Site Build-It’s special buy one get one free holiday promotion is back again for a short time, starting today. This the best deal they offer, and they only do it once each year around Xmas time. This offer is good until midnight on December 25th, 2011.So if you’re thinking about starting an online business, now’s the time to get started.

What Is SBI?

SBI is a service for people who want to start their own Internet business. They provide the hosting, tools, and education to help you create a real business that generates income for you.

SBI is a very popular service. I’ve been recommending them for years, and thousands of people have signed up as a result of my recommendation alone.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I don’t personally use SBI. I’m not the right type of customer for it. But if I wanted to start my own online business today and I didn’t already have 16 years of experience, I’d use SBI.

Why? SBI would help me get to the income-generating phase a lot faster. I could learn in several weeks what might otherwise take me years to figure out on my own by hunting for resources all over the place instead of having everything I need in one central location, organizing in a step-by-step process.

SBI offers a massive amount of educational resources, support, and tools to help people learn and implement the things I had to learn the hard way.

Years ago when people would ask me how to make money online, I tried to tell them how to do it the way I was doing it. I was very specific with the details too. But pretty much everyone screwed it up when they tried to implement it. They made lots of mistakes that seemed really dumb to me, but couldn’t even see it. I didn’t realize how much of my knowledge in this area is subconscious and automatic. I don’t have to think about it, but someone who’s just starting out really does have to learn a great deal more than I can teach them.

The tricky thing about online business is that it’s very sensitive to mistakes. You have to do a lot of things right. If you screw up  just one of a dozen critical pieces — and virtually everyone does — you can doom yourself to failure. Then no matter how hard you work thereafter, you cripple your traffic and cripple your income.

Lots of bloggers, for instance, write to me with messages like, “I’ve been working on my blog for 9 months now, and I still have very little traffic. What am I doing wrong?” If I go to their sites, it takes me maybe 30 seconds to spot several mistakes they’ve made. If they just used SBI instead of trying to muddle through on their own, they wouldn’t have made those mistakes in the first place, and they’d have traffic and income instead of a ghost town.

An example of a mistake that I can share is ad placement. Some bloggers try to make money with ads on their sites, especially Adsense, but they use ad layouts that aren’t going to be effective. Ads are really sensitive to how you arrange them. One layout can easily earn 10x as much as another. I say this from experience since I used to earn $9-10K per month just from Google Adsense (as I shared in this article).

The biggest mistakes aren’t usually what a blogger does though. It’s what they don’t do that kills them. I look at their sites and see some really important stuff missing. They install WordPress and few plugins and figure they’re good to go. Unfortunately that isn’t enough. WordPress will help you build a nice website, but it won’t build you a business.

If you just want a website, don’t use SBI. That would be overkill. Use it if you want an online business that generates income for you. Making a website is just the first 20%, maybe less. That part is fairly easy relative to building traffic and having your site earn significant income. It’s the difference between learning how to drive and being a race car driver.

Making a website isn’t a competitive endeavor. No one will get in your way if that’s what all want to do. But if you want to make it a real business, now you’re competing with others who are trying to do the same thing in your field, so you’d better know what you’re doing if you want a shot at the income pool.

It’s not enough to just put some content out there and sprinkle in some affiliate links for good measure. If you want to generate income, you have a lot more learning and skill-building ahead of you.

My decision to recommend SBI was born of my frustrations watching various friends try to jump into online business and failing miserably at it. Now I just refer everyone to SBI. SBI gets them up to speed and helps them achieve their goals, and SBI does a better job of it than I would.

SBI helps you break the work down into small chunks, and then it helps you complete the necessary steps one by one. But it’s still a good bit of work.

If you’re lazy and you know you won’t follow through, don’t bother. If you’re willing to put in some effort and seriously make this happen, then SBI is a good choice.

Many people who thrive with SBI do so because they’re fed up with the alternatives. They’re sick of working for someone else and just scraping by financially.

Others do it because they want a more independent lifestyle.

I got on this path as a combination of both. Having a boss doesn’t appeal to me, and I want a flexible lifestyle where I can work when I want, where I want, and how I want. I’m not lazy, but I value my freedom to choose how I spend my time.

I also like earning money from my overall contribution, not from how many hours I sit at my desk.

I worked maybe a couple hours yesterday, doing what I enjoyed, and my website earned a few thousand dollars. I now earn more in a day than I used to earn in a whole season when I had a job, and I can’t be fired or laid off.

About the SBI 2-for-1 Special

The 2-for-1 special is an extra bonus where you can get a second SBI account for a friend or relative (or yourself) for free. It’s a nice deal for couples, for a parent and child, or for two friends, since the two of you can build your own online businesses together and help hold each other accountable.

Most SBIers that I know use the 2-for-1 special to build two sites for themselves though. Every site monetizes differently, so you may find that one site brings in $500 per month while a second site is earning $2000 per month after an equivalent amount of time spent on each. Then you may want to put more effort in the more successful site to build it even higher.

The 2-for-1 is also a nice deal if you can’t decide between two different ideas. Go ahead and develop both, and see how each idea performs.

WordPress or SBI?

If you’re considering using WordPress to build your own online business, you can indeed do that. I used WordPress, and it meets my needs just fine. But I don’t recommend this approach for most people.

Before I started this blog, which became very successful (I hit yet another all-time traffic record last month), I’d already been actively generating income online for nearly a decade. Most of the income I’ve earned in my life has come via my online businesses.

I’m also a skilled programmer. I’m comfortable working with Internet technology and writing my own custom code.

So I’m not in the same boat as most people when it comes to running an Internet business. My choice to use WordPress was dictated by my personal skills and experience.

If you’re in a situation like mine, and you’re already making tens of thousands of dollars per year online without much difficulty, then go ahead and use WordPress or something similar for your new ventures. It’s fair to say you don’t need SBI.

If you have outstanding technical skills and you’re willing to learn the business side, that’s a borderline call. For you I’d still recommend using SBI to start. Use it to learn the business and marketing side until you start making real money with your sites… till you’re bringing in about $5K per month or so. Then think about using what you’ve learned with SBI to switch to WordPress or something similar. You could stay with SBI still, but you may no longer need it at that point.

Most programmers I know can build their own websites just fine, but they suck at building traffic and making money. They create sites that virtually no one visits. SBI is a good choice to help them learn the business side too.

I started as a programmer, and I assumed that learning to run an online business would be no big deal. I was wrong. It’s a whole different skill set, and it took me years to develop those skills on my own, even with tons of business-related reading, audiobooks, seminars, training, etc.

Don’t underestimate the scope of this challenge. It’s better to bite the bullet and learn it the right way, or you’ll have to the privilege of watching people with inferior technical skills run circles around you as they earn income from simple ideas. Don’t just be technically savvy — learn some business savvy too.

If you’ve never made serious money online and you’re not a programmer… or if you’ve been trying and you’re still struggling… don’t keep banging your head against the wall hoping for things to improve. Use SBI and take advantage of their system and resources, which has been refined over many years and is proven effective. That one’s a no-brainer. You’ll reach your goals faster with it than you will without it.

For more help deciding between WordPress and SBI, see this WordPress vs. SBI comparison page. It may look fairly short at first… until you notice the “Click here to show and read the rest of this page” link. It’s disgustingly detailed.

Getting Started

If SBI sounds interesting to you, a good place to start is to watch their video tour. It’s pretty basic, but it will give you an idea of how the service works.

Then you may want to read my full review.

After that you may want to poke around the SBI website.

And finally I recommend you read my Site Build It! Walkthrough.

If you have any questions about SBI, please submit them via their questions form. Your questions will be answered by an actual SBI customer.

Just remember that the holiday two-for-one bonus offer is expires at midnight on December 25th, so you have about 2 weeks to sign up.

Your Lifestyle Is Your Choice

Last year around this time, I wrote a similar post to let people know about the SBI holiday promo since SBI does this once a year. If you saw that post and decided not to act on it, did you make the right call?

If you took action and signed up for SBI back then and followed through on it, then today you’d own a profitable income-generating website. There’s no way to know how much it would be earning since that depends on many factors, but let’s say it would be earning about $2K per month by now, which I think is pretty reasonable based on what I’ve seen other SBIers do.

Do you choose a path that was better than this? If you had it to do all over again, would you make the same call, knowing what you now know?

We can never really know the outcomes of the paths we didn’t choose. We only get to see the outcomes of the paths we actually took. But if you suspect you chose a less than optimal path last year, then don’t make the same mistake this year. Try something different, and see where it leads.

I haven’t had a job since 1992, and I really don’t miss it. It wasn’t easy at first, but I’m glad I pulled the trigger and chose this path.

Some Internet marketers will tell you that building your own online business is really easy. They’re lying to you. It’s relatively easy to maintain it, but it’s not so easy to figure it out the first time. There really is a lot to learn.

If you’re really lazy and can’t get yourself to follow through on anything worthwhile, SBI isn’t going to baby you. But if you have a bit more self-discipline than the average person, and you feel motivated to create a more flexible and interesting lifestyle for yourself, then creating your own Internet business is an excellent choice these days.

With an online business, you can maintain it from anywhere. No one cares what hours you work. You can take vacations and travel when you want to. You can work from home or from a Starbucks or from the beach. And once you learn how to create some income online, it’s not as tough to maintain it and increase it. SBI businesses in particular often scale up very nicely. More traffic means more income.

Most likely I’ll be making a similar post around this time in 2012. When you see that post, will you be one of the people who sat on the sidelines and wished you’d made a different choice today? Or will you be satisfied and fulfilled by the path you took?

If you want more help understanding what the SBI path might look like for you, I’d recommend reading the stories from people who did make that choice. There are many detailed SBI case studies. This is especially worthwhile if you want to get a better idea of the specific results people are getting with it.

Whatever you decide, it’s up to you to creating the lifestyle you desire. The world won’t just hand it to you. I’m quite enjoying the lifestyle I’ve created, and my online business is a big part of that, but it didn’t happen by itself.

Update: SBI has extended this promotion through January 3, 2012.

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

When I did the opposite and paid more attention to what was lacking in my life, I experienced a variety of scarcity-based experiences — sinking deeper into debt each year, being kicked out of my apartment due to lack of rent money, not being able to afford what I wanted, feeling stressed whenever my car broke down, always buying the cheapest items and having them break easily, etc. That place of being was compelling enough to capture my attention for a while, but after a number of years there, I got bored with it and decided to try out the abundance mindset to see what that’s like.

I would often read books or listen to audio programs that went on and on about the abundance mindset, but I figured that was easy for them to say because they were already living it. What if you’re not living it? Usually their recommendation was to start wherever you are, and some would insist that abundance is a mindset you can create regardless of your starting position. I didn’t really buy into that notion at the time, but mainly because I was desperate to try something new, I opted to give it an earnest effort for at least a few days to see if it made any difference. It’s not like what I was doing before that was working, so I figured it couldn’t hurt, and it might help lead me into new territory where a solution could be found.

I began by focusing on feeling grateful for what I did have, like being able to enjoy running along the beach or watching a sunset. I turned my attention away from lack as much as possible. I did my best to ignore my debt, my unpaid bills, and my creditors for a while. Obviously that created some consequences, and I further dealt with those consequences by largely ignoring them as well.

This is really a key point that I don’t want you to just overlook. It wasn’t just that I began to focus on abundance thinking. I also did my very best to ignore anything in my life that suggested lack or scarcity. I stopped looking at my bills. I stopped answering the phone since most of the calls were from creditors. I ignored my debt and stopped making credit card payments altogether. That sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But when I paid attention to those things, they would just bring me down and make me start thinking about what wasn’t working.

This shift of attention soon created external shifts in my reality. I became more creative, released a new product, and started making a lot more money. A year later I was debt free, partly from going bankrupt, which was a good thing because it wiped out most of my debt, and then I paid off the rest mostly in one fell swoop with an advance I received for a game I licensed to a publisher.

I continued to expand upon this mindset of abundance over time. I imagined enjoying time abundance too. I imagined being more generous, first with my money, but then I felt even better about being generous with my time and creativity. I donated thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to non-profits. I wrote articles for free and hosted discussion forums for free. I didn’t do these things to get any particular result. I did them because I just felt motivated to do them. When I held onto that abundance vibe, I didn’t have to push myself to contribute anything. It just flowed out of me without really trying.

I’ve since created a massive body of creative work and gave it away to the public domain, and I continue to add to that collection each month. This month I started doing microloans as well and encouraged others to join our team, which has been making new loans every day.

I never would have done these things if I was focused on lack. The vibe of lack didn’t make me feel particularly generous; it merely made me project generosity as something other people should do more of, or something I should get around to “in the future” (which of course means never).

There is value in having experiences across the spectrum of scarcity to abundance. I’m glad for the experience of scarcity since it helps me understand and appreciate abundance more deeply. For example, I enjoyed my recent trip to Paris that much more because I know what it was like to not being able to afford such a trip and having it seem like an impossibility. Every day I spent in Paris, I felt grateful to be there. I didn’t take anything for granted.

Through personal testing I came to see that overall I prefer the abundance vibe to the scarcity vibe. Abundance is a better fit for who I am.

I neither require nor expect others to make the same choice I did. Lots of people find growth lessons in the scarcity vibe, and I have no doubt they’ll continue to explore it. I’ve tested that vibe and that mindset enough to know that it isn’t such a good fit for me. I’m happier and more fulfilled on the abundance side. But I wouldn’t be so sure of this if I hadn’t had those scarcity experiences first.

Many times when I write about abundance, there are people who will take issue with it. It’s interesting to see how they project a boatload of assumptions onto me and then argue with their own assumptions. Some seem to think that abundance is wrong. Others want me to pay more attention to poverty.

I pay little attention to poverty, scarcity, and lack, not just in myself but in others as well. My focus is on abundance, gratitude, generosity, appreciation, etc. If you believe that what I’m doing is not enough, it’s because you feel what you’re doing isn’t enough. If you’re in resonance with scarcity, then “not enough” is something you’ll see wherever you look.

When you view one side of the spectrum through the lens of the other, your perceptions are greatly distorted. Just as scarcity may look upon abundance as greedy, excessive, selfish, elitist, narcissistic, etc., so can abundance look upon scarcity as lazy, wimpy, foolish, childish, stupid, etc. But these perspectives aren’t helpful to us… again, because they’re distorted.

You can only understand the options available to you when you experience them from the inside. And yes, this does mean that you can’t really understand an option until you’ve experienced it to some degree. From the outside looking in, you can get curious, but you can’t really gain much insight.

You’re free to do as I’ve done and test different mindsets/vibes to learn which set of experiences you prefer. You have laid out before you a whole spectrum of possibilities to explore.

Try to avoid the mistake of judging or condemning someone else’s position on this spectrum. Don’t expect others to change their mindset just because you have issues. If you feel resistance towards what others are experiencing, look to your dissatisfaction with your own vibe. Then remember that you have the power to make the shifts you desire, if you’re willing to embrace those shifts fully and completely instead of resisting them.

I’m quite pleased with my choices thus far, even as I continue to explore new points along the spectrum of possibilities. I’m fully aware that some people object to my choices and would prefer to see me focus more attention on problems like poverty. From the perspective of scarcity, they want me to change what they’re unwilling to. They want me to join them in their feelings of being not enough. From within the lens of scarcity, this may seem like a reasonable request, but from the perspective of abundance, it’s a rather silly thing to do.

The response to such requests is predictable if you understand how both mindsets work. Scarcity criticizes abundance for being not enough. Abundance finds scarcity’s request silly and so enjoys amusement at the entertainment value of it; additionally abundance is appreciative of the reminder of the contrast between scarcity and abundance. Scarcity doesn’t get its request satisfied and hence validates its experience of not enoughness; it can continue to live in its world where abundance is greedy and unresponsive to its needs. Abundance ends the interaction feeling appreciative; scarcity leaves feeling frustrated. This is a perfectly congruent outcome from all perspectives. Each vibe creates the experience that harmonizes with it.

A few people have been amusing me lately, which I’m grateful for, and I in turn have been doing my part to frustrate them.

If you desire to shift from scarcity to abundance, how do you do that? There are many techniques that I’ve shared in the past, so I won’t rehash that same content here. A good place to start is to watch the Creating Abundance videos. I actually apply this to an even greater extent today than I did when I created those videos in 2009. Now I’m spending much more time each day doing this kind of vibrational work because I find it extremely powerful.

This morning I woke up at 3:30 and then spent a good 2 hours imagining different aspects of my life as I want them to be and getting a clear lock onto the vibes that are consistent with my desires — the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes I believe I’d be experiencing if all my desires were physically real right now.

Then throughout each day, I do my best to hold onto these new vibes as much as possible. When I catch myself slipping into a vibe I wouldn’t likely experience on the side of my new desires, such as frustration or worry, I stop whatever I’m doing, take a deep breath, and reload the vibe I desire. Or if I’m tired and can’t do this very well, I just take a break to distract myself.

I continue to practice this because I find it very effective. Not only do I attract and enjoy more of what I want, but my new vibes also become increasingly repulsive to those whose vibes are incompatible, while becoming more attractive to those with compatible vibes and desires — people with whom I can enjoy co-creating abundantly.

If you’re in resonance with scarcity, it’s normal to be frustrated and annoyed by my posts on abundance. You wouldn’t want to be amused or inspired by them, as that could be a symptom of a developing abundance vibe. Even curiosity can be risky.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

When you observe financial well-being in others, especially very lavish well-being, do you sometimes condemn it? If you do so, you’re simultaneously condemning your own well-being.

This doesn’t mean you need to praise those aspects that don’t resonate with you, but don’t waste your energy on condemning them. Instead, turn your attention to the aspects you can appreciate, and this will soon attract more well-being into your life.

Notice that if you desire greater abundance while thinking negatively towards those who already have it, you’re putting out conflicting intentions — I want more abundance; I hate excessive abundance — which means you cannot and will not progress. You’ll merely continue to manifest lack.

Think of someone who enjoys a degree of abundance that bothers you on some level. Perhaps imagine a wealthy corporate CEO that got paid what you feel is excessive compensation, even as their company lost money. Imagine this CEO spending that money lavishly — fancy cars, expensive vacations, a huge mansion, a staff of servants. Now look for a seed of appreciation within that imagery, and expand it.

Do you find it difficult to appreciate someone in this situation? If so, then approach it from a different perspective. Imagine that someone who lives on less than $1 per day and who doesn’t have access to clean water and reliable meals is doing this same exercise, and she has selected you as her example of lavish living. Your lifestyle seems incredibly abundant to her, far beyond anything she’s known during her life and seemingly unattainable for her. Would you expect her to judge you harshly for having what she does not? Would you have her condemn you as a heartless and greedy bastard? How would you like her to feel about you?

Now return to the original exercise. Put yourself in the place of that CEO. To you this lifestyle feels normal, not lavish or excessive. As you see it, so many others are living in lack and scarcity. You know you can’t help them by joining them in lack. You can be generous with them of course, and you do so to the degree it feels good, but you don’t want to give so much that it disempowers them, do you? Instead you would rather inspire others to create their own happiness, assisting them where you can but being careful not to rob them of their own creative power.

People do not want to see you in lack, but they cannot rob you of your power either — that is something you must learn to develop. Do not fight against the abundance you desire, especially when you see it in someone else. Instead, think of relating to this more abundant person as you would want someone in greater scarcity to relate to you — as an example of hope and potential, not a perfect or flawless example, but an example nonetheless.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Dr. Wayne Dyer says, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” I hope you realize just how profound that statement is. But just in case you don’t, let me share a personal story about it.

During my first 5 years in business (1994-1998), I lost money every year, turning my $20K life savings into $150K of debt. That’s a net loss of $170K, or $34K per year on average. In 1999 I finally went bankrupt when my credit ran out.

Every year since then, my business made a decent profit.

So I suffered a negative cashflow each year from 1994-1998, and then from 1999 – present (12 years in a row and counting), I enjoyed a positive cashflow each year.

What the heck happened in 1999? What was responsible for this major change in results?

Learning How NOT to Make Money

I can actually pinpoint the exact moment when I felt the shift. I underwent a radical change in my perspective. I turned the way I thought about business upside down. My attitude and my motivation changed.

Obviously there were some catalyzing experiences that led to this epiphany such as getting kicked out of my apartment and going bankrupt, but when the conditions were right for it, the actual mental and emotional shifts happened fast — in a matter of minutes. It was like flipping a switch, partly in my mind… but mostly in my heart.

Here are the main before-and-after differences:

During my first 5 years in business, I focused on making my business successful. I pursued deals, money, and projects as if they were things to be acquired. I wanted to create hit products that sold well (computer games at the time). My motivation had a lot to do with proving myself, with making my mark on my particular field. I visualized my games getting glowing reviews, and I imagined seeing them selling in software stores. Money was a big concern. I always went for the deal that I expected would put the most money in my pocket and lead to the greatest success.

During my last 12 years in business, I focused on having fun, enjoying life, and creatively expressing myself. I stopped worrying about whether or not I was ever going to be successful. The bankruptcy supplied plenty of proof that I’d already failed dismally, so I didn’t see any point in continuing to pursue the same priorities that led me there. I was using a cardboard box as a piece of furniture, a symbol of just how much financial success I’d been able to achieve. Since I’d been soundly thrashed while playing the success game, I decided to change the rules and try my hand at the “let’s just play for fun” game.

A Tale of Two Mindsets

My initial motivation for starting my computer games business was to make more money. For several months before that, I worked as a contract game programmer on the side while going to college. I completed a 4-pack of Windows games, doing all of the programming and much of the design work for a local games company. When the games got published, I received about $1 in programmer’s royalties for every $7 the company received. Other people at the company contributed artwork, music, and some design work, and of course they closed a deal with a publisher too. But these were fairly basic games from a resource standpoint, and it was clear to me that I was doing well over 50% of the actual production work, probably 70-80% in terms of sheer hours invested. I even wrote the help files and instruction manuals.

I recognized that with a bit more effort, and with the help of the right people, such as an artist and a musician, I could essentially do what this company was doing, and I’d get to keep a lot more of the profits. Finding talented people to work with wasn’t too difficult, so soon I was off and running.

I had the technical and design skills to create more games at least as good as those I created for the local game company, but after years of trying, I was never actually able to make a profit.

While running the business for the first 5 years, I was constantly looking for ways to make money. If I smelled potential dollar signs, I’d chase after them. I ran after a lot of elusive deals that fizzled, fell apart, or collapsed, even after some advances were received.

I worked hard, hard, hard, sometimes even sleeping at the office. But I could never get the money coming in with any consistency. Ironically the harder I tried to make money, the faster I lost money. Instead of the Midas touch, I somehow mastered the Medusa touch.

Looking back, I didn’t do that initial contract programming work for the money. I did it for the love of game programming. I was in college at the time, and a friend pointed out a flier about a game programming position. He suggested I take a look at it because he knew I was into computer games, and we were both computer science majors close to graduating. It seemed like a wonderful opportunity to me.

I went for an interview with the company. I felt confident about getting the job, and I really didn’t care how much they paid me. I just wanted to work on games. So when they asked me how much I wanted to be paid, I said “$10 an hour,” which was a ridiculously lowball amount. Game programming may not pay as much as some other types of programming, but it certainly pays more than $20K per year, even for a starting programmer who’s still in school.

That company hired me on the spot, and I must say they got a great deal. I hit the ground running and threw myself into the first project they assigned me. They were stunned that I had a prototype up and running after only 9 days, and they actually pulled me off that project and assigned me something more ambitious.

One time my project manager asked me how many hours a week I was putting in. This was during the summer when I wasn’t attending classes. I told him about 40 hours, which would have seemed reasonable because I worked at their offices Mon-Fri during normal business hours. But I actually lied. In truth I continued working on their game projects at home on evenings and weekends. Realistically I was probably putting in 60-80 hours most weeks. And those hours were dedicated to solid coding work, not to email or any other distractions. I said that I worked 40 hours a week because I didn’t want to make the other programmers in the company seem less dedicated. I was on good terms with them — and I wanted to keep it that way.

I wasn’t working hard and fast for low pay to impress anyone. I did it for the sheer love of the work. I was enthralled by the technical challenges of each game. There was nothing else I wanted to be doing. I probably would have done that work for free.

Within a month or two, I think the management of the company could no longer stomach seeing me do such high quality work for so little, so they voluntarily doubled my pay. I didn’t request it, but I received it with gratitude. $20 per hour is a lot for a college student.

By the time the royalties were added in (after the game hit store shelves the following year), I probably ended up making about $50 per hour for programming those games, even though I only asked for $10 per hour. Plus it was really cool to walk into software stores and see something I created on the shelves.

That’s rather beautiful, isn’t it? I certainly thought so. It’s a classic example of sowing first, then reaping.

And then over the next 5 years, I proceeded to take this beautiful model and completely screw it up.

I underwent a perspective shift that seemed intelligent at the time. The potential for greater success hit me, and I began seeing dollar signs. That local games business immediately offered me another project to work on, and I turned them down so I could start my own game development business. I did that specifically because I wanted to make more money.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was simply expressing the American entrepreneurial spirit, right?

Getting My Ass Kicked by Kolrami

After 5 years of total failure, I finally had to admit that my great plan wasn’t working. Going bankrupt was a hint and a half that something went awry. The more I chased after money, the faster it ran away from me, as if screaming, “The horror! The horror!”

So in 1999 I finally gave up. I didn’t enjoy living this way. It wasn’t producing the results I wanted, so for that reason alone I could justify declaring “game over.” But beyond that, those 5 years were very frustrating. I did my best to be positive and optimistic, but seeing some great projects canceled after years of work were serious disappointments.

In my moment of epiphany, I realized that my decision to pursue money was when everything started going kittywompus. Becoming more financially ambitious simply did not work.

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Peak Performance,” the master strategist Kolrami competes with the android character Data in a game of Strategema. The crew expects Data to win, just as you’d expect a modern chess-playing computer to kick your ass at chess. They confidently advise Data to take the shortest path to victory in order to put a dent in Kolrami’s smugness. However, Kolrami soundly defeats Data without breaking a sweat. Data is stunned by the loss and assumes he must have some kind of programming defect, going so far as to remove himself from active duty until he can figure out what’s wrong with him.

Later in that episode, Captain Picard informs Data that it’s possible to make no mistakes and still lose. This leads Data to challenge his assumptions about the game. He accepts Kolrami’s offer of a rematch, and this time he plays Kolrami to an endless stalemate, leading Kolrami to eventually surrender in disgust. The crew celebrates Data’s victory and asks how he did it.

Data confesses that he couldn’t defeat Kolrami by playing to win because that’s what Kolrami expected him to do. Every advantage-maximizing move that Data attempted was blocked by a superior counter-move from Kolrami. So in the rematch, Data used a different strategy. He bypassed obvious avenues of advancement and played for a draw instead of trying to win. This visibly frustrated Kolrami and allowed Data to theoretically play the game indefinitely, rendering defeat impossible.

This episode may contradict game theory and minimax algorithms, assuming that Data could search ahead more moves than Kolrami could, but setting aside that issue, I found tremendous value in this lesson. It seemed like the perfect analogy for my own situation. I felt like I’d made no serious mistakes, but I still lost. When I reviewed my previous moves, they still seemed reasonable even though they led to failure, and pondering whether I might have a defective brain proved as unhelpful to me as it did to Data.

During my first 5 years in business, I played to improve my financial score. I saw each business negotiation partly as a competition. If I got more money out of a deal, it meant that the other party got less. The more I succeeded in setting things up to maximize my financial score, the more I had to diminish the scores of others. In order to maximally win, someone else had to lose, at least a little bit. The harder I tried to win, the more friction I created that would ultimately cause me to lose.

Maybe some people are good at playing this kind of game. I wasn’t. Someone always had more resources, more time, or more expensive lawyers. The more I pressed for gains, the more I felt an opposing force pushing back against me. This led to many problems such as delays and cancelations. I could blame others for it, but the truth is that I was responsible for creating that reality.

When Internet marketers treat you as a dollar sign, can you sense it? Can you feel that tugging sensation — the sense that their main motivation is to get something from you? How does this ultimately affect your relationship with them?

Bypassing Obvious Avenues of Advancement

In 1999 I decided to stop trying to make money. I stopped trying to achieve success. I had 5 years of failure to convince me that it was time to change my approach. The bankruptcy was like a bonk on the head that told me I’d better not live the next 5 years like I lived the last 5. I had no more credit and no more cash to burn, so I had to make immediate changes. I had little choice but to try a different path.

When I tried to succeed, Kolrami always showed up to kick my ass. I could never defeat him no matter how hard I tried. The harder I tried, the more vigorously he thrashed me.

So I surrendered to his superior skills. I stopped trying to win. I accepted the irony that trying to get a higher financial score actually doomed me to a negative score. The opposing force was always greater than anything I could overcome.

I decided to apply Data’s lesson to my business. Instead of trying to win, I began to play for a draw. I bypassed what seemed like obvious avenues for financial advancement, recognizing that it was exactly what Kolrami expected me to do. If I made those self-maximizing moves, he would simply knock me back, and I’d be worse off than when I started. Again, I had 5 years of experience to drill this lesson into me.

In practice what this meant was that I stopped trying to maximize revenue or profits. In each business transaction, I opted to give more than I received in return. I always sought to leave extra value on the table.

For example, in mid-1999 I priced my next game release at only $9.95, even though I believed a competitive price would have been $19.95. I began writing articles for free. I committed hundreds of hours to unpaid volunteer work. I hosted free discussion forums on my website to help other game developers succeed. I spoke at conferences and hosted roundtables for free. I made it impossible for Kolrami to counter my moves because my moves weren’t competitive.

Last year I uncopyrighted all of my articles and podcasts and donated all of them to the public domain. I also committed to placing my new articles directly into the public domain (including this one). I encouraged people to republish, translate, and/or sell my work for their own financial gain if they wanted to.

I deliberately and intentionally earn less revenue and less profit than I feel I’m capable of earning. When it comes to income generation, I hold back when it seems like the logical move would be to advance. While Kolrami expects me to play to win, I’m actually playing for a draw.

Playing for a Draw

When I played to win, I lost for 5 years in a row. I never actually won. Even when it seemed like I nailed a winning move, it always turned out to be a mistake that led to my being checkmated several moves later.

When I played for a draw, I was able to make money for 12 years in a row. And I didn’t have to work nearly as hard to make that happen.

When you play to win in a competitive game, you’re playing for someone else to lose. If you want to maximize revenue or profits, you need to maximize the amount of money your customers or clients pay you. The more money you make, the less money they get to keep. You can only go so far down this path before you start meeting serious resistance. And the more tactics and techniques you use to try to combat that resistance, the stronger the resistance becomes.

How many businesses have had to learn this lesson the hard way? The more they try to extract the maximum amount of money from you, the more you feel driven to resist them, such as by resorting to piracy to cut them out entirely.

Which businesses do you dislike most? Do you feel those businesses are playing to win at your expense? How does that affect your ongoing relationship with them?

What are your favorite businesses? Why are they your favorites?

One of my favorite businesses is Google. I like them because I feel they give me a lot more value than they ask in return. They provide me with a free search engine, free email, free calendar, etc. I benefit from their engineering expertise every day, and I’m grateful for it. I’ve paid them back in some ways over the years, such as by generating hundreds of thousands of dollars of business for them when I had Adsense on my blog… and probably millions if you include all the referrals I must have sent their way, such as other bloggers who signed up for Adsense after learning about my results with it.

Facebook, on the other hand, left me feeling used and abused after two years as an active user of their service. So I shut down my personal page and my fan page and wrote multiple articles about why I had to abandon them and take my social networking to greener pastures. Ironically, one of those articles racked up 2000+ Facebook likes.

Of course these evaluations are being continually refreshed. Google might screw up, and I may have to bid Larry and Sergey adieu. Facebook might correct its problems, and I’ll have to refriend Zuck. But for now, my perception is that Google is still playing with me, while Facebook still wants to play at me.

Becoming an Enigma

What does it mean to win? What does it mean to succeed? Does it even make sense to pursue these ideals?

I learned the hard way that it’s actually easier to enjoy an abundant and fulfilling lifestyle by playing for a draw instead of playing to win or succeed.

When you play for a draw, you change the way others relate to you. They may not understand this consciously, but they’ll behave differently towards you nonetheless.

Some of your decisions may confuse people at first, especially if they’re used to dealing with businesses that play to win, but generally people seem to respond positively. A business that plays for a draw is a breath of fresh air.

When you leave extra value on the table without trying to extract it, that value rolls over into goodwill, which is the lifeblood of a sustainable business.

For example, by giving away so much free content, my business receives a massive number of referrals. New referrals happen every single day — passively and with zero marketing costs.

I’ve done okay financially too. Not counting income from my workshops or my book, my blog alone has generated well over $1 million in revenue since I started, mostly from joint-venture promotions and affiliate programs. That’s plenty for me to sustain a positive cashflow and to enjoy an abundant lifestyle.

What about the economy? I live in Nevada, which has the highest unemployment rate of any U.S. state, according to the U.S. Dept of Labor. Lots of people here are looking for ways to make money, and they’re getting thrashed by Kolrami. They’re trying to beat a game that they can’t win. The odds are better in the casinos.

The irony, however, is that I perceive my actual income as much lower than it could be if I put more effort into it. There are lots of ways I could potentially earn more money, and some are dirt simple. For instance, for about an hour’s work, I could immediately start earning at least an extra $10K per month in passive income just by putting up Google Adsense ads, which I used to have on the site for several years. See this post if you want to know why I dropped Adsense. I deliberately choose not to earn this money.

Now you might be wondering, What kind of idiot would pass up an easy $10K/month in passive income? The kind of idiot who’s had his ass kicked by Kolrami way too many times.

You see… I don’t run my business to optimize revenue or profits. When I tried to do that, my real-world results were the exact opposite of what I wanted. So these days I deliberately make business decisions that leave significant value on the table, untapped and unextracted. Kolrami cannot make sense of these moves, and therefore he cannot counter them. Consequently, any potential competition with him remains in a state of perpetual stalemate. He cannot defeat me, and theoretically I can keep playing indefinitely.

Instead of seeing me as a competitor, my peers in this field tend to regard me as a bit of an enigma. Many of them became very curious when I did the whole copyright giveaway thing last year. From their perspective it seemed like a very risky thing to do, perhaps even foolhardy. Some regard it as very brave, while others simply don’t know what to make of it. Most aren’t willing to go down a similar path, preferring to keep all their work copyrighted so they can control it. They know that I’m an intelligent and strategic thinker, but since this action doesn’t really make logical sense from the standpoint of maximizing revenue, they don’t perceive me as any sort of competitive threat, so by default I’m treated as a non-threatening ally. And the truth is that I’m not a competitive threat of any sort because I’m not playing this game to win. I’m still playing for a stalemate with Kolrami, and I plan to continue doing so indefinitely.

Making money is very easy now. I don’t consider myself uber-rich, but I’ve achieved what I consider to be functional abundance. All my bills are paid, and I have sufficient income to enjoy the lifestyle I desire. I can work when I want and take time off when I want. And I feel I can keep this going indefinitely.

Even though I’ve made plenty of money from this business, I always have the sense that I could be earning many times more than what I’m actually earning. But I deliberately avoid that level of success, not because I’m resistant to success but because I recognize that the pursuit of such success is a trap.

It was a major lesson for me to learn that I can actually make more money by trying to make less money. I can achieve more success by trying to succeed less. This is what has actually worked for me in the real world.

The path of abundance isn’t the path that maximizes velocity. It’s the path that minimizes friction. If you try to maximize velocity, you end up maximizing friction too, thereby causing massive amounts of heat. Ultimately, you burn up.

If you race to every destination by driving as fast as your car will allow, is that the optimal approach? Or is it better to intentionally hold back a bit, driving at speeds well below your car’s maximum potential?

Success = Sustainability

Instead of seeing success as some kind of accomplishment, victory, or conquest, I think it’s wiser and more effective to define success as sustainability.

This isn’t just about how we run our lives or businesses. It’s about how we relate to each other and to our planet as a whole.

Is the most successful energy company the one that extracts and sells the earth’s resources as quickly as possible? Is a successful relationship one in which you extract maximum value from your partner, leaving them drained at the end of each day?

I like Stephen Covey’s analogy of the goose and the golden eggs. If you try to maximize all-out production by extracting as many golden eggs as possible, you eventually kill the golden goose, thereby causing your production capacity to crash. For long-term sustainability, you must nurture the golden goose. Getting greedy with the eggs will cause Kolrami to swoop in and turn your goose into foie gras.

The game of business isn’t winnable. No matter how hard you play to win, you’ll always lose in the end. Even if you become an extremely cunning player, laying waste to all who oppose you, eventually you’ll die, and your deathbed score resets to zero. Kolrami always gets the last move.

But if you largely ignore the score and play for a draw instead of trying to win, Kolrami cannot defeat you. You can play the game for as long as you like.

When you seek sustainability, the games of money and business are transformed. Instead of competing for survival and success, you can relax and enjoy yourself. Playing for fun is a whole different ride.

When you play for fun instead of trying to win, most people will relate to you in the same manner. Some players may initially assume a competitive posture with you, but once they realize you’re playing for fun instead of trying to win, they’ll quickly lower their shields, and they’ll begin to play the game with you at your level — for fun. Even highly competitive players naturally sense there’s no honor in thrashing an opponent who isn’t trying to beat them. No real victory can be achieved against a player who stands no chance of winning. Players that try to overwhelm defenseless opponents simply make themselves look ridiculous.

I’m not saying that you’ll never encounter a stubborn victory-minded person who seeks to trounce you anyway, but it’s a lot rarer when you decline to resist them. Competitive people tend to expend more energy on those who resist them. If you offer no resistance, they’re more likely to consider you a potential ally.

When I tried to win in business, I experienced frustration and failure. When I played for a draw, I had fun and enjoyed sustainable success.

If you’re still trying to win, maybe it’s time to give it up. Kolrami is just too good. You cannot hope to beat him. He’ll take all your best moves and turn them against you, causing you to end up worse off than when you started.

As for defeating Kolrami, in the strictest sense, I did not win.

I busted him up.

Thanks for the inspiration, Gene. You are still loved. <3

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

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

The Cellular Perspective

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

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

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

The Holistic Perspective

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

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

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

Other Perspectives

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

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

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

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

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

Fairness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Does Consciousness Want?

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

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

Hopefully not.

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

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

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

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

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

Living Small or Living Large

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being a Conscious Human

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Flow of Abundance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aligning With Higher Level Desires

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Receiving Guidance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Effect on Relationships

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Effect on Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conscious Business

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

If you haven’t read the previous post yet, I suggest you read it first, so you can better understand the context of this one. I know it’s a lot of reading, but it will be worth your while.

Stretch Goals

For the sake of convenience, let’s use the term “stretch goals” to refer to the types of goals for which you aren’t already a good match.

Such goals are of course relative to the person setting them. Buying a new car wouldn’t be a stretch goal for someone who can easily afford it, but it could be a stretch goal for someone who’s broke and struggling with unemployment. The first person can simply walk into a dealership, pick a car, pay cash for it, and drive away with it. The second person may be looking at tougher challenges to overcome.

Jack Canfield likes to refer to these as breakthrough goals, perhaps because when you achieve such a goal, you’re breaking through to a whole new level of being.

Vibrational Alignment

People don’t experience the same level of difficulty in achieving similar goals because each person has a different degree of vibrational alignment (or lack of alignment) relative to the goal.

A goal is only easy or hard relative to your vibe. Some vibes are weak matches for certain goals. Other vibes are strong matches. The more strongly your vibe matches a goal, the more easily and effortlessly you can achieve that goal.

For example, if I wanted to earn an extra $10K this month, that would be a fairly easy goal for me to achieve. I could probably do something this weekend that would generate an extra $10K by the end of the month. My vibe is already a good match for receiving such sums. It feels normal to me. But since the goal wouldn’t cause me to stretch, it isn’t very inspiring either. As far as goals go, it’s a bit dull.

For someone else, earning an extra $10K this month might be a seemingly impossible fantasy. Their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors create a different vibe. Whereas I see ease and simplicity, they might see struggle, obstacles, or lack of opportunity. They might also become overly excited about the idea of earning an extra $10K (which suggests it isn’t normal for them), thereby positioning the goal in the realm of fantasy instead of possible reality.

To yet another person, the goal of earning an extra $10K this month might be right in the middle — enough of a challenge to be interesting and motivating, but not so challenging as to appear impossible. For this person it’s a stretch goal. They see it’s possible, but they aren’t sure how to make it a reality yet.

Your vibe largely determines which goals you’re even willing to set. If your vibe is too far out of alignment with a particular goal, you’ll never bring yourself to set such a goal. That would be self-delusion at best, like a scarcity-minded person setting the goal to become a billionaire. The mind won’t believe the goal, so the person won’t take the actions needed to get there.

When your vibe is a very close match for a goal, you probably won’t even think of it as a goal. It will simply be a task to do, like making dinner or taking your dog for a walk. For me, writing a new article is a basic task which I often do for the sheer enjoyment of writing. So we could say that my personal vibe is a very close match for the goal of writing an article.

When your vibe is somewhere in the middle, you have a stretch goal. Your vibe is enough of a match for the goal to enable you to set the goal and take it seriously, but not yet enough of a match to experience the achievement of the goal.

One of the best reasons to set goals and work to achieve them is the vibrational shift you must undergo in order to achieve new goals, especially stretch goals.

Matching vs. Mismatching Vibes

There are two types of vibes to think about with respect to any goal:

1) Vibes that match the goal

2) Vibes that don’t match the goal

When your vibe is in the first category, then achieving your goal is relatively easy. You will still take action, but your actions will flow easily, and they won’t feel terribly effortful. Taking action will often feel like play. The actions you choose will be the right actions that will move you closer to your goal. You’ll probably experience many synchronicities too. Great opportunities will come to you. You’ll see good evidence that real progress is happening. Other people will notice that you’ve shifted.

When your vibe is in the second category, the path to your goal will seem difficult and littered with obstacles. You’ll notice the obstacles and will probably feel a strong desire to procrastinate, and you’ll often indulge in distractions. You will identify actions to take, but they won’t be the right actions. When you take action, you’ll often feel resistance, either from inside yourself or from the external world. Getting to your goal will feel like work more than play. You may invest a lot of time and effort into your goal, but you probably won’t get there. Months or years may pass, and you’ll have little to show for it.

These are the extremes. Depending on the degree of alignment between your vibe and your goal, you’ll probably fall somewhere in the middle. Some aspects will look like the first example, while other aspects will resemble the second situation. This means that your vibe is a partial match for your goal. Some parts of your vibe are very well aligned with your goal, while other parts are opposing your goal.

Stop Using Force

Now here’s the tricky part to understand, so please read this next bit carefully.

When your vibe is a good match for your goal, you’ll naturally have a sense of the right actions to take, and synchronicities will show up to guide you as needed. You won’t have to struggle to figure out what to do next. Most of the time, the next action to take will be fairly obvious, and it will feel good to you. It will be an action you want to take. You won’t have to force it.

However, when your vibe is a poor match for your goal, you’ll come up with some actions to take, but they’ll be the wrong actions. You won’t have a strong inner feeling of clarity about them. You’ll have a lot of doubts. It will be hard to choose a path, and even when you do choose, you won’t feel certain that it’s the right path for you. When you do take action, you’ll be acting under a cloud of doubt and uncertainty. You’ll also have a strong tendency to procrastinate and delay.

A common prescription for people in the second situation is to use force. Take more action. Fight procrastination. Push yourself harder. Eliminate distractions. Focus! Do it now! Get to work!

This doesn’t work well. It’s like trying to push two opposing magnets together. Even if you do achieve a goal this way, it will be difficult to sustain it, and a fall is inevitable. Your vibe and the goal are constantly resisting each other. As soon as you let down your guard, they repel each other.

Imagine trying to get up at 5am when your vibe isn’t a match for being an early riser. Instead of popping out of bed feeling alert and refreshed, you feel tired and sleepy and hit the snooze button. When you are a match for such a goal, however, you can arise early with ease. The goal requires no struggle at all. It’s just your normal wake-up time. No big deal.

It’s safe to say that if a goal seems like a big deal to you, this indicates that your vibe isn’t yet a match for that goal.

When you notice that you’re trying to force a goal, stop for a moment and think about it. Why is this such a struggle for you? Why are you fighting what you claim to desire? Why are you sabotaging yourself? Why do you keep procrastinating?

Ask yourself, Do I really want this goal? Is this a good goal for me at this time? It’s okay if it’s a stretch goal. Just be sure it’s something you really want. It’s perfectly okay to desire a goal that may seem like it’s beyond you right now.

If you realize that you don’t really care enough about this goal to take it seriously, then let it go. If you don’t desire to do what it takes to become a match for the goal, there’s no point in fussing over it. Drop it, and accept the consequences of that decision.

I often see this pattern with people who go to college because their parents expect them to. They pick a major that others will approve of. But they don’t enjoy the coursework, and they don’t even want to work in that field. That’s a no-brainer recipe for vibrational resistance. Then these students wonder why they procrastinate on their studies and don’t feel motivated. Sure it takes courage to choose your own path, but you aren’t here to live up to other people’s expectations.

Now if you still feel good about the goal and you still want the outcome, that’s perfectly fine too. Just because you aren’t a match for the goal doesn’t mean you should drop it. Some of the best goals will require you to shift your vibe in order to achieve them. It could be said that the vibrational shift is an even greater accomplishment than the external goal. For example, aligning your vibe with abundance can be a greater accomplishment than earning some specific sum of money. Once you’ve integrated the vibe of abundance, your whole life is transformed, not just your finances.

Orbiting vs. Achieving Your Goal

Let’s assume for now that you have a goal that you like, but you aren’t yet a vibrational match for it. What’s the next step?

Well, many people would say that the next steps are to make plans and start taking action, but for a goal of this nature, that approach doesn’t work well. It will usually cause you to run in circles.

It’s like trying to push two opposing magnets together. You can push with great force, but that isn’t a wise idea. If you want the magnets to stick, then it’s easier if you flip one of the magnets around. If you do that first, then you can pretty much let go, and the magnets will attract each other. You may give them a nudge, but forcing them together isn’t necessary.

Now this is a very simple analogy, so let’s expand it a bit. Your vibe is much more complex than a single magnet. Your vibe with respect to any single goal is like 100 pairs of magnets. Some magnets have their poles aligned to attract each other, but some are repelling each other. So when you try to achieve your goal by taking direct action, sometimes you’re in the flow, and sometimes you’re out of flow. Some parts of your vibe are pulling the goal towards you. Other parts of your vibe are pushing the goal away.

You don’t have to be in perfect 100% alignment to achieve your goal. You just have to make enough shifts such that the overwhelming force is attractive rather than repulsive. But it has to be strong enough to overcome inertia and any repelling forces.

If there’s too much repelling force or inertia and not enough attracting force, then you’ll fall into the trap of running in circles when you try to take action.

The Earth and the Moon attract each other gravitationally. But they don’t crash into each other. The Moon just runs in circles around the Earth. But what if we could somehow slow down or stop the Moon’s motion relative to the Earth? Then the Earth and the Moon would attract each other till they collided. This would be bad for people on Earth, but the Earth and Moon would become one. Similarly, if you wish to become one with your goals, you’ll need to work with the various forces and motions that are present until a collision course with your goals becomes inevitable. This is essentially what it means to become a vibrational match for your goal. If you’re not a match, you’ll end up orbiting your goal instead of reaching it, despite having a lot of gravity on your side.

Understanding the New Vibe

Now here’s another tricky part, so read this carefully and ponder it a bit.

The #1 reason people struggle to achieve their stretch goals is that they don’t have a solid understanding of the matching vibe.

Because they don’t understand what the new vibe looks like and feels like, they don’t understand the right actions to take. So they take the wrong actions, they struggle, and they get results they don’t want.

The most important thing you can do to achieve a stretch goal is to deepen and clarify your understanding of the matching vibe. What will your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors be like when you’ve already achieved the goal? What kind of person will you be when you’re already there?

Someone who earns $1 million per year doesn’t have the same vibe as someone who earns $50K per year. The thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of each person are very different. If you’re earning $50K per year, and you set a stretch goal to earn $1 million per year, the first thing you must do is study and understand the vibe you’d be emitting if you were already at the $1 million per year level. It will be very different than your current $50K vibe. Energetically speaking, you won’t be the same person.

Your greatest risk of failure stems from the problem of projecting your $50K vibe onto the $1 million goal. You can’t use a $50K vibe to create the action list to achieve this goal. You have to use the $1M vibe to create the action list, and you can’t do that until and unless you understand the $1M vibe well enough.

Most people don’t do what it takes to understand the new vibe. They project their old vibes forward in time, but that doesn’t work. It only keeps them orbiting the same goal, running in circles for years.

You must figure out which of your 100 internal magnets are aligned with the new goal’s magnets, and which aren’t aligned. When you dive into action without this understanding, the odds of success are very low. The opposing magnets will simply repel each other, and you’ll be kept in orbit indefinitely. The closer you get to your goal, the stronger the opposing force will be. This may look like you’re sabotaging yourself each time you get close to your goal. Forcing it won’t work. It will only frustate you. Then you’ll say to yourself things like, “Why is this taking so long? I should be much further along by now.” or “Why do I keep procrastinating?”

How to Learn the New Vibe

There are many ways to deepen your understanding of the new vibe that pairs with your goal. Here are some suggestions.

First, be humble as you enter this process. Admit that you don’t yet understand the new vibe. If you did understand it, you’d already be coasting effortlessly to your goal. Accept that if you’re struggling, it’s because you don’t understand the new vibe well enough. You might also be clinging to some false assumptions about it.

Try to set aside any preconceived notions about the new vibe. Start with a blank slate. Open your mind to new possibilities. Don’t pretend to know something you haven’t yet experienced. If you aren’t already living it, it’s safe to say that you don’t know it yet.

It may help to think about a goal you’ve already achieved. Remember your vibe before and after the goal was achieved. Think about the goal of learning to drive a car. Notice how different your vibe was before you learned. It probably seemed like a big deal. You may have put the goal on a pedestal. You may have felt a bit stressed about it. But as you got closer to achieving this goal, your vibe shifted to the point where driving seemed like no big deal. If your vibe didn’t shift, you still wouldn’t be able to drive yet. We could say that practice is what helped to shift your vibe, but we could also say that you shifted your vibe by spending time with people who already had the right vibe (i.e. experienced drivers), and you picked up the right vibe (not just the know-how) from them. Once you matched the vibe of a confident driver, you could drive confidently too.

This leads us into the next step. If possible, identify people who’ve already achieved the goal you want to achieve (or something similar). Buy their books, and read them for starters. Join clubs where these people are members. Do whatever it takes to get face time with such people. Don’t admire such people from a distance. You need to connect with them in person, and preferably one on one. This means not over the phone and not over the Internet. In person means in person. This is easier than it sounds if you make it a priority. When you hang out with such people in person, you’ll learn so much about the new vibe you wish to create. Some inner shifts will happen automatically. This is very important. Don’t blow it off unless you prefer to orbit your goals instead of experience them.

So if you want to be a millionaire, go to places where millionaires hang out, and spend time getting to know them. Talk to them about money. Don’t worry about getting how-to tips. You won’t be able to apply them yet anyway. Instead, get a sense of the other person’s thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about money. Contrast their vibe with yours. What’s different about their vibe? Why is it that they’re a match for having lots of money, and you aren’t? The vibrational differences tell the story.

If you’re shy or socially dorky, go to a park or coffee shop in a wealthy neighborhood. Sit down, shut up, and observe. Listen to people’s conversations. Do this again and again until you start getting a clear sense of the vibe of such people. Contrast their vibe with yours. What’s different about them? Are you willing to embrace this vibe?

Notice that such people don’t usually say, “Holy frak! I can’t believe I have all this money! It’s so unreal!” Having lots of money is just normal and routine for them. It’s no big deal. That’s the vibe you want to understand. If you think having a lot of money is a big deal, that’s why you don’t have it. That’s the vibe of wanting money and not having it. The vibe of having money is totally different.

Next, spend time visualizing yourself as already having the vibe needed to achieve your goal. You’ll learn about this vibe partly from being around people who’ve already achieved your goal. Visualization can help you personalize the vibe. Other people will give you clues with respect to where you need to make shifts, but your vibe is uniquely your own. Your wealth vibe, for instance, won’t be quite the same as someone else’s. However, you’ll still have a lot in common with other wealthy people when you make the shifts that work for you.

I recommend spending about 10 minutes per day visualizing how your life will be different once you’ve achieved your goal. How will you really think, feel, and behave on the other side of that goal? Try to make as few adjustments as possible to your current vibe, just enough to realistically see yourself in that situation and having it feel normal to you. This is important. Realize that if you’re going to achieve this goal in reality, then it’s still you on the other side, with all your dorkiness coming along for the ride. It’s not your higher self or your ideal self. It’s just a slightly adjusted version of your normal, everyday self.

Try doing it like this. Imagine a scene that represents your goal. Now put your current self into that scene. This is the person you are right now, your normal self. Imagine yourself going through that scene as if it were completely real and happening right now. You just quantum leaped right into it. Do your best to imagine this not as a dream or fantasy, but as solid reality, like a real event that’s happening today, perhaps a few hours from now.

Now let your character interact with the scene. How would you realistically react to what’s happening? What you want to understand is your character’s vibrational interaction with the vibe of the scene. This will tell you where some of your magnets are pointing in the wrong directions. The more realistic you can make this scene, the more you’ll learn from it.

Daydreaming isn’t the same thing as visualizing. You can visualize yourself being in a sex scene for the purpose of taking care of yourself, but that isn’t the same thing as visualizing a sex scene that you actually want to experience in reality. Your mind can tell the difference between a fantasy visualization and a serious goal. Otherwise you’d manifest lots of sex just by imagining it. You can imagine anything you want, but it won’t become real until you match the vibe of that experience too, and that part takes a bit more work.

For example, suppose one of your goals is to live in a mansion and have a staff of servants. In most of your visualizations, you imagine how great it will be, but that doesn’t get you any closer to your goal. However, when you take the time to imagine it as 100% real, and you plop your current self into that new reality, you notice some issues coming up.

Maybe you feel nervous and anxious living in such a big place. Perhaps you feel uncomfortable telling your servants what to do — maybe you feel bad about the idea of other people cleaning your toilets and making your meals. Maybe you also feel some excitement about having such a cool place to live, but that also suggests a mismatch because if you actually lived there, it would probably feel normal to you. You might appreciate your home, but you probably wouldn’t feel excited about living there every day.

Take notes about these experiences. Write down things like: I don’t feel good about paying 20x bigger tax bills. I don’t like telling other people what to do. I’d feel stressed if I had to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per year minimum just to cover my expenses. What are the thoughts, beliefs, and feelings you have that indicate you’re still a mismatch for your goal?

Sometimes it’s the extended consequences of the goal, rather than the goal itself, that reveal a lack of alignment. For example, if you want to be a famous actor, what do you think about being in the public eye? Can you handle public criticism from people who don’t know you? Can you accept that as being a normal part of your life, or does that seem like something you’d want to avoid? If you want to achieve a goal, you must accept the logical consequences of that goal. If you resist the consequences, you resist the goal.

Now ask your mind to show you what vibrational adjustments you need to make to be congruent with your goal. Imagine that your character is downloading a new personality subroutine. Let your adjusted self interact with the scene anew. Allow your mind to keep making tweaks until your character seems to be a comfortable, natural fit for the scene. Get a sense of your character’s new vibe. What’s different about it? What had to be changed?

Again, take some notes that you can refer to later. You may notice things like: My new character is more confident. My new character jokes with the staff; s/he appreciates them but also retains an air of authority. My new character feels that it’s easy to earn enough to cover all the expenses; this isn’t a big deal.

A very helpful final step is to broadcast your desires. Share your goal openly with the people in your life, and talk about it seriously as if you intend to make it real ASAP. Notice how the people in your life react to your announcement. This will quickly reveal which relationships in your life are helping you become a match for your goal and which are holding you back. You’ll need to drop or transform the relationships that will otherwise hold you back. Don’t get clingy since that just holds everyone back and builds resentment. Accept that you’re here to grow. You’ll have the opportunity to connect with much more compatible partners anyway, so no worries about being alone.

Turning Repulsion Into Attraction

This process will help you create a vibrational to-do list. This is even more important than your action list. Once you take steps to adjust your vibe to be in harmony with your goal, the action steps will begin to flow rather easily.

What’s a vibrational to-do list? It’s a list of the personal development work you need to do in order to become a match for your goal.

Ultimately it will include three types of growth experiences:

1. You’ll shed limiting beliefs and perspectives that align with the old vibe, replacing them with new truths that align with the new vibe.
2. You’ll shed negative relationships that are bad match for your new vibe, and you’ll add positive new relationships that are well aligned with it.
3. You’ll stop feeding your power to excuses and obstacles, and you’ll begin emitting a more powerful vibe that draws your goal increasingly near.

These personal growth experiences are the inner magnets that you must re-align. Let’s consider each category in turn.

New Truths

Suppose your goal is to earn $1M per year. That’s about $80K per month. If you currently earn $50K per year, then this may seem like a very large sum. But if you were a match for this goal, then $80K per month must look and feel like a normal sum to you. It’s just your regular paycheck. There’s nothing special about it. If you’re going to turn it into a big deal, then you’re pushing this goal away.

So your new truth might be, “Earning $80K per month is normal. It’s easy and natural for me.”

To help you align with this goal, you might go to your bank, withdraw $1000 cash, and carry it around in your wallet every day. That may feel uncomfortable at first, but keep doing it till it feels normal and natural to you. How does it feel to carry two hours’ worth of pay in your wallet? It’s no big deal. Embrace your new truth, and it will help you create a more abundant vibe. If you want to earn 20x more money, then you need to change your relationships to money by a factor of 20. A $1000 sum in your new vibe is equivalent to a $50 bill in your old vibe.

If you can’t make little adjustments like this to get started, then you aren’t yet serious about your goal, are you? Are you going to make it real or not? If you’re going to make it real, then you’d better get used to dealing with larger sums of money as if it’s a totally normal experience for you. So start building that comfort now. Otherwise you’ll repel those larger sums because you’ll freak yourself out when they start to show up.

New Connections

Suppose your goal (once again) is to go from earning $50K to $1M per year. When you imagine yourself as already there, it becomes clear that some of your current friends won’t be able to handle it. So part of your inner work will be to either (1) drop these people from your life, so they stop blocking you, or (2) have some deep conversations to transform these relationships, so these people can get behind your goal.

Build new relationships too. What kinds of people would you have in your life if you already achieved your goal? Start building those relationships now. They’ll actually help you get there. Don’t do the “I’m not worthy” thing. If you’re going to make this goal a reality, then you’re going to have to overcome those feelings of unworthiness. You might as well start now.

The same goes for family members. In my early 20s when I decided to start my own business, I distanced myself from my parents and siblings because they were so immersed in the employee mindset. I had to be around other entrepreneurs to understand the vibe of success on this path.

Don’t cling to relationships that aren’t a good match for your goal. This is an area where you may really have to do some house-cleaning. Yes, you’ll see a lot of relationships come and go. That’s part of life. You’ll get used to it. If you want to be a match for having lots of growth experiences, then you’d better embrace the idea of seeing your personal relationships shift around a lot. Otherwise, you’ll be a match for stagnation and foot-dragging. This sort of shifting is nothing to fear. It can be quite exhilarating to connect with a variety of cool people in your lifetime. Clinginess isn’t a vibrational match for growth.

Embracing Your Power

The third area for personal development work is to notice where you’re giving your power away, and begin to reclaim your power. It’s time to stop making excuses, stop blaming others, and accept the full consequences of what it will take to achieve your goal.

Suppose you want to have a threesome (sexually). Obviously there are plenty of people on the planet who are willing to engage in this, so it’s certainly possible for you to have such an experience if you’re willing to do what it takes to make it a reality. It’s certainly not that difficult action-wise. Ask enough people, and you’ll get some yeses. Arrange a time to get together, and have fun.

And yet despite the simplicity of this goal, you can massively overcomplicate it if you give your power away.

Suppose you ask your current partner, and she says no. You can blame her for being a stick in the mud, or you can try to convince her (a form of force), but you’ll probably end up with a bad experience if you go that route.

You can also accept your partner’s no and learn to live without the threesome. But if this is a strong desire for you, then this will only build resentment. Settling for less than you desire certainly won’t lead to greater happiness and fulfillment. It may appear to be a more socially acceptable choice in some circumstances, but that’s just another instance of your feeding your power to something that blocks you (the delusion of being socially accepted by others in this case).

The deeper inner work is to ask, Why am I with a partner who doesn’t naturally want the same things I do? Why am I settling for less than I desire? Why am I being so clingy with someone who wants different experiences than I do?

To make the threesome real (not merely a fantasy), this inner work has to be done. These apparent conflicts need to be resolved. You have to learn to use your power to feed your desires, not obstacles.

If you were already a strong match for having threesomes, you could make one happen this week, perhaps even today. I know someone who claims to have had 500+ threesomes. For him it’s a fun but also an easy thing to experience. He can go out and make it happen with two women he just met, and he certainly doesn’t look like a swimsuit model. While most people block such an experience from happening, he directs his power to creating the experiences he wants to have.

I hope you can see that logistically, this really isn’t that difficult of a goal. The action steps are pretty basic, mostly involving some communication. But if your vibe isn’t a good match for such an experience, then it may appear to be virtually impossible for you. It will seem like the external world is opposing you, but that isn’t the case at all. Your own vibe is what’s creating the mismatch. If you adjust your vibe enough, the goal becomes easy and straightforward. It may even happen on its own without your having to ask.

Achieving stretch goals requires fixing the magnets that aren’t turned the right way. This includes dropping limiting beliefs and false assumptions, dumping disempowering relationships, and letting go of excuses and blame. If you avoid this inner growth work and try to jump ahead to cause-and-effect action steps, you’ll simply orbit your goal.

Do the Personal Growth Work

Once you’ve identified the personal growth work you must go through in order to become a match for your goal, then get busy working on it. If you’re conscious about it, you can compress lessons that would otherwise take years into a few months or weeks, creating big shifts in a short period of time.

There are tons of methods you can use to do this personal growth work. This website is filled with them. Here are some examples:

1. Journal to gain new insights (contrast the old vibe with the new one).
2. Have deep conversations with people who are intelligent and aware.
3. Meditate on feelings of gratitude and appreciation.
4. Keep visualizing yourself as already there; feel it as real.
5. Disconnect from people who aren’t a match for your goal.
6. Join a club that will help you align your vibe with your goal.
7. Move to a new city that’s a better match for your goal.
8. Replace the books on your bookshelf with books that match the new vibe.
9. Donate possessions that aren’t a good match for the new vibe.
10. Catch yourself giving your power away, and reclaim it by directing it back towards your desires.
11. When someone says no to your desires, say no to that aspect of your relationship with them (or to the whole relationship, if necessary).
12. Create new empowering belief statements to replace old limiting beliefs.
13. Hang out regularly with people who can naturally help you align with your goal (i.e. people who inspire you in that direction).
14. Intend and expect to reach your goal.
15. Use the word “when” instead of “if” when talking about your goal.
16. Blog about your goal or talk about it publicly (this will reveal mismatching relationships and help attract compatible connections too).
17. Conduct experiments like 30-day trials to immerse yourself in the experience of a new vibe.
18. Change your diet, clothes, etc. to eat, dress, and live as if you’re already there.
19. Put up pictures or other inspirational messages that represent the new vibe.
20. Read books written by others who emit a vibe that’s compatible with your goal.
21. Go to lectures, workshops, seminars, and retreats that will help immerse you in the new vibe.
22. Forgive people who’ve wronged you, and release the hurt and resentment.

I think you get the idea. The exact processes you use here aren’t that important. Last year I went to a talk where Joe Vitale asked everyone in the room (a room full of professional speakers and authors) to shout out their favorite personal growth processes. He had two people writing them down on a large white board. Within 10 minutes the board was completely filled, and they still kept going by writing over the previous items. This drove home the point that there are countless ways to do inner work.

Use your favorite three-letter acronym process. Get therapy. Poke yourself with your finger a few times. Go to Sedona and consult with the vortex aliens. Whatever. The specific process doesn’t matter. What works best for me may not work at all for you, and vice versa. The important thing is that the processes you use are helping you become a match for your goal. Don’t stick with a process that isn’t giving you results.

Results in this area may involve a lot of inner processing, but they should still create tangible effects. For many years I’ve wanted to travel a lot more. But I didn’t have the right vibe for a travel-rich lifestyle. I had limiting beliefs about how difficult it would be to make travel a regular part of my life. I had home-centric relationships that didn’t support a travel-rich lifestyle. I gave my power away to reasons (i.e. excuses) for why I couldn’t travel as much as I wanted to. I did some serious inner work to resolve those blocks, and as I did this, travel began showing up in my life very easily. Now it seems normal and natural to travel often. Two weeks ago I was in Canada. This week I spent a couple days in Sedona (consulting with the vortex aliens, no less). And next week I’ll be in New Orleans. Travel has become an easy and natural part of my life. It took some inner work to integrate the frequent traveler vibe, but I’d say it’s pretty well integrated now. I like being a travel slut.

When you’ve integrated the new vibe well enough (perfection isn’t necessary), you’ll find that the right actions begin to flow with ease. It feels natural and casual. There’s little or no resistance. When you want to experience something that’s aligned with your vibe, you just create it. It’s no more difficult than making a meal.

Now here’s the rub. The personal growth work will not be easy. It may be very challenging. But this is the area where you’ll make the fastest progress when working towards goals that you aren’t already a good match for experiencing. Once you resolve the alignment issues, the goal almost takes care of itself. You won’t have to worry so much about problems like procrastination and self-sabotage.

If you want to get through this part faster, read my book Personal Development for Smart People. It covers the 7 fundamentals of personal growth and how to speed up the process, regardless of what type of goal you’re trying to achieve. I’ve alluded to 3 of those 7 principles in this article. For the others I have to refer you to the book because it would take way too long to explain them properly in an article (and this one is already pushing 8000 words). A full book was necessary to do this topic justice.

Avoid Delusional Role Models

I feel very fortunate because I have a privileged perspective that isn’t available to most people. I get to observe lots of people going after different goals, and I get to see who succeeds and who flounders. And because I’m exposed to all this raw data, I’m able to learn patterns that most people don’t have the opportunity to learn within their lifetimes.

One thing that’s become very clear is that when people succeed, they tend to get there by taking actions that are easy and natural for them. Force doesn’t work well. Force can sometimes get you to a goal, but the form of the goal will be a bit off from what you wanted, and it will be hard to hold onto it. When you achieve a stretch goal using this vibrational alignment process, however, it’s easier to hang onto it afterwards — and to further build upon it. And you’ll enjoy the process of getting there so much more.

This is a very personal process, however. You have to keep coming back to what works for you. You have to stop projecting false imaginings onto other people, especially people you’ve never met. That’s delusional thinking that will only push your goal further away.

For example, if you set a goal to become a millionaire, search your thoughts for the kinds of images that come up. What associations do you already have in your memory? Where did you learn them? Are they accurate? Do they apply to you? Did you pick up fictional characters from TV or film for your role models in this area? When you think of millionaires, do you imagine Ebeneezer Scrooge or Gordon Gecko? Do you imagine millionaires that you’ve only seen on TV but which you’ve never met face to face? Such mental clutter will screw up your vibe in this area.

Go back to basics and re-learn the right vibe from scratch. Admit that you don’t really understand the true vibe of what it’s like to be an actual millionaire in the real world. I have many millionaire friends, and none are anything like the way I’ve seen wealthy people portrayed in fictional books, TV shows, or movies. Their real vibes are totally different than the fictional versions. Their vibes are also quite different than what I’d have expected based on interviews I’ve seen with other millionaires, or from what I’ve read in books written by millionaires.

When you only experience certain people through indirect media, don’t pretend that you know the person being represented. It’s too easy to project false assumptions and beliefs onto someone else when you only connect from a distance. If you later interact with such people one-on-one and face-to-face, those interactions will often throw you for a loop. The other person’s vibe won’t be what you expected.

Obviously I’ve shared many details about my life via my blog, but it’s safe to say that someone who spends 30 minutes chatting with me one-on-one in person will know me significantly better than someone who’s read all of my articles but has never met me in person. The second person will have a lot more information about me, but the first person will have a much better understanding of my actual vibe. I feel the same about others. If I haven’t met you in person, then I don’t claim to know you at all.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve met someone in person who’s clearly shy and introverted, but from their blog postings, you’d think they were a social butterfly. In most cases, they didn’t intentionally create a false image to deceive people. It’s just that their real vibe doesn’t get transmitted over the Internet. This leads people to project all sorts of false assumptions onto them, making it hard to use such people as good role models.

One of the reasons it’s so important to favor in-person communication (especially when you want to understand a new vibe) is that your skin cells are covered with tiny antennae that pick up electro-magnetic fields emitted by other people (such as their heart waves and brain waves). Every human being is like a walking transmitter and receiver. This aspect of our biology, however, is essentially a local phenomenon. It drops off massively if you’re more than a meter or two away from someone. Even watching someone from a stage is too far. You really want to be no farther than the distance of sharing a meal together. That’s when you’ll learn the most about someone else’s vibe. Of course you’ll learn even more about someone’s vibe if you sleep with them, but you don’t have to take things that far.

Consequently, if you’ve never spent any real time with me in person, then it’s not such a good idea to use me as a role model for any goals I might have achieved that you also want to achieve. If you only know me from my blog posts or podcasts or from watching me give a speech, you don’t really know what my normal daily vibe is like. You’re better off finding someone local who can serve as a role model, someone you can hang out with in person, if only for a short time. If you use primarily Internet-based role models, you’re probably going to spend a lot of time running in circles instead of achieving your goals because it will be very hard for you to lock onto the right vibe. You’ll merely be creating a false projection that doesn’t much resemble the real vibe that matches the goal.

The Process in Review

Here’s what our overall process looks like step by step:

1. Define your outcome.
2. Develop a deeper understanding of the new vibe that matches the goal (get face time with people who’ve achieved it, visualize yourself as already there).
3. Contrast your current vibe with the new vibe to see where you’re out of alignment (use contrasting visualizations, broadcast your desires).
4. Identify the personal growth work necessary to adjust your vibe (new truths, new connections, smarter application of your power).
5. Use your favorite processes to do the personal growth work until you achieve enough alignment to experience the flow of inspired action.
6. Allow the flow of inspired action (not force) to guide you to your goal.
7. Enjoy the harmonious manifestation of your goal.

It’s a simple process in essence, and it works amazingly well.

No goal is out of reach with this process. But what if you can’t find any role models for a particular goal?

Then you’ll have to rely more heavily on visualization. This may require more experimentation to find the right vibe. It’s one reason that new goals that have never been accomplished before by anyone usually take longer to achieve. It takes a while to figure out the right vibe that aligns with the goal. For example, human beings are always building faster computers than the ones that exist today because the vibe of “building a slightly faster computer” is already known and understood by enough people to make that possible. However, the vibe of “building a sentient android” is not yet understood and integrated, so we don’t have a Mr. Data yet.

Some fun areas for vibrational “play” involve exploring spaces with stretch goals that no one has ever achieved before. Can you figure out the vibe that aligns with the goal? Can you do the personal growth work to become a match for that vibe? Or will you stick to the vibes that represent a “been there, done that” experience for someone else?

What about the action steps? When your vibe becomes a strong match for your goal, you don’t even have to think about the action steps. That would be like telling you how to make dinner. There are countless resources to inform you about the action steps to take. When your vibe is a match for your goal, those action-step resources will tend to effortlessly flow to you. If it seems like the action steps are unknown or a struggle, then you need to do more work on aligning your vibe with your goal.

Now if I could only figure out the vibe of writing a typo-free article on the first try.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Scarce Resources

Certain resources on earth are in limited supply and are being depleted quickly. Perhaps the #1 example of this is oil. Oil is being pumped out of the ground faster than it can be replenished by the earth.

It takes energy to pump the oil out of the ground, and not all of the oil can be retrieved in an energy efficient manner. It doesn’t make sense to spend 100 units of energy in order to extract only 90 units.

The easy-to-get oil is already scarce, and companies are going after the harder-to-get oil at much greater risk and expense. It’s easier to pump oil out of the ground than it is to build offshore oil rigs and pump it up through the ocean floor. There would be no rational justification for engaging in costly offshore oil drilling if land-based oil supplies were abundant. The very existence of offshore oil drilling is a clear signal that oil is becoming scarcer. Even oil rich nations like Saudi Arabia are engaged in offshore drilling, which is a tacit acknowledgement that they’re running out of oil.

It’s only a matter of time before this resource runs out. As it becomes increasingly scarce, shortages will occur, and oil prices will surge. Industries that depend heavily on oil will have to cut back. Aren’t we already seeing this happen?

At present there’s no resource that can substitute for oil’s versatility or its integration into modern society. Oil is used to run farming equipment and transport food. It’s used in plastics — your home is probably filled with petroleum-based products. Even the tires on your car are made with oil, about 7 gallons per tire. It’s not a resource that can be easily replaced. As oil runs out, some lifestyle changes are inevitable.

Story

There’s no need to deny that certain resources are scarce. Scarce resources are part of the story of earth.

If life is a dream, then what sense does it make for there to be scarce resources? Can’t you just think your way into limitless abundance?

Limits and constraints make for interesting story. If there are no constraints, there’s no story. Life in a constraint-free world would be incredibly boring.

Abundance isn’t the same thing as limitlessness. If you lived in a truly limitless world, would you feel a sense of abundance? More likely you’d suffer from gluttony, boredom, and laziness. It would be a disappointing and uninspiring dream to endure.

This may appear unintuitive at first glance, but abundance requires scarcity.

Gratitude

Abundance and scarcity are equally valuable teachers. They both teach us gratitude, but in different ways.

When there’s a constant presence in your life, you’ll tend to take it for granted. You’ll come to expect that it will always be there. But when you have to do without for a while, it gives you the opportunity to appreciate what you have even more.

It’s the shifting between phases of abundance and scarcity that teaches us what we value most.

I take time every day to appreciate the good things in my life, partly because I’ve had the experience of not having them. I know these experiences are temporary.

I’m grateful for the freedom I enjoy because at one point I was in an 8′x10′ jail cell, feeling what it felt like not to have that freedom.

I’m grateful for the money that flows through my life because I was broke for many years, went bankrupt, and got kicked out of my apartment because I couldn’t pay the rent.

I’m grateful for the friends I have because I know what it’s like to feel alone and friendless.

I’m grateful for the health I enjoy because I know what it’s like to be sick.

When I use the Internet, I feel grateful for how amazing it is and how it lets me connect with people all over the world. I remember what it was like when I didn’t have access to this amazing wonder.

In two days I’m traveling to Canada to visit my Rachelle. We haven’t seen each other in a month and a half. Being apart for so long makes it hard to take each other for granted. It helps us appreciate each other much more. I’m very grateful that she’s in my life.

However, when there’s a glut of abundance, I’m more likely to take things for granted. That’s when scarcity may become the more valuable teacher.

When I’ve spent a few weeks with Rachelle, for instance, I may not feel as appreciative of her on Day 20 as I did on Day 1. But after saying goodbye to her at the airport and then experiencing a few days alone, I become more acutely aware of just how much I appreciate her, and I look forward to seeing her again.

It’s the contrast between abundance and scarcity that helps raise our awareness of what we value most.

The abundance mindset isn’t about acquiring and securing more stuff. It’s about appreciating life fully and feeling grateful for what life is teaching you.

Gratitude for the Story

Can you actually feel grateful for the scarcity you experience because it’s teaching you new truths about yourself?

When I was deep in debt, knowing I was going to have to declare bankruptcy, I felt I had nothing more to lose financially, so I decided to stop feeding so much of my power to that part of my life. I’d been telling myself I couldn’t have a good life if the my financial life was broken. So I gave myself permission to feel good about the other parts of my life and not let the lack of money drag me down so much. After all, it was just a number. Why was I giving it so much power over me?

I started paying attention to what I did have, and I learned to appreciate it more deeply. I appreciated the food I was able to eat. I appreciated that I somehow still had a roof over my head. I appreciated the weather. I appreciated the ocean, the beach, and the sunrise.

I appreciate that I could breathe. I appreciated running and meditation. I appreciated my relationships. I appreciated my health.

It was in late 1998 and early 1999 that I began to do that. And 1998 was the last year I felt to be a scarce one (and perhaps the first half of 1999). After that I always seemed to have plenty. Even the money situation turned around within a year. That was my first financially positive year after 6 years as an entrepreneur. I experienced 12 more good years in a row after that.

I’m glad these events were part of my story. If I had achieved lots of good things earlier in life, I don’t think I’d appreciate them as much as I do now. Despite having a lot of good stuff in my life these days, I don’t take it for granted. The sweet stuff is sweeter because I know what bitter tastes like.

The Story of Loss

Everything you have in this world is temporary. One way or another, it will vanish from your life. If it’s physical in nature, it’s impermanent.

Earth’s resources will eventually be used up. Your human body will be used up as well. Even the Sun will eventually burn out. And it’s expected that the known universe itself will eventually end.

Loss is part of the story of life. When we lose something precious to us, we deepen our understanding of its value.

Humanity is burning through some of the earth’s scarce resources. That, by itself, is not a problem. The real problem is that we don’t properly appreciate those resources. It’s okay to pump oil out of the ground and use it. The earth doesn’t mind. But are we truly appreciating what the earth is giving to us?

Do you realize that all of the “stuff” in your life is a gift of the earth? If it’s physical in nature, it was probably made from something that was pulled out of the ground. Human creativity played its part of course, but do you realize that the raw materials of the items in your home came from the earth? You’re literally wearing pieces of the earth on your body.

Now realize that all of this is temporary. You’ll either lose it before you die or when you die.

The great story of loss is that everything in this physical reality will eventually be taken from you. Do you accept this, or do you resist it?

Appreciating Scarcity

According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Clinginess shows up in the first 4 stages, but when we get to acceptance, we finally let go and make peace with reality.

I think there are stages beyond acceptance, however, and gratitude is certainly one of them. When we can see the important role that loss plays in life, we can learn to appreciate loss itself. It’s an important part of our story. Loss helps us grow.

Without loss we’d be too likely to take the good parts of our lives for granted. They’d eventually become hollow and meaningless to us. When we lose them, however, we become intensely aware of the value we once experienced.

As we move into an abundance mindset, we recognize that the true value we experience can always be recreated. Real value isn’t scarce. We may lose a loved one, but we can experience love again.

Scarcity teaches us what true abundance means. Scarcity helps us understand what we value and what we don’t.

You may not value oil specifically, but by appreciating what oil has done, you may come to appreciate technology, and by appreciating technology, you may come to appreciate human empowerment, sharing knowledge, making new discoveries, and connecting with people.

True Abundance

Abundance doesn’t require unlimited physical resources. Having limitless oil or some suitable replacement won’t help us feel more abundant. It will simply lead us to take more things for granted, and we’ll under-appreciate what we have.

Abundance isn’t about having more, more, more. It’s about learning what we truly value and realizing that we can in fact create that value if we so desire.

In some ways this dream world is much smarter than our limited individual personalities. It brings us what we truly desire, even if that conflicts with what we explicitly ask for. The universe is completely and 100% on your side. You can try to make an enemy of it, but it never abandons you. It simply outsmarts you by doing an end run around your stubbornness.

To create an abundance mindset, you may need to shed a lot of false desires. You may need to stop feeding your power to what you don’t want. And you may need to start appreciating all the goodness that’s right in front of you, but you’ve been too blind to pause and appreciate it.

If you think that scarcity in the world is a bad thing, take another look. You’re seeing scarcity because you need to see it in order to grow. You need to see war in order to appreciate peace. You need to see unfairness to appreciate fairness. You need to see disease to appreciate health. If you didn’t need to learn these lessons, you wouldn’t keep summoning scarcity as your teacher.

Don’t close your eyes to the scarcity you perceive. Let it sink in fully. Feel the sense of lack. And when you’ve learned the lesson you need to learn from it, withdraw your power from it, and use it to create the abundance you desire.

Happiness

Aligning yourself with abundance is the same thing as aligning yourself with happiness.

There are many false roadsigns to happiness in this world. Most of them lead to dead ends.

Material wealth is one example. If you think that having “more” will lead to happiness, go ahead and try it. You may learn this lesson by gaining more and still feeling unhappy, or you may learn it by failing to reach the level of more that you desire. Eventually you’ll become so frustrated that you decide to explore a different path.

I put some energy into improving my finances, but I didn’t feel happier or more abundant when I achieved those goals. What gave me the greatest feeling of happiness was taking time to appreciate the good things in my life. The interesting part is that this had nothing to do with the things. It had everything to do with how I was using my power.

I learned that it makes no difference what my finances are doing. They can go up or down, and it doesn’t affect my happiness. I always have the ability to feel grateful. Sometimes I feel more grateful when I have less vs. when I have more.

One of the reasons I placed my work into the public domain and no longer copyright it is that I realized that owning a lot of intellectual property doesn’t make me any happier than when I owned none. When I tried feeling grateful for it, I realized it wasn’t the ownership that mattered to me. Nor was it the body of work that I created in the past. I discovered the deeper truth that I’m grateful for the opportunity to express myself creatively. I’m grateful for the ability to connect with people around the world. I’m grateful for the chance to learn and grow.

I don’t need to make more money or acquire more prestige or gain more web traffic in order to be happier. I can be happy simply expressing my creativity. Certain tools like a computer and the Internet help me do that, and I’m grateful for them as well, but if they were all stripped from me, I could still express my creativity with sticks and stones. Even if I ended up paralyzed, I could build new creations within my mind, and I could still feel grateful for the ability to do that.

However, I’ve noticed that the more I remember these lessons, the less often scarcity shows up in my life as a personal teacher. I’m getting better at making choices with respect to happiness as opposed to making choice on the basis of more. I pass up obvious avenues for advancement in my business if I don’t think they’ll increase my happiness, even if they might increase my income. From an entrepreneurial perspective, it may appear that I run my business strangely, but I run it happily.

Discarding False Paths

The existence of scarcity in the world helps us identify and discard the false paths that won’t give us a true sense of abundance.

I believe that a true abundance mindset isn’t about how much stuff you can acquire. I think it’s about realizing how little you need to create happiness. Could you lose all your stuff and still feel grateful? Can you still use your power to create the experience of caring, generosity, and happiness even in the presence of lack?

I also think that life stops hammering us with certain lessons once we learn them. My money problems didn’t go away because I became aggressive about making more money. They stopped arising when I let go of my fear of not having money and when I stopped empowering the belief that I couldn’t have a good life without money.

What helped me most was thinking about what my life would be like if I actually became homeless. I could live on the beach and sleep under the stars each night. I could work on my social skills. I could learn to get better at drawing. I’d have lots of freedom. I could learn new languages from bilingual homeless people. I could go to libraries and read. I could meditate and go running each day. I could write a book about the experience. I could even do volunteer work to help people. I soon realized that even if I had no money at all, I could still live a pretty cool life. It was within my power to do so.

Once I realized that my money situation absolutely did not have the power to sentence me to a miserable life and that in fact, I could still lead an interesting and fulfilling life no matter what, my whole being lightened up. It seemed as if reality said to me, “Ok, great… it took years, but you finally got that lesson. Now let’s move on to these other lessons over here.” There was no more need for major scarcity to keep arising for me in this particular area since I learned what I needed to learn.

An expanded version of this lesson that I’ve been learning recently is that I don’t need non-physical property either. I don’t need to own anything at all to be happy. I think I’m going to enjoy writing without the burden of ownership. The creative part is what I enjoy most. I don’t need to own what I create.

Sustainability

Some people desire to create more sustainability in the world, which is partly about shifting away from non-renewable resources and towards renewable resources.

I don’t presently consider myself a proponent of the sustainability movement though. I think there are more beneficial growth lessons to be learned from cycles of excess and scarcity than there are from long-term sustainability.

If my own life had been more balanced, I doubt I’d have learned as much as I did. I think it would be boring and depressing to live as many animals in nature do, so I wouldn’t use that as my model of environmental harmony. I think there are good reasons humans create such huge imbalances — and why we have the capacity to continue doing so. These imbalances provide us with amazing growth lessons, teaching how to expand our power and our wisdom simultaneously.

Some would say that today our power has gotten ahead of our wisdom. I tend to agree. This, however, motivates us to increase our wisdom. When our wisdom pulls ahead, there will be a stronger drive to increase our power.

On a deeper level, I see this as the balance between Truth, Love, and Power. These are the primary ways in which we experience growth, and all three have the capacity to expand.

When Truth gets too far ahead, then we have theories we cannot test and grand ideas we cannot implement. This motivates us to come together and collaborate (Love) in order to achieve new breakthroughs (Power).

When Love gets too far ahead, we connect to such a degree that we begin to lose our individual will and drive. We stagnate and do the same things day after day. You may see this kind of imbalance arising in your life if you spend tons of time socializing online. Eventually you begin to feel empty inside, like you’re just spinning your wheels. This negative feeling can’t be resolved by throwing more socialization at it. To correct this imbalance, you need to incorporate more learning (Truth) and creative projects (Power) into your life.

When Power gets too far ahead, we abuse ourselves. We get good at creating what we don’t want, so we create a lot of it. This motivates us to pay more attention to our relationships (Love) and to listen to our true desires (Truth).

If we truly appreciate a natural resource, we’ll be motivated to find ways to use it efficiently to create good value for ourselves. If we don’t appreciate a certain resource, we may push it to the point of extinction and then deal with its absence afterwards.

How many of the now extinct species did we appreciate? Do you miss them, or are you okay living without them?

Is oil a resource that you truly appreciate, or is it one you’d be okay living without? Do you feel grateful for all that oil has added to your life? Do you hate it and want to see it go away? How does the unfolding story of earth reflect your feelings in this area? How does it give you new insights into what you value most?

For me the lesson of oil has to do with prioritizing my values. Using oil has consequences, some of which I perceive as negative and some as positive. Which of those consequences am I willing to accept? Which am I not willing to accept? And what does this tell me about my values? I learn a lot about myself by witnessing the story of oil unfolding in my reality. It’s a wonderful teacher.

Lessons From Your Story

The story of earth is taking us through some interesting lessons these days. When faced with these lessons, we have a choice. We can choose to resist them, in which case we’ll feed more power to them and see them expand. Or we can choose to learn these lessons now, which gives us a chance to move on to new lessons.

If you don’t appreciate something in your life, then why is it there? It’s there because you keep feeding your power to it. You keep noticing it and paying attention to it. If you didn’t do that, then for all practical purposes, it would be invisible to you.

The reason you’re creating this drama is so that you can have a growth experience. It is there to teach you something important, such as what you truly value. You’ll keep creating this drama in different forms until you’re able to learn the lesson behind the drama. That lesson will ultimately take you to a deeper level of Truth.

If you try to shortcut these lessons, your solutions will never last. The deeper part of your being — the part that wants to grow — will simply keep manifesting the lessons as new dramas in your reality. You create with your whole being, not just with your thoughts or feelings.

Some people are currently experiencing interesting and dramatic lessons with respect to unemployment. Many didn’t appreciate the jobs they once had and which are now gone. Now they are job-free, and some don’t appreciate that either. They may finally get a new job, and they may dislike that too. They’ll continue to live out such cycles until they realize that the common element in all this scarcity isn’t the presence or lack of a job. It’s their ongoing lack of appreciation.

If you were looking to employ people, and someone came to you for an interview, and you sensed they didn’t appreciate their previous employer, and they didn’t appreciate what they learned from unemployment, and they probably weren’t going to appreciate the job you could give them, would you hire them? If you were going to hire someone, wouldn’t you choose someone that would truly appreciate what you can offer? Wouldn’t you favor someone with a record of appreciating their previous work history as well? Would you rather work with an appreciative person or with an unappreciative one? What would you want if you were the employer?

What kind of employer would hire an unappreciative employee? Perhaps an employer who’s desperate, ignorant, or self-punishing would do so. Is that the kind of person you’d want as your boss? Are you likely to enjoy that job?

My career life turned around when I learned to appreciate the value of work itself. I realized that the value I get from work isn’t about how much I get paid or who hires me. It’s about the opportunity to express myself creatively. Once I realized that, I always enjoyed my work.  I feel grateful that I get to create something that didn’t exist before. I also realized that being creative is more important to me than a steady paycheck. I’m glad that life brought me experiences to teach me this lesson, even though they were difficult to learn.

Can we enjoy abundance in a world of scarce resources? Of course we can. Scarcity is one of our best teachers. It steers us away from false paths and teaches us what real abundance means to us. We don’t need more money or success or iStuff to be happy. We can choose to feel grateful for what we value most, and through that feeling of gratitude, we can empower its expansion.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Why Have I Been Recommending SBI for Years?

SBI is a popular online service that helps you build an income-generating online business. It includes the education, tools, and website hosting to get you to the point of making money. This service is for people who want to build a real online business that consistently generates income month after month. If you only want to put up a website and don’t care about whether it makes any money, you don’t need SBI.

The whole point of using SBI is to create a website that makes money for you, namely passive income that keeps coming in month after month.

I don’t recommend SBI for people with strong technical and web design skills who are already making streams of passive income online. If you’re already doing what SBI does, then you really don’t need it. Personally I don’t use SBI because I’ve been doing business online since 1995, so I already developed the know-how to do what SBI would otherwise do for me.

I recommend SBI as the best choice for people who aren’t already making at least $1000 per month online — and they’d really like to get into it — but they don’t know how to make it so. (If they knew how, they’d already be doing it, not just talking about it.) This is especially true for people who don’t have deep technical and design skills, but they can write well enough to produce decent content.

I also recommend SBI for people who have the skills to create a website or a blog, but they aren’t making much money with it, and they really don’t know how to monetize their work well. SBI does a great job of teaching you how to monetize your content, and they providing tools to get you into the money game faster.

One of the reasons I keep recommending SBI is that it works. I’ve recommended it to some of my closest friends. It’s gratifying to see them making money with it month after month. I can’t teach people to do what I do the way that I do it — it’s too complicated, and there are decades of knowledge and experience that got me to this point. Fortunately, SBI doesn’t require people to learn all of that. They provide a structure and tools to keep you headed down the right track towards making passive income for life.

SBI vs. Blogging

One advantage that SBI has over blogging is that a blog can be a bit of a “monkey on your back.” There’s a feeling of pressure that you have to keep updating it. Personally that doesn’t bother me. I’ve been blogging for 6+ years and still enjoy it, and I have limitless new ideas to express. But if you don’t want to dedicate so much of your life to a single website, SBI is a good choice because it focuses on creating sites that don’t look like they need to be constantly updated, so if you want to take a few months off here and there — or just get it to a certain level and then enjoy the ongoing cashflow for life — that’s perfectly fine.

My friend Darlene is a talented raw food chef. I tell her she’s my stomach’s best friend. She has an SBI site called Raw Food Diet Inspiration, which she’s gradually built up to about 150 pages. She shares many recipes and tips for healthier eating. She can choose to let the site sit there, such as while she’s traveling, or she can continue to build it up by adding more content. By using SBI she was able to get up and running fast and has turned her passion into a online business.

If you just want to put up a website and don’t care about making money with it, don’t use SBI. Use WordPress instead. WordPress is very robust, and you can’t beat free. But a website is a different animal than an online business. It takes more knowledge and skill to build a successful online business that actually makes money.

My website may not win any design awards, but it consistently brings in six figures a year. It took about 24 months after I started blogging to pass the $10K per month mark. There are many SBIers who are earning at that level and more; most own multiple SBI sites.

If you want an online business that actually makes money, then I’d recommend SBI over WordPress for most people. SBI directly teaches people how to monetize their work and provides tools to assist in that process. The whole point of using SBI is for you to make money with it.

WordPress is a content management tool. SBI is a business building tool. There’s a lot of overlap, but the former is designed to help you publish content, while the latter is designed to generate multiple streams of passive income for you. If you want to share personal growth tips or something like that, use WordPress. If you want to make money from what you share, and you don’t necessarily want to create new content every week for years, then use SBI.

Rule of 5

As a tip for succeeding with SBI, I recommend using Jack Canfield’s Rule of 5. Take 5 small actions each day to improve your SBI site, especially the content and monetization. Actions might include signing up for a new affiliate program, posting a new article, tweaking the layout of one of your pages for better flow, and so on.

Jack and his partner, Mark Victor Hansen, used the Rule of 5 to promote their first Chicken Soup for the Soul book. They took 5 specific actions each day, 6-7 days per week, to work towards their goal of making the book a New York Times bestseller. It took 14 months of consistent action, but they eventually got there. Actions included calling radio stations for interviews, calling bookstores to request that they stock the book, mailing out review copies, and so on.

SBI isn’t a get rich quick scheme. It’s not for the fool who thinks they can get something for nothing. It’s for the person who wants to share genuine value with others and generate income from their work. If you’re willing to put out good value, SBI will help you turn it into streams of income. That’s precisely what it’s designed to do, and it does that quite well.

About the SBI 2-for-1 Special

The 2-for-1 special is only offered once per year. This is an extra optional bonus where you can get a second SBI subscription for a friend or relative (or even yourself) for FREE instead of the regular price.

This offer is only good until midnight on December 25th, 2010, so if you want to take advantage of it, now is the time to look into this and make a decision.

This is a great deal for couples, for a parent and child, or for two friends, since the two of you can build your own online businesses together.

Most SBIers that I know use the 2-for-1 special to build two sites for themselves. Every site monetizes differently, so they may find that one site brings in $500 per month while their second site is earning $2000 per month after an equivalent amount of time spent on each. This is also a great deal for people who have multiple passions, and they like having the freedom to switch back and forth between them.

Getting Started

If SBI sounds interesting to you, a good place to start is to watch their video tour.

Then you may want to read my full review.

After that you may want to poke around the SBI website.

And finally I recommend you read my Site Build It! Walkthrough.

If you have any questions about SBI, please submit them via their questions form. Your questions will be answered by an actual SBI customer.

Just remember that the holiday two-for-one bonus offer is expires at midnight on December 25th, 2010.

There are several successful SBIers who are active in the forums here, and they’ve been great about sharing tips and advice. So as you’re building your own SBI site(s), take advantage of that extra social support to keep you on track towards your passive income goals.

There’s no substitute for making money online. With a well-monetized online business, money comes in month after month, and you can generally expect the cashflow to continue for years. You can’t be fired and suddenly lose your income. Even if you stop working on your site after a while and just let it sit there, you’ll probably find that it keeps bringing in cash like clockwork year after year with no end in sight.

This is a wonderful place to be lifestyle-wise. Thanks to the income that StevePavlina.com generates, I’ve spent 9-10 weeks traveling this year, and I have another 10-day trip coming up in a few weeks — it will be my first ever White Christmas. I don’t need permission from my boss, and my website brings in more money than I spend while I’m on the road.

In the Spring of 2011, I intend to go to France. I haven’t been to Europe yet, so I’m really looking forward to the experience.

Other than laziness or limiting beliefs, there’s no reason you can’t enjoy similar freedoms and benefits. It’s definitely worth it! Who needs a boss anyway?

When I’m posting pics of the Eiffel Tower in a few months, will you still be slaving away at the same job? Or will you already be making money from a new web business and be well on your way to a lifestyle you desire? For a smart person like you, a job is totally unnecessary, and so is being broke. You deserve to get paid based on the value you create and share with people, not the number of hours you put in.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina