Is it possible to use the Law of Attraction to manifest true abundance in your life, including financial abundance, social abundance, and more? Absolutely, it is. In this 35-minute video (split into 4 individual clips for posting on YouTube), I explain why people so often fail in this area, and I give you a simple two-part method to make it work for you. I also share some stories and examples from my own life to help you internalize these ideas so you can apply them successfully.

There are several video clips of me on YouTube already, but those were all recorded by others, including some interviews that people have done with me. This is the first time I’ve intentionally recorded a video to share the kind of ideas I might otherwise cover in an article or podcast. So please consider this my first official video blog.

I recommend that you watch all 4 clips back to back if possible (35 minutes total). I broke the video into shorter clips because of YouTube’s 10-minute limit. I wanted to post these on YouTube instead of another service since it’s the most popular one, and I already have a YouTube channel (stevepavlinadotcom). Feel free to subscribe to it if you’re a YouTube member.

This video was recorded in HD by the way. Enjoy!

You can watch the videos one at a time below, or use this playlist link to automatically watch them in sequence on YouTube.

Creating Abundance (Part 1 of 4)

Creating Abundance (Part 2 of 4)

Creating Abundance (Part 3 of 4)

Creating Abundance (Part 4 of 4)

I’m a total newbie at video, and this was my very first time using iMovie — or any video editing software for that matter — so please be kind.

I hope you find these insights on creating abundance helpful. If you’d like to see more videos, I’m open to suggestions for additional topics to cover.

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

The first Conscious Growth Workshop earlier this month was such an unqualified success that I started the process of booking another event less than 48 hours after it ended. It took a little while to select the meeting room and get the paperwork signed, but we’re good to go now.

Workshop Details

All the workshop details can be found on the Conscious Growth Workshop page, including the specific topics we’ll be covering each day.

This will be a very holistic workshop, blending high-level ideas with practical application. We’re going to cover career development, money, health, skill building, habits, productivity, emotions, relationships, spirituality, and more. I’ll be sharing the best insights I have on each of these topics. My goal is not to send you home with pages and pages of notes that you’ll hopefully implement later. This workshop is geared to create many a-ha moments that shift your thinking right there in the workshop.

Workshop Location

The first CGW was at Harrah’s. This one will be at the Flamingo, which is just two doors down, still right in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip.

For CGW #2 we’ll have a significantly larger and nicer meeting room. This new room can hold up to 400 people, so we’ll have more capacity too. I expect attendance for this workshop to be considerably higher than for the first workshop, especially given all the positive buzz about it — and the fact that CGW #1 alumni can attend for free.

Comparison to CGW #1

I’ve received a tremendous amount of feedback from attendees of CGW #1. I didn’t calculate it precisely, but it looks like the average rating was higher than a 9 out of 10. So obviously we did something right. We don’t want to mess up what’s working, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

In the months ahead, I’ll be poring over the feedback in detail and making lots of tweaks to the format, the exercises, the fieldwork assignments, and the way the material is presented. I REALLY appreciate the level of detail people used when sending me their feedback. Rest assured I’m reading every word of it and carefully considering what you shared.

One simple change is that we’ll be doing 2-hour lunch breaks each day instead of 90 minutes. It was obvious that people wanted more time to socialize at lunch, myself included. To compensate for the longer lunch breaks, we’ll be ending 30 minutes later each day (5:30pm on Fri and Sat, 4pm on Sun), so the actual time in the workshop will be the same.

We’ll still cover the seven fundamental principles of growth on Day 1, and then we’ll apply them to different areas of life on Days 2 and 3. The feedback I received suggests that this overall structure was very effective. Most of the changes I’ll be making will pertain to how each individual segment is structured and delivered. I’ve already refined some of the exercises (including the Master-Servant one), and I’ll probably make a lot of changes to how we do the written exercises to make them more impactful. The biggest challenge is figuring out how to incorporate the best ideas into the time we have available.

My goal is to make CGW #2 significantly better than CGW #1 while retaining the elements of CGW #1 that worked best. I can’t yet say what all those changes will be. It’s going to take time to fully review the feedback and re-factor each segment of the workshop.

Workshop FAQ

If you have questions about the workshop, please consult the Workshop FAQ first. It packs in a lot of info.

I did my best to anticipate any questions you may have about the workshop, travel arrangements, hotels, and staying in Las Vegas.

Workshop Forums

A few weeks ago, we added a Conscious Growth Workshop discussion forum. This is a great place to interact with CGW #1 alumni if you want to learn about their experiences. You can read plenty of feedback from them about the experience.

A good place to start is with Alex Wu’s day-by-day review of CGW #1.

You can also use that new forum to introduce yourself to other CGW #2 attendees, arrange social gatherings in Vegas, find people to share hotel rooms, ask questions about Las Vegas, etc.

Additionally, you may enjoy reading through this thread about the workshop results, which includes lots of feedback on CGW #1. Just be aware that it’s pretty long (more than 140 posts). You may find this post from Daan Buckinx especially insightful since he shares the specific changes he experienced.

The CGW discussion forum is also a good place to keep in touch after the workshop. It’s very likely you’ll make some great new friends there. I’ve been seeing CGW alumni continuing to stay in touch on Facebook, Twitter, and sometimes in person.

CGW Alumni Attend Free

As I mentioned previously, anyone who attended the very first Conscious Growth Workshop in October can attend one of the 2010 CGWs for free.

Will there be any benefit to attending more than once? Yes, absolutely. This workshop is designed to meet you where you are right now and to help you grow from there. If you attended the first workshop, you may recall the analogy of the different planets. Next year your Planet A will be different, and so will your Planet B. Even though the material will be similar, you’ll be applying each principle to your current life situation, so your experiences will be different each time. Also, you’ll have many new friends to make and hang out with, so the social opportunities will be unique as well.

If you’re a CGW alumni, and you’d like to register for CGW #2, don’t use the online registration form. Instead, please visit Erin’s contact form, and send her a message letting her know you’d like to register for CGW #2. Please provide her with the following info:

• Your name (as you want it to be printed on your badge)
• Your city and state (city and country if you live outside the USA)
• Your email address
• Your phone number

If you send Erin this info and she confirms receipt of it, we’ll have a badge waiting for you at CGW #2.

There’s one caveat though. We need to make sure we don’t get too many alumni saying they’ll be at CGW #2 and then not showing up. That could mean having empty seats we might otherwise have offered to someone else. So if you request a badge for CGW #2 and you flake for some reason, then it means you’ve used up your freebie pass for good, and you won’t be able to attend another CGW in 2010 for free.

Since there were 115 attendees of CGW #1, we should have enough capacity to accommodate anyone who wants to attend CGW #2 for free, as long as you request a badge early enough. However, if we sell out with paid registrations, then it’s possible we may have to turn away some alumni freebie requests if they wait till the last minute to request a badge.

I’d suggest that if you want to request a free alumni badge, please submit your request by December 1st, 2009. That gives you more than a month to decide. We may be able to accommodate requests after that date, but I can’t guarantee it.

If we do get close to selling out, we may follow up with each alumni freebie request to verify that you’re still planning to attend. That way we can offer your seat to someone else if you change your mind. But please don’t request an alumni badge unless you’re willing to commit to using your freebie pass.

If we can swing it, we’ll use a different color for the alumni badges, so you’ll be able to tell at a glance who’s alumni and who’s new.

I don’t know how many CGWs we’ll have in 2010 — that depends on the demand — but I’d like to do at least 3-4 of them, roughly one per calendar quarter. CGW #2 is the only one that’s been scheduled so far.

Time to Register

It should be obvious that I’m EXCITED about doing another workshop. I had so much fun at the first one that I couldn’t wait to schedule another one.

This workshop has had a huge impact on my own personal growth. I thought I was there to be the facilitator, but it turned out that I was just as much an attendee as anyone else. Together we created a space where many breakthroughs were able to occur. The last two weeks have been – without a doubt – one of the most intense growth periods of my life.

Some of the changes I’ve been experiencing are still creating ripples and will have to be revealed in the weeks ahead. But one of the simplest changes I can share is that I’ve been exercising a lot more, eating more lightly, and sleeping less. My fitness level has measurably improved, and I dropped six pounds in the past two weeks.

But perhaps the most astonishing change is that I did something I’ve never done before. That’s right — I bought a Mac! After 20+ years of continuous PC usage, I decided to switch to a Mac for a while. The fact that my laptop PC and desktop PC both went belly-up within the past 3 months made it a good time to switch. I figure it will be an interesting growth experience to become a Mac guy for a while. I ordered a Macbook Pro online last week, and it’s supposed to arrive on Thursday. I also bought a 24″ Mac monitor, which I received yesterday. Before the workshop I’d never have thought it possible!

So what are you waiting for? Go sign up for January 2010 Conscious Growth Workshop. You’ll love it!

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

The cubicle is the antithesis of doing work you love. Virtually no one pictures a cubicle when they think about doing what they most love.

The cubicle is where you end up when you fall out of harmony with what you love.

The only way you can be stuck in a cubicle is by giving your power away to it.

A cubicle has no power over you. You can empower the cubicle, but it can’t empower itself.

To complain about a job you dislike is an act of giving your power away. You chose the job, and you can just as easily choose to stop showing up.

Think of it this way: If you and your cubicle got in a fight, who would win?

Still not sure? How about this: You plus a chainsaw vs. the cubicle plus a chainsaw. Who’d win?

If you decide to leave the cubicle, it is powerless to stop you. You could smash the thing to pieces just for spite.

So the only one keeping you trapped in that cubicle is you. You’re there by choice. You’re there because that’s the life you chose to create.

“But I need that cubicle because I need money,” you say.

Now you’re giving your power away to money. Money is nothing but a piece of paper… or a number on a computer screen. How can something so lifeless and inanimate have any power over you whatsoever?

If you and $1 million cash got in a fight, who’d win?

Not sure? Ok, try this: You plus a flamethrower vs. $1 million plus a flamethrower. Who’d win?

Is that even a fair fight? You could repeat it for a thousand matches and win every single time.

“But I have bills to pay,” you say.

Now you’re giving your power away to your bills. You do realize you don’t have to do that, don’t you?

What is a bill? It’s a few pieces of paper at most.

You vs. your bills in a fight — who’d win?

Can you see who’s stronger here, or do we need to arm each of you with a paper shredder to be sure?

“But I need a roof over my head and food on the table,” you say.

Now you’re giving your power away to the roof and the food. Those are inanimate objects.

Who’d win in a fight between you and a house or you and a ton of food? I think it’s clear that you’re the fiercer opponent in those matches, and unless you do something stupid and slip on a banana peel, an easy victory is yours.

Follow this chain of making and busting excuses for as long as you desire. You’ll still end up at the same place. Each rationalization is just another instance of giving your power away.

Giving your power away is stupid. Who would use their creative powers to create a trap for themselves and then complain about being stuck in the trap afterwards? That wouldn’t be very bright, now would it? I mean… you’d have to be really, really stupid to do something like that, wouldn’t you?

Do you realize that you don’t actually have to give your power away to anything? Really you don’t.

You don’t actually have to create a trap for yourself, fall into it, and then spend years complaining about the trap.

It’s not like your traps are very strong anyway. A cubicle isn’t a particularly strong cage, now is it? You can walk away from it this very second, and it’s powerless to contain you.

An unfulfilling relationship isn’t much of a cage either. Again, it’s easy enough to just walk away.

Even now, you have the ability to withdraw your power into yourself and reclaim it.

That power is your creative ability. Your power allows you to bend reality to your will. If you want to experience a different reality, you have the power to create it.

If you desire a roof over your head and food on the table, you can use your power to create that.

If you desire to have bills in your life and also have them be paid on time with ease, you can create that reality too.

If you desire to have money flowing through your life, that is also within your power.

And if you desire to live your life outside a cubicle, then once again you are strong enough to make that happen.

Do not make excuses. Do not complain about your situation. Complaining and excuse-making are acts of using your power to create what you don’t want.

Whenever you complain about anything, it’s because you do not understand the true nature of power.

Do not pretend you are powerless. You are stronger than any excuse.

Use your power to constructively create what you want. Focus your will upon your desires. Withdraw your thoughts from helplessness and hopelessness.

Realize that you’re the creator in your reality. If you find yourself in a cubicle, who created that reality for you? Who used their willpower to walk up to the cubicle and sit down? You willed that into existence. You thought about it. You felt what it would feel like. You fed that potential reality your power. And so you manifested and experienced it. But you didn’t have to. You never had to. And you never will have to.

Look around your life and notice all that you’ve created. You did all of that. Your repeated applications of power constructed the reality you are now experiencing.

Celebrate that realization. See the good in what you’ve created. Remember the thoughts and feelings you summoned to create it. Do not give your power away by pretending that you didn’t create it.

You may have created much that you no longer desire to experience. In that case, focus your creative energies elsewhere. Stop feeding your power to what you’ve already created, and begin channeling it toward what you now desire.

You cannot uncreate what you’ve already created. Well, maybe if you use the flamethrower. But you can re-create your reality into that which you desire to experience.

Imagine being in the place of experiencing a reality that you created. Actually you’re already there. You’re experiencing that every day. But now imagine yourself enjoying a reality that you very much desire to experience. You can create that too.

What if you don’t know what you’ll enjoy? How do you know what to create next?

Well, start with what you know. If you know you aren’t thrilled with what you have right now, then pick a direction and target your creative energies there. If you know what you’re experiencing right now isn’t what you desire, then the most foolish thing you can do is to use your power to keep re-creating it.

Explore. Experiment. Create new experiences for yourself. It is only through exploration that you will hone in on what you most desire. Be willing to fail.

Celebrate your creative failures. Celebrate those times when you created something you didn’t like. Those experiences are your greatest teachers.

When you know you’ve created something you don’t like, learn from that contrast. Ask yourself, “How does this help me understand what I truly do want?”

If you know you don’t want to spend your life in a cubicle, how does that help you? It helps you better understand what you do want. It suggests other places to explore.

Based on your reaction to cubicle life, perhaps you will see that you desire to spend more time outside. You desire more freedom. You desire to manage your own time without having to be at a certain place at a certain time. You desire to physically get up and move around more. You desire fresh air and sunlight and moonlight. You desire to be with people who are on fire with passion and happiness, not with people who are slaves.

Observe your creations. Take credit for them. Take full responsibility for what you’ve created. And then learn from them. Allow yourself to have an emotional reaction to what you’ve created. Do you love it? Do you hate it? Are you bored with it? How do you really feel?

When you observe the life you’re living, are you blissing out? That’s a sign you’ve created what you truly desire. Or are you bored or frustrated or stressed? That’s a sign you missed the mark and need to try again.

Use your emotional reactions to what you’ve created as a way to re-orient yourself in the direction of new desires. Then withdraw your power from the creations you no longer wish to experience. Realize that you created all of it and that you now have the power to create something else.

Now focus your power in that new direction. It doesn’t have to be a perfectly crystal clear direction. It just has to be a path with a heart, something that feels good to you, something you’d like to explore.

If you can’t find a path that feels good, then look for a path that feels better than what you’re already experiencing.

That path with a heart is a path that requires courage. If you haven’t chosen a path that requires courage, you’ve chosen to create another trap for yourself. In the end you will only create more of what you don’t want.

True desires pull at your heart. But if your application of power has been rather weak, then the mind will resist these desires. This conflict between head and heart is called fear. Fear is what you experience when you turn your inner eye to see the path with a heart, but your mind doubts you have the power to create it and have it feel good.

When you see that path with a heart, it’s okay to feel fear and tension. It will take time to re-awaken your power and apply it to the pursuit of that path.

Imagine power and energy flowing forth from you. Flow your power toward your desires. Imagine them as real. Use your power to create them in your mind and in your heart. See your creations as real. Feel your creations as real. Know that this is an act of creation.

Be careful not to feed your power back to your undesired creations. Let the old creations die. Let go of the cubicle. Disconnect from the unfulfilling relationships. Channel your power toward your desires only.

If this is difficult for you, then strive to minimize the amount of time you spend feeding your power to what you don’t want. Go on a power fast in those areas. Starve out those creations. Keep pulling back and withdrawing more and more of your power into yourself.

Notice when you are channeling energy to something you don’t want. You will know it’s happening because you will be feeling negative emotions. When you notice this happening, withdraw your power and re-channel it toward something you desire. You will know it’s happening when you experience positive emotions. Feeding power to your desires feels good.

Enjoy the unfolding journey as your new desires begin to manifest. Keep following the path with a heart. Turn your body, mind, heart, and spirit in the direction of your desires. Keep facing toward them as much as possible, as you turn your back on that which you no longer desire.

Do not pretend to be powerless. Such behavior is unbecoming of conscious beings.

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

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

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

Where do these beliefs come from?

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

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

Removing Limiting Beliefs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m very grateful that I met Morty.

Try the Lefkoe Method for Free

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Since these courses tend to be fairly involved, I decided to ask for feedback from people who’d already gone through some of them to see if they’d be worth my time to evaluate. To be honest I was partly hoping that people would trash them because that would save me a lot of time.

However, the feedback I received about David’s work was very positive overall. Several people told me they got great results from applying what they learned from his programs, such as successfully initiating new relationships.

Another thing I was able to discern from the feedback was that many people found David’s later programs to be significantly better than his earlier works. These products were released over a period of many years, so it makes sense that the work would evolve over time. At the time I wasn’t quite sure what people meant by “better” though.

Evaluating David DeAngelo’s Products

This summer I went through a massive amount of material from David’s product line for men — dozens of DVDs in total — including the following home study courses:

• Cocky Comedy
• Meeting Women Online
• On Being a Man
• Deep Inner Game
• Man Transformation
• Become Mr. Right

He has other product lines for women created by different experts, and I have several of those products too, but I haven’t had a chance to evaluate them yet. Because of the size and scope of these programs, it can take a long time to go through them. It’s a good thing I enjoy evaluating personal development products.

I definitely saw a progression in these courses. The earlier works like Cocky Comedy and Meeting Women Online were largely technique-based. Say this and do that to get a certain result. Although the message in those programs didn’t resonate strongly with me, I could see them being helpful to many men, especially men in their early 20s. I might have applied some of those ideas in college to good effect, but I don’t see them being as effective at creating connections with women who are very conscious and aware. Even David admits as much in his later programs. Whether or not those products will prove helpful to you depends on where you are on your path of relationship growth. If you’re just starting out, you’ll probably find them useful. But if you’re already good at connecting with women and are working on the intimacy stage, it’s safe to say you’re ready for something more advanced.

David’s more recent works like Man Transformation and Become Mr. Right have a significantly different focus. I could see why people liked them so much. In these courses the emphasis is on inner development, not so much on tactics and techniques. A lot of time is spent exploring what it means to be a man today. How do we shed outmoded models of manhood that no longer serve us? What kind of men do we wish to be? How can we express ourselves authentically with women? What do women find most attractive about men? How can we create fulfilling intimate relationships? What’s holding us back?

Man Transformation

By far my favorite course was Man Transformation. At 20 DVDs, it’s the most comprehensive of all these programs. That’s about 35-40 hours of material.

Man Transformation focuses on three core areas of relationship development:

1. Inner game – developing your character, identity, and life purpose from the inside out
2. Interaction skills – approaching women, starting conversations, being confident and authentic
3. Creating lasting intimacy – moving beyond attraction and creating a deep connection with your partner

This course covers everything from approaching a woman the first time… to dating her… to creating a fulfilling long-term relationship with her.

I especially liked that this course included hour-long presentations by multiple experts — 16 in total aside from David himself. These people share a wealth of knowledge based on extensive experience.

My perspective on this course is necessarily different than most people who’d be interested in it, since I’ve been enjoying a very fulfilling intimate relationship since 1994, married since 1998. One reason that Erin and I remain very happy together is that we worked through a great number of blocks to intimacy along the way, especially during our first few years together. There were a lot of challenging moments, but we worked through them together. Our relationship has been — and continues to be — an amazing growth journey for both of us.

Many men, however, don’t know how to work through their blocks to intimacy and remain stuck for years. For example, many guys feel tremendous anxiety at the mere thought of walking up to a woman and starting up a conversation with her (aka approach anxiety), and this paralyzes them from taking action. Other guys can start a conversation, but they don’t know how to express romantic interest and end up orbiting the woman indefinitely as a friend. Other guys are good at getting dates, but they’re stuck with a series of shallow connections and can’t progress to the intimacy stage.

Man Transformation spends a great deal of time identifying these blocks and explaining how to overcome them. I think it will be really helpful for men to learn from men who started out with poor relationship skills and progressed far beyond those limitations.

If this program sounds interesting to you, please read my complete review of Man Transformation.

Exclusive 10% Discount and Bonuses for StevePavlina.com Readers

When I find a course or program that impressed me and that I feel good about recommending, I like to arrange a special deal for my readers if possible. Since I have such a large readership, product publishers are often willing to offer us a group discount or bonus.

Well, I’m pleased to tell you that the publisher was willing to offer both a discount and an extra bonus for any of my readers that are interested in purchasing the Man Transformation course. And best of all, this offer is exclusive for us, so you’re getting a better deal here than anyone else can offer.

First, you get a 10% discount off the price. My readers are the only people who are being offered this discount. Apparently they never do discounts, but they’re willing to do it for us.

Second, you get a number of free bonuses, including 3 extra DVDs (on time management, health, and financial success), a note-taking journal, and a free copy of David’s Double Your Dating e-book. Most of those bonuses you would still get if you buy direct from the publisher — it’s part of their standard offer. However, the free Double Your Dating e-book is a special bonus that’s only being offered to StevePavlina.com readers.

Third, you also get to try Man Transformation for a free 30-day trial. You only pay for it if you decide to keep it. Otherwise just send it back and don’t pay a dime.

As with any special deals I arrange, this one includes a 100% no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.

Finally, if you live in the USA, you get free shipping too. If you live outside the USA, you’ll pay a reasonable shipping fee.

This offer is good for the next 10 days (through September 27th, 2009). After that, the offer may continue in some form, but it probably won’t be as generous.

You’ll find all the details on my Man Transformation review.

In case it wasn’t obvious, this program is intended for men. If/when I find a high-quality dating or relationship program for women or couples, I’ll be sure to let you know about it.

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

At some point we decided to pull out our Flip cameras and do some interviews.

Matt posted his interview with me today. We talked about some of my ongoing experiments with raw and cooked foods (it’s been a while since I posted an update about that), creating social support for change, and how to achieve new income goals.

Hope you enjoy it.

In another interview we did, I asked Matt and Angela some questions about the raw diet and simple steps people can take to eating healthier. As soon as Erin edits it and uploads it, I’ll be happy to share it here as well.

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

He said he that he felt just about everyone could train to be a decent singer, but the main challenge was that people don’t hear themselves the way other people hear them, so their pitch is off. They hear one pitch in their heads, but what they’re actually singing (and what other people hear) doesn’t align with what they think they’re singing.

It immediately struck me that this is a great analogy for why some people struggle so much when trying to apply the Law of Attraction. The vibration they believe they’re putting out doesn’t match what they’re actually putting out. What they perceive in their heads isn’t what other people perceive coming from them.

For example, I occasionally meet people who are struggling financially, and they tell me about their efforts to apply the LoA. They tell me about how they shifted their vibration (thoughts, feelings, actions) to align with financial abundance, but they’re still manifesting scarcity. Some of them are on the verge of concluding that the LoA doesn’t really work.

However, from my perspective, it only takes a few minutes of conversation to see that such people are still broadcasting scarcity through every pore. How can they not see it? How can they kid themselves into thinking they have a mindset of abundance when it’s so obvious to me they’re still stuck in a scarcity mentality? Their mannerisms and choice of words always betray their true vibration.

It’s the same with singing, isn’t it? The way you sound to others and the way you sound to yourself may not match. So which one is the true vibration you’re putting out? When it comes to singing, the truth is represented by the sound waves emanating from your mouth. It doesn’t matter what you’re hearing in your head.

Many people don’t realize that this is how the LoA works as well. Your true vibration isn’t what you’re thinking or feeling in your head. Your true vibration is what you’re broadcasting out to the universe.

Discovering and Correcting Vibrational Discordance

Your thoughts and feelings are not equal to your vibration. They’re merely effects of your vibration, but they get filtered through your beliefs. If your beliefs aren’t aligned with truth, then your inner perception of your vibration will be a distortion of your true vibration, so you won’t perceive yourself accurately. You may think you’re resonating with a certain energetic frequency like abundance, vitality, or love, when the truth is quite different.

How can you become aware of your true vibration if you can’t blindly trust what you’re thinking and feeling?

The solution is that you need to create a feedback loop, whereby you can observe yourself objectively to get a better sense of what you’re actually putting out. This will help you make adjustments to correct inaccuracies in your internal self-image.

I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s important for singers to record themselves singing and to listen to the playback. This helps them hear what’s really coming out of their mouths. If they’re singing off-key, they will hear it in the recording, and then they can make adjustments. A talented deaf singer is an anomaly because something other than direct audio feedback must be used for training.

You can use a similar method to discover and correct your own vibrational misalignments. Record yourself, either with audio or video. Video is best because it gives you more information.

Record yourself talking about your finances. Record a conversation with your significant other. Record yourself interacting socially with friends and family. Record yourself giving a speech. Record yourself working at your desk. Then watch the playback. I guarantee that if you’ve never done this before, you will be surprised. It’s a very eye-opening experience.

If you record video, watch the playback once with video and no sound. Then listen to the audio only without looking at the video. You will pick up different insights. With no sound you can observe your body language. With no video you can pay more attention to your voice tone. This will help you see if you’re being congruent on all channels or if you’re sending mixed messages. For example, are you speaking confidently while your body language broadcasts insecurity? That would indicate that your true vibration is mixed as well, and that will surely affect your results.

Another thing you can do is invite someone else to observe you. This may take some courage, but it’s a great way to discover new truths. It’s especially helpful to get feedback from people who are already emanating the type of vibration you would like to integrate.

Ask someone who’s already enjoying financial abundance to listen to you talk about your finances for a few minutes. Ask someone who has a loving relationship to watch you interact socially with others. Ask someone who’s very healthy and fit to watch you eat and prepare a meal, do your exercise routine, and listen to you talk about your health habits. Then ask those people to give you brutally honest feedback.

We all have blind spots, myself included. In order to become aware of those blind spots, we need to take a step back and observe what’s really coming out of us. What are the real frequencies we’re broadcasting, and how do they compare with what we think we’re broadcasting?

Making Adjustments

Once you have a chance to observe yourself, make some changes based on your new distinctions. Make the gross adjustments first, and then work on the finer adjustments.

In many cases objective self-observation is the key limiting step. The challenge is to become aware of your shortcomings and to see yourself accurately. Once you’ve done that, correcting those actions can usually be achieved via basic trial and error. Make changes, record yourself again, and notice how it looks. Keep cycling through this feedback loop until you can observe that you have it right. Depending on the nature of your challenge, it may take some time to get where you want to go, but at least it’s doable.

When I did a lot of computer programming, there was a built-in feedback loop. I always had the opportunity to observe the output from the computer code I’d written, so I could identify bugs and make adjustments many times per day. But in some areas of life, such as in our human relationships, the natural feedback loop plays out much more slowly. However, you can still gain a lot of information by paying attention to your immediate results and your objectively observable momentum. If you claim to be resonating with financial abundance, but your present reality is that you’re sinking into debt and unpaid bills are piling up, something isn’t right. When you see that your results are out of alignment with your intentions, those are the best places to start investigating.

Do your best not to blame the Law of Attraction for your personal failings. That cannot possibly help. If you aren’t getting the results you intend, you need look no further than your lack of vibrational alignment. A lack of results means that you haven’t hit the right frequency to manifest your intentions yet. You’re still singing off-key. You may think you’re hitting the right notes, but if you haven’t observed your own output via objective means like recording devices and consultations with others who are already experts at those frequencies, how can you really know what frequencies you’re actually broadcasting? You can’t know!

If you want to get better at applying the LoA, you can’t simply go scouring through your thoughts and feelings, hoping to get everything perfect on the inside. You can’t create a good feedback loop entirely in your mind. It’s too easy to get lost in a tangled web of belief filters. You need to pull back, don your observer cap, and see yourself from the outside looking in. Get out of your head and your ego, and diagnose the problem holistically. Only then will you be able to apply a holistic solution that actually works.

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Communicate like a human being, not a marketer.

If your email looks even remotely like spam, expect that busy people will treat it as such.

If an email looks impersonal at all or seems like it’s being sent to more than one person, busy people will often delete it without reading it. Busy people get enough personal communication that they don’t want to bother with anything that isn’t personal.

Sometimes I get messages sent through my online contact form that start with salutations like “Hi Marc…” I actually prefer these copy/paste blunders, since it saves me from having to read them before hitting delete.

If you’re going to contact a busy person, make sure your message is personal and specific to that person.

Be authentic.

Get clear about why you want to connect with a particular busy person.

Do you want to become good friends? Do you want to do business together? Do you want to ask for advice or mentoring?

Don’t put up a false front, pretending to want one thing while secretly desiring another.

Don’t pretend you want to be friends and hang out if you really just want to do a deal together. Similarly, don’t pretend you’re interested in doing business if you just want to hang out and be friends.

When you communicate inauthentically, other people will often pick up a creepy vibe from you. They may not even notice it consciously, but they’ll feel turned off by you.

Inauthentic communication is a big pet peeve of mine. It’s such a huge turnoff when someone is being fake with me. You may think you’re good at hiding your real intentions, but someone who deals with a high volume of communication has the opportunity to get pretty good at discerning patterns, so what seems invisible to you may be glaringly obvious to them.

Authenticity is the best policy. Putting up a false front simply isn’t necessary.

I’m not suggesting the approach of radical honesty, blurting out whatever you’re thinking and feeling no matter how offensive it may be. I think a little decorum and politeness is reasonable. However, to say one thing while secretly intending something else is a bad idea. You’re a lot more transparent than you realize. People usually won’t call you on it, but they’ll sense that something is off with you, and their shields will go up.

If you want people to lower their shields around you, make sure your expression reflects your intention.

Be patient.

Don’t buy into the myth of the once-in-a-lifetime networking opportunity. If you maintain an abundance mindset, interesting opportunities will come up again and again.

Think of networking like playing in the World Series of Poker main event. You aren’t going to win the whole thing on the first day. It’s a long road. You probably won’t make it to the final table. That may be a goal to strive for, but most of your experience will involve playing the game and making new friends along the way. The try-hards usually just make fools of themselves.

Networking with people is much the same. Sometimes you’ll encounter what appears to be an opportunity, but it doesn’t quite work out. Don’t force it. Be patient and wait for a better spot. Maintain your poise and self-respect, and don’t be a try-hard.

A few years ago, someone from Oprah’s production company called to offer me an “opportunity.” They were looking for someone to help teach Eckhart Tolle’s material for some webcasts they were doing. Was that a good spot for me? Heck no. I have no interest in presenting someone else’s material when I have so much of my own to share. I knew they could find hundreds of people to fill that role, so it’s not an area where I can make a unique contribution. It may have looked like an opportunity, but it wasn’t a good spot for me. To say yes to that would have been to act out of desperation. So naturally I turned them down. The “better spot” is to share my own material in the form of a 3-day workshop.

When you network with people, do so from a place of abundance. Know that opportunities are everywhere. When a good opportunity comes your way, accept it. But when the opportunity isn’t right, just relax and let it go.

Realize that the rules change once you’re in.

Once you’re “in” with a busy person, it’s still important to be respectful of their time, but if you’ve made it past the slush pile, your status will likely change, and their shields will go down when they’re communicating with you.

Once I’ve established a solid friendship with a person, my rules change. Now my attention shifts from processing their emails and voice mails to managing a relationship.

There’s a continuum here of course. I might spend one minute typing an email to one person, an hour on the phone with another, and a half day in person with someone else. When I’m typing emails, I normally want to process them fast and move on to something else. But when I’m talking to someone face to face, I’m just going with the flow and having fun, not looking at my watch and worrying about the time investment.

Almost every busy person I know experiences a similar dichotomy. Busy people are usually tight with their time in some areas but much looser with their time in other areas.

The people who will send you a one-line email to save a few minutes are the same people who’d have no qualms shooting the breeze with you for hours under different circumstances.

I think the reason for this is simple. Typing emails and returning voice mails isn’t much fun, especially if you have to process a high volume. I certainly don’t want to spend hours each day typing emails. But I like connecting with people face to face – that feels much more natural, and it isn’t tedious at all.

Sometimes when people pop over to my house to visit with Erin and me for the first time, they start feeling anxious after a while. They might look at their watch and say, “Oh I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I just chewed up two hours talking with you. I’m sure you’re very busy and have better things to do.” I have to reassure them that it’s okay for us just to hang out and chat.

I’ve had one-on-one conversations that have lasted as long as eight hours. I’ve had people hang out at my house for days at a time. Why? Because it’s fun. I enjoy it. But if I spend more than an hour answering emails, I start feeling squirmy.

I’m certainly not alone in feeling this way. Other busy people behave much the same way. Even so-called productivity gurus will sit around drinking coffee and chatting for hours about the most mundane things. Why? Because they enjoy it. They apply their productivity tactics to efficiently process the tasks they don’t enjoy much, so they can free up more time to do what they enjoy most.

Therein lies another good lesson. If you try to communicate with a busy person through a channel they don’t enjoy much, you’re going to get processed. But if you use a channel they enjoy, you have a much better chance at connecting.

***

This was a long series, and it should be largely common sense, but these tips aren’t commonly practiced. I hope that by sharing what it’s like to network with busy people (from both sides of the fence), I’ve helped you gain some distinctions that will help you become a more effective networker – and a better friend as well.

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Don’t apologize for reaching out.

Never begin your first contact with an apology.

Every week people send me emails that begin with phrases like, "Sorry to bother you, but…" What does this tell me about the other person’s expectations for connecting with me? It tells me they expect to bother me. Who am I to argue with them? Delete… next.

If you hint that you’re about to irritate or annoy someone, they’ll assume you’re right. Why should they do otherwise?

You might think that you’re just being polite and respectful. Are you really? Or would it be more accurate to say that deep down, you don’t feel equal to the person you’re contacting?

If you have to apologize for bothering someone, maybe you shouldn’t be contacting them at all… at least not until you do a bit more work on your self-esteem.

“Excuse me…” is another weak opener. Why do you need to be excused? Are you doing something wrong?

If you’re going to approach a busy person, do so as an equal. Don’t act like an equal. Know you’re equal.

It doesn’t matter which person on this planet you wish to connect with – the President of the USA, the Dalai Lama, Oprah, etc. Don’t chode yourself with anyone. We’re all equal. We’re all part of the same whole. Why should you feel intimidated to meet another piece of humanity?

Don’t put busy people or celebrities on a pedestal. They may have a lot of accomplishments under their belt. They may be famous. So what? They’re still human just like everyone else. Don’t mistake the public image for the real person underneath.

Be secure in who you are. Know that whenever you reach out to connect with someone, you’re offering something of value. The value is who you are. If you don’t think you’re worth knowing, you need to spend more time getting in touch with your own value. Of course you’re worth knowing.

If you want to be worthy of a busy person’s time and attention, then know that you deserve it.

The surest way to have your communication devalued is to signal up front that you’re a low-value contact. High-value contacts don’t apologize for reaching out.

Get to the point.

If you conclude that making friends isn’t right for you, and you opt to communicate some kind of offer straightaway, then do your best to be concise and direct.

Never ever begin your emails with a paragraph like this:

I know you get a lot of emails, but I just had to send you this message. I’m sure you must be very busy, and I definitely respect your time, so I’ll try to be as brief as possible. This request will take a bit of explaining though. But please take the time to read it all the way through. I’m sure it will be worth your time to do so.

This is the point where a busy person will often hit delete. When I see a paragraph like this, I probably hit delete at least half the time without bothering to read the rest of the message, regardless of length. Historically speaking, such messages have rarely been worth the time to read. Also, when I answer the phone and someone offers up the verbal equivalent of the above paragraph, I know it’s best to get off the phone ASAP.

Plainly state the purpose of your communication in the first sentence. Get to the frakkin point as quickly as you can. Let the other person know the context for the rest of your message.

If you really don’t care to connect on the basis of friendship, then don’t act like you do. That’s inauthentic. You’re better off sending an android-like email and cutting out the fluff. Keep it short and sweet.

Never send a wall of text.

More than two paragraphs is usually overkill when you’re trying to solicit business. If you send long-winded emails, busy people will hit delete long before they make sense of your offer.

Making an offer or suggesting a deal doesn’t require sharing the entire history of your business. Really it doesn’t.

Some people think they should include as much detail as possible in their first message to a busy person. That way the busy person will have all the important info up front. They figure they’ve only got one shot to make a first impression, so the more words they use, the better. So they send first-contact emails that are upwards of a thousand words.

This is a mistake.

If your first contact with a busy person is to send them a wall of text, you immediately give the impression that you’re going to be a time drain. This makes it much harder for a busy person to want to follow up with you.

Make your first message to a busy person as short as you can. Busy people are more likely to read and reply to a 100-word email than a 1,000-word one.

People send me wall-of-text emails every week, but I stopped reading such messages a long time ago. I don’t even skim them anymore. I’d be afraid to reply to them for fear of receiving another wall of text in response.

If you already have a close relationship with someone, a wall of text is questionable but ok I suppose. I’d still suggest you pick up the phone if you have more than a couple paragraphs to communicate – it’s usually a lot faster. But definitely don’t send a wall of text as your first contact to someone new, busy or not.

If you want to share the history of your business or the complexities of your business model or your personal history, it’s inappropriate to do that in an email. Instead, offer to schedule a phone call or face to face meeting, and share the details then. Don’t propose marriage before you’ve had a first date. If the busy person is interested, they’ll follow up with you.

Keep your personality switched on.

The way you normally behave with your friends and family – that’s how you should behave when connecting with busy people. That’s what it means to be yourself.

I’ve seen people act like a deer caught in the headlights when meeting someone they consider famous or popular. It’s like they switch off their personality and freeze up. They can still talk, but it’s not how they normally communicate.

No one wants to connect with an automaton. That kind of communication is very boring.

I think a lot of people hide their personality because they’re worried they might say or do something that will lead to rejection. Can you see that this is a very fear-based way of thinking? You’re going to create exactly what you fear.

Don’t worry about getting rejected. It’s really not a big deal. If you’re secure in who you are, it shouldn’t matter whether or not someone else likes you. It’s much better to relax and be yourself instead of tensing up and worrying about every word that comes out of your mouth. It’s not like such mistakes are fatal. In most cases they’re easily correctable.

When you make a social faux pas and then become aware of it, brush it off if it’s minor. If it’s more serious, acknowledge the mistake and apologize for it. Most of the time the other person will appreciate your candor, and you’ll form a closer bond because of it.

A few years ago, a friend with a very “switched on” personality treated me in a way that some would regard as slightly rude. This happened in front of a bunch of our mutual friends. He didn’t notice it at the time, and I simply brushed it off, but someone else noticed and pointed it out to him later. He quickly realized that he goofed, and he took me aside and apologized. I was touched by the gesture and actually came to respect him even more because of it. He and I are still good friends to this day.

People tend to be very forgiving of personality quirks when they see you’re just being your natural self.

As a human being, you’re going to make social mistakes. That’s perfectly okay. Don’t expect yourself to be perfect. And definitely don’t assume that other people expect you to be perfect. They don’t. When you take things a bit too far and screw up, fess up to it and move on. Learn from your mistakes. This is much better than tensing up or using fake routines and communicating like a social robot.

Keep your real personality switched on, even in circumstances where you might feel inclined to clench up. You’ll make some mistakes now and then, but the honest social feedback will allow you to hone your personality over time. “Being yourself” is not a static state. You’ll continue to evolve.

You can’t grow if you hide your real personality whenever you encounter unusual social situations. The uncommon situations are often the best teachers.

To be continued…

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

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Meet in person.

It’s hard to create much of a connection with someone via email. Email just isn’t expressive enough. Email is communication stripped of its emotional context.

Instant messaging is a step up from email because it’s real-time instead of asynchronous, but it’s still a very thin channel. Consequently, I virtually never use IM. It feels like trying to communicate underwater.

Text messaging is a close cousin of instant messaging and email, depending on how it’s used and how quickly people respond.

Phone calls are a big step up because now you can pick up some emotional context from tone of voice. You can build a halfway decent connection over the phone. But you’re still missing out on body language, and when it comes to creating a strong connection, that’s a pretty big deal.

The best way to communicate is face to face and belly to belly. Nothing else compares to it.

If you do a lot of networking by email and phone calls, but you never go outside and meet people face to face, you’re probably only 20% as effective as you could be – and I think that’s being generous.

Face to face communication is very efficient in terms of the bonds it creates and the value that can be exchanged. Many people can create a strong, intimate connection with someone in a matter of minutes when communicating face to face, but that may never happen via email.

Sometimes when I meet people in person, we can get an amazing connection going in just a few minutes. It’s like our souls recognize and acknowledge each other. If I tried to form these kinds of connections via email or phone, it still wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as face to face, even after years of back and forth contact.

I know a lot of networkers who love to work the phones and email. Personally I find that a huge waste of time. It may seem more efficient at first glance because you can reach more people in less time, but is it really more efficient? What about the quality of those connections? Email and phones are okay for maintaining relationships, but they’re poor choices for building relationships.

I’m not saying that you can’t build some decent connection when communicating remotely. I’m just saying that face to face communication is about a couple orders of magnitude more effective if your goal is to create an authentic connection.

I dare say that if you’ve never met me in person or talked to me one on one, you really can’t claim to know me all that well, even if you’ve read every article and listened to every podcast I’ve created. Many people who’ve met me after “knowing” me online for years have said something like, “This is weird. You’re not like I expected.” That’s because only a small slice of me can really be communicated over the Internet.

I’ve experienced this from the other side as well. At the leadership retreat I attended in July, I finally met some people in person where we’d previously communicated only by email or phone. In every case my expectations of what they’d be like in person were off. Sometimes my mental model of the person was wildly out of sync with the reality, and it took only minutes to realize that.

When you communicate remotely, much of the connection you feel is rooted in illusion. You may harbor very deep thoughts and feelings when typing an email, but only some dull text gets delivered to the other person’s inbox, not the whole mental and emotional context that spawned that text. Similarly, when you read someone’s reply, you’re adding your own mental and emotional context to it, which is going to distort the message quite a bit. Most of the connection you feel with the other person is just you connecting with different aspects of yourself.

Sometimes I meet people who seem really gregarious and vivacious online, but in person they’re so shy and quiet. Other times I’ve seen people who seem very woo woo from a distance, but in person they’re highly intelligent and grounded. My assumptions about people I’ve never met face to face are never accurate, so I do my best to keep an open mind about people I’ve only communicated with remotely.

One of the best ways to meet busy people face to face is to go to conferences, seminars, and workshops where they’ll be, especially multi-day events where you’ll have multiple opportunities to meet and talk to them. Ideally, volunteer to be a speaker at the same event if you can.

If you spend a lot of time networking through technology, spending hours at your desk, make a point of going outside to interact with people face to face. You’ll find that life becomes much more fun and fulfilling when you do this.

Earlier this week I did a live interview for an online radio show. I could have done the interview by phone like I always do, but since the studio was only 15 minutes from my house, I opted to go there and do it in person. It was so much more fun and lively than other interviews I’ve done. I could see the hosts and read their body language from a few feet away. This made it so much easier to interact with them. It made the interview flow much better. There’s just no substitute for face-to-face communication.

Meet people when their shields are down.

Timing plays an important role in meeting busy people. The worst time to try to create a connection is when the other person’s shields are up.

If you try to talk to people when they’re “on stage” or in public performance mode, you’re not really connecting with them. You’re only connecting with their public image. Some speakers are still very human and authentic in those situations, but most have a hard time being fully themselves when there’s so much energy coming at them. They shield themselves in some fashion to avoid being overwhelmed. When you talk to them, they may seem nice enough and be very charming, but you can sense that you’re not really connecting with them at a deep level.

I’ve met some interesting authors and speakers just by hanging out in the speakers lounge for a conference I was speaking at. It’s a great way to meet people and connect as friends. Speakers typically drop their shields when they walk into the speakers lounge. It’s a place for them to just relax. I often hear them sigh as they enter the room. “Ahhh… I can relax and hang out with friends now.”

Sometimes fun connections can happen when you least expect them – if you stay open to them.

For example, I first met Gregg Braden in a restaurant bathroom. We were attending a speakers’ dinner last year and just happened to go to the bathroom at the same time. Sort of an odd place to meet, but in that environment the shields are down, and we joked around a bit before returning to the dinner. When we came out, Erin was standing there waiting, wondering what was taking us so long.

During one of the bathroom breaks at the leadership retreat last month, someone walked into the men’s restroom and jokingly said something like, “Well, this is quite a sight… All these transformational leaders lined up against the wall urinating… What would the rest of the world think if they saw this?” Then we all started cracking jokes about it. I guess this was one of those had-to-be-there moments, but the point is that even very busy and successful people are still human, and it’s a lot easier to connect with their human side than it is to connect with their public persona. The best connections happen when the shields are down.

This doesn’t mean you should hang out in bathrooms trying to network with people. The point is to stay open to connecting.

Connect with laughter.

Sharing laughs is one of the best ways to create a fast connection. This can be done over the phone, but it’s much more powerful in person. Laughter is contagious. Much of the time we don’t even laugh because someone says something funny. More often we laugh for other reasons. Laughter is a vehicle for creating a sense of inclusion and connection.

Personally I love to joke around, to tease, and to have fun. My sense of humor is largely spontaneous, so only a small amount of it comes through in my writing. People who’ve never met me in person often expect me to be this very serious and intense guy. They’re often surprised at how much I joke around.

This was something that surprised me when I first became an entrepreneur. I thought the world of business was this super-serious thing. I assumed that having fun and being business-like didn’t mix. My image of business was colored by TV and movies. Unless it was a comedy, the boardroom always seemed like such a serious place.

When I started connecting with other people in a business context, fresh out of college, I was surprised at how much they joked around and had fun with each other. Even lawyers would sometimes crack jokes with each other or their clients (although generally speaking, I found lawyers to be the least fun-loving profession I worked with, perhaps because their clients don’t take kindly to joking around when they’re paying an hourly rate). It took me years to realize that this was normal and acceptable and that I could actually use my sense of humor to good advantage in business.

I’ve noticed that young entrepreneurs tend to be the most serious. They’re so business-like and don’t give themselves permission to express their natural personalities. Experienced entrepreneurs tend to be more relaxed and sociable; they know how to have fun and enjoy themselves, even in serious business contexts where a lot of money could be changing hands. Generally the people who can’t express their natural selves end up quitting. When you can’t lighten up and have fun, the result is that you burn out.

Networking should be fun. You won’t enjoy it much if you’re super serious all the time. You will enjoy it if you learn to express your natural personality. The way you behave among family and friends should ideally be the same way you behave around business colleagues. Otherwise you’re splintering your personality and living incongruently.

To be continued…

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© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.