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

I estimate that we can sell about 6 more tickets before the room is at capacity. (Update: We now have only 3 seats left.)

This is the eighth 3-day workshop we’ll be doing in Las Vegas. When I look back on our first Conscious Growth Workshop in 2009, I see that we’ve really come a long way. I especially enjoy the process of designing workshops that are empowering, engaging, social, and practical.

I’d say that the main difference between CSW and other programs on success is this: A typical book, audio program, or workshop on success usually begins with setting goals. After you set some goals, you get a bunch of advice on how to take action to move towards those goals.

This approach does work for some people, but it usually fails. The problem is that it’s too likely that you’ll set socially conditioned goals to begin with — goals such as how much money to earn, what car to buy, how much weight to lose, or what kind of job to get. Those goals may look good on paper, but they’re not enough to center your life around — they’re too shallow and too boring compared to what you can create with a more conscious approach.

If you dive into goal setting too soon, you may come up with some ideas and feel slightly motivated as you write them down, but that motivation won’t last, and those goals won’t stick. That’s because the goals you set weren’t really yours to begin with. If you find yourself changing directions every few months and not sticking with any goals long enough to achieve them, the most likely reason is that you haven’t learned how to set goals consciously. The goals you set were just surface thoughts. If you did the same goal setting exercise a month later, you’d have come up with different goals.

At CSW we’re going to use a smarter and more conscious approach. We’ll address goal setting but not right away. First we’ll help you identify and discard socially conditioned surface goals. Once we get those out of the way, then we can go deeper into what you truly desire to experience in life. We’ll help you build a solid foundation of self-understanding with a variety of exercises, with the aim of creating a holistic life vision, not a disjointed set of goals. Once you have a clear vision for your life and you understand the person you wish to be, you can set goals much more consciously, but you can also enjoy a lot of fulfillment and success simply by sticking to your vision, even when you don’t set specific goals along the way.

CSW is designed to help you discover and embrace what it will take for you to be a success, based on your values and desires. Once you get in touch with that, it’s easier to get into the mode of doing success by taking action. This being aspect is crucial if you wish to experience the type of success that results from your own conscious choices, as opposed to the socially conditioned version of success that’s promoted by mainstream media. Conscious success will fulfill you deeply. Socially conditioned success may leave you feeling very empty inside, regardless of how much you seem to have achieved.

As a simple example, I enjoy conscious success as a writer because my writing is aligned with my true desires. I find it very fulfilling to share ideas with others around the world through the medium of blogging. I write when I’m inspired to write, not because I have to. I have no deadlines, no boss, and no editor. My articles are uncopyrighted by choice, so anyone can republish or translate them.

I enjoy this type of success because I’ve shed the socially conditioned version of success that doesn’t align with my truest, deepest desires. I don’t care if I have a New York Times bestseller. I don’t care about being on Oprah. I don’t care about making millions of dollars. I don’t care what the critics have to say. This vision of writing makes me very happy, and I feel tremendously successful on this path. On the contrary, I have friends who seem much less happy as writers, even though they’ve been on Oprah and have the bestseller accolades. They’re on a stressful treadmill; I’m free.

There will be many creative exercises to help you go through this process. Some are left-brained, others more right-brained. One exercise involves crayons.

If you’ve found that traditional goal setting has fallen short for you, or if you suspect your goals have been overly infected with what society has taught you to want, I think you’ll really gain a lot from CSW. One of my intentions for this workshop is that by the end of the first day, you’ll have more clarity about your true desires than you’ve ever had before in your life. I say this because most people never learn how to differentiate between true desires and socially conditioned ones, and I don’t know of any other workshops that teach people how to tell the difference.

One of the most powerful aspects of CSW is that it will help to unload false notions of success you’ve been conditioned to believe without question. This will restore your freedom to consciously choose what you desire to experience — and to create it without getting bogged down in false desires. It will be a richly rewarding 3 days for you to experience… and certainly for me to share with you.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

To wrap up 2011 and transition to 2012, Rachelle and I went to Phoenix for Raw Spirit Fest, and then yesterday we took a side trip to Sedona to meditate in one of our favorite spots. This retreat gave me time to reflect on the past year and to understand what I want to experience next.

During the past few years, I’ve been very active in the social circles surrounding my work, including connecting with people in the forums, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, email, talking face to face, doing consultations, holding workshops, hosting meet-ups in various cities, and so on. I maintained a strong community-oriented focus for much of this time.

For a while it was my conscious choice to immerse myself in all this social energy and to bring people together in various ways. I enjoyed it.

Eventually I began to feel a bit trapped though. Instead of choosing all this social interaction, it became an ever-present part of my life, whether I wanted to engage with it or not. It no longer felt like a choice. I’d engage in social networking simply because I’d been doing so for years. It became unconscious and very routine. Consequently, I developed quite a love-hate relationship with it. When I freely chose it, I loved it. When I felt like I was being sucked into it, I resisted it. I’m well aware that this influenced my interactions with people as well.

I now understand that it’s time for me to move on from this community-centered focus. It was a nice thing to experience, and it stimulated a lot of growth for myself and others, but I know it’s not the best choice going forward. If I keep doing it, it will only hold me back, and it will also suck others into more unconscious socializing.

Getting wrapped up in other people’s energies (thoughts, feelings, beliefs, etc) on a daily basis can be stimulating and rewarding, but the endless repetition can lead to resentment. That isn’t how I wish to feel about my social life, nor do I wish to serve as that kind of model for others.

If I continue actively immersing myself in the social community surrounding my work, I’ll become a victim of my own past. People are typically drawn to my work based on what I’ve written about in the past, but that isn’t who I am today, and it doesn’t accurately reflect where I’m going. When I keep connecting with people who are interested in discussing ideas that I explored years ago, it means I’m not keeping pace with my own path of growth. It’s like trying to drive while looking in the rear view mirror — after a while you begin to hate driving, even if you’d otherwise enjoy it when looking forward.

I’m delighted that so many people resonate with my work. Last month my web traffic hit a new all-time high: 12.4 million page views. Yet all of those pages contain content that was created in the past.

Essentially I’m faced with a question of priorities. Do I continue to actively engage with the social community surrounding my work and allow myself to keep getting re-immersed in past ideas, past energies, etc? Or do I let it go and focus on my own present and future path of growth?

For quite a while, I tried to do both and strike a balance. My efforts along those lines thus far have failed. Maybe a balance is possible, but I can see now that this balancing point isn’t going to be on the side that invites daily social connections that tie me to the past, such as emails, article feedback, private messages, questions, etc.

All this social energy has been acting like an anchor. When I try to move forward, it keeps tugging me back to old ideas I’ve already explored. It re-introduces old problems I’ve already solved but that other people are just beginning to solve. It tempts me to engage in old discussions that have no growth value for me today.

This month is my 15-year anniversary of being vegan, for instance. Is there any value in having the “why vegan” discussion with someone who hasn’t even done a 30-day trial of it yet? Will it be helpful to do more interviews on polyphasic sleep? Do I care to engage with people who think organized religion is the path to salvation? No… that’s looking to the past. I’d rather connect with people who can inspire me to keep growing. To make room for empowering connections, I’m consciously cutting connections that encourage me to keep looking backwards.

I love helping people grow, but I’m not willing to do that at the expense of my own growth.

So in 2012 I want to recenter my life on my path of conscious growth. I want to disengage from all the discussion surrounding my past work and free myself to explore life on my own terms once again.

The forums are closed. My online contact form is closed. I deleted my Facebook page a few months ago. I follow zero people on Twitter, so no one can send me a direct message there. My Google+ page is now closed to comments. If you wish to discuss my work, you remain free to do so; just don’t try to involve me in such discussions.

Socially I’m only keeping open the doors that I consciously choose to keep open, such as my workshops. But I’m closing the doors that encourage too much unconscious communication, such as feedback and questions related to past articles.

Part of this shift involved preparing for the upcoming Conscious Success Workshop, which starts in 11 days. One reason I enjoy creating workshops is that they push me to keep raising my standards. My vision of success involves consciously pursuing my own path of growth, and I want to know that I’m solidly living that vision before delivering this workshop.

As I clear out the mental and social clutter, I’m feeling much lighter and more enthusiastic about this coming year. I’m anticipating new experiments and experiences. I especially love this fresh opportunity to fully engage in what captivates me without regard to other people’s feedback.

In some ways I feel like I’ve been assimilated by the Borg collective for the past few years. There were so many voices in my mind that it was difficult to stay connected to my own desires. Now that those voices are quieting down, I’m enjoying the bliss and peace of reconnecting with what I love most — conscious growth experiences.

Disconnecting from the social elements that didn’t serve me doesn’t mean I’m disconnecting from the world. I love to write and expect to continue doing so. Reading people’s feedback on my writing, however, is something I can live without. I feel I’ve digested enough feedback about my writing to last me a few lifetimes, so I’m cashing in some of those credits to opt out for a lifetime or two.

In addition to refocusing on my own path of growth in 2012 and closing the door on daily social networking, I’d like to reorient my social life to spend more time connecting with others who have similar priorities when it comes to pursuing growth experiences. I had hoped I might meet such people through the social networks surrounding my work, but that didn’t happen. One reason is that such people would rather engage in growth experiences than in discussions about growth. They’d rather travel than talk about travel… would rather speak than discuss speaking… and would rather start a business than talk about starting one.

I don’t want to connect with such people in order to have more discussions about growth. I’d rather connect with people who are up for pursuing some growth experiences together — like traveling together, conducting experiments together, or tackling projects together. We can always talk to each other in the car, on the plane, etc.

Most importantly, when I connect with people, I want to do so from a place of conscious choice, not from a sense of habit, obligation, or routine. What’s most important to me in life is pursuing my path of growth. That comes first. But when this path meshes nicely with another’s path for a while, then why not explore our paths together if it’s something we both enjoy?

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

In addition to Adsense, I also sold some ads direct, and I earned income from other ad networks too, although Adsense was by far the best one I tested.

Then one day in October 2008, I decided to stop hosting third-party ads altogether, including Adsense, as I explained in a blog post about dropping Adsense at that time.

The consequences were predictable. Overnight my income dropped significantly.

If I’d kept those ads running, it’s fair to say I’d have received at least an extra $300K in ad revenue since then — probably significantly more since my web traffic has gone up during the past 3 years. Google has undoubtedly continued to refine the Adsense program as well.

If I ever feel the urge to do so, I could easily restore these ads to my website. It wouldn’t take long — a few hours at most. And it would probably start bringing in an extra $10-15K per month.

Many people would consider my decision a foolish one. Some have told me as much.

But my vision of success is my own to nurture. It’s not for anyone else to decide. I intend to grow in the ways that matter most to me, not the ways that society tells me I’m supposed to care about.

Letting go of that $300K bought me a different path of growth than I would have otherwise experienced. It started with asking myself What kind of man do I really wish to be? and How far am I willing to go to become that man?

This soul-searching led to a cascade of other choices, including ending my marriage after being together for 15 years and making some significant lifestyle changes.

Of course I can never be sure what would have happened if I made different decisions — we only get to experience the results of the paths we take, not the ones we don’t — but I’m still pleased with the path I chose. In this case the ad-dropping decision remains easily reversible, but I don’t see cause to reverse it.

Life includes many tests that help us clarify our values. I could have come up with all kinds of reasons to justify why I should have kept taking the ad money and what I could have done on that path, but based on what I knew about myself and what I was already experiencing on that path, I concluded that a different path would be more authentic and empowering for me — but also more difficult.

One side effect of dropping advertising is that I finally started doing live workshops. I’ve done seven of them now, and I have two more coming up. But workshops produce active income, whereas advertising was passive income. I’d previously believed that passive income is always superior to income I have to keep actively earning. But I learned that having to earn income actively can help me grow faster, especially when I have to exercise my creativity to earn it; active income is more challenging, and challenge encourages growth.

When my life gets too easy, I like making things harder on myself because it stimulates more growth. I like getting up early. I like writing deep and insightful articles. I like pushing myself. I like having some pressure to take action. I like being challenged. I don’t want a life of ease and comfort.

I made the choices that I felt were best for me, and I balanced that decision with what I felt was best for others. I think my website is more usable and provides more value to people without all those ads. I also know that the workshops I’ve been doing are providing a lot of value to those who attend. I really like the business model I’m using today, even though it’s more challenging than other business models I’ve tried. Designing and delivering 3-day workshops stimulates a lot more growth in my life than watching ad revenue automatically plop into my bank account.

Society may nudge you to adopt certain values, but at the end of the day, you still have a choice. You can decide which values you’ll hold as sacred and which aren’t nearly as important to you.

Exploring different ways to make money can be an interesting challenge, but I hold my path of growth and how it affects others on a much higher plane.

Conscious success requires making choices to mold your character as you desire to be molded.

Sometimes your choices will receive the approval of others. Sometimes they won’t. Regardless of others’ reactions, do your best to stay true to yourself. Make the choices that allow you to look in the mirror and feel good about the person gazing back at you.

I’ve been thinking more deeply about what it means to succeed consciously as I prep for the Conscious Success Workshop in January. I see a lot of people struggling with fuzzy notions of success that are overly infected by assumptions that society has drilled into them. I know that many people feel pressured to improve their finances, and they worry that they may be sabotaging their success with limiting beliefs about money.

I’d like to suggest that perhaps it isn’t self-sabotage or laziness that’s getting in the way, but it could be a need to develop more clarity about your true values.

There are a lot of ways to potentially earn more money that I wouldn’t feel good about, so I don’t do them. Perhaps you’re in a similar situation.

On the other hand, there are ways to make money that I do feel good about. I feel great about selling workshop registrations, so I can be pretty shameless about that. When someone signs up for a workshop, it’s good for me, and it’s good for those who attend.

There’s a temptation to sacrifice your values to buy into someone else’s definition of success, but again you have the power to choose. At many personal growth seminars, for instance, there’s a big push to get you to spend more money on products in the back of the room. Some people earn more on product sales than they do on seminar registrations. In fact, BOR sales (BOR = back of room) is a common topic for pro speakers to discuss in organizations like the National Speakers Association. Speakers frequently share tips with each other on how to maximize BOR sales.

I don’t buy into this model though. It often creeps me out when speakers push for BOR sales so hard. It feels like they’re just trying to squeeze more money out of people who already paid to be there. Behind the scenes I know that speakers often calculate and track their BOR sales per attendee. Then they try to increase that number over time.

The only products I have for sale at my workshops are my books and Erin’s CDs, and they’re discounted. The main reason we do this is because some people want us to sign copies for them or to buy them as gifts. We don’t sell very much at all though. At the October workshop we did $100 total in product sales, just to give you an idea. In fact, one of those sales was to a conference center employee who was walking down the hall, saw our sign and got curious, and ended up buying one of my books.

It took me many years to figure out what conscious success means to me, and it’s still very much an ongoing process of discovery. I gradually learned that much of what is taught about success, achievement, and wealth just doesn’t resonate with me.

It’s nice to make money, but I prefer to earn it on my terms, even when it means earning less. I like making money from exercising my creativity, such as by writing and speaking. I like making money in ways that feel congruent to me, where more income equates to more value being provided to others. I feel better about earning money from workshop sign-ups than I do from seeing more clicks on third-party ads, for instance.

If you’re able to attend the Conscious Success Workshop next month, I think you’ll find it a very unique experience because it’s about understanding and achieving your own vision of success, not someone else’s.

As anyone who’s been to one of my previous workshops can attest, we create a special vibe at these events that you’re unlikely to see elsewhere. At the October workshop, for instance, I’d estimate that the average attendee received at least 5 hugs before they even made it to their seat at the start of Day 1 — from me, from Erin, from Rachelle, from KB, and from Shae. This doesn’t even include the hugs attendees often gave each other.

No one is going to force you to be hugged if you’d rather not be hugged, but I actually instruct our staff members to greet everyone by offering hugs. This isn’t for any manipulative purposes whatsoever. We do it because virtually everyone likes to be greeted in this way, and it feels good to us. It helps people feel very welcome and fosters an intimate, family-like atmosphere. I don’t know of any other success workshops where you can expect to be showered with warm hugs as soon as you arrive.

I share this because it’s another example of how we can define success on our own terms. Just because other people’s success seminars tend to have a vibe that’s more cold and calculating doesn’t mean we have to buy into that model. Whatever you don’t like about how society seems to be conditioning you to behave, you can say no to that. Then go do your own thing. I for one think American society is cold and disconnected enough already, and I want to help warm it up. I think we’re all better served by relating to each other as family as opposed to acting like strangers.

There’s a tendency to think of success in competitive terms, as if the point is to outperform other people. But that isn’t a very effective model. I think most people will experience far greater long-term success through cooperation, mutual support, and encouragement than they will through hard-hearted solo determination.

One tricky thing for me to figure out was how to create sales pages for my workshops that feel really good and congruent to me. I don’t like hard-sell tactics when someone tries to use them on me, nor do I like feeling that I’m being manipulated to buy something I don’t need. On the other hand, it doesn’t feel good to me to be shy about telling people about these workshops either. I know they help people, and so it would be lame not to encourage people to sign up.

In the summer when I launched some new workshops, I created very basic web pages for each of them. An example is the current page for the February Conscious Relationships Workshop. It’s a pretty simple page that’s mostly just a description of what people can expect to learn there.

My thinking in creating these pages wasn’t to try to sell people on new workshops but actually to get out of the way as much as possible. I wanted to give people a sense of what each workshop was about, but I didn’t want them basing their decision to attend on how persuasive I could be. I figured that it would be better for them to base their decision on whether or not they resonate with my work in general and if the topic appeals to them. That way we’d end up with a really good group of attendees who truly wanted to be there.

I was pleased to discover that these simple pages actually work just fine. Plenty of people have already signed up for each of the new workshops. And by and large, the people who’ve been signing up have been the right ones to attend.

But I still made some mistakes, and I’m continuing to calibrate my approach to feel more congruent to me.

For one, I used to offer a money-back guarantee on all my workshops. I discontinued that guarantee weeks ago. Of course it’s still going to be honored for anyone who signed up while it was in effect, but it isn’t something I’m willing to offer anymore.

I didn’t stop offering the guarantee for business reasons. Refund requests have always been minimal, so that wasn’t the issue. I don’t know if having a guarantee increased registrations overall. I didn’t have a guarantee for the first two workshops I did, and those were very well attended.

I realized that the way I was phrasing the guarantee was a mismatch for the kinds of people I wanted to attract. It was too far in the direction of trying to convince people to attend. My guarantee was based on my assuming 100% responsibility for people’s results, which in practice doesn’t make sense. Each workshop is a co-creative experience, and if people are showing up with less commitment because of that guarantee, that’s no good. I’m going to bring my A game to each event, but I also want other people to be fully committed as well.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I received a refund request from someone who didn’t claim to have a problem with the workshop at all. He just needed more money for rent, so he requested a refund as a convenient way to acquire some quick cash. I still honored his request, but it seriously creeped me out. That incident combined with a few other questionable requests convinced me to re-evaluate the decision to offer a money-back guarantee. I let the emotions of that incident subside, so I could make a clear-minded decision, and ultimately I concluded that it was the wrong approach for me.

Another thing I used to do was offer workshop scholarships to some people. I haven’t been advertising that fact because I don’t want to be inundated with freebie requests, but when I felt someone would benefit from the workshop and I knew that were very unlikely to attend due to financial issues, I’d offer them a free registration. Almost always when I made such offers, people took advantage of them.

In practice, however, this has been a mixed bag. Some people who were given free passes really appreciated it, put a lot of effort into the workshop, and got a lot of value out of it. That was nice to see. Unfortunately others utilized the freebies in ways I felt were hugely disrespectful. They’d show up late, skip out on key exercises, and not really take it seriously. They came to play.

So I’ve backed off from doing scholarships except in very rare cases, like with people I know very well and can absolutely trust to do their part. I don’t take freebie requests, so please don’t bother to ask.

My current approach to selling can be described as testing for resonance. This means that I seek to find the best matches for my workshops. As I see it, some people are really meant to be there. These people really resonate with the message of conscious growth, and they’re willing to put some effort into accelerating that process. Those are the people I want to work with.

Most of the material I’ve read about selling treats the process as one of persuading and convincing people to buy. But who actually likes to be convinced of anything they don’t already believe?

Testing for resonance makes a lot more sense to me. So I’ve been pondering how to do this with my workshop pages. I figured a good approach would be to simply write about the topic and share more thoughts about it, just like I do when writing new articles.

So a few weeks ago I rewrote the CSW web page to see how that approach felt to me. I wrote it to be more like a new article on success and achievement, not a sales page. I don’t think the workshop is even mentioned till about 2/3 of the way through. I mainly shared some personal stories about success and failure from my own life. My aim was to give you a better sense of my thinking about success and to see if that resonates with you. It’s only a small slice into the big picture, but I think it was a good slice to share. The page is much longer than the original version, but that’s because it’s long on content, not salesmanship.

On that page I also added some pics that I’ve never shared online before, namely copies of some of my college report cards.

Even if you know that you’re not going to attend CSW, I still encourage you to read that page if you’re interested in success since I do believe you’ll get some value from the content, especially if you’ve liked some of my other articles on the subject. If you don’t already resonate with the idea of coming to a workshop of mine, I don’t think you’ll need to worry about that page convincing you to attend.

Yet another area where I’ve been re-assessing the notion of conscious success is our discussion forums. I realized that I’ve been a bit lax as admin this year, and the standards for our community have been slipping a bit. Our rules haven’t changed, but our enforcement of those rules hasn’t been as consistent as it could be. Consequently we’ve been seeing a rise in problems like trolling, thread derailment, and members taking disrespectful jabs at each other. Some members have racked up a half-dozen warnings or more, when they really should have been banned months ago.

So recently I’ve been working with the mods to raise our standards when it comes to cutting members who can’t follow the rules as they agreed to do when they joined. Suffice it to say we’re going to be much more strict about it. Otherwise the community is at risk of drifting towards a juvenile stomping ground like so many other online forums. So if you’re active in that community and you sense a tightening of our standards, it’s not because our moderation team is ganging up on people. You can lay the blame for that on me. I want our community to continue to serve as a place where people come together to help each other grow and to offer positive support, and I want to our signal-to-noise ratio to stay high. For everyone else, there’s Facebook.

This article itself could serve as an example of resonance testing. If the ideas I’ve shared here feel good to you, you’ll probably get a lot of value from one of my workshops, and you’re likely to make lots of new friends there who share a similar resonance.

On the other hand, if you’ve read this and think “meh… you’re an idiot for not taking the ad money,” then you’re probably less likely to be a good match for my workshops. So you can also label me an idiot for not wanting your money either. You probably wouldn’t be a good match for the other attendees either.

A key lesson I learned about success is: Sometimes we have to say no to the paths that don’t resonate with us, clearing them out of the way first, and only after that will the more congruent paths come forward and make themselves known. In other words, you may continue to attract mismatched approaches to success as long as you’re still tempted to pursue them. When you finally muster the strength to say no to those paths, then you can gain access to much better ones.

And yes, I really do feel good about shamelessly plugging my workshops… as long as I’m doing it in ways that align with my values. Convincing you to go isn’t the right approach. Testing to see if you’re the kind of person who totally belongs there does feel good, however.

Incidentally, the $100 early bird discount for CSW is still good for one more week. I’m not going to extend it beyond that since we already have enough people signed up to guarantee a vibrant weekend, and from past experience I know that a lot of people sign up in the final week before the discount expires.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Of course it’s possible. Many people have done it before. But is it realistic for you? Well… that depends. The honest answer is: probably not. What it takes to succeed as an artist isn’t such a mystery these days. The real question is whether or not you’re willing to do what it takes to get there. If you’re like most people, you aren’t willing. So if you want to succeed as an artist, you must elevate your standards well beyond the level of those who are willing to give up.

Starving artists may be more common and cliché than financially successful artists, but as you’ll discover in this article, there are some very good reasons for that. For starters, artistic skill alone isn’t enough to guarantee financial success.

There are many challenges on the path to financially sustainable artistic nirvana, and all of them have solutions. Successful artists are willing to apply those solutions; unsuccessful artists typically aren’t.

Here are a number of guidelines for transitioning from creating art as a hobby into a financially lucrative profession:

Get Your Financial Beliefs in Order

Do you harbor any beliefs such as these?

• Great art and money don’t mix.
• It’s noble to be a starving artist.
• Artists who make tons of money are sell-outs.
• Money corrupts true creative expression.

If your thoughts have been infected by such limiting beliefs, even a little, consider how this will affect your efforts to earn serious income from your work. These beliefs are financially retarded. With such mental baggage, you’ll miss too many opportunities to generate income from your art. In fact, you probably won’t even notice them. These beliefs will cause you to behave stupidly.

Consider upgrading your beliefs to something along these lines:

• Money can help fuel creative expression.
• Creativity is free; paintbrushes aren’t.
• Great art is financially valuable; surely the artist deserves a fair share.
• Artists who make lots of money have good business sense.
• Great art deserves great financial support.
• Art is a creative endeavor, but it’s also a business.
• Fans are nice, but customers pay the bills.

It’s a lot easier to generate income from your art if you hold beliefs that support income generation instead of demonizing it. If you’re going to attach some kind of meaning to earning income from your art (an event which is largely meaningless from a cosmic perspective), then at least apply a meaning that will support you on your path instead of creating imaginary roadblocks.

Beliefs are infectious, so choose your friends carefully. If you regularly hang out with people who harbor negative beliefs about combining art and money, they’ll just drag you down. It’s fine to associate with them now and then, but be very careful about inviting them into your inner circle.

Seek Out People Who Are Already Succeeding

Art is a social field, and so is business. The business of art — any kind of art — is hugely social. Insiders have it way easier than outsiders, so aim to be an insider. Don’t even think about trying to go it alone.

Financially successful artists are generally happy to share their “secrets” of success, including how they make money from their work. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Make every effort to meet such people and hang out with them. Join clubs or trade associations, join forums, attend conferences, and find other ways to socialize with successful artists in your field. It’s not that difficult, but it does require that you make an effort. You’ll make some networking mistakes along the way, but eventually you’ll figure it out. Read through the extensive How to Network With Busy People series to get a better sense of how to do this.

I suggest that you identify a certain income goal — something modest — and target people who are earning close to that. If you’re making no money as an artist, it may be hard to relate to the advice of someone who’s earning $1M per year. You’ll have a better shot of understanding and applying the advice of someone who’s earning $30-50K per year. Then when you get to that level, meet with people who are earning $100K per year, and notice what they do differently. And keep stepping up from there.

If you always hang out with artists who are making the same or less money than you, I hope you like eating at Taco Bell.

When you meet successful artists, don’t do the fanboy/fangirl thing. It’s best not to even utter the word fan because it sounds too much like stalker, and it steers the conversation in the direction of putting the artist on a pedestal, which really isn’t going to help you. Aim to be friendly, interested, and respectfully curious, but assume equal standing as human beings. Artists are generally very comfortable discussing their work, so a great opener is to ask a specific question about their work. Feel free to pick their brains, but don’t bleed them dry.

Being passive ensures dismal results. Push yourself to go outside and meet people. Take some social risks. If you dork-out now and then, it’s not the end of the world. You’ll recover.

During my computer games business days, I was having coffee with my lawyer on a patio in Century City (a business district next to Beverly Hills). He suddenly turns and yells to a guy walking down the street, “Bill!” Turns out it was William Shatner, who was working with my lawyer on a book deal. Shatner approached us for a friendly conversation, and being a 20-something Trekkie, I dorked out — not too much but enough to feel self-conscious about it afterwards. I learned to be much less dorky around such people after that.

Successful artists in any field typically know each other. They may not get to spend a lot of time together, but they often meet in person as a consequence of moving in similar circles. If you want to become a successful artist, it’s wise to prepare yourself for this. The key is that it must eventually feel normal to you. If it seems like a big deal, you’ll push it away.

Networking with other pros in your field is good business. Most of the income I’ve earned from my creative work (writing, speaking, computer games, etc) has resulted from business deals that came through my network. Other people brought me those opportunities. This isn’t unusual. Money flows through people.

As an unknown artist in any field, it’s difficult to get much exposure for your work. But if you have many friends who will help get the word out, it’s no longer so difficult.

Networking gives you the chicken and the egg at the same time. You can receive income-generating ideas and opportunities as well as exposure, without needing one to get the other.

Create Art That People Want

Think of your favorite music group. Would you respect them more if they created music you didn’t like?

When you spend money on art, is it because the artist was super creative, or is it simply because you like what they created?

Most likely you aren’t spending too much money on creative work that you don’t like. When you pull out your wallet, it’s because you like the work — or at least you expect to like it.

This doesn’t mean that the artist created the work for you (or for people like you), but it does mean that if the artist wants to get paid, there needs to be some alignment between their creativity and what people are willing to pay for.

It’s absolutely fine to create art that no one else will appreciate. Do that now and then. Just don’t expect to pay the bills with such an approach.

If you want to generate income from your art, then pay attention to what people are buying in your field. What’s in demand?

You’ll likely find that you can just as easily create works that align with trending demand but which still give you plenty of room for self-expression. These constraints are not inherently in conflict. You can choose and instead of either-or.

This article, for instance, is one that I felt inspired to write, and I’m enjoying the process of creating it, but it isn’t merely a gratuitous personal journal entry. It’s an article that I expect will provide some value to certain people. It’s art, but it’s also socially purposeful.

Sometimes people will want you to express yourself in ways you aren’t willing to deliver. Feel free to say no. Sometimes you’ll want to express yourself in ways people don’t care about. Feel free to do that. But when you want to generate income from your work, focus on the area of overlap between what people want and how you enjoy expressing your creativity. Then you can enjoy your work and pay your bills too.

If you’re going to be stubborn about this, then be prepared to see much less talented artists whizzing past you financially.

You may not control the waves of public desire, but you can still surf them.

Publish or Perish

Creating art isn’t enough. To be a financially successful artist, you must get into the habit of publishing art.

Many amateur artists amass sizable collections of half-finished pieces. The pros often do this too, but the pros get into the habit of finishing and publishing their work.

I know from experience that if I create and leave something in a half finished state, and I go more than a few days without working on it, it’s dead. The inspiration is gone. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, it’s easier to start and finish a new piece than it is to rez and finish the old one. A half finished piece isn’t 50% done; it’s more like -50% done. To finish a half-done piece weeks later may take 150% of the effort of creating a new piece from scratch.

If I start writing a blog post, and I get it 60% finished, but I get interrupted and can’t get back to it for a week, I’ll virutally never finish it up and publish it. I’ll just delete it and move on. If it’s 90%+ done, or if I just need to give it an editing pass, then I’ll likely finish it, but if I can’t cross the finish line with ease, it’s a dead work that will never see the light of day.

I’ve learned how important it is to kill my unfinished work and let it be dead. I don’t save it or let it linger in my drafts folder. I put it out of its misery and kill it for good. Then when I look at my portfolio of creative work, I see 1000+ finished and published creative works: mostly articles but also computer games, speeches, workshops, a book, a poem, and some podcasts. I don’t think of unpublished works as being part of my portfolio. If I didn’t complete and publish them shortly after conception, they’re dead to me.

This may sound overly harsh, but what’s the alternative? Amass an ever-growing collection of partially finished pieces? How do you feel when you think about that monstrous pile of unfinished work? It’s draining, distracting, and demotivating, isn’t it? It’s clutter that weighs on you.

If you’re thinking about stuff you need to finish up from the past, then your creativity isn’t focused on the present. Creativity is limitless and abundant. There’s no need to tie it to past obligations. Thinking that there’s value to be extracted from partially finished work is a result of scarcity thinking. If there was major value in finishing those pieces, you’d have finished them long ago.

Chalk up the value of those partially finished pieces to the learning experience you got from them. If you wouldn’t get much growth from finishing them, let them die. Focus your attention on the sweet spot of artistry by creating works that provide value to others and provide growth experiences for you. Your creative energies must be focused on the present, which is the only place where you can create. Don’t allow your creativity to be drained by past regrets and obligations. The flow is here and now. The wave that passed you by is gone. Don’t go swimming after it. Just ride the next wave. And there’s always a next wave.

You could say that publishing is an unnatural process. A creative work is never really done — it’s abandoned. You can keep polishing and refining a piece indefinitely, but at some point you have to declare it done and move on. If I ever feel that I published an article too soon, I’ll give it an extra editing pass after it’s posted (that’s a nice thing about publishing online). Sometimes I over-polish a piece that probably didn’t warrant so much attention. It takes time to calibrate and get a feel for when a piece is ready to publish, and there’s no right or wrong solution per se. It’s mainly a matter of trial and error and experience.

When I begin a new creative work, it’s a race to the finish line to get it published. I need to express the ideas quickly and tune out distractions till the piece is done and released. Friends who’ve been around me when I’m designing a workshop, for instance, will know how single-minded I can be during such times. Even if I’m ahead of schedule, I can scarcely pay attention to anything but the workshop. My energy is focused on bringing everything to completion. I can pay attention to other things when the workshop is over.

I find it best to work on one major creative piece at a time. I try not to start something new until the previous piece is done. I can make some exceptions like writing a blog post in the midst of a bigger project like designing a workshop, but I want to avoid creating more loose ends. I wouldn’t want to design two workshops at the same time, for instance.

Visibility First, Then Income

If you want to become a successful artist, you’ll need to get your art into people’s hands (or eyes, ears, etc). If the art is hidden in your closet or buried on your hard drive, don’t expect it to generate much income.

I recommend that you focus on visibility first, and don’t worry so much about generating income at first. If you aren’t very visible, you probably won’t be able to earn more than a pittance anyway. But if you can gain visibility and sustain it for the long run, then it’s much easier to generate abundant income.

A good strategy for creating visibility is to give your work away for free. Spread it as widely as possible. Encourage people to share it with no restrictions. If you can manage it, favor media that encourages sharing without costing you anything — i.e. anything that can be put into digital form.

Show your work to anyone who might be interested in it. Give your art as much state time as you can. If you aren’t willing to do this, don’t expect your art leap onto the stage and market itself. Being timid about promoting your work will hurt you financially; don’t pretend it won’t.

If you give your work away for free or otherwise procure lots of stage time for it, and people don’t seem to appreciate it, consider the possibility that your work (1) isn’t very good, or (2) isn’t what people want. This happens to just about everyone. Everybody falls the first time. Keep refining your creative output until you strike something that people appreciate enough to share.

Once your visibility is high enough, then start charging for your work.

Commit to Excellence

Mediocre artists are broke artists.

Don’t settle for mediocre. Put in the hours and years it takes to become outstanding. If you want to become an overnight success, spend a decade building your skills first.

There’s little income to be made from most art forms except for those who commit to excellence. Such fields are simply too crowded and too competitive. The good news, however, is that most people in these fields are just dabblers. They aren’t serious about it. Rest assured they’ll give up within a year or two and go back to working at Starbucks, only to be replaced by people with even less experience. There’s a lot of churn at the bottom.

Consider the field of music, for instance. There are millions of wannabe musicians, but only a small percentage of them are committed to becoming truly outstanding. They’ll practice a little here and there, and they might dream of great success, but at the end of the day, they’d rather watch TV than invest an extra hour or two in practice. These people aren’t your competition. If you stick with your craft for 3+ years, you’ll be well beyond the majority of them, and they’ll never match your skill.

Persistence is your friend. With persistence you can easily outlast 99% of the people in your field. The longer you stick with your craft, the more the gains begin to pile up: a growing portfolio, a growing network of peers, and a growing fan base. As these aspects improve over time, it gets harder to fail, and it becomes easier to generate income. You have more work to leverage for income generation. You have a larger network to bring you opportunities. And you have more fans who could become customers.

If, however, you go around switching fields every year or two, you’ll have a hard time building a financially sustainable practice. If you’re unwilling to commit to long-term mastery, you’ll be denied access to its rewards. You can still switch fields if you really want to, but there’s a price for doing so.

It may be true that 99% of artists within a particular field aren’t making much money. But that’s largely because those 99% aren’t any good at it. The top 1% get paid because they’re the ones who put in those 10,000 hours to become world class.

Are you willing to commit yourself to joining that top 1%? Do you love your art so much that you’ll invest 10,000 hours into it? That’s about 5 years working full-time. If you aren’t willing to make that kind of commitment, well… Starbucks is hiring.

If 99% of artists in your field won’t become financially successful, then you’d better commit to bypassing that 99% if you wish to avoid their fate.

I realize this might sound like a very difficult challenge, but the truth is that it’s actually easier to make such a commitment in the long run. It only appears more difficult in the beginning. Think of it like this. The time is going to pass anyway. Someday that distant future will become your present reality. Now imagine that your future self is reflecting upon the decisions you made today, decisions that greatly influenced his/her results in life. Is that future you shaking his/her head in disgust or smiling in appreciation?

One reason I kicked off my 30-day trial of learning music is that I’ve been thinking about where I’d like to be at age 50 (I turned 40 earlier this year). I have the sense that my 50-year old self would really appreciate it he had some serious musical ability to enjoy during his 50s. He’s not too particular about which instrument(s), but he’d be disappointed if he had to enter his 50s with no musical skills to speak of. He’s glad I developed my writing and speaking skills to such an extent, and he can count on their continued development, but he’d be even happier if he could express himself through music as well.

I’m not at the point where I’m willing to commit a decade to learning music, but a 30-day trial is a good starter commitment. I’m enjoying it so far, and I’ll likely commit beyond that point, but for now an exploratory approach is best since I wouldn’t even know what kind of long-term commitment to make yet. Even as I conduct this 30-day trial, however, I’m approaching it with the mindset that I might be initiating a new thread of skill building that could last for decades. This long view sharpens my short-term decisions. I’m willing to embrace the awkward phase of being a newbie, since I know it’s a stepping stone to building new skills I can enjoy for years to come.

Get to Know Your Customers, and Serve Them

If you want to be financially successful in any field, not just art, then sales are very important. Without sales, there’s no income, and without income, it’s hard to sustain yourself as an artist. If you can maintain strong sales, then even if you screw up almost everything else, you’re still going to have a sustainable art practice. Strong sales are very forgiving of mistakes. Weak sales aren’t.

Fortunately, selling needn’t be pushy or manipulative. If you create work that aligns with what people want, then selling is largely a matter of letting people know that you have something that will please them. If, on the other hand, you have to do a lot of convincing to get people to open their wallets, then the problem is likely the art itself.

Earlier this year I went to a local art fair. I walked past a lot of art that didn’t resonate with me, but then I stumbled upon an artist from Arizona who had a collection I really liked. I have an affinity for Southwestern art, especially pieces depicting bears and eagles. This artist had some really unique copper pieces, and I bought one of them. It currently hangs above the fireplace in my living room. He did his part to help sell the piece — very softly — but it was mostly a “you had me at hello” situation. The main act of selling he did was to envision, design, and create a piece that someone like me would appreciate.

If you want to create art to sell, it’s wise to know why someone would actually buy it. If you haven’t a clue or if you assume you’ll figure out how to sell it later, best of luck with that.

Selling is often treated as a discipline unto itself, but for a serious artist, selling is an integral part of the creative process. Selling begins with the question, Who would most appreciate this? Ideally this question should be asked before you start a new creative project. Determine who will buy your work and why. Who’s the buyer? Does such a person actually exist? How do you know?

If at all possible, meet your customers (or at least your potential customers) face to face. Talking to your customers about what they want is perhaps the best source for your sales education.

At my workshops I like to spend many extra hours talking to attendees outside the workshop itself. On the first day as people are arriving, I greet them with hugs. I stick around during breaks, at lunch, and at the end of each day to talk to people. Partly I do this because I enjoy it — these are interesting people to connect with. But I also do it to better understand them. Who are they? Why did they attend this workshop? What else can I help them with?

It’s important for me to create workshops that give me plenty of freedom for creative expression, but it’s also important to give people what they desire, especially if I want my workshops to be financially sustainable.

Respect the role of money in your artistic endeavors, but don’t put money on a pedestal. Money is lubrication to grease the wheels of your artistic endeavors. You’re always free to create art for art’s sake, even if it won’t pay the bills, but if you want to get paid, then create art to sell.

Canadian actor Michael Ironside said in an interview that he accepts some acting roles for the money (Robocop being a good example), while other roles he performs for the soul. I make similar choices. Sometimes I write articles that I expect will boost traffic or generate income, while other times I write purely for the sheer enjoyment of being creative. And sometimes I get the best of both worlds. This variety is very nice.

Creating art to sell doesn’t equate to selling out. In my opinion the sell-outs are the artists who spend more time complaining than they do creating. If you create art to sell, then you can spend a lot more time creating art for the sheer joy of creating, and once you’ve built up the sales side of your practice, you may find that there are buyers for anything you create.

Buy Art

As a corollary to the above, when you see art you like, buy it. Yes, with money.

Get into the habit of financially supporting artists whose work you appreciate. Don’t do the piracy thing. Piracy is rooted in scarcity thinking, and it’s disrespectful of the artists. The beliefs that justify piracy are at odds with the beliefs that will help you generate sustainable income from your art.

By piracy I’m referring to illegally obtaining something that isn’t free. That which is given freely is a different animal. All of my blog posts and podcasts are uncopyrighted, for instance, so you can translate, republish, or share them however you wish, and it wouldn’t be piracy. But if you do this with copyrighted works without the artist’s permission, that’s piracy.

When I first began developing my own computer games, I was still into pirating games and other software. I realized that if I expected people to buy my software instead of just pirating it, it made sense for me to get my own house in order. So I stopped pirating, and I began purchasing what I wanted. If I wasn’t willing to purchase it, and if it wasn’t free, I did without.

Making that transition was easier than I thought, and it felt really good. I observed that I appreciated what I purchased more than I did when I pirated it. I also became more selective about what I consumed and less impulsive. My computer was easier to manage. I felt better about myself knowing that I was helping to support other people’s creative work. I felt like I was partnering with them in some fashion.

If you want others to financially support you as an artist, take a good look at yourself in the mirror. Are you an avid supporter of other people’s creative work? Do you readily purchase art that you appreciate?

Like many people I have a sizable collection of media, especially music. None of it is pirated. When I scroll through my collection, I not only see a lot of art that I enjoy, but I also see a list of artists that I’ve helped support financially. It’s comforting to know that Alan Wilder will never run out of hair gel.

I know it’s tempting to try to justify piracy. Don’t go there. You can claim that everything digital should be free, but such beliefs are at odds with those who choose not to release their work for free. Some people would still appreciate fair payment for their work. If you’re going to demonize them for making such choices, realize that you’re also necessarily demonizing the part of you that would like to make money from your creative work. That incongruency will surely come back to haunt you; usually it will show up in the form of self-sabotage.

When you support other artists financially, you reinforce the belief that you deserve to be financially supported. That’s an important belief to have if you wish to succeed as an artist.

Although it might seem more difficult to pay for work you could easily pirate, in the long run it’s easier than the alternative. If you wish others to respect your work and to pay for it, then have the integrity to show this much respect to other artists. Respect their right to ask for payment. If you feel their prices are unreasonable, don’t patronize them.

Supporting other people’s creative work can also be good motivation to increase your own income. I rather like spending money on books, seminars, music, and other art forms. This tells me that the more money I earn, the more I can support other creative people.

Learn to Handle Criticism

In any creative field, you’ll find plenty of people willing to assume the role of critic, largely because it’s easier to criticize art than to create it. Sometimes critics can be helpful by providing specific ideas for improvement, but they rarely bother to do so. More often they approach art with a sense of entitlement combined with undercurrents of bitterness, resentment, and envy.

A good summary of the relationship between artist and critic can be found in Teddy Roosevelt’s “Citizenship in a Republic” speech from 1910:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

What really disturbs critics is the knowledge that they don’t want to face — that they simply don’t matter. The critic is irrelevant and superfluous. History remembers the great artists, but it forgets the critics.

If you try to respect the critic, you’ll feed more power to the self-judgmental part of you, the part that says you aren’t good enough and can’t measure up. To empower your critics is to empower your self-doubt. If you want to be more prolific, then give your full attention to your artistry, and starve the critic of attention. A good way to transition is to laugh at the critical part of you. Poke fun at it. See it as the joke it truly is.

Abandoning self-criticism doesn’t mean letting go of reason and becoming blind to areas where you could stand to improve. You can still examine your work with an eye for improvement without getting bogged down by the voices of envy and resentment.

Genuine constructive criticism is what artists bestow upon themselves. Look at what you’ve created, and pay attention to your reaction. What do you think about it? How do you feel about it? Is this your best work? How could it be improved?

Feedback from others can be helpful, but such feedback rarely comes from would-be critics. Often the best feedback comes from other artists, people who understand what it’s like to play in the arena. Even then, you’ll still need to take such feedback with a grain of salt. If it makes sense to you, then use it, but don’t give it more weight than your own opinion.

Here’s some more text from that same Roosevelt speech:

There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities — all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness.

Offer your art to those who will appreciate it. You can safely ignore the critics, for history will treat them as if they never even existed. Their weakness is unworthy of your respect. Regardless of criticism, artists will continue creating art. The artists will have their cake and eat it too… while the critics scurry for the crumbs.

One of my most criticized pieces is the article 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job (2006). Another one is 10 Reasons You Should Never Have a Religion (2008). For me these were inspired pieces that I truly enjoyed creating. Criticism of those pieces has drawn even more attention to them, making them some of the most popular works I’ve ever created — both are in the top 1% in terms of the referrals and traffic they generate. To critique such pieces, the critic is admitting that the work was impactful, so the critic is actually validating and promoting the artistry of those pieces.

In the long run the critics ultimately serve the artist’s interests, whether the critics realize it or not. The critic draws more attention to the artist’s work, which can still benefit the artist with extra publicity, even if the criticism is largely negative. A professional artist will seldom return the favor by publicizing a particular critic, however. This dynamic reflects the artist’s commitment to his/her creative expression as well as the critic’s denial of his/her creative abilities. The role of the critic may seem pitiable, but ultimately the critic serves to elevate the artist, which is good for everyone.

Appreciate Your Customers

While your critics can be safely ignored because they don’t provide any value, your customers are actively supporting your work, making it easier for you to keep doing what you love. It makes sense to support your customers in supporting you.

As an artist it’s easy to confuse your customers with your fans, but these aren’t merely different labels for the same groups. Your fans consist of anyone who appreciates your work. Your customers are the people who are financially supporting your work. These groups will likely overlap, but it isn’t unusual for an artist to have many fans who aren’t customers.

If you have lots of fans but few customers, you don’t have a financially sustainable operation.

It may seem like a wonderful thing to have lots of fans, but fans who aren’t customers can potentially hurt you more than help you, unless they’re helping to refer more customers to you. Maintaining a large fan base can consume extra time and resources. For example, if you have a website, more fans may mean more web traffic, and more web traffic means higher hosting and maintenance costs as well as more communication.

It’s wise to appreciate your fans too, but be careful about encouraging too much fandom at the expense of customers. If you want to be famous, then more fans are great, but if you want a financially sustainable lifestyle as an artist, then put your customers first. If you lose some fans but retain your customers, you can still sustain your practice. But if you lose your customers by focusing too heavily on your non-customer fans, you could see your work becoming very popular while you become very broke. It happens.

Fans may feel that by appreciating your work, they’re somehow helping you. They may believe they’re on your side. But is that really true? Love and appreciation are nice, but they won’t keep the lights turned on.

Imagine that you hosted a dinner at your house. Guests arrive empty-handed, enjoy the food you provide, and graciously thank you for it. Do you perceive that as a form of support? It may be emotionally and socially supportive, but it isn’t financially supportive. How long can you sustain this? The more you do it, the more you incur a hit of time and resources. Sure, you may end up with lots of people appreciating your cooking and your generosity, and they may gladly refer others to you, but where will that lead in the long run? By itself this isn’t a good way to sustain your artistry.

To have a financially sustainable operation, it’s fine to have fans, but you’ll also need to see a certain percentage of those fans choosing to become customers.

Some artists take this to the extreme, focusing entirely on customers and ignoring non-customer fans altogether. Others go the opposite route, treating customers and fans as equally valuable. There’s no right or wrong way to do this. It’s a matter of finding the right equilibrium for you, one that can create long-term sustainability.

I enjoy seeing a healthy ecosystem around my work that consists of many more fans that customers. It gives me a sense of optimism because I only need to see a small percentage of fans become customers to maintain financial sustainability, and I’m happy to see people enjoy my work whether they pay for it or not. My conversion rate from fans to customers is high enough that I can afford to scale up without much risk to sustainability. But I do have to make some sacrifices for this to be viable.

I can afford to hang out with workshop attendees for a few hours after a workshop. I can’t afford to give this kind of personal attention to anyone who visits my website, however, despite receiving many requests to that effect. From a financial perspective, I can’t justify investing as much time and energy in non-customer fans — I have to put more attention on serving the needs of my customers. To fans who don’t wish to become customers, this may sound disappointing, but it should be understandable.

Your non-customer fans may not like the fact that you pay more attention to your customers, and this realization may cause them to feel under-appreciated, but ultimately this is a matter of common sense. If a non-customer fan feels under-appreciated and abandons you as a result, you’ll lose the chance to someday convert them to a customer as well as the other customers they may have eventually referred, but that’s a gain that may never have been realized anyway. On the other hand, losing an existing customer is a less speculative loss and one that anyone with good business sense would work harder to prevent.

In your relationships with other artists, notice the difference between being a fan and being a patron, and start paying attention to why you make these choices as you do. This will deepen your understanding of how you wish to relate to these groups as an artist. Again, there’s no right or wrong way to do it, but you’ll find that some ways feel better to you than others.

Socializing with fans and customers can be very enjoyable. It’s wonderful to connect with people who have shared interests, and you’ll generally find such people to be very friendly. After all, you’ve already earned their appreciation. But it’s crucial to maintain reasonable boundaries and balance these connections within the context of your life as a whole. It’s all too easy to overdo it, feel overwhelmed by too many people trying to connect with you at the same time, and actually end up resenting the attention. If left unchecked, you could end up sabotaging the very success you’ve been seeking.

So appreciate your fans, and appreciate your customers, but safeguard your boundaries. As your work becomes more popular, you’ll need to pay more attention to maintaining your sacred creative space. Don’t allow your fans, customers, or anyone else to encroach upon that. Your connection to the creator-god within you (however you may define it) must not be derailed. In the long run, your fans and customers will forgive you for not being as available as they might like… as long as you keep creating.

Learn to Surf

As your artistic practice matures, managing your relationships with fans and customers — along with all the other relationships in your life (family, friends, business partners, etc) — can be one of the trickiest aspects of your practice to get right. You only have so much time and attention to devote to each of these groups, and there are consequences for being too giving as well as for being too stingy. These challenges can be exacerbated as your popularity increases. The shifting populations of fans, customers, and business contacts will keep throwing you out of equilibrium, and solutions that worked for you last year may seem utterly broken this year.

The best advice I can give is to accept that your equilibrium is a moving target. Fortunately you have some say in the matter. If you want to be more social, take action by inviting new connections. If you’re feeling socially overwhelmed and need some privacy, feel free to back off.

I’ve learned that the more often I blog, the more incoming communication I receive. If I have a backlog of communication and need a break, the best thing I can do is to stop blogging so much. When things really get overwhelming, I can disable my contact form or take a break from social media. Then when I’m ready to be more social, I can start blogging more often, and I can more actively invite people to connect.

I have made more screw-ups in this area than I can count, but with each passing year, I develop a better understanding of where my equilibrium is, and I know how important it is to go with the flow. Sometimes the flow takes me in a very social direction. Other times I feel an intense desire to be alone and turn within. The biggest mistakes I’ve made were the result of failing to honor and accept where the flow was going — i.e. trying to be social when I really wanted to be alone in my creator space, or forcing myself to create when I’d much rather be around people and share love and laughter. As it turned out, the balance I sought was never a static state where I could run essentially the same patterns week after week. Balance looks more like a sine wave, constantly oscillating from one extreme to the other. And to make it even more complicated, there are smaller sub-oscillations that combine with those larger oscillations.

Imagine trying to balance a basketball on your finger. If you try to keep your hand totally rigid, the ball quickly falls. To balance the ball you must be in constant motion, making continuous adjustments based on what the ball is doing. This is how it feels to balance the creative and the social aspects of art. Inspiration never sits still; it is always in motion. Either you’re diving more deeply into your private creator space, or you’re opening yourself to more social connections. The key, as I’ve learned, is not to resist these oscillations. Instead, learn to ride them like waves, much like a surfer.

Another metaphor for thinking about balance — perhaps a better one than surfing — is to think of your artistic life as a song. Consider that your life is a combination of rhythm, melody, harmony, etc. A song is always in motion, but it isn’t chaotic or random — there’s a structure to it. That structure may be complex and difficult to grasp, but it’s there nonetheless. Notice where the song of your life wants flow next. Notice when you’re trying to force it to go in a direction that doesn’t feel right. What might be the next notes in the progression? If you can sense the structure of the song and develop a feel for where it wants to go, you’ll find it easier to cultivate a fulfilling life-work balance as an artist.

* * *

The bottom line is that making a sustainable living as an artist is doable. It doesn’t require a miracle, nor does it mandate putting money ahead of artistic expression. It does, however, require some intelligent choices and a genuine commitment. For those who are committed to the mastery of their craft for the long haul, ensuring the financial sustainability of one’s work is a worthwhile and achievable goal.

Invite the universe to express itself through you, and do your best to get out of its way. It will support you on this path if you’re committed; otherwise it will bring you every manner of obstacle to validate your lack of commitment.

The question being put to you now is: Will you do it? Will you step into the arena? Will you know the great enthusiasms and the great devotions? Or will you sit in the stands as a spectator… or a critic?

Is your future self looking back on this day with intense appreciation and gratitude… or with disappointment and regret?

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

That said, there can be tremendous value in planning. Thinking through a business in advance is hard work and requires deep concentration (if you want to do it well), but the payoff is a significant increase in clarity and a better shot at creating or expanding a successful enterprise.

I spent most of last week creating a new long-term plan for my business, which I just completed on Friday. I hadn’t done anything this thorough since 2005. It was incredibly tough mental work, and I put in many 12-16 hour days in a row, sometimes working so hard that I literally fell asleep at my desk. Then I’d wake up and work on it some more.

Since I’ve just been through this process, let me share some thoughts on creating a written plan for your own business.

Planning for Yourself vs. Planning for Investors

There’s a big difference between creating a business plan for your personal clarity vs. creating a plan to attract funding. Most of the business planning information I’ve seen in books or online is heavy on the latter side. If you don’t need outside funding, you can probably ignore 30-50% of the typical suggestions for what to include in a business plan.

There can be value in doing some of the work that it would take to impress an investor. Thinking through the financials is a good idea, but in practice a lot of what goes into an investor-based plan is actually persuasion as opposed to serious planning. Financial projections can be incredibly subjective, and you can’t predict with much accuracy what’s going to happen under real-world market conditions anyway. Overplanning is also a waste of time — you need to guard against filling your plan with irrelevant details that simply won’t matter one way or another.

I set financial goals for my business, but I don’t bother making predictions which are merely guesswork. Instead I spend more time planning how my business can adapt to whatever conditions may occur.

My business plan is created solely for me, and to a lesser extent, for those who work closely with me. I’ll never show it to an investor or banker because I’m confident I can continue to grow the business with a strategy that requires no outside financing.

Thinking Strategically

Business planning helps you think strategically about the road ahead. You only have so much time each day, month, and year to make decisions and take action. For many business owners those actions are chaotic and unfocused. They start projects they never finish. They miss opportunities by failing to act promptly. It’s very easy to hit a plateau and get stuck there for years.

A clear, committed strategy helps to cut through all of that. It sharpens your day to day choices. It provides an intelligent framework for action.

The problem, however, is that there are many valid strategies for growing a business. You will undoubtedly have more opportunities than you have time to pursue them. You can’t do everything well. If in the back of your mind, you’re oscillating between several different primary strategies, you’ll have a hard time growing your business if these strategies don’t mesh incredibly well.

I could grow my business in a variety of different ways. I could blog more often. I could write more books. I could expand into videos. I could expand my workshop offerings and begin doing them in different cities. I could invest in more marketing and PR. I could do guest blogging and accept more interview requests. I could get back into podcasting. I could start a membership site or paid subscription service. I could hire a few personal coaches and open a coaching program. I could turn my blog posts into products to sell. I could expand my social media presence. I could launch my own affiliate program (for workshops and future products). I could do more joint venture deals.

We could do any or all of these things, and many of them would be effective. But we can’t do all of them well. We might be able to do one or two of them well at any given time.

Thinking strategically requires deciding which fronts not to open. To create a practical and realistic business plan, I had to make some tough choices about which directions not to pursue. At first glance, almost everything looks golden. But with some deeper probing and a lot of analysis, I could discern which opportunities are truly the best relative to the others.

The Planning Process

Planning is an iterative process. In many areas you won’t know the best decision to make. At best you’ll be able to identify some options, but you won’t have much clarity about which possibilities make the most sense.

The way I resolve this is by taking a stab at each part. You can’t leave things in a wishy washy state, or you’ll end up with no workable plan at all. You have to keep pushing towards resolution and convergence. A good way to do this is to force a decision in a particular part of your plan. Then see how it fits. If it doesn’t feel right, yank it out, and try another possible solution. Repeat till you get it right.

Planning is an exploration of the potential solution space. To find the right combination of products, pricing, marketing strategies, staffing, and more, take some guesses and see what the big picture looks like. Then notice how those different elements mesh together.

It’s much like creating a song. Choose some notes and sequence them together. Then listen to the result. Does it sound harmonious? At first it probably won’t. But what’s creating the disharmony? Can you identify one misalignment? And can you fix that?

Then you keep tweaking and listening, tweaking and listening. Write out each new idea in great detail. Then read it back.

Sometimes you’ll get inspired ideas. Sometimes you’ll have to use a lot of perspiration, testing multiple ideas to find the right one.

My business plan is only 23 pages, but I probably wrote at least triple that to create it. For some parts of my business, intelligent solutions were fairly obvious. But in other areas, the right approach wasn’t obvious at all. My first stab produced a lot of text, but when I stepped back and read it within the context of the rest of the plan, it wasn’t harmonious. Perhaps my website would be delivering one message, but my products and pricing were likely to be incongruent with that message; the predicted consequence of that disharmony is that my business would end up attracting people who’d resist being customers — not a very sustainable approach.

This is a really important point to emphasize. To achieve convergence you can’t just sit and ponder until the right idea pops into your head. You have to take some guesses and run with them. Take a stab and fully document how it’s going to work, as if you’ve already made your final choice. Then look at it within the context of the rest of your plan. Does it seem harmonious? Does it support the other areas beautifully and elegantly?

My major rule here is that if it doesn’t feel elegant (or sound harmonious, or look beautiful — take your pick of modality analogies), it’s wrong. I know I have the right solution when a wave of awe washes over me, when I have to get up out of my chair and pace around so I can just be with that feeling for a while. Then I know I’ve figured out a key piece.

Deep Honesty

Deep honesty means being able to look at what you’ve planned and answer these questions:

• Is this an intelligent approach?
• Is this an honest approach?
• Is this a loving approach?
• Is this a strong plan, or am I caving to weakness and low standards?
• Is this a harmonious plan? Is it elegant and beautiful?
• Will this be a path of continued growth for me?
• Is this a courageous path, or am I playing it safe?

This is akin to asking a musician after many days of hard work, What do you think of your finished song? Will you get a fair and honest assessment, or will the answer be overly biased by the musician’s personal investment in the song?

There’s a temptation, especially when you’re tired after working so hard, to capitulate to a flawed plan. At some point you’ll want to say, This is good enough. You’ll want to label weak as okay, okay as good, and good as great. You’ll want to turn in B-quality work hoping to get an A.

But if the plan isn’t harmonious and elegant… if it doesn’t knock you back in your chair… if it doesn’t quicken your pulse like a beautiful song… you’re not done. You mustn’t say “it’s good enough.”

Hold out for the truly elegant solution — not by waiting, but by continuing to diligently explore until you find it.

How do you know when you’ve found a beautiful solution? If you have to ask, you haven’t found it yet. When you find it, you’ll know. If you don’t know that you’ve found it, you haven’t.

Listen to your very favorite song, one that you’d consider a masterpiece. When you listen to it, ask how you know it’s beautiful. You probably can’t articulate exactly why. You know that it’s good by how it makes you feel. If you have to seriously ask yourself whether the song is beautiful, you already know that it isn’t. Beauty is recognized, not analyzed.

When Martin Gore wrote the song “It’s No Good,” he knew he’d created something good (ironic given the title). He called Depeche Mode bandmate Andy Fletcher and told him, “I think I’ve written a number one.” And in many countries, it did hit #1. (source: DM biography Stripped).

This is how it is with a good business plan. When it’s finally done, you’re compelled to take a deep breath and say something akin to, “I think I’ve written a number one.”

When you’ve created a song you know is amazing, you can’t wait to share it with people. Similarly, when you have a business plan that you truly love, you can’t wait to implement it. But if your song (or your plan) is weak, then moving forward is more difficult. You’re more likely to procrastinate because you know you haven’t done your best work.

If you don’t love it, you’re not done. A plan you don’t love isn’t finished. How do you know you love it? Again, if you have to ask the question, you’re not there yet. A great plan will excite you.

What to Include

There are many guides to creating a business plan, but so many of them are filled with fluff, or they may be inappropriate for your particular business. Most of the ones I’ve seen are ridiculously archaic. In doing some research, I came across a business planning tutorial from Entrepreneur Magazine. Their template appears to be based on a manufacturing business. Seriously… what percentage of entrepreneurs are starting new manufacturing businesses these days? Perhaps they should note what century this is.

If you need to create a plan for investors, then you may want to follow conventions that they expect. But if, like me, you’re just creating a plan for yourself and your team members, then make sure the plan fits your business. Feel free to take advantage of online templates, but adapt them to your needs. If a section seems irrelevant, it probably is.

My plan has the following sections:

Overview – What’s the basic concept of the business? What is its purpose?

Business Description – What does the business actually do? Who are its customers? What are its products and services? What value does it provide? How does it earn income? What’s special or unique about it?

Market Strategies – What’s the target market for the business? How will you position it? How will you get the word out and reach potential customers? Why should anyone care about what you can provide? What’s your distribution strategy? What kind of PR will you do? Who’s your competition in the marketplace? What’s your strategy for dealing with competition? What’s your search engine strategy?

Pricing – What’s your pricing strategy? Do the numbers make sense? How will this affect your market positioning? This can be one of the most challenging sections to get right.

Social Media Strategy - How will you leverage social media? How does social media mesh with the rest of your business? Can you use it intelligently without seeing it become a distracting diversion? I haven’t seen any business plan templates that include a separate section for social media, but I include it because it’s a part of my business (blog, forums, Google+, etc), and it’s a growing segment that will likely be around for at least the rest of the decade. StevePavlina.com’s own discussion forums will soon pass 1 million messages posted.

Development Plan – How will you take the business from where it is now to where you want it to go? This is where you linearly plan out the steps to go from A to B. Document the key processes your business will need to execute. Identify the major risks, and decide how you’ll manage them. I prefer to spin off separate documents for this section, so it doesn’t become too bloated. For instance, I have other planning docs for my staffing plans, my process for creating and delivering workshops, my process for creating new products, etc. Those plans are 2-7 pages each, so if I included them in the main doc, it would probably be around 50 pages in length. Expect to spend a lot of time on this part of the plan.

Business Finances - In this part of the plan you can include things like balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements. You can analyze your costs as well. For a new business these will be projections (which are often just guesses). For an existing business you can use historical data and also include projections if you so desire. I don’t bother to include this section in my plans because my business has been profitable for years (October 1st, 2011 was its 7-year anniversary). I’m not trying to impress any investors, and I can use my accounting software to review my financials whenever I desire. I don’t bother to make future projections since I think it’s largely a waste of time. Another reason this section is largely irrelevant to me is because my business has a very low cost structure. My growth plans don’t require spending much cash, and the existing cash flow will cover it. I also have plenty of ways to quickly adapt to a cash crunch, so I simply don’t need to pay as much attention to this area. This would be an important area to fill out if you’re investing a lot of capital into the business, and you need to convince yourself and/or others that you have a sound plan for recouping that investment. But if your projections ultimately amount to guessing, why bother?

Closing – I like to include a half-page closing of just a few paragraphs to summarize the key strategic decisions. Since I already have a business, my main focus here is about what I need to start doing differently in order to implement the plan. What do I need to start doing? What do I need to stop doing? What do I need to change about the ways I’m doing things?

Thinking Holistically

Each part of a business plan is like a puzzle piece, and the entire plan is the puzzle. Your puzzle may have 100 pieces to it. But you may be able to identify 500 puzzle pieces. Many of those pieces will look like they fit the puzzle, but when you include them, it will feel like the puzzle isn’t quite coming together.

A holistic plan is one where all of the pieces support each other to create a singular picture. When you have this picture, your business will seem much simpler. Without this picture all you have is a jumble of pieces, each one demanding your attention. You don’t have the capacity to give all 500 or even all 100 puzzle pieces your full attention. But you can give your attention to the big picture, and if those 100 pieces all fit together beautifully, you’ll be giving them the right level of attention when you focus on the big picture.

As I created my business plan, I realized that the process requires a lot of deleting and letting go. There were some puzzle pieces I was very attached to, pieces I’d assumed should be important components of my business, but when I included them, I had to conclude they didn’t fit the big picture.

Letting go of the unneeded bits requires a lot of self-awareness. I had to pause many times and admit to myself that I didn’t feel good about a particular aspect of my plan. Occasionally I worked through the math behind an idea, or I tried to project the idea forward in time to think about the long-term consequences. In some cases I could see that 5-10 years down the road, I’d be left with a very undesirable situation, even though the first year looked great. Other times my intuition would be the dissenting voice. If any part of me disagreed with the idea, I knew I had to rework it or let it go. My commitment was to create a plan that made logical sense, that felt good, and that satisfied my intuition.

One thing that helped me tremendously was to do a 7-day all raw no-fat cleanse before I began this planning process. I started with a 24-hour water fast, and then for the next 6 days I ate nothing but fresh fruits and vegetables. No salt. No spices. No oils. No sweeteners. No overt fat sources like avocados, nuts, seeds, or coconuts. Just raw, water-rich fruits and veggies, water, and some occasional herbal tea (no caffeine). I lost 4.5 lbs during that week, but that was nothing compared to the mental clarity I experienced. After about 3 days, my mind became super sharp, as if I had more working memory available for conscious thought. I wasn’t even going to make a business plan at this time, but when I started working on other planning documents, I couldn’t help but notice how sharp my thinking was. I blazed through a day’s worth of work in a couple hours. When I tackled really hard problems that had challenged me for months or years, simple solutions were suddenly obvious. I felt a bit stupid for not seeing them earlier.

I realized I had to take full advantage of this heightened clarity for as long as it lasted, so I dove into this business planning project and worked each day till I was ready to drop. I’m so glad I did because I think I was able to do a better job in a week than I probably would have been able to do in a month if I didn’t have this extra clarity. If you’ve seen the movie Limitless, the experience was almost like taking one of those pills — not quite that good, but enough to notice a difference.

I’m still feeling this heightened clarity now, but I can tell it’s not quite as high as it was near the end of the cleanse week (which ended last Sunday). I’m probably still enjoying 60-70% of that boost though. I’ve never done a cleanse like this before (I’ve done low fat but never no fat), so this was a new experience for me. I’ll very likely do more cleanses like this when I want to regain that mental boost. The productivity I’ve been enjoying these past couple weeks has been amazing. I’d love to learn how to create this level of mental performance permanently, but I’ve had problems with eating very low-fat in the past for more than 2-3 weeks (like having my skin become so dry that my knuckles were cracked and bleeding).

I’m not saying you have to do a similar cleanse to create a decent business plan, but I am suggeting that it makes sense to be at your mental and physiological best when you do it. The sharper your mind is, the better your plan will be. This is incredibly challenging work that will stretch your brain to its limits. Give yourself every advantage you can.

Competitive Advantage

One of the most important parts of a good business plan is identifying your business’ competitive advantages. Many planning templates have you start by doing market research and looking for market gaps. Then you deliberately target those gaps to position your business competitively relative to existing businesses. You look at what the other players are doing, and you target where they’re weak.

I prefer to approach this from a different angle, especially for small Internet businesses. Start by looking at your personal strengths. How are you different from others? What can you do better than most people? Or what could you eventually learn to do better than most if you worked at it?

If you start with a strengths-based approach, then you need to massage your strengths into a competitive advantage that people will care about. A strength is probably something that matters only to you. It may take some work to transform it into a benefit for your customers.

One of my strengths is that I can develop quality content on many topics much faster than most of my competitors can. I can create in an hour what takes many of them half a day to a day to do.

Being a prolific content creator isn’t necessarily a competitive advantage, but it can be turned into one. For instance, by using this strength to write lots of quality free content, I was able to build very high web traffic in just a couple years. This was largely under my direct control too. I didn’t need Oprah to host me on her show. I didn’t need outside investors to give me money. Now I’m able to leverage this traffic to do things that most of my competitors can’t, such as delivering workshops without spending any money on marketing or promotion. I can also develop workshops faster, which allows me to launch several new workshops simultaneously instead of doing the same one or two over and over.

While you may not like the idea of thinking competitively, it’s wise to view your business through this lens and give it some careful thought. People have an incredible array of choices today. Why on earth should they buy from you instead of from someone else? If you can’t come up with a good reason, don’t expect your customers to figure it out for you. They will indeed buy from someone else.

If you can’t think of any major strengths, then what makes you different? What sets you apart from other people? If you embrace your differences, you may see that you can turn them into strengths. For instance, I live in Las Vegas, which is different than where most people live but not necessarily better. However, I’m able to turn this into a strength by doing workshops on the Las Vegas Strip, which is a fun and lively place. I take full advantage of the location by inviting people to do special exercises in the casinos and on the Strip and by encouraging people to hang out socially after hours, see shows, etc. This provides them with fun, memorable experiences that they won’t have at other people’s workshops. Living in Las Vegas is merely different, but with a little creativity it can be made into a strength.

What’s different about you or your business but not necessarily better? Can you massage one or more of those differences into a strength for your customers? Is anyone else already using similar differences to create a competitive advantage?

Thinking Long-term

Business planning will challenge you to think long-term, years and decades ahead.

I use a time frame of 10-20 years for most aspects of my plan. If I think only 6-12 months ahead, I fail to see how particular paths can magnify into problems down the road, and I overlook major opportunities. If I try to think more than 10-20 years ahead, my plan becomes too speculative, although I can think further out for some aspects that are likely to remain stable.

A lot can change in 20 years. If you had a PC 20 years ago, you probably had a 386 or 486 running MS-DOS 5.0 and possibly Windows 3.0. Windows 3.1 didn’t ship till 1992, and Intel didn’t ship the Pentium processor till 1993. No smart phones. No iPods or iTunes. No web browsers. No Google or Yahoo. No YouTube. No social media unless you liked BBSing. You may have had email, but you probably checked it using a slow dial-up modem. If you did use the Internet, you may have accessed it via CompuServe, Prodigy, or AOL. If you owned a video game system, it was probably a NES, Super NES, Sega Genesis, Turbo Grafx, or Neo-Geo… or Game Boy or Game Gear for a handheld. If you went to the movies, you’d have be wowed by the 3D special effects in Terminator 2.

So if so much is going to change, how can you possibly create a long-term plan that makes sense? Isn’t planning pointless in light of such uncertainty?

The purpose of planning isn’t to predict the future. The purpose of planning is to sharpen your present day decisions and to give your business an intelligent basis for growth.

It’s true that you can’t know what’s going to happen even a few years from now. Surprises will occur. Some of those surprises will help your business. Others will throw you for a loop. No matter what, you’re going to have to adapt as you go along.

But some aspects of the future may be fairly predictable. I feel good in predicting that personal growth will still be important in 20 years. It’s been around for thousands of years. It will probably survive a few more decades. Actually I predict it will be even more important in 20 years than it is today. For at least the last few decades, this field has been trending towards expansion, growing by many billions of dollars in annual revenue within the past five years alone. People are spending more on personal growth than ever before. And as far as I can tell, this increase is expected to continue for many more years.

One of the reasons personal growth will become increasingly important is that change is accelerating, especially technological change. The job market will continue to shift. To be competitive workers, people will need to adapt more quickly than ever to changing circumstances. They won’t be able to trust that they can just get a job and keep it for decades.

I predict that traditional educational systems like universities will become increasingly less relevant, failing to adapt quickly enough to marketplace changes. By the time a student graduates from a 4-year degree program, so much of what they learned will already be obsolete. This is already a major issue today, but it will continue to get worse. College grads will enter the workforce wholly under-prepared for the competitive realities of the workforce. This creates tremendous opportunities for the personal growth field (which overlaps traditional education) to fill in the gaps. There will be increasing demand for faster, more intelligent, more practical sources of education — forms that can adapt their curriculums more quickly to changing circumstances. Archaic elements like tenure only make it harder for old systems to adapt, so if those structures aren’t replaced with more flexible systems, those institutions will be out-competed by smart entrepreneurs who are willing to embrace change. To some degree this is already happening, and I expect this sort of change to continue.

The business opportunities in education alone are staggering. I’ve lost track of how many millionaires I’ve met who built successful businesses teaching people important skills that aren’t normally taught at traditional universities. By leveraging the Internet, they can do it at much less cost for their students, they can do it faster, and they can keep their programs modern and practical under today’s conditions.

All this growth and expansion will create more confusion and stress. Self-discipline and focus will become increasingly important qualities for people to develop since distractions will surely keep expanding. The demand for better management of one’s life will increase significantly.

You don’t need to be a technologist to make some reasonable predictions about the future. Just look at some of the general trends that have been building for years, and project them forward. Smart phones will get smarter and will become even more common. Tablet computers will become more powerful and more common. Data transfer rates will increase. The Internet will become much bigger. New major players will emerge. There will be more interests competing for your attention than ever before.

Some major breakthroughs will occur, and human beings may begin integrating tech-based enhancements onto or into their bodies, but the concept of growth won’t go out of style. Very likely it will become even more important. The fastest growing, fastest adapting people will have a major competitive advantage over those who are slow to adapt. This remains true whether the world of the future becomes more abundant or more scarce.

By making some reasonable predictions about the needs of future humans (or cyborgs, or whatever we become down the road), you can make decisions today that set yourself and your business on a path to long-term success. You can avoid getting bogged down in short-term thinking that leads you astray. You can build a business to grow in alignment with the direction that the world is heading, not where it’s been.

I can see pretty clearly that people are going to need a lot more help with focus, self-discipline, and self-control over the next several years. I can see that many traditional educational institutions are going to get worse in terms of their ability to teach students skills they’ll need in today’s workplaces, especially as they have their budgets slashed. I can predict that more people are likely to access my work on devices that aren’t a desktop computer or a laptop. This helps me make intelligent choices about how my business can serve those needs while remaining flexible and adaptable.

It’s important to get clear on the difference between your medium and your message. Your message can remain fixed, even under changing circumstances, but your medium must remain flexible if you want to have a competitive business across decades in time. My message is conscious growth, and that message can adapt to many different media. I don’t need to worry that blogging may someday go out of style. Ten years from now, most of our interactions may occur through a medium other than blogging. Growth is my business, not blogging, and growth can be communicated in many forms. With a plan based on your message, you don’t need to fear change; rather, you can be excited by all the new opportunities change can bring. (For more on this notion, read The Medium vs. the Message.)

Clarifying the Core

When you finally complete your business plan and clarify the big picture, you may feel a newfound sense of excitement about it. Ultimately the core of your business will probably be something very simple, perhaps something so simple that you were inclined to overlook it.

In my case when I saw the big picture, I realized that it ultimately came down to one simple principle. In order to have a business that really works, I have to focus first and foremost on pursuing my own path of growth. Making money doesn’t work as the main focus. Creating products or doing workshops can’t be the main focus either. In order to succeed, I have to make sure the business is tough on me. I can’t allow it to become so easy that I no longer feel challenged.

When I feel challenged, I’m much more motivated, so I work harder, and my business thrives. When it gets too easy or repetitive, I lose interest. If I don’t feel I’m growing by running the business, that’s a problem. So I have to run it in a way that keeps me in that sweet spot of challenge. That sweet spot, however, is a moving target. It’s not a static spot. And so I came to realize that the only way I can make my business viable and successful in the long term is that I have to relate to it as a vehicle for my own growth and development.

If I stop growing, my business loses its value to me. I begin to check out from it. I’ll turn my attention elsewhere to keep growing. And the business will ultimately suffer for that.

Intuitively I’ve known this all along, but it was difficult to see it till I worked through all the details and finally understood it logically too. It may seem like an emotional or even an irrational choice to define the primary purpose of my business as serving as a vehicle for my own growth. But when I worked through the consequences of that focus, I understood that if I make this my primary focus, then many other intelligent choices flow smoothly from there. I have to help other people grow in order to grow faster for myself — I can’t grow much in a vacuum. I have to innovate. I have to make the business financially sustainable since going broke isn’t going to help me as much as creating more abundance will. I already did the going broke thing more than a decade ago and don’t see much point in repeating it.

This simple understanding helped me remove many puzzle pieces I might otherwise have kept. I now see with much greater clarity that it’s unwise to try to expand my business in directions that won’t help me grow.

I don’t think this is particularly unique though. I think the appeal of entrepreneurship for many people is the long-term personal growth that’s gained from this path. That’s what keeps a business fresh and exciting for the founder. That’s what got me out of bed at 5am this morning. When that growth is no longer present, it’s a good time to sell or leave, so you can move on to new growth experiences.

What’s really interesting about this is that even though I mainly used the objective perspective to develop this business plan, the end result is nicely congruent with the subjective perspective as well. What does a business matter in a dream world? The subjective value is how the business affects you, the business owner. It doesn’t matter how much dream money you accumulate or how many dream characters you can count as customers. What matters is the story you’re creating and how it affects your character’s development. This is of course perfectly in line with what we should expect from the Equivalency Principle, which I’ll be covering in more detail at the Subjective Reality Workshop in less than two weeks.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

For anyone who missed it, Learning Strategies is now offering recordings of all the sessions, either on CD or via digital download for $148. For 20 sessions that works out to only $7.40 per session.

They’re offering the CDs for a very short time only, just till the end of the day on Friday (September 30th). After that the CDs will no longer be available. The CDs include a very nice 3-ring binder, which is typical of Learning Strategies’ products. If you’d like to pay in 3 installments, they provide that option for a small surcharge.

You’ll also get copies of the handouts that were used in the Mindfest.

If you’d like to order the NLP Mindfest (CDs or via instant download), you can call Learning Strategies toll-free at 1-866-292-1861 or order online.

The Mindfest comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

The benefit of the recordings is that you can listen to your favorite sessions more than once. With each pass you can focus on using the processes and closed-eye exercises to make different improvements.

If you ever lose your Digital Downloads, Learning Strategies guarantees that you’ll always be able to download them again at no additional charge.

What Is the NLP Mindfest?

The Mindfest includes 20 audio sessions with tools and techniques for quickly making changes in feelings and behaviors so you can conquer fears, eliminate bad habits, think more creatively, influence others, enhance your relationships, and improve your performance in just about anything you do, from playing sports to building a business.

Each session is about an hour long. So that’s 20 different experts sharing techniques for making changes.

The programs are commercial free, so there are no advertisements or excessive plugs for the authors’ other products. The focus is on providing value you can use right away.

Here’s a list of the different sessions in the Mindfest (provided to me by Learning Strategies):

1. Mind Mastery: How to kick negative thoughts out of your life

2. Brain Switch: How to erase anxiety and boost success

3. Influence vs. Power: How to quickly build connections with others

4. Our Future Leaders: How to reduce fears in children

5. Ultimate Motivation: How to achieve an extraordinary and healthy lifestyle

6. New Life: How to control diabetes and weight

7. Missed by the Masses: What you should know to be more successful

8. Stop the Sabotage: How to uproot nasty habits with ease

9. Game Day Nerves: How to live without performance anxiety

10. Change Catapult: How to self-coach yourself to significant achievement

11. Word Mastery: How to be clear, persuasive, and charismatic

12. X-Ray Listening: Decoding the language of the unconscious mind

13. Winning Strategies: How to use unconscious programming to change your life

14. Living Brilliantly: How to find your personal “sweet spot”

15. Huna & NLP: Ancient and modern keys to well-being

16. Story Time: The truth about your success, relationships, and happiness

17. Social Media: How to use NLP to create sales on the Internet

18. Awareness: The answer to every life problem that actually has an answer

19. Powerful Clarity: Make better life decisions

20. Mending the Wounded Learner: Conquering the fear of learning

How to Get the Mindfest Recordings

If this sounds appealing to you, you can order the NLP Mindfest on CDs or as an instant download. Just call Learning Strategies toll-free at 1-866-292-1861 or order online.

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

Since this program hasn’t started yet, I haven’t seen it. But I wanted to let you know about it for two reasons. First, it’s totally free. And second, I’ve recommended other programs from Learning Strategies such as PhotoReading and Paraliminals, and I know they’re sticklers for high quality, so I don’t feel any hesitation in letting you know about this festival.

What Is the NLP Mindfest?

The NLP Mindfest is a series of online audio programs. Each one is about an hour long, and they’re releasing two programs each day of the Mindfest. So that’s 20 different experts sharing techniques for making changes.

The programs are commercial free, so there are no advertisements or excessive plugs for the authors’ other products. The focus is on providing value you can use right away.

One unique aspect of this program is that there’s a good chance you’ve never even heard of the experts who are participating in the Mindfest. Apparently this was intentional. Learning Strategies didn’t want to create yet another me-too program. They opted to put together a collection of experts who are better known for their methods and teaching than for their sales and marketing skills.

I’m sure you’re looking for the catch, so here it is: The programs are only available for free during the Mindfest. You’ll have a 24-hour window to listen to each of them. If you want copies to listen to again later, you’ll have the option of buying the whole set afterwards. I think you’ll agree that’s a pretty minor catch. If you just want to listen to all the programs for free and not buy anything, you can do so. It’s all try before you buy.

Here’s a list of the different sessions in the Mindfest (provided to me by Learning Strategies):

1. Mind Mastery: How to kick negative thoughts out of your life

2. Brain Switch: How to erase anxiety and boost success

3. Influence vs. Power: How to quickly build connections with others

4. Our Future Leaders: How to reduce fears in children

5. Ultimate Motivation: How to achieve an extraordinary and healthy lifestyle

6. New Life: How to control diabetes and weight

7. Missed by the Masses: What you should know to be more successful

8. Stop the Sabotage: How to uproot nasty habits with ease

9. Game Day Nerves: How to live without performance anxiety

10. Change Catapult: How to self-coach yourself to significant achievement

11. Word Mastery: How to be clear, persuasive, and charismatic

12. X-Ray Listening: Decoding the language of the unconscious mind

13. Winning Strategies: How to use unconscious programming to change your life

14. Living Brilliantly: How to find your personal “sweet spot”

15. Huna & NLP: Ancient and modern keys to well-being

16. Story Time: The truth about your success, relationships, and happiness

17. Social Media: How to use NLP to create sales on the Internet

18. Awareness: The answer to every life problem that actually has an answer

19. Powerful Clarity: Make better life decisions

20. Mending the Wounded Learner: Conquering the fear of learning

What to Expect

Here are the details on how the Mindfest works.

Starting on Monday, Sep 12, each day at 9:00pm Eastern time (6:00pm Pacific time), two new programs will be posted online for you to listen to.

You’ll have 24 hours to listen to these programs… until the next day’s programs are posted. During that window you can listen to the programs as often as you wish. So you don’t have to tune in right at the program posting time if that’s not convenient for you.

Sign up online if you want to attend the Mindfest. A few days before it begins, you’ll receive an email with the full schedule and web links. Then just visit the website to listen to the new programs as you desire. You shouldn’t need any special software or browser plug-ins.

Free Bonus Session

As soon as you sign up for the Mindfest, you’ll also get instant access to a special introductory session with Paul Scheele and Marilyn Devonish. This session will give you a couple techniques you can use right away. And you don’t have to wait for the Mindfest to start — this session is available right now.

Another Free Bonus for CGW Attendees

You may have noticed that our upcoming Conscious Growth Workshop (Sep 16-18 in Las Vegas) overlaps the dates of the NLP Mindfest. That would make it difficult for CGW attendees to listen to the Mindfest. To remedy this conflict, I made arrangements with Learning Strategies to provide the NLP Mindfest recordings to our CGW attendees — for free. No catch.

So if you’re attending the September CGW, you can listen to the whole Mindfest for free at your leisure anytime after the workshop. I believe Learning Strategies will be selling these recordings for $148, so this makes for a nice bonus gift. During the week after CGW, I’ll coordinate with Learning Strategies to get your bonus delivered to you.

Please note that this free bonus is only provided for September CGW attendees. If you’re attending a different workshop (SRW, CSW, or CRW), you can still watch the NLP Mindfest live for free.

Since CGW starts in only 15 days, this is meant mainly as an extra thank you bonus for people who’ve already registered. But if you’re still on the fence about going and this extra bonus nudges you over the edge, I certainly have no objections to that perspective.

Click on over to the NLP Mindfest page, and you can watch Paul Scheele’s intro video before deciding if you want to sign up for it.

Update Sep 29th – How to Get the Mindfest Recordings

The NLP Mindfest has ended, and the recordings are now available — see this post for how to get them, or just get them online right now.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

When you see movies about visiting certain cities, or hear about people traveling there, does a certain part of your psyche salivate with desire? Do you have the thought, I really want to go there someday.

Do you realize that it’s absolutely possible to turn your travel dreams into reality? Those dreams aren’t mere fantasy. They’re the seeds of real experiences.

In this post I’ll share with you some lessons I’ve learned during the past couple years as I worked to transform myself from a very infrequent traveler into the kind of person who regularly sets and achieves new travel goals.

I certainly wouldn’t label myself an accomplished world traveler at this point. There are dedicated travel bloggers who post at length about all the places they’ve visited. But the unique transformation I have to share, and which I hope will be of value to you, is that I just went through this transition recently. It’s clear to me that I’ve passed my own personal tipping point, such that now I know I can maintain regular travel as part of my lifestyle. I didn’t just take a trip — I transformed my whole lifestyle to make this a reality. So these lessons are still very fresh for me. I can still clearly relate to the vibe of being a person who had travel dreams that always seemed to be delayed for a distant someday, so I can draw a sharp contrast between these two different states of being.

Stop Making Excuses

What are some of your most common excuses for not traveling?

Fill in the blank: I’d like to travel more, but I can’t travel right now because _____.

Here are some of the excuses I’ve used in the past:

• I can’t travel right now because I have kids.
• I can’t travel right now because I don’t have enough money.
• I can’t travel right now because I don’t have the time (or I can’t afford to take time off from work).
• I can’t travel right now because I have too much to do at home.
• I can’t travel right now because I haven’t finished X, Y, and Z yet.
• I can’t travel right now because I need to do more research about places to go first.
• I can’t travel right now because it’s too complicated.
• I can’t travel right now because I don’t know how.
• I can’t travel right now because my wife doesn’t want me to.

Any of those sound familiar? What are your favorite excuses for not traveling?

How about this very popular disguised excuse: I will get around to traveling someday – I just can’t get to it right now.

I encourage you to actually write out your own personal list of excuses. Now look at them, and acknowledge that the entire lot is B.S.

When you make excuses and feed them as if they’re real, you’re using your power against yourself.

Let’s review some of the excuses above and see just how nonsensical they are.

You can’t travel because you have kids? Lots of people have kids and still travel. They just don’t use their children as excuses. If you ask enough people, you’ll find someone who can watch the kids while you’re on the road. You may enjoy having some away time from the kids, so you can come back to them fresh. Traveling without them will give you a chance to miss them. Also, notice that kids are portable. You can take them with you if you want. Try it and see if it works for you. You can do this even while they’re still in the womb. So this excuse is just lame. If you want to travel and you aren’t doing so because you have children, you’ll end up resenting them as a burden, and how is that going to serve them? Is that the kind of parent you wish to be? Do you want to teach your kids that they can’t have what they desire if they become parents?

You can’t travel because you don’t have enough money? Last time I checked, money was earnable. Money is an important part of the travel game, and we’ll address that later, but just admit to yourself for now that it’s incredibly pathetic to hide behind a lack of money as an excuse for not traveling. People were traveling long before money was invented. If you want it badly enough, you’ll do what it takes to get the money you need, and you probably need less than you think. In fact, clear travel goals are great motivation to earn more money.

You can’t travel because you don’t have the time… or you have too much to do? Yeah, right. You have so much to do that you have time to read my blog but not to make travel arrangements? You have the same amount of time as anyone else, including those people who are traveling all over the place. Ferdinand Magellan somehow found the time to sail around the world, and he lived to the ripe old age of 41. It’s nonsense to say that you don’t have the time. A more accurate statement is that you haven’t made travel a high enough priority in your life. You’re putting too much lesser crap ahead of it, like watching TV or web surfing. Turn off your cable TV, and never look back. You do realize that at the same time you’re reading this article, you could be exploring another city — right this very moment. Someone else is doing that instead of you. They got there not by having more hours in the day, but by making different decisions and setting different priorities. This may sound ironic since I’m a blogger, but I don’t read other people’s blogs. I don’t have the time. If I tried to keep up with all the blogs that interest me, I wouldn’t have just spent 2 wonderful weeks in Paris. Stop making time for stupid stuff, and you’ll have plenty of time for travel.

You can’t travel because your spouse won’t let you? Not a problem — just tell your spouse I said it’s okay. You have my permission. If your spouse has a problem with that, tell him/her it’s out of your hands because I said you had to go travel. Steve’s orders. Also read My Wife Won’t Let Me Start My Own Business – same ideas apply here. Seriously, don’t be such a wimp. If you want to travel and your spouse won’t let you, then go travel without your spouse; if they have a tizzy cow about it, find a new spouse that loves to travel as much as you do. I know that sounds over the top, but it’s even more over the top — and utterly ridiculous — to try to use your relationship as an excuse for not achieving your own happiness and fulfillment. If you hold back for the “good” of your relationship, you’ll just end up silently resenting your partner. Is that really the kind of relationship you wish to have? Is that the kind of person you want to be — an inauthentic one who can’t speak up and be true to yourself? It’s better to forgive yourself for picking an incompatible partner — we all make mistakes — and open yourself to attracting a relationship with someone who enjoys traveling as much as you do.

You can’t travel because you can’t get the time off of work? That’s B.S. too. Everyone who travels could just as easily make this excuse, but they take the time off of work anyway. What if you have a job? It doesn’t matter. You Are Self-Employed no matter what. You may simply not be very good at managing your personal services business. Perhaps you did something rather dumb like taking on an indefinitely long contract job where you somehow agreed to give a third party control over your schedule. Realize that it’s not your bosses fault. You did this to yourself. You didn’t have to do that. Lots of people don’t do that. I don’t do that. I think it’s a stupid way to live. Then again, maybe your employer subtly manipulated you into a form of slavery. But now that you’re aware of those limitations, do you wish to continue? Or do you want more freedom? If you want more freedom, don’t expect someone else to bestow it upon you. You must demand it and claim it. Freedom is seldom free. Ask any former slave. Frequent travel requires that you have the freedom to control a significant part of your schedule. The truth is that you already have this freedom right now. You can buy a plane ticket and go. Whatever structures you feel are getting in the way are structures that you need to collapse and replace with better structures. Otherwise you’ll never have the freedom you desire, and your travel dreams will indeed remain pure fantasy till you die. Your employer and your work schedule aren’t real problems; you can ditch those today if you want. The problems you must overcome are your own past stupid decisions and your own wimpiness in giving your power away too easily. Fortunately these are solvable problems.

Are you beginning to see a pattern here? A common thread weaves through every excuse. The problem is always one of giving your power away, feeding energy to your excuses instead of your desires. And the solutions are the same in each case: Stop it! It’s a stupid thing to do to yourself.

All of your excuses are lame and pointless. None of them are valid. For each excuse you can name, lots of people with similar challenges are already traveling in spite of those challenges.

No doubt at this point, there will be some nudnik who feels compelled to offer up a counter-example… like What if you’re serving a life sentence in prison? How are you supposed to travel then? Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison, and he sures seems to get around. For every retarded excuse, there’s an inspiring example of using your power correctly.

If you need more help with this notion, read Feeble Excuses and How To Give Your Power Away and Abuse of Power. And then of course… Stop it!

Work Through Limiting Beliefs About Travel

In addition to making excuses, another challenge to overcome is that of limiting beliefs. A limiting belief is a perspective that prevents you from taking actions you’d otherwise like to take.

Here are some examples of limiting beliefs I had about travel:

• Traveling is selfish and self-indulgent.
• The more I travel, the more I’m neglecting my work, kids, etc.
• Traveling is difficult and complicated.
• Traveling isn’t worth the effort.
• Traveling equals taking a vacation, a break from more important matters.

And again I had to go through a process of breaking down these limiting beliefs and replacing them with more accurate ways of thinking.

Is travel selfish and self-indulgent? Of course it is — to an extent. But is there anything wrong with that? I think the underlying assumption with this belief is that if we do something that we really desire, that somehow it’s wrong. Instead of trying to frame traveling as something I do for other people, I got past this belief by accepting that for me, traveling is indeed a self-indulgent thing to do. And then I admitted to myself that I like to self-indulge in this way, and I feel good when I do so. When I’m traveling at a frequency and pacing that feels good to me, I’m happier with my life. I could say that it benefits others in some fashion, but I don’t want to overplay that because that isn’t really why I travel. I travel primarily for myself, and it’s perfectly okay to do so.

Are you neglecting your work, kids, etc. when you hit the road? No, you’re creating the balance you seek. You can’t give everyone and everything your attention at all times. The requests for your time will often exceed the time you have to give. It’s up to you to discover the right balance that works for you.

For more than a decade, I tried “balancing” my life with 1-2 weeks of travel per year at most, usually to destinations I’d already been to many times before. In 2010, I traveled about 12 weeks out of the year, mostly going to new cities. That was a huge shift for me, as I’d never done anything like that before. It didn’t take long to see how much happier I was with this level of travel.

Is traveling difficult and complicated? It may seem that way at first, but the more you practice, the easier it gets. You can learn a lot from other people who travel frequently, but you can also just ease into it and learn by doing. I prefer a mixture of both. Travel has its share of challenges, but all of them can be handled, and the process of dealing with them will help you grow stronger and more capable.

Is traveling worth the effort? I figured this one out by trial and error. For me it has definitely been worth the effort. By and large, the trips I’ve taken have been better than I expected. I enjoyed them even more than I thought I would.

A couple weeks ago, I was standing outside the Louvre, thinking to myself, This is so cool! I can’t believe I’m really here at the Louvre. It’s even more amazing than I thought it would be.

I feel so much awe and wonder as I travel to different places. There have been many magical moments, like when Rachelle and I were the last people to leave the Eiffel Tower one night and had the whole top level to ourselves for a while as we gazed over a moonlit Paris… or when we rode bikes through Stanley Park in Vancouver… or when I drove through the beautiful landscapes at Yellowstone and saw a bear, a wolf, and lots of bison.

Yes, you can feel over-traveled if you do it to excess, but when you find your balance, I think you’ll agree that it is indeed worth the effort.

Is traveling just about taking a vacation? Travel is what you make of it. If you treat it as a vacation, a break from your normal life, then that’s all it will be to you.

That isn’t how I prefer to travel through. Getaways are nice now and then, and I do occasionally enjoy them, but I can’t usually stomach vacation-style trips for more than a few days. I get bored with them pretty quickly, and I end up feeling that my time would be better spent elsewhere. But for many years, those were the only kinds of trips I took because I thought that’s all there was to travel.

Today I no longer think of traveling as taking a break or a vacation. It is a shift in routine to be sure, but the purpose isn’t to escape or take time off from work.

Travel is just as important to me as any other work I might do. Traveling, when I do it in the way that works for me, provides me with an integrated bundle of growth experiences. It pushes me and challenges me. It wakes me up to new possibilities. It exposes me to new perspectives. It inspires me.

I don’t get these benefits if I keep going to the same places I’ve already been to and repeat experiences I’ve already had. I get these benefits when I branch out and visit places I’ve never been to, inviting new experiences I’ve never had before. For me, travel is the progressive experience of the new and the unfamiliar.

I don’t feel guilty about traveling for weeks at a time because I know that for me, travel is time on, not time off. Travel is an important part of my path of growth. I love that there are so many places I have yet to visit — it means I have a long line of growth experiences ahead of me. When I’m traveling in the manner I find most fulfilling, I’m not on vacation. I’m working on myself. Travel is exactly the opposite of taking time off. When I travel I’m pushing myself to be on 24/7. By comparison when I return to Las Vegas after a long trip, that’s when it feels like I’m taking it easy.

In a similar manner, I encourage you to list out your own limiting beliefs about travel, and then work through them one by one. Step into the real truths behind these apparent limitations, and realize that the only limits are those you place upon yourself.

If you need more help busting limiting beliefs, I encourage you to use the Lefkoe Process, especially if you’re a very logical and left-brained person. Take advantage of Morty’s 20-minute videos to eliminate beliefs that hold you back from traveling as much as you’d like to.

Honoring the Call to Travel

I know that not everyone feels a call to get on the road and travel. And that’s fine. But for whatever reason, I’m one of the people who does hear this call. I love being on the road… not every day, but often.

Are you one of those people? Do you feel a stirring in your soul to get out on the road and see more of the world? And does it scare you to think about it? Fear is a pointer to desire.

If you hear this call too, it’s important to honor it. Traveling is a part of you. It’s time to awaken to this calling and to make it a part of your life, not someday… but now.

It may not be easy to make it happen. You may have to overcome many challenges and undertake significant lifestyle adjustments. It may take some time to work through all those shifts, but you can make this happen. It’s all very doable, regardless of your current situation.

I travel because it stirs something in my soul. It feels so good to me. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve enjoyed the trips I’ve taken during the past couple years even more than I expected to. Paris was even more amazing than I thought it would be. The reality of travel seems to keep exceeding my expectations.

I often find that I don’t really understand certain desires until I begin to explore them. Before taking action I can’t fully fathom why they matter so much to me. Those lessons unfold over time — only after I dive in and act. As a result of lots of trial and error, I know it’s important for me to listen to these desires and to give them outlets for expression, even before I fully grasp what they’re trying to express.

By giving myself permission to travel more, I’ve learned more about why it’s so important to me. Up until mid-2009, I’d never left the USA. I think that limited my perspective. I would occasionally see feedback on some of my articles about how “American” my perspective was. I had no idea what that meant. My blog has an international audience, with 50% of readers living outside the USA, but I wasn’t a particularly international person. Sure I studied other cultures in school, but that doesn’t come close to actually experiencing them firsthand.

I’ve gone far enough along this path to know that traveling will continue to be a significant part of my life henceforth. I couldn’t fathom going back to a lifestyle that lacked expansive travel experiences.

Traveling offers a variety of different challenges, and those are good challenges to help me keep growing. My life in Las Vegas is fairly easy. If I settle into it too much, I feel bored and restless, and I crave new challenges. Going to France and trying to communicate in French was a real challenge for me at times — a challenge I can’t readily duplicate in Vegas, at least not with the same level of immersion.

One time I was at a museum in Paris, and a woman said a couple sentences to me in French. I couldn’t consciously make out a single word, but somehow I understood what she was saying. She was asking me if I wanted to do the audio tour, which would cost extra. It was surreal to have a communication experience where I didn’t understand any of the words, yet I grasped the meaning. This gave me a different perspective on how I communicate with others.

Even if you don’t fully understand why you wish to travel, I encourage you to begin honoring this call anyway. From the outside looking in, it may appear to be self-indulgent whimsy. But once you get on the road and start experiencing what it’s really like, I expect you’ll have a profound shift in your perspective, just as I’ve had.

Give your travel calling the attention and the respect it deserves. It matters.

Place Your Travel Order

When you’ve worked through the excuses and limiting beliefs and accepted your travel calling, the next step is to place your order with the universe.

Many people are really, really bad at this — as in pathetic. Let me save you a lot of time here and get you past all the fluff that will keep you stuck at home.

Do this: PICK YOUR NEXT DESTINATION!

This means to pick one specific place to travel to, such as a city or an island. Make that your next travel goal.

Pick your next destination based on where you most desire to visit next. Don’t base it on what you think you can get — that’s a misuse of power. Ask yourself: If I could hit the road tomorrow on a free trip that someone else was paying for, where would I most like to go?

In order to get moving on your travel goals, you need to pick a destination that inspires you. It has to be a real, genuine, heartfelt desire. If you don’t really want it, or if it’s just something you’re settling for but isn’t really your top choice, then it’s a phony, wimpy-ass goal, and you’re probably not going to put any real effort into it.

When you acknowledge the destination you really want, it’s probably going to scare you a bit. That’s good. That means it’s a stretch goal.

If you travel goal seems too easy and doesn’t stir up any fear or trepidation, chances are you’re wimping out and picking something because you think you can get it, but it’s not a deep, soul-stirring desire. If you move forward and try to take action on that goal, you’ll most likely procrastinate and sabotage yourself, and even if you do make it happen, you’ll get there and may feel bored and listless.

Recently on Twitter and Google+, I asked people what city they’d most love to travel to next. Most people seemed to have no trouble offering up their top choice. But some people gave a list of possibilities, which is an abuse of power. You can only be in one location at a time, so if your next destination is a list of items separated by the word or, have you really made a decision yet? No, you haven’t.

What if you can’t decide? Seriously… you can’t decide? How did you decide what to eat for breakfast? Use the same process to pick your next travel destination. It’s not rocket science. You just decide. If you didn’t know how to make such decisions, you’d have died of starvation long ago. Don’t overcomplicate it. You can visit more than one destination in your lifetime. All you need to do now is pick your NEXT one. It’s no more difficult that choosing your next meal.

It’s perfectly fine to make your next destination a package deal — a string of ANDs rather than ORs. Just be clear that you want the whole package, and get clear about the order in which you’ll visit each city/location. I did a 23-day road trip last year, and it was fairly straightforward to make it happen, but I had to figure out what all the stops would be. I visited Reno, Sacramento, San Francisco, Ashland, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Kelowna, Banff, Calgary, Glacier Park, Yellowstone, Salt Lake City, and back to Vegas. It was an awesome trip!

Vague goals have very little power to manifest. When I tried to set a goal to visit the Pacific Northwest or to travel to Europe, nothing much happened. It was only when I got specific that these goals started to manifest quickly. A goal to visit the Pacific Northwest is lame; you can’t take action on that. I had to concretize that goal by deciding which cities to visit and in what order. Same goes for Europe. I intended to go to Europe for many years. But it was only when I shifting to a more concrete goal and picked Paris for my next destination that I finally found myself on an intercontinental flight.

So don’t pick a country or a continent or some other vague B.S. like that. China isn’t a destination. Pick a real city. And it’s not a bad idea to get even more specific if you can, like deciding to stay in Midtown Manhattan when you visit NYC. In my experience, picking a city is enough specificity though — once I’m there I’ll probably travel all around the city anyway, so just about anything within city limits can potentially be part of the experience.

Even if you’ve already read How to Order, read it again. If it seems like I’m being excessive in constantly referring back to this article, that’s accurate. I’ll keep doing so until people start ordering correctly and stop behaving like nimnuls who walk into the universal restaurant saying, “I’m hungry. I want some food. Bring me some food.”

Don’t be one of those dolts who says, “I want to travel more” or “I want to visit Asia.” You’ll stay home if you do that. Place a real order. What city? What island?

Banish Doubt and Create Certainty

Once you’ve picked a destination, do NOT change your mind.  Poke a pin in it on a paper map, and don’t move the pin till you’ve been there and back.

Don’t consider other alternative you might visit. Remove all doubt from your mind. You are going to go to this place. And you’re going to start making it happen now… not someday. Someday is never.

This is your reality. You’re a god here. If you want to visit this place, nothing can stop you from getting there. It’s a done deal.

Pause for a moment and let that sink in. This isn’t just a dream or a fantasy. This is about to become your reality. Soon you will physically be in your chosen destination. Yes, you’re really going to be there. It’s going to happen.

If you think it’s not going to happen, if you harbor any doubts about it, give yourself a good smack. That’s an abuse of power. Stop it!

You are going to reach your destination. Period. Whatever obstacles come up, you’ll surmount them. Whatever problems arise, you’ll solve them. Whatever challenges present themselves, you’ll overcome them. You cannot be stopped.

Do NOT use your power against yourself. Direct your power in one direction — strictly towards your intended destination.

Doubting that you’ll reach your destination is the same as deciding to stay home. Don’t do that unless you’re #1 destination is to stay home.

Whenever I finally get moving towards a new travel destination, I invariably hit a certain snapping point. I may waffle and vacillate a good bit leading up to the decision, but once I’ve made the decision, I turn off all alternatives. After that snap point, I direct all my energy forward, towards making the trip to the chosen destination a reality. I don’t give myself permission to change my mind or to doubt whether it will happen. I create the reality where the trip is an absolute certainty. The odds that it will happen are 100%.

You already know how to do this. Recognize that you’ve used your power in a similar manner at various points in the past. Remember what it felt like when you hit that snapping point of making a real decision, and you never looked back. Maybe you quit a certain job or ended a relationship or decided to move to a new city. Remember what a done-deal type of decision feels like.

Notice how easy and straightforward it is to take action after you’ve snapped. And noticing how incredibly difficult it is to take action before you’ve snapped.

Until you snap yourself into 100% commitment, your trip probably isn’t going to happen. I’d bet against you. But once you snap, it’s a done deal — after that you just know that it will be done.

Before your personal snapping point, various obstacles will seem like big deals. They’ll make you want to give up. That’s because you’re allowing some of your power to leak out and feed those obstacles. Not having enough money seems like a real problem. Not being able to get time off from work seems like another major problem. But once you’ve snapped, these problems reveal themselves to be ridiculously minor challenges. Stop allowing your power to be drained by excuses, and direct all your power forward towards your destination. Solving problems becomes child’s play after that. You’re much more powerful than any obstacle that stands in your way.

Obsess Over Your Destination

Begin to obsess over your chosen destination. For now, it’s the only place you’re going to think about visiting. Ignore all other suggestions or alternatives; for now they’re irrelevant.

Concretize your goal. Bring it from the level of fantasy to the level of reality.

Use maps.google.com to look up your destination. Study the layout of the city. Check out what’s there. Start thinking about what you’ll see and do while you’re visiting. Use the street view to zoom in on some locations to see what it would be like to actually be there. Know that soon you’ll be there seeing these places for yourself.

Before going to Paris, I zoomed in on a few places like the Louvre and a some spots along the Seine. I rotated the view around and imagined that I was seeing this through my own eyes. Less than a week later, I was actually there doing it.

I recommend buying a travel book for your intended destination and reading through it. Based on a reader’s recommendation, I bought Rick Steves’ guide to Paris. Rick has been traveling through Europe for 30+ years and has written extensively about it. His company also hosts a variety of guided tours through Europe. As I flipped through the book, even just for several minutes in the bookstore, it made the idea of going to Paris become more real and concrete, shifting it further from the realm of possibility to certainty.

For many years, I’d thought about traveling to Paris, but once I committed to really going there, I started visualizing the upcoming experience differently. It took on a different flavor.

Another recommendation is to do an image search to find a nice photo of your destination, and make it your background pic on your laptop, iPad, cell phone, etc. This will help you think about it some more.

Make your intended destination a serious obsession. Be very clear that you’re going to go there. If you catch yourself thinking of obstacles, again… give yourself a good smack across the jaw. Stop it! Think only of the successful achievement of your goal. You WILL go there. It’s a done deal.

Another thing you can do to continue obsessing is to start watching movies that involve your destination. Rachelle and I watched Amelie a while before visiting Paris, and we ended up visiting the café from the movie when we went to Montmartre. Additionally, we had the surreal experience of walking up the steps in front of Sacré-Coeur, only to realize that it was also used in a scene from the same movie.

The reason this obsession process is important is that it gradually moves your goal from the realm of fantasy into the realm of reality. When you learn more about your destination and begin to study it AFTER you’ve committed to it, the goal becomes significantly more solid. You start to accept that it really isn’t just a fantasy — you can and will actually go there and experience it for yourself. This is an important shift to make because it’s so easy to fall into the trap of wishful thinking when it comes to travel goals. Wishing isn’t enough to make it real.

Some people like to create a vision board for their destination. I do have a vision board, but the only Paris-related element was a tiny cutout of the word “France.” So for me this wasn’t really necessary. I got more value from zooming in and out of the Google map for the city and visualizing myself standing there — that made it more concrete for me. Other people swear by vision boards though, so I encourage you to experiment to see if you find them helpful. I don’t see how it could hurt.

Keep obsessing over your destination till you’re actually there.

Brace Yourself for the Social Shifts

You’ll probably find that your obsession starts to polarize the people around you. I’ve been through this process countless times, so I’m used to how it plays out, but I caution you to prepare for the inevitable social ripples your newly emerging travel vibe may unleash.

Some people in your life will be turned off by your new obsession. I got a few jabs here and there for being a bit nuts about Paris at times. Some people just can’t relate. Some people hate Paris. My attitude is mostly to roll my eyes at them and tune them out. I don’t need to explain to anyone why Paris was my #1 pick. Either you get Paris or you don’t. Same goes for Las Vegas… or any other city for that matter. There’s no need to explain or justify your choices to anyone else. Let it be enough that you want them, and let other people have their reactions.

Pick the destinations that inspire you, and don’t worry if the other people in your life don’t get why you want to go there. These are your desires. That’s enough. Nobody else needs to agree with you. If people react negatively to your choices, feel free to indulge in some eye rolling, but don’t change your mind.

On the other hand, when you start obsessing over the destinations that truly excite you, you won’t turn everyone off. You’re also going to light up and inspire others who share similar desires. I’ve received some nice positive feedback from others who found my destinations inspiring too, whether or not they’ve already been there.

There’s something really cool about attracting new people into your life who share similar desires. Rachelle and I enjoy traveling together, but I also think it would be fun to travel in small groups with other like-minded adventurers. We’d have to test this at some point to see how it goes — I imagine it would depend on the people and how compatible our specific interests are.

Don’t get clingy to past connections that are no longer in sync with you. Your social life will shift. Let it. You won’t end up alone. New connections will flow into your life soon, and those connections will be a better fit for you than the old ones.

You’ll also discover that as you embrace your own travel vibe, you’ll awaken similar vibes in others. I’ve been seeing a lot of this lately, where my own travel adventures are stirring up some excitement in others. One person’s travel-mania can be infectious at times. Initially, when you encounter someone who stirs up such desires, there’s a tendency to feel envious or dismissive if you’re still repressing or denying your own desires. Try to move past that phase as quickly as possible. Yes, it will be a good bit of work to make this a reality for you if it seems like a distant goal, but you can do it once you reach your own personal snapping point.

Integrate the Travel Vibe Into Your Lifestyle

In the long run, if you want to travel a lot more than you’re traveling right now — as opposed to just taking very occasional trips now and then — it’s important to transform your lifestyle into one that’s structured to support your travel goals. You don’t want to remain stuck in a lifestyle that’s at odds with frequent travel.

I’ve made certain career choices partly because I want the freedom to travel a lot. Today I enjoy the fruits of those decision. I have a flexible work schedule that’s under my control, and I’m able to make enough money to financially support frequent travel.

None of this just happened. It wasn’t an accident or a stroke of luck. I made deliberate decisions and commitments to create this kind of lifestyle. That began with saying no to decision paths that would interfere with this goal.

I didn’t get it perfect, but I got what I wanted. My lifestyle choices and my travel vibe are integrating themselves nicely. I still have more work to do in this area, but I’m very pleased with the synergy thus far.

Recognize that if you want to travel a lot, and your current lifestyle structure doesn’t support it, then you’ve got some transformational work to do. If you’re tempted to blame your lifestyle elements or use them as excuses for not traveling, don’t do that. If you want to blame something, then blame yourself for making dumb choices in the past that led you to this point. Go ahead and give yourself a sound thrashing — you deserve it! You’re the one who made the choices that led you here, and now you’re dealing with the consequences of those choices. It’s no one’s fault but your own.

We all make stupid choices at times. And sometimes it’s not such a bad thing to smack ourselves when we come to terms with the ridiculously lame consequences of those choices. I’ve certainly made my share of stupid choices.

But realize that your situation isn’t terminal. Don’t try to make the best of a bad situation. That’s even dumber. Instead, figure out a lifestyle structure — especially involving your career and finances — that will support the kind of traveling you’d like to do.

You can start by saying no to anything that conflicts with the lifestyle you wish to create. If you desire to travel for about 12 weeks out of each year, then does it make any sense to accept a job where you get only 2 weeks of vacation time each year? Of course not. That would be moronic.

Can you admit to yourself that in light of your current travel desires, some of your past decisions have been fairly dumb? If those decisions create consequences that don’t mesh with your travel desires, then they’re stupid decisions. Don’t try to justify them. Just admit the sheer idiocy of them.

I’m not suggesting that you’re an idiot. But we all make stupid decisions at times. And in such cases, the worst thing to do is to pretend they’re smart choices with a “Hehe… I meant to do that” attitude. You didn’t mean to do that. You didn’t mean to get stuck. That was a mistake.

The good news is that once you acknowledge the stupidity of some of your past choices, you can start to release them and make some better choices for the road ahead. You can choose a new career/financial path that fully supports your travel desires. You can attract new relationships that are compatible with frequent travel.

You’re not stuck. You’re way more powerful than any situation you find yourself in. Don’t act like a baby. If you want to travel more, than snap yourself into a real commitment. You’re going to undertake all the lifestyle transformations necessary to make that a reality. It’s a done deal.

It may take time to get there, but harbor no doubts that it will happen. Again, the creation of doubt is an abuse of your power. Stop it!

Create only the certainty that you are absolutely, definitely going to do what it takes to transform your lifestyle structure into one that fully supports your travel goals. You’ll be on the road as much as you desire to be, and that will be a good thing for the other parts of your lifestyle. Traveling will enhance your career, your finances, and your relationships.

What About the Money?

A lack of funds is a common reason people give for not traveling, but like all feeble excuses, it’s a bogus one.

Your income isn’t fixed. You can go out and earn as much as you desire. There are countless ways to earn money.

The main requirement for earning more money is having the motivation to do so. Picking a clear travel destination and obsessing over it can create some pretty strong motivation, the kind that will get you off your butt, fire up your brain, and get you taking new actions.

When people say that a lack of funds is holding them back, they’re lying to themselves. The truth is that they’re holding themselves back. They’re empowering money as the excuse of the moment. They could just as easily abuse their power by blaming their spouse, their job, their kids, or their country.

The cool thing about travel goals is that they’re pretty easy to accomplish with money. You can use money to buy plane tickets, to secure places to stay, and to pay for experiences. While it’s entirely possible to travel with little money, there’s no reason you can’t earn more money. It certainly makes travel easier.

Let your travel goals inspire your financial goals. It’s not particular motivating to earn more money just for the sake of having a bigger number in your bank account. But if you translate those financial goals into visiting more cities every year and having cool adventures, then your financial goals will be much more meaningful.

In my experience, the financial aspects tend to take care of themselves when you’ve done the other steps properly. The means present themselves when you’ve properly turned the corner and hit your snapping point.

Before the snap, the lack of funds may seem like a pretty big obstacle. If you’re ever willing to use the lack of money as an excuse, you’ll always experience this as an obstacle for you. But when you’re 100% commitment, then money is no longer your enemy — it becomes your ally instead.

Whenever I set big goals that require more money that I have on hand, the money shows up pretty quickly. Either I get inspired by a new idea or project that brings in the money, or the money just shows up through some other channel, often in ways I didn’t expect. These days I even make a game of it by asking the universe to pay for my trips in creative ways. It’s fun to see how that unfolds. For my recent Paris trip, I received way more than I needed. First, I launched 4 new workshops, which created an avalanche of initial registrations. The registrations from just one day were more than enough to cover the costs of the Paris trip twice over. Then on the day I left, I received a $16K refund from the IRS; that was expected, but the timing was very nice. Then on the day I got back from the trip, I received a $6K inheritance, which wasn’t at all expected.

This pattern keeps popping up in my life. Whenever I set stretch goals and commit to them before I can see how they’ll work out, the universe backs me up. If money is needed to achieve the goal (or even if I don’t need more money but playfully request it anyway), the money just shows up.

If this sounds like a completely alien experience to you, then stop feeding your power to excuses. Try doing the opposite to test how it works for you. Commit to doing something that really inspires you, even when you can’t see how it’s going to work out.

How do you commit to pursuing a path when you can’t see how it’s going to turn out? How do professional athletes do it? When they show up for a game, they don’t know how it’s going to turn out. They show up anyway and play full out. Do the same.

The point is to play full out — because that’s how the game of life is meant to be played.

If you need more money to travel, go make more money. Quit acting like a baby about it. It really is that simple, but it only becomes simple when you snap into 100% commitment. If it looks complicated, that’s because you’re letting your power leak into excuses. Stop doing that!

Who Are You?

Look within and take note of what you see. Are you a traveler, or are you a homebody? There’s no right or wrong answer per se, but what are you? What do you see?

Do you believe as Cervantes said, that “the road is better than the inn”? Or would you rather be the innkeeper?

Where do you fall along this spectrum? Where do you see yourself?

How many weeks out of the next 52 weeks would you ideally like to be traveling away from home? When I asked this question on Twitter and Google+, the answers were all over the place. Many people gave answers in the range of 8-16 weeks. But some said 0-2 weeks. One person actually said 53 weeks.

For me I’d say that 16-18 weeks feels about right on average, but the exact amount of time I’m on the road isn’t as important as other factors like the specific destinations and the new experiences I invite.

What kind of person are you when it comes to achieving your travel desires — or any other desires for that matter? In your heart of hearts, are you the sidelined spectator who will watch others achieve their dreams? Or are you the achiever who will commit fully to your own dreams and desires?

How much longer are you going to make excuses? Is that who you truly are? Do you really think it’s right to keep blaming external factors like your empty bank account, your debt, your family, etc? Is that the real you?

Isn’t it time you placed the responsibility for achieving your desires squarely on your shoulders? Aren’t you the one who made the decisions that resulted in the reality you now experience? Didn’t you invite it to happen, either by your own choices or by your silent approval?

It’s not up to me to tell you who you are on the inside. Only you can determine that. You’re the one who must determine whether or not you’ve been living up to your own ethical and moral code.

As for me, I think it’s wrong to blame my lack of results on external circumstances. Deep down I know I’m stronger than that. I can’t possibly blame the failure to achieve my desires on a lack of money, unsupportive relationships, lack of time, etc. I know I created all of those things by own choices. If I don’t like my financial situation, it’s up to me to change it. If I feel my relationships aren’t supporting me, I’m capable of releasing or transforming them and seeking out more empowering connections. If I lack the time to achieve my goals, I can reassess my priorities and stop putting lesser concerns ahead of more important desires.

When I make excuses for not living up to my potential, I give my power away, and I don’t feel quite myself. When I remember that this is my reality and that I’m not some powerless weakling who has to accept the whims of fate, I reclaim my natural creative powers. Then I can change whatever I desire to change, and my life zooms off in a new direction of my choosing… with results that are even more rewarding that what I imagined.

How do you feel about yourself when you excuse yourself from setting stretch goals and achieving them? Do you like letting yourself off the hook? Does that align well with your personal moral code? Is that the kind of person you truly wish to be?

At the end of the day, would you rather accept what you don’t want and try to make peace with it, or would you rather reclaim your power and commit fully to creating what you do want?

Obviously these concepts go far beyond mere travel goals. Your travel goals are part of your personal training program to fully embrace your power. They’re going to continue dangling in front of you for the rest of your life, teasing, coaxing, and daring you to pursue them. Will you step into your power and claim them, or will you live passively till you die?

Will you live as a person who reaches your destinations, or will you continue to push them away, deny them, pretend you don’t want them, and excuse yourself from doing what it takes to experience them?

Let me say that the view from atop the Eiffel Tower at midnight is indeed more glorious and inspiring than the tiny portal into which you’re currently staring.

Why did you summon me into your reality anyway? You did it to keep reminding yourself not to settle for less. You can have what you want. You like watching me figure out what I want, come to terms with it, commit to it, and achieve it. You live vicariously through my experiences because you want to integrate similar vibes in your own life. Your desires will be your own of course, but you keep coming back here because whenever you’re tempted to settle, you know that I’ll make it more difficult for you to do so. Settling isn’t you, and you know it. You’re way stronger than that.

When you’re ready to snap, you’ll snap. And the universe will back you up — you’ll see. Your challenge is to snap before you’re able to see the avalanche of support that awaits you on the other side. There’s very little support on the pre-snap side; all the good stuff is post-snap.

Next stop: London.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina