewarding. Lately I’ve been pondering how to expand this co-creative model and apply it to other parts of my life as well.

Co-Creation vs. Domination and Submission

Last year I shared some ideas on domination and submission and how it applies to personal growth. While this can be practiced as a sexual thing, it’s really a general pattern of relating. If you tell someone what to do and they do it, you’ve dominated them. If the opposite happens, you’re practicing submission. Don’t get hung up on the words — it’s the underlying concepts that matter, not the words used to describe them.

You can use domination or submission patterns in any part of your life. You can relate to others by trying to dominate them or by submitting to them. A boss tends to be a dominant figure in many organizations, one that employees are expected to submit to. You can use a dominant parenting style by controlling your kids and telling them what to do. When dealing with a gun-wielding law enforcement agent, you might find yourself taking on a more submissive role.

Co-creation, on the other hand, is a more cooperative approach. Parties combine their power to create something together, with neither submitting to the will of the other. In a way you could say that all parties agree to submit themselves to the collective will, but no one is personally in charge of the collective.

I’m not suggesting that one model is superior to the other. They each have their strengths and weaknesses. In urgent situations a command-based approach may be important — there may be little time for discussion when fast, decisive action is required. It makes sense for the surgeon to be the boss of the operating room when a critically injured patient is on the table, and time is of the essence.

In other situations a collaborative approach may produce superior results. To continue the medical example, multiple doctors may confer about a patient’s care, potentially coming up with better treatment options than any one of them might have chosen individually.

I’ve explored the D/s pattern enough to see that it does have value, but my interest in focusing on it has basically run its course, and now I’m drawn to explore a co-creative model. Since I love immersive experiences, I’ve already stepped into that space this week and plan to continue with this direction for quite a while. I want to deepen my understanding of co-creation through direct experience and see what it’s capable of.

Subjective Reality and Co-Creation

Since I’ve been getting incredible mileage from exploring subjective reality, naturally I want to explore how co-creation and subjective reality can mesh with each other.

At first glance it may appear that subjective reality is in conflict with the idea of co-creation. If you create your reality, and if there’s only one consciousness, then how can we talk about multiple consciousnesses creating something collectively? Does that even make sense within a subjective universe? Isn’t there only one being, and how can you co-create with just one entity?

I understand these concerns, but there are easy ways to resolve them. Remember that subjective reality is not a truth per se — it’s just a perspective, a lens through which you can look at truth. It isn’t difficult for the subjective lens to include a co-creative aspect.

Clues from Lucid Dreaming

For me the major clues regarding how to connect the dots between subjective reality and co-creation came from lucid dreaming. I’ve had many more lucid dreams this year, i.e. dreams where I’m conscious and aware that I’m dreaming, so I’ve been doing further experimenting along these lines.

If you’re having a nighttime dream, would you say there are multiple consciousnesses in the dream, or is it all just you? I imagine you’ll probably agree that there’s ultimately just one consciousness there, and it’s yours. You’re the dreamer of course.

What are the other dream characters? Do they have independent will separate from your own? You’d probably say that they don’t. At best these characters may represent different parts of your psyche. Since the whole dream world is playing out in your mind, everything in it is coming from you.

Those who believe that the objective lens is the only truth would probably agree on this much. They’d probably say that the whole dream is due to a pattern of neurons firing in your physical brain, and therefore everything in the dream world is coming from within your brain. So of course the dream characters don’t really have a consciousness that’s separate from yours.

That said, I’ve had some fairly interesting experiences involving a certain aspect of lucid dreaming — trying to mind control the other dream characters.

You might think that if you get really good at lucid dreaming, you should eventually be able to mind control your dream characters perfectly. What’s to prevent you from controlling them just as easily as you control your own avatar? After all, the dream body you have isn’t the real you. It’s just a mental projection. So are all the other dream characters. So it seems reasonable that you might develop the skill to control the other dream characters, willing them to do your bidding however you see fit. If there’s some mechanism to prevent you from doing this, it’s not clear what that would be. The main limitation seems to be just developing the skill to do it, just as you’d develop any other lucid dreaming skill.

As I tried to further develop this ability in my lucid dreams, I noticed that while I could successfully mind control other dream characters, it wasn’t as easy as I expected it to be. It takes a lot of concentration to bend a character to my will, and on some level it feels like the character is resisting being controlled. As soon as I have a lapse in concentration, that character breaks free for a bit and stops following my mental commands.

I called Erin and asked her about her experiences in this area since she’s been lucid dreaming much longer than I have. She reported similar results, and she added that it feels like the other dream characters are pre-programmed to do certain things. If you try to mind control them, you can, but as soon as you let up or lose concentration, those characters’ original programming reasserts itself, and they continue following their previous scripts. Erin suggested that the resistance may come from the characters being programmed to play out a certain storyline, and when you try to mind control them, you mess up the storyline to an extent.

Erin also said that it’s possible to take control of the whole dream and to essentially wipe out the pre-programmed story. When she does that, she says it’s much easier to mind control the other characters. They no longer have a scripted routine to return to. I haven’t tried wiping out the entire dream story, but what Erin described is consistent with my own experience.

Now the interesting part is that waking reality seems to work in much the same way. If you try to control other people, then to a certain extent, they let you. Perhaps you don’t do this through the same mechanism of telepathic mind control, but you can just as easily develop the skill of influencing others, essentially using your will to override their previous behaviors for a while. It’s not that difficult to knock someone out of their pre-programmed script for a while.

Hitler and the Nazis are one potent example of this phenomenon. Since then there have been some intense psychological experiments demonstrating just how easy it is to control and direct people. Perhaps the most notable would be the Milgram Shock Experiments during the 1960s. If you aren’t familiar with them, I encourage you to follow the link and read up on them. These experiments have been repeated numerous times with similar results.

If we commit to doing so, we are indeed capable of dominating and controlling others, and to a great extent, they’ll let us. Similarly there’s also a part of us that’s eager to submit to authority. Start noticing how often you tell people what to do, and they obey you. And also notice how often people tell you what to do, and you obey them.

Become aware of all the subtle ways the command and control model comes up each day. When you get an email and you reply to it, you’re doing someone else’s bidding. If they hadn’t sent you that message, you’d have directed your time elsewhere.

What I’ve observed regarding how dream characters react to being dominated aligns pretty well with how waking characters respond. They may offer token resistance, but they also bend to the dominant will most of the time. When the dominant will is relaxed, the character return to their previous scripts for the most part.

So how might we use this to connect the dots between subjective reality and co-creation?

One Model of Co-Creation

If we assume, as Erin suggested, that our dream characters aren’t really conscious and are just following something akin to a pre-programmed script, then one way of explaining co-creation in a dream world is this:

The other dream characters aren’t really conscious, but they’re pre-programmed with a storyline to follow. This storyline is a higher level construct, one created by our subconscious. When we dominate or mind control other characters, we knock them off script, which can throw off the unfolding story. Yes, we have the power to do this, but perhaps it’s better to go with the flow of the story (or the dream) and see where it leads. Perhaps there’s a purpose to the story that we should listen to and understand.

If we apply a subjective reality lens to our waking world, we could suggest a similar interpretation. The other people walking around aren’t separate conscious beings, but they’re pre-programmed to help create a certain storyline. This story isn’t something we’ve consciously created per se. It’s being created by our subconscious. While we can control people by exerting our dominant will, we may mess up the story when we do so. It’s preferable to allow the other characters to follow their intended scripts, so we can better understand where the story is going and flow with it.

What is co-creation then? Co-creation is cooperation with our subconscious. To co-create is to align ourselves with the unfolding story. The other characters all represent different parts of us. They may not be independent, fully conscious beings, but they are pre-programmed with certain behaviors because it’s part of the storyline. We can resist their behaviors and try to change them, but ultimately this may corrupt the storyline. If we really don’t like where the story is going, we always have the power to consciously step in and take control and redirect a given scene, but perhaps it’s best to let the story unfold as it will and to play our own part in alignment with what the other characters are doing.

To co-create with this model is to acknowledge that a story is indeed unfolding in this reality, and we’re all characters within it. Every character has value because each one contributes something to the story. So this form of co-creation isn’t necessarily something we must do in terms of adopting different behaviors. It’s more of a general attitude of cooperation… of valuing what the simulation is playing out and flowing with it. In other words, sit back and enjoy the ride, and don’t resist what’s happening.

There is some value in this perspective, but overall it’s not my preferred model to use for co-creation. It seems a bit too passive, and it also paints the other characters as little more than automatons or NPCs.

Another Model of Co-Creation

Instead of using scripts and programming to describe how people behave, we could also say while deep down there may be just one creator in this reality, everyone is a part of that creator, just as each cell in your body is a part of the greater whole.

So co-creation is simply consciousness collaborating within itself. Just as you may have a discussion with yourself, listening to the different voices within you in order to come to a decision, you can do the same with other people, and it’s essentially the same process.

You enjoy inner harmony when your different facets are in agreement — your thoughts, words, and deeds are congruent. Similarly, you create outer harmony when the people in your life are mutually supporting one another.

External co-creation is really the same thing as doing inner creative work. In order to create anything, you must somehow get all the different parts of yourself to agree upon what to do at any given time. If your mind wants to write, sleep, eat, and go to the bathroom all at the same time, you’ll just spin in circles.

While you can use a domination-based model to get yourself to take action, it tends not to be very sustainable in the long run. Just like mind controlling other dream characters, it requires intense concentration. As soon as your attention lapses, slippage occurs. In practice it’s difficult to maintain this state for long.

With this model the focus is on creating harmony. Forward action requires cooperation, whether it’s internal cooperation or external cooperation.

In this case we wouldn’t say that other people have a separate consciousness per se, but then neither does your avatar. There is still just one consciousness, and the different human beings within it are projections of the different aspects of that consciousness. So they’re not separate consciousnesses, but they are all conscious… just as your fingers aren’t distinct human beings, but they’re still human.

So to subjectively co-create with other people doesn’t imply that we’re all distinct conscious beings. We’re all individual projections of different aspects of consciousness. Co-creation is the process by which consciousness establishes harmony within itself.

Your avatar is a vehicle for creating that harmony. Instead of passively watching the story play out, you can exert some influence over the storyline. You get to be part producer and part audience member.

To co-create is to influence the other aspects of consciousness, to discover where we can agree, and then to leverage that agreement to develop and release a more powerful aspect of the story.

Exploring Co-Creation

For years I’ve been practicing a model of conscious creation that involves setting goals and achieving them, or setting intentions and manifesting them. This model is effective — it works.

I’d also like to practice co-creation, to see what can be created when two or more people contribute to a goal or intention that goes beyond what either of them would have chosen individually.

Co-creation is more than just teamwork. One person can come up with a goal and assemble a team to work together to achieve that goal. Co-creation, however, is when the team comes up with the goal as well. So the goal isn’t handed down from above.

Co-creation occurs from the idea stage onward, so even the starting idea is worked through collaboratively. If I already know what my goal or intention is in advance, or if some other individual does, then most likely we have one person submitting to another person’s direction. A co-creative team comes up with its own projects.

With co-creation you don’t even know what the goal or intention will be in advance. That’s something to be worked out collaboratively. Each person can suggest ideas and bounce them off each other, but the point isn’t for one person to convince the other that any particular idea is best. The idea is for all involved to collectively reach an agreement that everyone willingly commits themselves to.

Co-Creation and Relationships

While I could apply this model to my business (and I’ve already started doing so, with some cool new ideas percolating), I’m actually more interested in applying it to my social life first. Due to the highly social nature of co-creation, this just makes sense to me. But in practice I have to be more flexible than this because you never know where co-creation will lead. So my social life is merely a place to get started.

Because it’s uncommon to consciously co-create our connections with others (we normally do so unconsciously), we often fall into the domination-submission realm in terms of how these interactions play out. One person decides what they want and then seeks to get the other person to go along with it. This works to some extent, but as with mind controlling a dream character, it normally meets with some resistance.

In situations where I’ve already been using a co-creative model, the results have been promising. My workshops are a good example. I don’t feel overwhelmed or overloaded there. We create a certain energy that seems to keep things pretty balanced and harmonious. I think the face-to-face feedback helps as well. People tend to be open and friendly but also respectful of the fact that I can’t have 5 conversations all at the same time. I don’t need a list of rules telling people what’s okay or not okay. Within the environment that we create, people tend to be pretty socially graceful. You might say that it’s because of the face-to-face element, but I see this online in some places too, such as with my Google+ interactions.

I do believe it’s possible to co-create with large groups, but it may be more difficult to get everyone to agree. Take note that this isn’t the same thing as dominating and controlling large groups, such as Hitler did. My workshops attract people with common interests, so it makes sense that co-creation can gain a foothold there. But with more diverse groups, it could be more challenging.

Consequently, I’m going to focus for now on co-creating with individuals and very small groups, such as my existing friends. I probably won’t have time to try this with everyone right out of the gate, but I think it would be rewarding and enlightening to have a discussion with a friend about how each of us would like to see our connection evolve, then to see what we can agree upon, and then to commit ourselves to that co-created vision of where our relationship will go next. And then of course we have to keep adjusting our vision as we grow and change, so it doesn’t go stale.

I already did some of this with Rachelle yesterday. We had a deep discussion about what we want to create next in our relationship. Instead of only discussing what we each want as individuals, we tried to gain a sense of what we could co-create that would inspire both of us. I think that individual desires are necessary because they provide fuel for the collective vision, but then you have to let others’ desires combine with yours to create something together, something that goes beyond what either of you would have come up with individually.

This morning I had another experience while talking to a business partner. Going into the call, we had two separate projects to discuss, one of his and one of mine, but after we’d talked for a bit, he suggested a creative way to combine them. I instantly liked the idea, recognizing it as something that would be good for everyone. We agreed to make it so immediately, and now we’re already moving forward with it. It was a very fast way to work out a win-win arrangement. The best part is that this will ultimately produce something that’s free for everyone but which will also benefit our respective businesses, so it isn’t just a win for the two of us but also for everyone else who will be affected by it.

A Co-Creative Attitude

At the individual level, you may set goals and intentions based on what you desire.

A co-creation attitude is all about win-win. It isn’t just about what’s good for you. It’s about what’s good for everyone. You can co-create at the level of determining what’s good for the team, or you can co-create as Marc Allen recommends — for the highest good of all.

My experience on this path is pretty limited since I’m just getting started with it, but I can already see that the energy signature of co-creation is different than the one I’m accustomed to with traditional goal setting or intention-manifestation.

Co-creation requires a more flexible attitude. It’s important to bring your own desires to the table, but then you must be willing to allow the energy of others’ desires to merge with your own, so that you eventually come to form an intention or goal that everyone loves.

I’m looking forward to talking with more friends to discuss what we might co-create together next. It’s too early to say what the results will be, but I’m pretty optimistic about it thus far, and the few interactions I’ve had with this mindset in the past couple days have all been great.

I feel this is a good time for me to get started on this path, but I can’t predict where it will lead. To be truly co-creative as opposed to dominant, I have to open myself to seeing my relationships evolve in ways I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen on my own.

I’m not treating this as a 30-day trial since I expect it will take considerably longer to explore it, but it does feel a little like embarking on a new 30-day trial where I don’t know what the outcome will be.

I’ll surely be sharing more about subjective reality and co-creation at the upcoming Subjective Reality Workshop in October, which already has dozens of people signed up for it, but I also expect that I’ll blog about new insights along the way.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

I don’t do this 100% of the time… but probably 95% of the time these days. The other 5% consists of situations like if I’m all sweaty after a workout when I run into someone and a few other exceptions that seem reasonable to me. But if there’s any doubt, I’ll give a hug.

When you respond to a handshake offer with a hug, you communicate that you like and accept the other person more completely than they expected… and so there’s less reason for them to hold back when they communicate with you. Consequently, they typically open up and share more of their true selves, which is always beautiful to behold.

I’ve noticed that when I do this, even people that might not seem so comfortable with it at first will accept that I must be feeling perfectly comfortable with them, and so the conversation that follows is able to go deeper, faster. A hug creates a very different vibe than a handshake. It’s like doing a completely different opening move in chess that changes the whole direction of the game that follows.

I’d say that perhaps 90-95% of people are completely comfortable in receiving the hug, even when they offered a handshake at first. They may even react in a way that suggests a slight embarrassment that they offered a handshake when I was obviously willing to accept a hug, as if they’re thinking, Do’h… I should have offered Steve a hug to begin with. They recognize that they attempted to raise their shields unnecessarily. So for these people, the hug acknowledges to them that my shields are indeed down, so they can relax because they won’t need their shields either. They have nothing to fear from me and nothing to protect. No degree of conflict is anticipated.

For the remaining small percentage, the hug represents an offer to connect without any need for social shields or formality. Some people don’t feel good about connecting in that way, and so it’s normal for them to feel some hesitation. But I still think it’s a good thing because I’ve let them know that the door is open if and when they’re ready to walk through it. They don’t have to ask or knock.

Most of the people in this latter group just need more time to warm up. Their initial reaction comes mainly from surprise rather than intentional resistance. They just didn’t expect a hug, probably because they’re not used to it. But as they come to terms with the invitation the hug represents, they accept it and enjoy it. Then by the end of the conversation, they give a parting hug freely and willingly, maybe even feeling appreciative that they had a chance to connect in such a delightful way.

Most of the time, but with some exceptions, the people in this latter group are men. I’m sure that doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

On very rare occasions the other person is so shielded that they decline to accept the invitation to open up. This is almost invariably due to past emotional wounds having to deal with trust. But this is pretty rare in my experience, probably happening less than 1% of the time. And even in those situations, I still think the hugs are wise. In those situations, I see my role as being a stepping stone on the person’s path back to trust and security. They may need to receive such offers from several other people before they’re ready to go there.

I’ve had my fill of connecting with people from behind a shield of formality, especially having dealt with many technical people, lawyers, and others who are quite often disconnected from their hearts and who communicate in emotionally stunted ways. I just feel so done with that approach. It’s completely phony and utterly pointless. It slows everything down, and so much of the communication that stems from this type of energy is pure B.S. anyway. You can’t speak your truth from behind a shield.

I openly hug people I do business with as well, assuming I have the opportunity to hang out with them in person at some point. For instance, I’ve hugged Morty Lefkoe many times (creator of the Lefkoe Method). I’ve hugged his wife — and even salsa danced with her too. I’ve hugged Paul Scheele at least a few times (creator of PhotoReading and Paraliminals), as well as Pete Bisonnette who’s President of Learning Strategies. I’ve hugged Louise Hay (from Hay House, publisher of my book) as well as many other Hay House authors and team members.

I really enjoy that whole Jerry Maguire – Rod Tidwell style of relationship. It makes business so much more fun. Why shouldn’t we share hugs with all the people we work with. I think it would be so much better if lawyers hugged each other, the judge, the court reporter, etc. when they went to work. Doctors should hug their patients. People should hug their accountants too — I’ve hugged mine!

I think formality, even in business, is just stupid. I bought into that type of keep-your-distance communication style for years. That was not so coincidentally the time period when my business tanked, sinking into debt year after year.

I was definitely not this way earlier in life. I was totally the opposite of a huggy person. During my teen years I could go months without sharing a hug with anyone. Now it’s just a daily thing for me.

Today I hugged three new people that I met for the first time at a local coffee shop, twice each. I hugged Rachelle. I hugged another friend who happened to recognize me while I was meeting with the first three. This is normal for me now and feels completely natural, but years ago it would have seemed completely abnormal to me.

For me this shift was a fairly easy one to make because I shifted from the game development industry to the personal development field, and the people who work in the latter field tend to be a lot more huggy. So just by going through this career transition, I subjected myself to a lot of hugs on the other side. I admit that I wasn’t so comfortable with all the hugs at first. It took me a while to get used to it. But I’m grateful for all those people who kept hugging me, even when I still felt some resistance to it. Gradually, over a period of years, they helped me convert from a non-huggy person to a very huggy person. I’m definitely happier as a huggy person. Hugs are wonderful… so much better than handshakes.

These days even when I’m around technical, left-brained people who clearly won’t be very huggy, I bring that huggy vibe with me. It often surprises them when I hug them, but even knowing that they may initially have some resistance to it, I still hug them anyway. I rather enjoy seeing their reactions because it reminds me so much of myself. I also believe they’ll be happier if they can undergo the same type of transition I did. They may never make that journey — it’s entirely their choice — but I just want to plant a seed for them to ponder.

In the past I used to think that hugging people I was meeting for the first time was too aggressive. I assumed that people would be turned off, creeped out, or offended in some way. But based on sharing hundreds and hundreds of hugs since then, I now believe that the vast majority of people would absolutely love to receive more hugs. Most of the time they’re just afraid to request them; they don’t want to offer a hug and have it rejected. So they play it safe and offer a handshake instead, even though they’d actually prefer a hug. By hugging them first, I assume all the risk of rejection, and they get what they want. Most of the time people smile after receiving the hug.

If I happen to offer someone a hug, and they reject it, I’m okay with that. So far that’s never happened though. But most of the time, when I turn a handshake into a hug, I’m giving the other people what they really want, and I’m alleviating them of any risk of rejection. Everyone wins.

If you happen to meet me in person, such as at an upcoming workshop, just frakkin hug me. I assure you it won’t be rejected.

You can try offering me a handshake too, but most likely you’re going to get hugged no matter what. If you’d prefer not to receive a hug, you’ll just have to avoid me.

Here’s a very huggy photo from the last CGW. People love hugs… yes, even the left-brained geeky types. You just have to give them permission.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

+Family: Still looking for a better job. There just isn’t much out there these days. I’ll keep pounding the pavement weekends and evenings till I find something though. Sorry I can’t make it to the holiday thing this weekend, but finding a new job is important to me. Wish me luck!

+Roommates: Let’s do another weekend video game fest. That was fun last time!

+Hot Friends: I’m free Friday night. Let’s go out!!!

+Friends -HotFriends: Can’t on Friday… my boss is making me work late again.

+Ex’s: OMG… my wealthy uncle left me and my siblings $10M, and I haven’t even seen him since I was like 5.

+Friends to Dump: Can’t believe how gassy I’ve been lately. Went to the doctor, and he said it might be a permanent thing I’ll just have to deal with.

+Stalkers: It’s been a long time coming, but I’m finally moving to India to study meditation for a few years. I’ll miss all of you so much, but I’m going to a place where Internet access is very limited, so I probably won’t be online much for a while. xoxoxox

* * *

+Media: Looks like some silly prankster hacked into my account and posted fake sexy pics of me. I guess it happens when you’re changing the world. Let’s forget about it and move on to talking about real issues… like how we can keep spending money we don’t have, without it looking like we’re spending money we don’t have.

+Girlfriends: Dammit!!! Sent those pics to +Media instead of to you guys. I’m so toast.

+Wives: I know it’s hard on you, hon, but we’ll get through this. It will all blow over soon. You know you’re the only one for me. <3

+Public: We’ve had numerous complaints from privacy advocates about Google’s privacy practices, so we’re launching a panel to investigate them. If they don’t send someone to testify willingly, we’ll have to subpoena them.

+Wives +Girlfriends: Don’t worry… we’re gonna work Eric Schmidt over till he guarantees this sort of thing can never happen again.

+Wives: No idea why those people commenting on that last update are acting so familiar. I just sent it to you and my staff members.

+Facebook +Microsoft: Thanks again for the campaign contributions!

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

As I considered different relationship models like monogamy, serial monogamy, polyamory, and more, I soon realized that what I really wanted to experience wasn’t a good match for any existing labels that I knew of. I wouldn’t want to apply any of those old labels to myself because none of them make sense to me. They all seem too narrow and limiting.

In 2009 I wrote a post about Label-free Relationships. This mindset of trying to avoid labeling my connections with other people was a step in the right direction, but it wasn’t quite enough.

What helped me adopt a different perspective was my stepped-up exploration of subjective reality within the past year. I pondered that if life is a dream, then what does it mean to have relationships with other people (dream characters)? In a dream we’re all inherently connected anyway. It may still make sense to classify relationships with your fellow dream characters based on how you relate to them, but labeling isn’t the real issue here.

The bigger issue is how you relate to the dream itself — to life. Clearly there’s a broader and more significant relationship here than your individual connections with other dream characters. Those low-level connections are still important, but focusing on them too much seems limiting.

I began to explore this idea of stepping back from managing my connections at the dream character level, particularly with respect to conscious growth. Instead of thinking about my relationships with people X, Y, and Z, and pondering how those individual relationships might continue to grow and evolve, I began paying more attention to my general relationship with life itself.

I started to wonder that if we’re all connected, then maybe focusing on individual relationships is too granular.

Suppose you’re in a relationship with a woman, but instead of relating to her as a complete person, you focus most of your attention on your relationship with her breasts. Sure you might enjoy such a relationship for a while, but eventually you’re going to have this woman poking you and saying, “Um… hello… there’s more to me than just my boobs, ya know!” And that’s a fairly gentle reaction. She might of course start yelling at you to take a break from her bossom.

Consider this as an analogy for life itself.

Suppose that when you focus too much of your attention on your relationship with just one person, life eventually starts poking you and saying, “Um… hello… there’s more to me than just this one dream character, ya know!” And again, that’s a gentle reaction. Life could just as easily yell at you when your focus is too limiting, such as by giving you the experience of having to deal with lying, cheating, etc. This isn’t a punishment. It’s a wake up call to help you see there’s more to life and to relationships than you previously realized.

Now this makes for an interesting theory, but what of the application?

Well, I’m a dive-in-and-try-it sort of figment, so I decided to give this a try to see what it actually feels like. I can’t say I’m that far along with it yet, but I’ve been testing this for at least a month now, and I’m really falling in love with it.

Instead of putting so much attention on my individual relationships, I’m paying more attention to my relationship with life itself. Actually I wouldn’t say I’m quite that high up yet. The way I currently think about this is to imagine the sum total of my relationships with all the people in my life as if they’re a relationship with a single entity. I hope that makes at least some sense.

From this perspective, my relationship needs can be met by anyone. They don’t have to be met by any particular person.

For example, if I feel a desire for stimulating conversation, I could have that experience with a close friend, or I could have it with someone I just met. Instead of requiring any particular relationship to fulfill this desire, I simply allow life itself to fulfill it without being attached to where it comes from.

The same goes for my desire to give to others. I don’t worry about how much or how little I’m giving to any particular person. I simply focus on giving to life itself. And again, it doesn’t matter if I give to a close friend or a total stranger. It’s the act of giving that satisfies me.

This mindset has really changed the way I relate to people. I feel very unattached to outcomes when it comes to my relationship with any one person. When I’m with someone, I feel very present because I don’t need anything from them. I don’t need that particular relationship to satisfy my needs because I can just as easily have those needs met by someone else. In terms of which needs are satisfied by which person, I delegate those decisions to life.

This has also made me very curious about the nature of each individual relationship and how it relates to the whole. Instead of trying to lead someone or allowing myself to be led by them, I see the relationship as a flowing dance where no one leads. I ask, “Where does this relationship want to go?” A very similar question is: “Where does life want this relationship to go?”

I’d say the biggest transformation is in how I relate to women, especially my female friends. When I think about how each individual relationship is evolving, it can look rather complicated. But this new model simplifies everything. I stopped trying to make sense of these relationships at the individual level, and instead I focus on the big picture of my relationship to women in general… and beyond that my relationship to life.

In practice this means that when I connect with someone, I don’t worry about what kind of relationship I have with that person, and I don’t try to label it. I allow that relationship to go wherever it wants to go, using my intuition to guide me in the moment.

So as to avoid any preconceived notions about where a particular connection may be heading, I like to set up intentionally ambiguous ways to connect. I avoid what looks like traditional dating because that pre-supposes a desire to have a certain kind of connection with someone. When I connect with someone, I like to keep the door open to all possibilities. Will we just hang out and talk for a while? Will we become friends? Will we end up in bed together? Will we do business together? Will we become activity partners? I remain open to endless possibilities for each individual connection.

As a new relationship evolves over time and takes shape, I can try to look back on those first connections and retroactively resolve them by saying, “That was a business meeting” or “That was a date”, but that doesn’t seem to work either. There’s too much fluidity and flexibility.

I rather like not having expectations about how things will turn out in advance. I’ve found that since I started doing this, my relationships have taken on a level of richness and complexity that I’ve never experienced before. I don’t mean complexity in terms of these relationships being overly complicated, but rather complexity in the sense of enjoying the exquisitely delicious creations of an expert chef… or perhaps tasting a really good wine and experiencing all its subtleties.

In the past if I was connecting with a woman I was attracted to, I might be thinking about her in a certain way. I might even try to lead our connection down a certain path. But now I don’t really see a point in doing that. I find it more enjoyable to hold no desires as to how that particular connection turns out — I keep my desires at the higher level of what I want to experience in general, and I avoid attaching those desires to any specific person. I just relax and enjoy the flow of our connection and see where it wants to take us. This just feels so much more natural to me. I know that whatever needs or desires aren’t filled by this particular person will simply show up in some other way.

I rather like this way of living. It feels very freeing and flowing.

You’re basically surrounded by people, so there’s no need to lock your gaze onto specific individuals and demand or expect that they be the main fulfiller of your needs or the primary recipient of your gifts in some areas. Wouldn’t it be better to simply allow life itself to meet your needs through whatever channels it deems best? Life is actually quite good at this, if you give it a chance to prove itself.

To further open myself to a better relationship with life, I’ve relaxed my intentions by not asking for much. I just hold the intention that life will bring me all that I need to feel happy and fulfilled, and it will receive my gifts in return. Then I relish in the delicious mystery of wondering how this will manifest, staying present to whatever opportunities arise and flowing with them as they do.

Consequently, it seems like I’m making much faster progress in certain areas than I was a few months ago, but I don’t feel like I’m personally doing as much. Things are happening, but I don’t feel like I can take credit for them. In a way it feels like I’m allowing life to live through me, like I’m partly stepping aside and allowing it to animate my avatar while I relax into the flow of its direction.

For many years I’ve had that feeling when I write articles. I don’t try or struggle to write; the words flow with effortless ease. I don’t know what I’m going to write in advance. I just get a “knock” in the back of my mind, and I can tell there’s a message ready to flow through me. I’m simply inspiration’s typist.

Now I’m having a similar experience as I relate to other people. I don’t try to be social. I just get a sort of ping — a feeling that it’s time to go out and connect in some way. I sense there’s a certain energy that needs to flow through me, and it shows up in the form of communicating with other people.

The kinds of connections that show up when I hold this mindset seem to have some special beauty to them. Just as I feel that an inspired article is a beautiful work (as long as I don’t get in the way of the inspiration), I have the same feeling towards inspired relationships with other people. I can’t predict in advance how they’ll evolve, but these interactions seem beautiful to me.

Interestingly, it appears that life is indeed bringing me exactly what I need in this area because I’m feeling very happy and fulfilled. I don’t feel like anything’s missing right now, and my intention for this part of my life is simply to remain in this wonderful flow.

I also feel that life is bringing me new opportunities to give, also in ways that leave me feeling very fulfilled. As I mentioned in my previous post, new workshops are lining up. But this came about largely by following the flow of spontaneous action.

One day a few weeks ago I was on the Vegas Strip, and I felt a strong impulse to check out the conference center in one of the hotels. So I did that. As I turned a corner, I saw an employee walking towards me from the opposite direction, and I had an intuitive urge to ask him if he knew who I should talk to about booking some meeting space. My doubts tried to block me for speaking up, but I told them to shut up. He was very helpful and gave me directions to the sales office. Minutes later I found myself asking the receptionist if I could talk to a meeting planner. Shortly thereafter I was speaking to someone about booking workshops. We set an appointment for me to come back later to check out specific rooms (those rooms were occupied at the time).

Note that this was totally spontaneous. I’d only had the impulse to do this minutes earlier, and at first I didn’t even know why I was in the conference center. It wasn’t anything I had planned to do. It just felt like the right thing to do.

In order to follow this flow of action, it was helpful to view the experience through the lens of subjective reality. At the time I was dressed pretty schlubby, wearing jeans, a t-shirt, an old pull-over hoodie, and sneakers. But when I felt hesitant to act, I reminded myself that it’s just a dream. I might not make a great first impression with the meeting planner figment, but I knew that I could speak confidently and enthusiastically regardless of how I looked. Feeling that I needed to dress nicer was just a cowardly delay tactic that cut me off from the flow. It was more fun to take immediate action.

This was just one example of how I’m working on following the flow of inspiration in other parts of my life — not just when it comes to blogging.

Of course I don’t always get it right. One time I was out with a woman I was meeting for the first time, and after only a short time with her, I started feeling very warmly towards her. I felt a strong desire to hold her hand and also to cuddle her as we talked, but it just seemed way too fast and seemingly out of sync with our conversation, and my mind couldn’t make sense of it. I held back from acting on those feelings, so I lost the flow in that regard, even though we still maintained a wonderful connection together. On another day I shared with her what I was thinking and feeling in those moments, curious to see how she would have reacted if I had acted on those feelings. Suffice it to say that my intuition was right. D’oh! This was yet another lesson that I really need to trust these intuitive pings and take more “risks” when my mind is struggling to make sense of it. The irony is that even though she and I talked a lot about subjective reality, I forgot to remind myself that I was in such a reality. This stuff can really bake your noodle (or if you’re a raw foodist, dehydrate it).

Being in the flow of inspiration is easy for me when I write; it’s pretty much second nature now. You might think it should be fairly straightforward to apply the same idea of acting on inspiration to relationships, but in practice I find it more challenging. First, there’s a lot of social conditioning to get past. Second, it seems more challenging to remind myself to think subjectively when I’m in the middle of a conversation with someone. I’m still working through the conscious competence phase, striving to reach unconscious competence when I won’t have to think about it so much.

I’m definitely making progress though, and I’m enjoying the process tremendously.

I know that objectively speaking, it may sound totally ludicrous to relate to other human beings as if we’re all characters in a dream world, but before you make such judgments, let me ask, Have you tried taking this seriously for at least 30 days? If you aren’t willing to test your assumptions about the nature of reality, can you really claim to be objective? That isn’t objectivity; it’s stubbornness.

On a grander scale, I’m starting to wonder what it would be like if everyone related to each other like dream characters. I’ve noticed that when I pop into subjective mode in the middle of a conversation, the interaction shifts pretty quickly… usually within 30-60 seconds. It’s hard to describe, but it feels like the connection becomes brighter and more real. It opens up and starts flowing, whereas it was previously constricted and stifled when viewed through the objective mindset.

I’m going to continue exploring this mindset because I find it absolutely fascinating. Not only does it work better, but it’s a lot of fun as well. The best part is that the other dream characters really seem to like it. When I tell someone I’m thinking subjectively and regarding them as a character in a shared dream, they don’t respond negatively. To my recollection, every time I’ve done this with someone in person, the other person invariably enjoys playing along with me. Their shields go down, not up. I’ve just given them permission to join me in a playful, creative space where anything is possible. I’ve also removed all judgment from the interaction. So consequently, the interactions that result from this mindset flow so much more easily than what you might experience if you try to connect with an objective lens.

When I’m in this mindset, other characters are more likely to engage in playful interactions with me automatically, even if I don’t tell them what I’m doing. And these interactions can take all sorts of strange twists and turns.

A couple days ago I was checking out at the grocery store, and the guy behind me in line says to me, “Hey, I know you. You’re that guy who was in the news.” I paused and wondered what “news” he was referring to, figuring that he must have recognized me. I’ve been recognized in public a number of times before, so that wouldn’t have been a total surprise. But instead he continued, “You’re that gorilla guy, aren’t you?” I glanced at the conveyor belt, which was filled with dozens of bananas I was buying, then looked at him and smiled. I said, “Yeah, I get that a lot.” He told me he thought it was clever. I said, “It is clever… just not original.” Since I buy a lot of bananas, I often get comments from people about being a monkey or gorilla or having one as a pet.

To top it off, the cashier informed me that recently someone had actually dressed up in a gorilla suit, ran into the store, and stole a bunch of bananas. The cashier said it must have been some kind of prank. Apparently the gorilla got away too.

Definitely a dream world.

The objective lens separates us. The subjective lens makes us one. Communicating from a place of oneness is a much different experience than communicating from a place of separation. Connecting subjectively is more lively, vivid, spontaneous, and fun.

I still have to integrate this subjective mindset into other parts of my life. It feels like I’m upgrading a lot of old code little by little. I’m enjoying this gradual unfolding though. I love the mystery of not knowing what lies around the next bend. I don’t think I’d enjoy it nearly as much if I could somehow instantly erase all the old conditioning and drop in the new mindset in a fully integrated manner. I’m getting a lot of mileage from experiencing the contrast between the objective and subjective POVs at a very granular level as I keep making micro-shifts.

Have you had any experiences along these lines? What do you make of them?

Seen any gorillas lately?

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Let me share some perspectives that should make it easier to understand the process of waking up.

The Cellular Perspective

From the cellular perspective, you can see yourself as an individual person interacting with other individuals. You’re like a single cell in the larger body of humanity, which is comprised of billions of other people-cells.

For example, I could say that I’m a guy (a cell) who’s dedicated to helping people (other cells) live more consciously. I may communicate with many people during my lifetime, but each person is a unique individual, so the impact is different for everyone. We may all be part of some larger body of humanity, but our interactions mainly occur at the individual cellular level.

This is similar to one of the cells in your body noticing the other cells around it and deciding to do what it can to be of service to those cells. It may help a lot of cells, but it still regards itself as an individual cell helping other individual cells. And it won’t help all cells equally, nor could it do so even if it tried.

The Holistic Perspective

From the holistic perspective, you see yourself as an integral part of the universe as a whole. The overall intent is to help universal consciousness grow and evolve, particularly the human consciousness of which you’re a part.

This would be like one of the cells in your body recognizing that it’s part of a larger physical body, whereby it stops thinking of itself primarily as an individual cell and begins to see itself as being of potential service to the greater whole. Its fate isn’t as important as the fate of the larger body.

So with this perspective, instead of thinking of myself as a guy who helps people live more consciously, I can see myself as a servant of humanity helping to create a more conscious humanity, or as a servant of universal consciousness itself. My primary role here is to serve conscious evolution, which isn’t necessarily what’s best for any particular individual human in the short term.

Other Perspectives

Of course there are other perspective too. We could discuss identification with community, nation, all life, the cosmos, etc. These perspectives are equally valid, but exploring them would add complexity without adding much substance to the core ideas. So for now I want to keep this simple.

On the atomic side, you’re an individual, and other people are individuals too. On the holistic side, we’re all part of a greater whole.

I’m not suggesting that any one perspective is best. All of these perspectives are valid. But I will suggest that it’s important to integrate the holistic perspective more fully into your life if you wish to experience a healthier flow of abundance.

“Waking up” basically means that you consider and integrate the holistic perspective as part of your daily life. Of course there are degrees of waking up, depending on how aware you are of the holistic perspective and how fully you’ve integrated it into your life. In the same manner, the cells in your body may have varying degrees of awareness that they are in fact part of a larger human body.

Alternatively, to be “asleep” is to be unaware of the larger holistic perspective. We could also define this behaviorally by saying that someone is asleep if they’re aware of the holistic perspective, but they don’t attempt to act congruently with it. In terms of semantics, I’d say that the first group is asleep, while the second group is trying to sleep.

Fairness

At the individual level, fairness seems to be about equality. But of course we don’t see that much genuine equality in the world. It’s quite obvious that some individuals have more resources than others. Some people seem to be luckier too.

Does your own human body care about fairness when it doles out resources like oxygen and sugar to its individual cells? To an extent, sure. When resources are abundant, there’s plenty for all, but even then the distribution isn’t perfectly equal. And when resources become scarce, the body will starve cells that are less important to its survival to divert more resources to the most crucial cells.

So the question is, are you an essential cell in the larger body of consciousness? Or are you superfluous? Well… look at the resources that life sends your way. Do you feel all your needs are well met — your physical needs, emotional needs, social needs, self esteem needs, etc? Are you a highly self-actualized individual? Or do you have strong unfulfilled cravings for things that are important to you? Have you possibly given up on meeting some of your needs? Are you flourishing or are you stuck?

If you’re struggling to get your needs met, that’s a hint and a half that life itself isn’t particularly concerned with your well-being. Don’t fret though if this describes your situation. It’s a problem that can be fixed. Just don’t try to fix it by clamoring and complaining — that doesn’t work and will often backfire.

This may not seem fair, but in a way it is reasonable. You may be a very nice, kind, and generous person, but if your focus is at the cellular level, you’re probably missing so much of the big picture that in the grand scheme of things, your contribution just doesn’t matter that much, at least not from the perspective of universal consciousness.

You may be doing what could just as easily be done by someone else, which means you’re highly expendable. You may be playing follow the follower. You may be genuinely helping, but only at the cellular level. You may be doing nothing much, which makes it easy to ignore you.

If you live in such a way that doesn’t really contribute much, don’t be too surprised if it seems like life is starving you for resources. After all, life doesn’t need you as much if you aren’t actively helping with its expansion and growth.

Consider the cells in your own body. You may scratch an itch on your arm and kill lots of cells in the process without even thinking about it. Individual skin cells just aren’t that important to your overall survival. But you’re less likely to scratch off a patch of critical brain cells. A cut on your finger is no cause for alarm, but a cut on your eyeball is something you’d do more to avoid. Your body is even designed to protect some parts more than others. If something flies at your face, you’ll automatically throw up your arms to protect your head. But you won’t normally use your head to protect your arms.

Do you think you’re among the critical humans that the larger body of humanity would move to defend and protect? Or are you among the sacrificial parts?

What Does Consciousness Want?

What do you want as a human being? Think about your goals, dreams, and aspirations for a moment.

Now consider what an individual cell in your body would want. It wants oxygen and sugar. It wants to eliminate waste. Is this on the same level as your goals? Do you aspire to breathe, eat, and take dumps as your primary goals for the year?

Hopefully not.

Now look at this from the other side. From the perspective of the consciousness itself, your human-level dreams and goals seem petty. It’s important to keep people happy to an extent, but the fate of any one human is largely insignificant. Universal consciousness really doesn’t care if you have a job or an income, if you get the house you want, if you have a good relationship or not. It doesn’t care if you get laid or remain a virgin.

Well, it cares a little, but it’s not a major concern, just as you aren’t overly concerned about the fate of any individual cells in your body. It’s the body’s overall status that matters. And you probably identify more with your mind (your collective cellular intelligence) as opposed to your physical body anyway.

Similarly, universal consciousness is more concerned with the evolution of consciousness itself (our collective consciousness) as opposed to the fate of any individual human or even of humanity itself. Now the loss of humanity would probably be a setback, but consciousness may eventually recover in other forms.

What does consciousness really want? Like you and like your individual cells, it wants to get its needs met, and it wants to grow and evolve. But the level on which it’s capable of doing this goes way beyond what you’re capable of as an individual.

Look around at all the amazing — and accelerating — achievements of consciousness. It’s expanding in many directions simultaneously. Consider what’s evolving on earth. Humanity itself is becoming smarter and faster and more connected. And it’s having some health issues to deal with as well. And consciousness wants to keep going.

Living Small or Living Large

You can spend your life fussing over your own piddly cellular needs, but in the grand scheme of things, it won’t be anything to write home about. No matter what you do or don’t do as an individual, it’s just not going to matter that much.

The same can be said of any cell in your body. At the individual level, a single cell isn’t particularly important.

Imagine asking a cell in your body what he’s doing with his life, and he talks about the Bloodstream Marketing course he’s taking and how excited he is about all the extra sugar he’ll earn from his efforts. Oh boy!

But will his efforts pay off? Probably not. If he isn’t getting his needs met, there’s probably a good reason for it. The larger body will see that his needs are well met if there’s a good reason to do so. Otherwise it will divert resources where they’re needed.

This is how silly we humans appear to universal consciousness. It still cares about us and wants to see us happy for the most part, but it finds our cellular perspective to be rather limiting. If you push to get your individual needs met, but you do so in ways that the larger body doesn’t care about or which may interfere with its bigger plans, it will either ignore you, or it will swat you down like a mosquito.

Imagine if a cell in your body said, I just want to eat food and reproduce like crazy. That might seem fun from his perspective, but then the larger body has a tumor to deal with. Send in the white blood cells.

If you feel like some greater force keeps knocking you back down every time you try to get ahead, you’re not imagining it. It really is knocking you back down, and it will continue to do so until you stop trying to get ahead like a cancer cell would. Have you ever noticed, for instance, that as soon as you try to make progress on cancer-like projects, you keep getting distracted, so your attention has to turn somewhere else?

Quite often we cry “Life is so unfair” when from a larger perspective, it’s a no brainer that life is either going to ignore us or attack us. Humanity’s white blood cells will come after us and make life unpleasant for us when we forget that we’re part of a larger whole and that its well-being is more important than our individual well-being.

Now imagine if an individual cell in your body said to you, “Wait a minute. I get it. I may be just a tiny cell, but I’m a part of this whole body. That’s cool. Is there anything I can do to help?”

What would you say to it? You might wonder what one conscious cell could do for your whole body. Not much most likely. But then you might think, What if this cell could wake up many others, and what if those cells could awaken still more? Eventually you could have a body filled with cells that were aware of the whole body and seeking to serve it. This would fix a lot of your problems. You’d have much better health for starters. Cancer wouldn’t be able to take root. Most diseases would be eradicated easily. You’d always be able to maintain your ideal weight.

So you might tell that one conscious cell, “Go around and wake up more cells. Gather them together. Then we’ll talk.”

Being a Conscious Human

A conscious cell is aware of the whole body and realizes that the body matters more than any individual cell. The cells are there to serve the evolution of the body and mind, not merely themselves. There’s obviously a connection between the good of the cells and the good of the body, but it’s easier to have a healthy body if on some level, the cells are aware that the body’s health is more important than their own. A cell that works against the health of the body is a disease cell.

A conscious human being is aware of the larger body of humanity and has a sense of a greater consciousness that’s unfolding and evolving at a much higher level than any individual human can.

There is value in the lower level perspective. It’s not a perspective to ignore but rather to integrate with the holistic perspective. For example, through relaxed meditative breathing, we can connect with the lower level perspective of our own cells. Breathe in. Breathe out. We’re getting plenty of oxygen. Life is good. This cellular level perspective can help to ground us. Many meditations are essentially about tuning back in to this cellular perspective, while other meditations involve expanding to a more holistic perspective. The ideal is to be able to consider all of these perspectives as valid.

If our cells aren’t healthy, our bodies can’t be healthy, and so humanity itself can’t be healthy. And of course the opposite holds true as well. But there are ways of meeting our needs on different levels that are in alignment with all of these perspectives, and there are other ways that are out of alignment. To live consciously, we need to shift towards the ways that are in alignment, so we can meet our needs as we also meet the needs of the cells in our bodies and of the greater body of humanity.

I’m certainly not the first human being to have the experience of “waking up” and becoming aware of this. Other conscious humans helped wake me up and continue to help me stay awake… or to reawaken me when I lose that perspective. I also endeavor to do my part and help other people wake up to the realization that jobs and money and marriage and retirement just aren’t that important. There are more important things to attend to here. Meeting our cellular needs is still important, but we don’t want to fuss at that level too much. We have more significant work to do here, and we could be experiencing life at a much higher level of existence.

Living your life as a part of humanity will take your experience to a level that’s far beyond life as an individual human being. Even if your intention is to help people, try expanding it to a vision of helping humanity, as if humanity itself is a conscious entity. It’s a whole different level of being.

Now what I’m seeing is that the gathering phase is well underway. Many years ago, it seemed like conscious people were very isolated. Now they’re coming together in bigger and bigger groups. I’m involved in multiple groups of this nature, and it seems like every few months I’m hearing about new groups forming. The conscious humans are clustering, and these clusters are growing larger and more organized. It’s as if new organs are incubating with the larger body of humanity. Something is definitely happening, and it’s a wondrous thing to behold.

Consequently, while I know some people are worried about where humanity is headed, I’m not worried at all. In fact, I’m excited about it. I have the privilege of being able to see what many of these conscious people are up to, and they’re starting to create transformational ripples. If you’re reading this article, then these ripples have already reached you, and you’re being impacted by them.

Some conscious cells are still isolated, however. Others are in very small groups only. And of course there are lots of people who still primarily think at the cellular level (go Bloodstream Marketing). But this is changing.

Perhaps the simplest way I can explain what’s happening is that humanity’s Power has been increasing by leaps and bounds, and now its alignment with Truth and Love desperately need to catch up. Otherwise humanity will eventually crash and burn. For instance, the first atomic bombs were dropped only 66 years ago, yet now we must somehow ensure that they’re never used on a global scale, not even 1000 years from now. One serious mistake or lapse during any minute that we have nukes, and it’s a major setback for us all. That’s a tall order that cannot be satisfied at the cellular level of consciousness. We’ve had too many close calls already (see the documentary Countdown to Zero for details on that). The larger body of humanity is aware of this challenge, and it recognizes that we need more people who are Truthful, Loving, and Powerful to deal with this existential threat.

You’re going to start picking up on this at the individual level, if you haven’t already. For instance, you’re going to feel far less tolerant of political leaders who lie to you. We’re going to see different kinds of leaders emerge, the kinds of leaders we truly need in this day and age. There are plenty of people like that, but in order for them to become popular enough, we just have to continue waking up more individual people. Once enough people are awake (or stop trying to sleep), we’ll see some major shifts. These shifts are already happening in the world of business, where popularity with the masses isn’t as necessary.

The Flow of Abundance

What we’re seeing is that on some level, this higher consciousness is taking note of what’s happening, and it seems to be assisting and accelerating the process. It wants human beings to wake up because a body of conscious cells can do much more than a body of unconscious ones. So if you’re concerned that there are too many crises in the world, recognize that there’s an upside. These major challenges are helping more and more people to finally wake up. We can’t even begin to address these challenges with cellular-level thinking, so we have to wake up in order to solve them.

There’s a lot of rebalancing that’s occurring as universal consciousness and individual human consciousness communicate with each other about how to best meet each others’ needs. How can humanity continue to evolve and expand while keeping individual humans happy and healthy? For humanity to be at its best, enough individual humans need to be at their best as well. You’re going to see this reflected in your own life too, as you grapple with the challenge of how to serve some greater life purpose while also making sure your individual needs are satisfied. In a way, you’re helping humanity experiment in order to find good solutions, which it can then spread to other cells. This is why cells like me feel an undeniable urge to pass on what we’ve figured out thus far.

As I’ve seen in my own life, this higher level consciousness is clearly listening. Somehow it can perceive the level at which we’re thinking, and it responds in kind. If you keep thinking at the cellular level, this higher consciousness will keep trying to wake you up. You may lose your job and other possessions, for instance, until you finally realize that those things don’t matter. We have more important things to deal with right now.

I’m far from perfect in this area, but I’m gradually getting the hang of it. I’m noticing that whenever I slip back down to cellular level thinking, I get a good smackdown. I feel like everything slows to a crawl. And when I shift back up to a higher level perspective, it’s like I’m back in the flow again. The phone rings with fresh opportunities, money just shows up, loving relationships flow into my life, and more. Fortunately perfection isn’t necessary. We just have to shift the balance far enough to achieve critical mass.

For those who are stuck at the cellular level of thinking, I suspect that life is going to become increasingly difficult for you. You’re going to see your worries, fears, and frustrations magnified. Life will seem to be getting worse. It may seem like important aspects of society are falling apart around you. This is happening for a reason though. These old systems are going to be dismantled. That’s actually a good thing. They’ll be replaced with better things.

For instance, you may be worried about debt, either your own or your country’s or someone else’s. But from the larger perspective of humanity, debt is meaningless. Humanity really doesn’t care if our financial system collapses or not. In fact, it may be better for it to collapse and be replaced by something else. So if you’re really attached to the current system and the money in your bank, you may get scared. But if you’re looking at the big picture, you’ll probably feel excited instead.

Be willing to lose what doesn’t matter, so we can all gain what does matter. Jobs don’t matter, but creativity does. Paying our bills doesn’t matter, but keeping our bodies healthy does. Getting good grades in school doesn’t matter, but preserving and passing on our collective knowledge does. Start reorganizing your life around what matters, and be willing to shed what doesn’t.

Try not to be too attached to remnants of the old cellular consciousness, like the money you have, the job you do, and the home you live in. The more you cling to those things, the more stressed out you’ll be. Just notice that these are all artificial cellular level concerns. What’s important is that humanity is evolving in a very positive way. You can resist that change and see your old goals fall apart, or you can flow with it and actively participate in the process of change.

For those who are waking up, life is going to become much easier in a way. Your life will explode with opportunities to learn, love, share, and grow. The good stuff will come from your alignment with the expansion of universal consciousness. But it’s important to keep the perspective of what really matters. Money doesn’t matter. Bloodstream/Internet Marketing is pointless and shallow. Waking people up and consciously co-creating something amazing is what matters.

When you align yourself with this higher level consciousness, abundance will flow through your life with relative ease. However, this type of abundance will be universal level abundance, not human level abundance. It doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily have more money, a more luxurious home, or more possessions. That kind of stuff just doesn’t matter and represents artificial needs, not real needs. This level of abundance means that you’ll be experiencing the benefits of being in a healthier body. You’ll get more of what really matters — more growth opportunities, more love, more joy, more inner peace.

Focus on your true needs. What do you need to feel abundant? You need to keep your body healthy with healthy food, sunshine, and clean air and water. You need a reasonable degree of safety. You need love and belongingness. You need self esteem. You need an outlet for your creativity. Your true needs are quite simple in fact, and they’re easier to satisfy than your artificial needs. You don’t need the latest tech gadget. You don’t need a job or an income. You don’t need to get married. You don’t need to master Bloodstream Marketing.

Your artificial needs may not align well with humanity’s larger concerns. But your true needs certainly do align. It’s in humanity’s best interests to keep its best servants healthy, happy, and prosperous. In that sense, it you dedicate yourself to serving this greater body, it will surely watch your back.

Aligning With Higher Level Desires

In order to tap into this greater flow of abundance, you have to tap into higher level desires.

First, recognize that your human level goals are beginning to bore you. No matter how important you try to make them, you can’t get motivated to work on them. You just can’t get that worked up about making money beyond a certain point. People may tell you it’s important to have specific financial goals, but when you try to do this for yourself, it makes you feel yucky inside. You can’t get motivated to work on those kinds of goals. They don’t inspire you. And so you procrastinate and then beat yourself up. It’s time to end this cycle. It’s time to re-align your desires with something that actually matters to you. You can set better goals than the human equivalent of stockpiling oxygen and sugar.

Stop thinking about what you want for yourself as an individual. Start thinking about what you want for humanity as a whole.

In the past, you may have been hesitant to even think at that level. Start thinking at that level now.

What do you want for humanity itself? Where would you like to see this larger body go during your lifetime and beyond?

Do you want us to clean up the planet? Explore outer space? Improve our educational systems? Stop fighting wars?

Let yourself dream about what’s possible for humanity. Notice that these dreams are much more impressive than anything you could possibly do as an individual.

Become a billionaire? Who cares? Start a charity? Big deal. Discover a new planet? Nice try. When will you be ready to work on a real goal, a goal for humanity itself?

Receiving Guidance

The best part is that you don’t even need to figure this out yourself. All you need to do is wake up to this higher level perspective, and then simply ping this universal consciousness to tell it you’re awake and ready to serve. Ask it for guidance, and guidance will come.

Just be aware that universal consciousness is frakkin powerful. It’s way more powerful than human level consciousness. When you tap into this resource and align yourself with it, your life is going to speed up. At first it may seem like drinking from a firehouse. It will take some time to get used to it.

If you feel that the flow is too much for you, you can ask it to slow down. I do this all the time. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I say to the universe aloud, “Okay… this is too fast. Let’s slow this down for a week or two and give me a chance to catch my breath.” Then when I’m ready, I ask it to speed up again.

With practice you’ll get used to this faster pacing. You’ll get used to things showing up when you need them. You’ll get used to experiencing synchronicities almost every day.

A synchronicity is no accident. Universal consciousness knows what you need, perhaps even better than you do. You really don’t even have to ask for your specific needs to be met once you ask to be a better servant of humanity. As Jesus said, just say, “Not my will, but thy will be done.”

Lately I’ve been holding off on setting specific goals for myself. Instead I’ve been saying to the universe, “Bring me what you want me to work on, and also please bring me whatever you know I need for optimal health, happiness, and flow.” And then I do my best to remain open-minded and detached from outcomes. I let the universal consciousness guide me instead of having to set specific goals and intentions. I still have an intention, but it’s simply to do what’s best for humanity as a whole.

Partly I’m doing this because I’ve reached the point where any individual-level goal would bore me, and I wouldn’t be able to motivate myself to work on it. I just don’t care that much about oxygen and sugar to make it the central focus of my life. So I’m willing to risk things like losing my money, losing my home, having my relationships disrupted, etc. just for the opportunity to see where this flow leads. And yet somehow when I move past this fear of losing stuff, I seem to gain much more than I lose. As far as meeting my human needs goes, they’re all nicely satisfied and then some. Bloodstream Marketing just can’t compare.

Effect on Relationships

When you begin to align yourself with the perspective of higher level consciousness, your relationships with other people will shift. Try not to be too attached to what happens here. Your pairings with any one or more individuals aren’t necessarily going to be stable. It’s how your relationships affect the whole of humanity that matters. What ripples are you and your relationships co-creating?

People who aren’t compatible with this new perspective will fade from your life. At first you may fear that you’re going to end up alone, but there’s no cause for alarm. New relationships will come into your life, relationships with people who have a similar perspective. And these relationships will be much better for you than the old ones. They’ll help you hold the new perspective.

These new relationships will be different than what you’re used to, however. There will be less rigidity and more flexibility in this part of your life. Such relationships may defy traditional labels. You may feel a bit ungrounded in this new space. It takes time to get used to it.

Eventually you’ll realize that happiness and love can come from anywhere. You may have your emotional needs met equally well by a long-time partner or with someone you just met. Universal consciousness will guide you to whatever it is that you need to sustain your emotional health, as long as you don’t get too attached to how it shows up. If you remain open and flexible, your emotional needs can be satisfied with relative ease. Trust that universal consciousness knows just what you need, and it will deliver it right to you if you’re ready to accept it. Again, you don’t even have to ask once you’re on this path. It will satisfy your emotional needs because doing so makes you a better servant. You can’t serve humanity so well if you’re feeling lonely and disconnected. You’ll be more motivated if you have love in your life, so love will be delivered unto you.

Compared to where I was a few years ago, my relationship life might seem a bit strange these days. I have many relationships that would be difficult to label, but they seem to be healthy and flourishing in ways that are hard to get my head around. I can’t really define what they are, and I can’t predict where they’re going. But it seems like these connections are good and healthy for all involved. My biggest relationship challenge is unloading the traditional-minded baggage that nudges me to lock down and label each relationship, so I can feel like I understand it. But whenever I fall into that pattern, things get worse, not better. Conscious relationships don’t seem to like being locked down and labeled. They require more freedom and flow.

At first this sort of situation could make a person feel insecure. You may be accustomed to having a sense of security based on the stability of predictable interactions with people close to you.

However, when you align yourself with universal consciousness, you’re likely to move around a lot more relationship-wise. You’re going to meet and interact with a lot more people than you’re used to. Your social life will be rich and varied. Your stability has to come from trusting that no matter where you are, your emotional needs will still be satisfied. You’ll have the opportunity to share love, intimacy, affection, etc., and it can be more abundant than what you experienced at the individual level of being. I assure you that you won’t have to go it alone. This isn’t a lonely path — it’s actually an incredibly social path.

Effect on Work

Your work life will be transformed as well. You’ll probably need to stop thinking of your career in terms of having a stable job and earning a set income. Serving humanity requires a lot more flexibility and flow than a traditional job can provide. Thinking of starting or running a business is equally limiting. This is human level thinking. What does humanity need?

Humanity is more concerned with things like creativity, purpose, and expansion. It would love to see you contribute to the ongoing expansion and evolution of consciousness. That’s what matters. The other stuff is too trivial to fuss over.

I don’t really have a job title. Sometimes I make one up like President or CEO when it’s required for social convention, but the title is meaningless to me. When people ask me what I do for a living, I don’t really know what to say. I don’t do anything for a living. I just live. In certain situations I might say that I’m a blogger, author, or speaker, but that’s mainly what I say to people who are asleep and I don’t have time to wake them up in that particular moment. If I’m talking to someone who’s awake, then either they won’t ask such a silly question, or they’ll understand my honest answer… and they’ll probably share a similar feeling about job titles.

My business cards have the wrong address because I haven’t updated them in 5 years. My website obviously isn’t the prettiest one out there. I’ve never spent money to market or promote my website, book, or workshops. I don’t think it would be a bad thing to do so; it just hasn’t ever been necessary. Humanity takes care of all my marketing and does a better job than I could.

Last year I uncopyrighted all my blog posts and podcasts, so you have just as much ownership of this article as I do. From a cellular level, that might seem like a foolish decision. But that isn’t the level at which I made the decision. What does a copyright mean to humanity? Of course it’s meaningless. What would you think if one of your cells tried to patent the Krebs Cycle? Silly cells…

Some people are repackaging and selling my work for money. Does that bother me? Of course not. Even though they may be operating at an individual level of consciousness, they’re actually helping. They’re spreading ideas that humanity wants to spread; after all, humanity gave me those ideas to share in the first place. They’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing. I think some of them have been donating back to me as well, since I’ve seen a modest increase in donations lately. But I didn’t do this to get more donations. I did it because it should help the ideas spread and get more people thinking about living consciously. It really doesn’t matter which humans get credit or make money from it.

I think my business actually works better because I don’t manage it with a cellular mindset. Millions of people have been drawn to my work, and it’s been translated into more languages than I can track. People keep sharing it, with or without my permission. New opportunities keep showing up. Money keeps flowing. Everything works. Well, aside from my web server, which I may have to upgrade yet again due to traffic growth. But that’s a good problem to have, isn’t it?

Why does my business work? Because it’s not really a business. It’s a service, not primarily for individual humans, but for humanity itself. The purpose is to help enough people wake up and live more consciously, so that humanity itself may continue to survive and thrive. And by performing this service for humanity, it takes care of all my needs. It’s really good at it too. I barely have to lift a finger to attend to such things. I rather appreciate that.

Individually speaking, there are some humans out there who don’t particularly like my work. But that’s largely irrelevant because humanity as a whole has made it abundantly clear that it appreciates what I’m doing and wants to speed things along with further expansion. These days I largely ignore cellular level feedback because it comes from people at varying levels of wakefulness, so of course they won’t all agree. But I pay close attention to feedback from universal consciousness, such as whether my life is flowing well or not. These days it’s flowing amazingly well, so I figure I’m on the right track.

Is humanity making it abundantly clear that it appreciates what you’re doing? If not, any guesses as to why? Could it be that you’ve been ignoring humanity’s needs, and thus it’s been ignoring your needs? Try doing the opposite and see what happens. I think you’ll like it.

Conscious Business

Recently I’ve been listening to an audiobook about the history of Google. Google began as a fairly idealistic company with the grand mission of organizing and providing access to all the world’s information. Does that sound like an individual level goal or a goal for humanity itself? Of course Google has since become a giant, besting all other search companies. Interestingly, one of the reasons it succeeded is because it attracted some of the brightest minds in the world, people who were inspired by its mission and who would not have worked for the company if it was just about the money. You could say that humanity diverted the best resources to Google because Google’s mission served the best interests of humanity. In fact, Google has helped to create a smarter, more self-aware humanity.

Microsoft used to be a similar purpose-driven company, with the mission of putting “a computer on every desk and in every home.” That was an expansive goal that served humanity. But a lot of people now believe Microsoft has lost its way, and sometimes it acts more like a cancerous tumor than a servant to humanity. Do you believe that Microsoft is here to serve humanity, or mainly itself? Is it working with the expansion and evolution of humanity, or is it working against it? Probably a bit of both. Hence its mixed results and recent stagnation. Microsoft needs a new mission that aligns with humanity’s expansion. So far its current attempts at a new mission have been fluffy and noncommittal. It wastes too much energy on trying to defend its turf, failing to recognize that there’s only one turf, and it belongs to universal consciousness. If you happen to work for Microsoft, do what you can to wake more people up within your company, and eventually the culture will shift, as will the company’s results.

The irony is that companies that care less about quarterly returns and more about service to humanity can often achieve amazing growth. Why? Because humanity wants those companies to succeed. It sends them whatever resources they need to succeed.

Notice which companies appear to be serving the expansion and evolution of humanity and which are only here to serve themselves and their stockholders. If you were a genius, which kind of company would you want to work for? If you were humanity itself, which companies would you support? Which would you ignore? Which would you wish to tear down or transform? Now what kind of company do you currently work for?

* * *

Martin Luther King, Jr. said that we have guided missiles and misguided men. Let’s change that. Guidance is available to you whenever you want. You just have to be reasonably awake to receive it. Then you’ll have all the inspiration you could possibly want.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina